LEARNING HOW TO RECEIVE

The church is really good at reminding us that it is better to give than to receive. We take up collections every Sunday, have special offerings to purchase a new organ or to build a home for a family. We ask for funds on a regular basis for the Rector to use for helping others and ask for donations to support children in other lands so that they can have a decent education -- and the list seems go on and on and on.

We have bake sales and bazaars, book sales and rummage sales, car washes and spaghetti dinners, and anything else anyone can think of to raise needed monies for needed causes. Then, of course, there is the annual Every Member Canvas that is fast approaching.

All this is not a criticism. It is simply the truth. There are better ways, I suspect, to raise funds, but that is not my issue at the moment. Nor do I wish to debate the fact that it is better to give than to receive. It truly is and we all know it.

But sometimes we can get the impression that there is something wrong in receiving; we sometimes give that impression as well. We sometimes believe that if we are on the receiving end of someone else's giving, we are somehow inferior to, that we are of lesser worth than, the giver. That is nonsense, of course, but we do sometimes give that impression as givers and have that feeling as receivers.

We also often feel that when given a gift, we have to reciprocate somehow in some way. We find it difficult, at times, believing that a gift is given with no strings attached, that it is given simply out of the love.

Neither giving nor receiving comes easy. Why that is true, I am not sure. But I do find it to be true. As children we have to be taught to share our toys with others. In fact, as children we find it easier to take than to give, to hoard rather than to share. It takes a lot of time and teaching for us to realize how good it is to share what we have, share from our abundance with those who have less.

What we then assume is that because it is good to give, it must be bad, or at least not as good, to receive. So now we have to learn how to receive and learn that it is just as good to receive as it is to give and that there is nothing wrong with being on the receiving end. That is a truly difficult lesson to learn.

We are on the receiving end more often than we think. We receive gifts of love, kindness and caring; we receive homecooked meals and calls and letters. We receive everyday gifts every day. We receive perhaps as much as we give, and maybe even more.

What we fail to understand, I think, is that a gift is a gift is a gift. Difference in kind or degree or need makes no difference. It makes no difference if I need a meal because I can no longer cook than if I need a hug because I just need one. Gifts are gifts. It does not really matter who gives them or how much we need them. We simply need to receive them thankfully and joyfully.

STAYING GROUNDED

It's hard to be humble when everyone thinks you're wonderful. I am not speaking of myself, of course. Yeah, right. I suspect that we all have a little trouble with humility now and then. We all like to think or want to think that we are a little better than we are and certainly better than others think we are or perceive us to be. It certainly helps when we are having a bad day for whatever reason we are.

It is easy to live under the illusion that because we are not all that bad, that we are pretty good, that we are even wonderful and that God loves us just as we are. The truth is that we are pretty good and sometimes do wondrous things and that God always loves us. In fact, as the late evangelist Luis Palau once very astutely observed, "God is not disillusioned with us."

Oh, that was only the first part of his observation. The second half? "He never had any illusions to begin with." Talk about a blow to our pride. Palau hits us over the head with a sledgehammer with that. But we need to be reminded that we need to stay grounded. God knows us better than we know ourselves. We are mere mortals after all. We are God's gift and we are God's gift to the world -- just like everyone else.

I remember way back when I was first ordained. Humility was not one of my virtues even though I thought I was ever so humble. You see, I had all the answers and I knew I had all the answers. All you had to do was ask me and I would and could tell you what was wrong with the church and what should be done. In fact, there were times when I stood in the pulpit and smugly pontificated about some issue. I had a lot to learn and a lot of growing up to do. I am ever thankful to all those kind and loving people who hit me over the head with a sledgehammer when I became too full of myself.

All this reminded me of what a mother of another newly ordained priest said to her son as he was basking in all the praise people were heaping on him. She said, "I used to think priests knew everything. Now I worry because you are a priest and I know you don't know anything." That was a sledgehammer if I ever heard one! Now I have to wonder if my own mother thought the same thing about me. She probably did but was too kind to say it. She simply prayed every day that I would not make a fool of myself and save her from the embarrassment I might cause to the family.

