Friday, January 30, 2009

Peace

I have four favorite Hebrew words and the one at the top of the list is shalom. Like so many powerful words, it encompasses so many shades of meaning. Whenever I hear the English word peace in a religious context, I think of shalom.

We often think of peace as the opposite of hostility, the end of war and fighting. And inner peace as a sense of no conflict. Shalom does mean this, but it implies more. Its root means to be perfect, complete, or whole. And that, for me, has come to be what peace is about.

It isn’t enough that there be no conflict between nations, peoples, or individuals, or within oneself. God’s call and gift of peace is more. Between people it is a regard, care, concern, recognition of and for the other. It is loving your neighbor. Within oneself, it is a sense of wholeness and an acceptance, a loving of yourself.

I know that I am beloved and that God dwells within every part of me and declares me good. Within me is the seed and bud of that which I am formed and called to be. I am whole and complete. I know that. But I struggle to believe it. I do not feel peace. I feel turmoil. I doubt myself, my goodness, my love of others and myself.  I struggle to recapture those moments when I felt intrinsically good and worthy.

That sounds perhaps more depressing than it is. Like most people, I live with ups and downs. I am naturally optimistic and positive, and so it seems to hit me worse when things aren’t going the way I hoped or desired. I see my faults so large and glaring and my shortcomings seem enormous.

I make my prayer, over and again, God grant me peace. Give me the clear vision that shows me the way to love myself and to love my neighbor. Let me see and feel that shalom which is created within me.

-David

Thursday, January 29, 2009

An Inch At A Time

One of my regularly read blogs is that of the Rev. Susan Russell, from All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Her blog title, An Inch At A Time, comes from a quote of Sister Joan Chittister: “We are each called to go through life reclaiming the planet an inch at a time until the Garden of Eden grows green again.” It is, for me, a deeply profound reflection on the experience of life and our call from God. Baby steps. We don’t have to do everything at once. We’re just called to keep moving forward, even if only by inches.

Susan (I don’t know her personally but after reading her for so long, I find myself always thinking of her as just Susan) recently wrote about a license plate frame she saw on a car in front of her in traffic. It said, “You suck. And that’s sad.”

It is so easy to find our own self-worth in telling ourselves that we are better than others. Sometimes it is mean or cruel, as in the license plate frame. For the religious, it can often be a celebration of our own righteousness compared to the unrighteousness of others. We know this is wrong and that Jesus taught us the exact opposite, but the temptation is great. It’s an easy path to self-esteem but one that never ends in authenticity.

Too often I allow my feelings of anger, fear, jealousy, superiority, inferiority – the list is infinite – direct my interactions with other human beings, both friends and strangers. I want to be able to look at others and see them as children of God. I want to be able to truly respect the dignity of every human being regardless of my own psychological or emotional issues of the moment.

At this particular moment in my life I need to be able to love simply and without agenda. I need to be able to lay aside my issues and feelings and love without consideration. It is so hard.

-David

Friday, January 23, 2009

Blessed

I have to admit that I’ve been having a bit of a self-pity party. For many reasons, and, to be honest, it is deserved. But it’s not terribly productive. That, combined with a comment from an acquaintance who was complaining about spiritual malaise, reminded me of a Bible study I experienced recently.

The Beatitudes occur twice in the Christian Scriptures, in Matthew’s Gospel and in Luke’s Gospel. But they aren’t quite the same. The Bible study used Matthew’s text but in the discussion following I talked about how much I like Luke. And this intersected with my self-pity party.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Matthew, but “Blessed are you who are poor,” says Luke. And I like that better. They both sound like Jesus to me, but the first one makes me feel sorry for myself and my own current crises of purpose and relationship. Luke, however, reminds me that my emotional struggle is nothing to those who have need of food, clothing, shelter, justice, freedom, and health.

When I am feeling sorry for myself, in Luke I hear Jesus telling me to get up off my butt and do something. Telling me that, yes, I might be struggling, but that I have so much more than most of God’s beloved children. As I sit in the suburbs, with my television with hundreds of channels, my wireless internet, my refrigerator which holds so much food I constantly have to throw things out, and my trash which probably contains more edible food than some families in the world see in a day, Jesus reminds me that I am already blessed. I just need to open my eyes. And if I still feel sorry for myself, I can get up and go out and serve. I can feed the hungry, tend the sick and the dying, sit with those who mourn, clothe the naked, teach those who yearn to understand and crave opportunity, fight for the rights of all people. Not only will I help to meet the needs of others, but by doing so I will turn my own spiritual poverty into blessing and abundance.

Admittedly, this won’t solve my own personal struggle or remove its importance to me, but it reminds me that in blessing we are blessed and in giving we receive. Perhaps my own angst can become a fuel to better love my neighbor as myself.

-David

Monday, January 19, 2009

Remembering Hope

I was barely a year old when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. My family, although not the same now, was certainly not one to mourn his death. They wouldn’t have been happy, but their genteel brand of racism would’ve acknowledged a troublesome man now gone from the scene.

In the many ways I differ from my family, this has been one of the most profound. I never shared in that bias and discrimination. That’s not to say that I’m not racist. As the Avenue Q song so correctly puts it, we’re all a little bit racist. But I always instinctively felt it was wrong. I suppose that’s a result of always knowing that I was different. Always sensing that difference and knowing that they sensed it in me.