Of course, now that I am older and wiser and more mature and have over fifty years of experience, I definitely have all the answers. Just ask me. Come to think of it, isn’t that what my audacity in writing and sending reflections like this seems somehow in some way to indicate?

Seriously, it is so easy to live with the delusion that we are wiser than we really are or worse than we really are. When I think about it, I am not sure which is worse. Staying grounded, being honest with ourselves both about our failings and shortcomings and our God-given gifts is a never-ending battle. It is only through the grace of God that our pride does not do us in more often than it should.

TWO DOGS

George Bernard Shaw: "A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, 'The one I feed the most.'"

Whenever we do something wrong and then begin to wonder why in the world we did it, our only response -- and most honest response -- is to admit that we must have been feeding the wrong dog. We feed both evil and good, both right and wrong. More often than not we are not all that aware of what we are doing. It is only after we have been caught in the bad or been complimented for the good we did that we come to realize that we made what happened happen.

Good feeds off good and evil feeds off evil. It always has and always will for both. The evil of Hitler's Germany began with a single wrong and escalated into the killing of millions of innocent people by other people who, had they been asked before the evil began, would have insisted with every fiber of their being that they would never do such a thing, not participate in such atrocities, not in a million years they wouldn't. But they did, did they not?

How did they come to the point were doing evil took over their lives? They fed it and fed on it so much so that, in the end, it may not even have occurred to them that what they were doing was evil. They had come to convince themselves that what the evil they were doing was, if fact, a good.

Now we may protest and say that they were only fooling themselves, maybe even lying. Anyone in his right mind would know that Dachau was immoral. If that is true, then what happened is that their feeding of evil, slowly but surely, came to cloud their thinking. Evil overcame good because evil and not good was being fed.

The opposite is also true. We can overcome evil by feeding good with good, by doing good. Remaining strong in the face of evil is not easy. It is always easier to give in. That is why feeding the good dog can never be taken for granted. When we become lax in our attention to doing good, we will stop doing good, stop feeding the good dog and start feeding the bad one.

We know that. But knowing is not enough. Ask anyone who is caught in an evil act why he did it, his first response will not be "because I wanted to." It will be "I don't know. I don't know how I ended up in this mess." Upon reflection he would have to admit that he had been feeding the wrong dog and may not have been as aware of what he was doing as he should have been.

We all make excuses for our sinful deeds, make them to others and make them to ourselves. It may be human nature, and I suspect it is. Nevertheless, we must not take lightly anything we do, good or bad, about which dog we feed.

BE EVEN MORE CAREFUL

We've all heard the old warning about being careful about what we pray for lest that that prayer be answered. We also know the reality of that warning. We've all had prayers answered in the way and to the degree we prayed. And we were surprised because even though we believe in the efficacy of prayer, we sometimes pray hesitatingly. We pray not really believing that our what-seems-outrageous request will be granted by God simply because it seems a little outrageous in the first place.

When our prayer is granted, we are blown away and not only do not know what to say but are almost overwhelmed by the responsibilities that come with the granted prayer. That is not to say that we wish God had not answered our prayer. It is to say that sometimes, after the fact, we come to the realization that more was involved than a simple prayer request and a simple answer to that request by God. That does not mean that strings are attached to our prayer being answered. It is to say that it actually seems that way.

But that does not stop our asking. Even though we don't always, if ever, fully understand all the consequences of having a prayer answered, we will still ask because what we ask for is very, very important to us. Maybe we should be careful in what we pray for; but given the alternative, we will all take that chance.

It may be difficult enough dealing with the consequences of an answered prayer, what is even more eye-opening is the fact that sometimes the answer to our prayer is the one praying. So we are warned: be careful how you pray: you may be the answer.

The fact is, I think, we are always the answer, or at least part of the answer. God answers our prayers because we ask, even if we ask for something for someone we know nothing about except that the person needs prayers. Every Sunday we pray for a lot of people most of whom none of us know personally and know not why the persons are being prayed for in particular. Our task is simply to pray. Prayers for healing, for instance, are answered because we pray for someone's healing. We are part of the answer.

Again, sometimes we are the answer. In the incident where Philip comes up to Jesus to tell him that the people are hungry and need to be fed, he is making a request to Jesus: a prayer. What is Jesus's response? "You feed them, Philip. You answer your own prayer."

Philip did not see himself as the answer to his own prayer. He was so overwhelmed by the need -- to feed over 5000 people -- that he could not see how anything but a miracle could accomplish the deed. Jesus fed the people, of course. But Philip could have fed them in the same way Jesus did. The difference was that Jesus saw Philip as the answer to the prayer and Philip saw someone else as being that answer; so Jesus fed them.

My suspicion is that we are the answer to our own prayers more often than we suspect. Perhaps we need to be careful not only about what we pray for but even more careful how we pray.

WHY?

Why is it that when we can afford to eat anything we want, we can't; and when we can eat anything we want, we can't afford to? I am blessed. I can afford to eat out whenever I want, but I cannot eat out whenever I want because I will eventually look like the Goodyear Blimp and die of a heart attack. Yet, when I was younger and could eat more because my metabolism was better, I could not afford to eat out. The money just was not there to do so.

Why is it that we are better grandparents than we are parents? Not only do we have more time to spend with our grandchildren, we actually want to spend time with them. There were times when I did not want to be around my daughters at all, like at least once a month -- and sometimes more. They were not pleasant creatures. I loved them dearly, and still do, but they were impossible sometimes. Grandchildren, on the other hand, are simply wonderful all the time.

If I were to hazard a guess as to why this is true, I would say that God created life so that there would be a balance throughout. Obviously, it sometimes seems as if we are on some sort of divine seesaw: the times we are up we would rather be down, and vice versa. The times we would like some peace of mind we get chaos, and the times when we can endure chaos because we have the time, we get peace of mind.

The way to deal with it, or at least one of the ways, is to, as they used to say, "go with the flow." No use fighting the rapids because you'll lose. But the rapids eventually cease and the river of life becomes calm again -- until the next set of rapids. Then the cycle starts all over again. It is not a vicious cycle as it sometimes seems, but simply the cycle of life as we experience it.

Throughout it all, thankfully, especially when we least understand why things are the way they are, God is right there. God never leaves us even though we sometimes feel that we are battling the rapids alone. Of course, it is usually only when we've made it through the rapids that we realized that God was the one who got us through safe and sound. Would that we would have realized and sensed God's presence when the rapids were at their worst -- like when the house is overrun with teenage daughters! Sometimes it’s simply too difficult to do so.

Ahh, it's grandparent-time and been grandparent-time for a while now. I have shot the rapids and survived. And even if I can't eat all the food I can afford to buy, I'll enjoy what I can eat and save the money for our grandchildren's education.  And even more in, to spoil them as best my wife and I can, much to their delight and their parents’ sometimes displeasure.  But, then, spoiling grandchildren are a parent’s revenge.

Come to think of it, I guess there are good reasons why God made it so that I can't (and shouldn’t for all kinds of reasons) eat all that I can afford to eat: Grandchildren.  They are a blessing and, thankfully, not in disguise. They are right there, if only in our hearts and minds, to help understand the wonderful and joyful ways God works in our lives.

FAITH-FILLED FEET

A friend of mine passed along a sign he once saw on an Indian Reservation: "The sign of God's presence with you is that your feet are where you do not expect them to be." The late Father Dan Berrigan is said to have put that thought in more earthy terms (edited here to keep this column rated "G"): "Faith is where your 'backside' is," as in "when you are up to you knees in an alligator pond, faith in God is all important."