In college, Dr. King became a hero for me. I was a freshman when the King holiday came into being. It generated plenty of discussion at my religious and conservative university. And I found myself staunchly in favor of such an overdue day of remembrance and honor for a man who fought for the things the founder of our religion advocated. The acceptance and love of all God’s children, equally and without distinction.

Dr. King’s message, his passionate call for justice, remains just as valid today. We continue to live in a society, a nation, a world, that devalues people and makes some of us second-class. He understood that the call to build consensus, to wait, to go slowly, really never results in equality.

In spite of the obstacles and set-backs, the voice of hope, the call for justice, the demand for equality continues to be heard. I often find myself losing hope that change will ever come. I despair that I will always be a second-class person, in my country and in my church. But then something happens to give me reason to remember my hope. Something pulls me into hope in the way the Eucharist mysteriously pulls me into Jesus. I am reminded that despair is the ultimate sin, the act of forgetting that God is God.

Tomorrow, as Barack Hussein Obama becomes President of the United States, I will see a part of that hope come to fruition, and feel more confidence that one day all of that hope shall come to pass and justice shall indeed be for all.

-David

Friday, January 16, 2009

Trust

Someone I know recently wrote about thin spaces in relationship to an experience he once had. Thin places are a significant part of my Anglican spiritual tradition, coming from the Celtic Christians whose gifts infused the early English Church. Earlier this week, I listened to a bible study on the Baptism of Jesus. In that story, the heavens are torn open and the Spirit descends and God’s voice is heard. The word used for torn is the same word used in the Crucifixion story, where the curtain of the Temple is torn.

This reminded me of thin places, where the veil between the divine and the creation is stretched so thinly we sense the presence of the divine. Those are the places where we hear and feel and experience the great mystery in a unique way. They give us our glimpses into God’s soul, as it were.

 

In the midst of a personal relationship struggle, or perhaps it’s a full-fledged crisis, I’ve thought about this idea of thin places. About how difficult, impossible even, it is to experience such a thin place between two human beings. How impossible it is to really see into the soul of another. When we cannot see the deep truth of another, cannot know what the other is thinking and feeling for ourselves, we are left to trust. I strive and struggle to trust. But it is so difficult. For so many reasons. I hate the doubt within myself but I understand it. It is my nature to trust, and I hate when I find myself questioning that trust.

My goal is to live a life of sincerity and honest, of openness and authenticity. I think I’ve done that. When it comes down to it, it’s all I can do. To be who I am called to be, to live a life of love that is given without condition.

-David

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Resolution

I seriously failed in my attempt to keep writing regularly. I’ve kept meaning to come back, but like sending an email to a friend, I feel that it has to be just right in order to post it, and nothing has been just right to post. Well, there’s nothing like New Year’s to inspire changed behavior, so I’m back.

 

A lot has happened. I’ve been dating someone for a little more than 3 months. I am finally no longer working for the corporation I was working for (victim of yet another force reduction – but fortunately one of the last to receive a generous severance package). I spent much of the fall meeting and traveling as I serve on my parish’s search committee. Life has been busy, and a bit intense. Among it all, I’ve taken regrettably little time to sit and reflect on what it all means.

Obviously losing my job has had the most intense immediate impact. But I am glad to be gone. It had become an unpleasant place to be and several friends commented that they had sensed for months that I was unhappy with work. Now, I really am fully reinventing myself, in the middle of my life! I think I’ve settled on a course of action, though I’m still mulling it about. I think I’m going to follow my college desire and go back to school to certify to teach. High school science. Teaching/training was the one part of my old job that I always loved and the one skill that almost everyone I know affirms in me. So I think that following a heartfelt, deep desire is what’s called for!

 

I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s “Grace (Eventually)” which I received as a Christmas gift. What a great title! It certainly sums up much of my life experience. In any event, she ends one chapter saying that she hopes her gravestone says that she was a helper and that she danced. I think that sums up what Jesus has called us to do. The experience of love and the call to love impel us to serve others. To reach out and give that love to all around us, because only by giving the gift do we receive the gift.

But I also think that the experience of that love calls us to dance. To whirl about with abandon at times. At others to move in ways that are stately and ordered. But always to move in time to a beat which is not our own. It’s not a metaphor I instinctively like, as I have no sense of rhythm myself. And yet, like others who lack that ability, I long to dance. Seeing people dance can move me by their grace, their celebration. I hope that my life is lived like that. A sense of something calling me to follow and my own willingness to follow. And looking around to see that, in our own ways, we are all following that same music.

 

Maybe this is all the purpose I need. I wish I had that almost biblical sense of a vision, of a calling. That vivid dream or clear voice or angel scaring the bejeebers out of me and telling me what I should do.

Sometimes I think love is the only real miracle. That we can find ourselves able to love each other is amazing. Definitely miraculous. So while I would like God to tell me what to do, and telling me how would be a greatly appreciated bonus, I don’t think it really happens like that. I think that what I do get is to look around and experience this miracle of love and to join in the dance. To help and to dance. Maybe I’ll do that by teaching. Maybe not. But, God help me, I plan to help and to dance.