There are times when we all find ourselves knee-deep in a mess, whether than mess is of our own creation or whether we just happened upon it. In such a situation we are called to respond; we have no choice but to respond. We may not like being where we are, but there we are and there is nothing we can do about it. Crying and bellyaching are a useless waste of good breath at that moment.

It is in that moment, moments like these, that we are called to live out what we believe. It is in moments like these that we discover that we have been placed there or found ourselves there because that is where God wants us to be at that moment in our lives. Of course, it is usually only after the fact that we make this discovery about how God works in our lives.

That is not to say that God only works with us when there is some mess to clean up. It is to say that so often, when we are in such messes, we have a very difficult time being able to see anything but the mess and thinking about nothing else than getting out of it as quickly as possible. Such thoughts often preclude the ability of God's intervention and the working out of our faith.

Dan Berrigan used to put himself into situations most of us would avoid and he used them to speak of his own personal faith. Whether others agreed with him was beside the point. My point is that most of us simply avoid touchy situations that demand a faith response simply because we don't want to get involved. Sadly, sometimes our response is to not get involved and simply walk away leaving the mess to be handled by someone else who will.

The sign on the Indian Reservation reminded my friend, who really did not want to be there, himself having been raised in a rather comfortable New England suburb, that he was there because God wanted him there to live out his faith at that moment in his life. He admitted that it was, as usual, only after much complaining and soul-searching that he finally understood why he was there. That did not make the situation any easier to deal with. It simply allowed him to understand why.

Wherever we find ourselves, there we are called to live out our faith. The good part of all this is that most of the time we find ourselves on safe ground rather than in alligator pits. The more difficult part is to always remember that no matter where we are -- good, bad or otherwise -- the living out of our faith never takes a day off, or at least it should not. The truth of the matter is that like Moses at the burning bush, no matter where the ground or what it is like, we are always standing on holy ground.

WHERE MEANING CAN BE FOUND

Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies: A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless or it can be part of a great meaning." I would add (and it almost goes without saying, but I will say it anyway): but it, our human life, we as a person, never stands alone.

A single letter of the alphabet is totally meaningless, even the letters "a" and "i." Capitalize the "i" and it is still meaningless because it has to be defined. And when I define the "I" that is "I," I will define myself in the context of other people. And it is in context with other people that I find meaning in my life and help me to give meaning to the lives of others.

Deep inside of us, in our innermost being, we are quite aware of that truth. Yet it is sometimes important to remember the importance of community in our lives, to realize once again just how important other people are in defining who I am and how important I am in defining other people.

I am, for instance, a priest, husband, father, son, brother, lover, golfer (a poor one at that), and so forth. And like "poor" golfer, all that I am is defined even further: good son, happy father, wonderful husband. The point is that the definition of who I am comes from others and not just from myself. I may think myself to be a ""great" priest. But my priesthood is lived out in community. And it is the community who defines me. They may perceive me to be otherwise than great.

That does not mean that how I define myself is unimportant and that all that is important is how the community defines me. We all have a picture of ourselves in our minds. We think we know who we are; and to an extent, that is very important. Our self-image is vital to our daily living. But who we are truly finds its meaning both in how we see ourselves and how others see us: how we live and move and have our being in community. For, again, it is the community that gives us life just as we give life to others by giving our life in and through and to the community.

There are times in the lives of all of us when we do not think we need the community, read "church," as much as we once did, or even at all. We would be wrong. We need the community more and more, not less and less, especially as we grow older and discover how important others are in our lives. But we only discover that by being in community and, to be sure, by being absent from the community. It is not academic reasoning that opens our eyes or even words in a newsletter. It is our actual experience in being part of a community that shows just how important community life is in giving meaning to our own individual lives.

The temptation in the midst of summer is to take time off from the community knowing that it will still be there when we get back to it. Maybe so, but any time spent away from community diminishes us, both individually and as community. Our community, however we define that word, needs us just as we need the community.