Striking the balance of confident agent in God's world AND humble service

clipart illustration of Master and Lord now as servant of love

Fortitude but also frailties; certainty but also not knowing; rock of strength but also water of life; deep self-esteem and respect but also humbleness; in charge of one's life and steward of its gifts but also recognizing God's Will Be Done (giving one's affairs over to God's direction). Each of these opposing pairs center on the vital tension between being mortal and child of God growing step by step while presuming there is a finite universe to be grasped and played well, but also striving to get past or get over our own limitations and boundaries of control to allow much bigger forces into our field of view and arena of participation.

Today's reading from John's gospel, chapters 12 and 13, in which Rabboni Jesus in the role reversal of servant, not master, washes the feet of all the apostles, overcoming Peter's refusal to allow such a thing, but also revealing that one of the brothers will betray Jesus. This mind-boggling illustration for all followers to strive for has many strands of meaning: servanthood, humility with dignity and respect, no pretension in the humanity of the engagement of one to the other. Likewise, we, too, are meant to embody seeming contradictions and overcome the initial tension we perceive between living our days with a plan or intention, but also remaining open-hearted in order to accommodate unplanned events or opportunities.

If it proves to be too hard to hold the opposing motions in constant tension, then another way is to alternate between the one position and the other; between being in the driver's seat but also being the passenger in God's own vehicle. A similar solution seems to work for the conundrum of seeking after God's nature, teachings, and will for today and for tomorrow. It is possible to take a position of certainty and increasingly deeper and more detailed knowledge, but also to alternate and take a position of humble ignorance. "The more I know, the more I see there is to know and thus feel my ignorance more keenly." Acting as though a limited body of knowledge can be encompassed in order to know God, a counterbalancing position is needed to break what is finite in order to glimpse what is infinite: just as we have a momentary feeling of triumph in apprehending a passage or idea or example, only to find out the limits of that momentary grasp of God's infinity. Here, again, there is a vital pulse produced by grasping and letting go; of understanding and then feeling ignorant; of feeling certain of God's Way and then feeling humble and lacking clear or simple answers.

Since we cannot directly and fully know God, this veering between fragments of knowing and then letting go of these pieces to embrace something bigger is, perhaps, the most productive way to mature in one's relationship to the Creator.

as Dorothy said, "There's no place like home"

Today's morning Bible Study pressed forward in the gospel of John; the scene of supper with Lazarus, Martha & Mary, who pours out the pricey aromatic Nard oil to wash the feet of Jesus. The practical man, and embezzler by John's account, Judas Iscariot, is much like we moderns - rationalizing that the pot could fetch market prices and the proceeds would better serve a few destitute souls than to be used on the feet of the Master. But one interpretation that rose above the discussion around the table was that Mary's gushing and extravagance impulse, perhaps, is a model of the Abundant Life when rooted in God's Way.

So much of learning to be an informed, committed, and activated pilgrim of the Way, following the Christ, seems to be about adopting set habits of action and seeing, and speaking. Being a disciple means to take to heart certain disciplines, like the ligaments that secure the motion of one's bones; the same root word found in re+ligare (religion), binding into alignment, over and over, again. And yet, those details are less important than the peace or contentment that follows. In other words, the teachings/rules/traditions (of whatever religion in the world - historical, today, or in the distant future) are instrumental or processual means, not the end goal. What matters is the change in one's heart; seeing with one's heart and not judging according to the many other dominant forces and perspectives of the historical age we occupy.

So often we seem to refer to external forces or conditions. We feature an invocation in the Order of Worship to invite God into our gathering at a place of worship, out in the field, or wherever the occasion arises --as if God were out doing something else and we call out for His attention and intention. In our prayers we address God with the formula that should include both thanks & praise, not simply prayer as mere joyous outpouring, or petition for personal favors. In this, again, we are presuming that The Creator is bounded and located with finite coordinates away from our present moment. Of course, this way of thinking fits our experience of physics and time/space. But maybe it is truer to say that these shout outs to a faraway all-knowing entity really are just a device and way to visualize ourselves apart from, distinct, and independent of the all-powerful Father/mother named YHWH. In other words, perhaps it is truer to understand our place in Creation as infused and immersed in God elementally, as integral to the fabric of creation; not separated from it. 

Just like the realization of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, who travels faraway seeking something valuable, but discovers that what she was searching for had been all around her and close to hand all along, right at home; right under her very nose. Hence the immortal line, "...there's no place like home." In the same way, the God we hunger for, seek after, and try to get to know better and better by life experience and wrestling with scripture and worship is not distant, but instead is all around us, everywhere, and discoverable in every faith tradition that humans engage with. Often the adherents and novices struggle with the stumbling blocks of details, rules, and optics that are meant to please higher status people. But sometimes a person will break forth, like Mary with the jug of aromatic nard oil, and gushes on pure impulse to non-verbally express the abundant vastness of God's love and the glory of loving one another.

How best to get to that point that Mary embodies? Perhaps the many impediments that hobble modern people have to be minimized: consumer appetites to acquire and steward ever more possessions, feelings of want - need - entitlement, peer comparisons that block one's field of view in looking to God as benchmark (whose favorable impression do we seek - peer or God). Something like Benjamin Maslow's Pyramid (1943, Hierarchy of Needs) needs to be climbed to reach the part where physical, social, emotional needs are more or less satisfied and one's heart is free to dwell on things like the fellow travelers on life's way - all living creatures, not limited to the human ones; or to dwell on the day to day opportunities to intervene and engage with others in a proactive way, rather than in a dismissive or reactive way, for example.

In the end, while we are called on to function as God's feet and hands (and eyes and ears), his Creation is so much bigger than any one person. And his way can be accomplished whether we seize the opportunities he provides and we fail or succeed (in our own eyes, or when judged by peers, or by The World). In the same way, as each person ventures to engage in God's world, sometimes in blind faith reaching out, the adherence to prescribed formulas, rituals, or other particulars are less important than the spark that is in one's heart. God is not keeping a report card for your appearance and your performance like some figure skating judge. Rather he knows your heart and wants it to grow bigger, more generous, and moved by impulse closer to the Abundant Life shown by Mary's example. Ours is a wild God, not a tame one. So, too, should our response be untamed, the more we get to know The Creator: meek and humble, yes, but capable of great power and the ability to touch one another's hearts. What might seem extravagant or Fools for God, actually might be what The Way is all about - living in abundance; not the physical kind, but the kind that bubbles up from within and without limit.

opening your heart, realignment points of reference

Having missed a week at the weekly table for Tuesday Men's Bible Study, I could feel the absence more sharply after rejoining the circle for opening prayer, reading John 12, and round-the-table banter and chewing the words, context, intention, and longer thread of the selection. Being solitary, no matter how deeply one reads or engages with online, broadcast, or recorded media, the experience is nothing like the give and take of dialog, either via telecommunication or face to face. For some reason the interchange of ideas and interpretations, references to lived experiences and one's own assumptions brought to light has a powerful effect. It is as if solitary study, praise or thanksgiving occurs in a boundless desert that offers no feedback, echoes, or other means of sensing one's location and passage through the landscape. But when there are others involved, then care must be exercised to receive the others' viewpoints with respect and let them settle momentarily, rather than to react by dismissing the perspective conveyed. As a result of this consideration for others' standpoint, one's own heart rises to the surface, exposed to the care given by others and exposed in order to engage and express care for others. In summary, by study and worship with others, one's own heart can grow and one's position can be gauged by reference to others' viewpoint and the words on the printed page. By extension, perhaps it is not only for Bible Study or small group reading and discussion of a selected books together that creates this sustained engagement and sustaining community of respect and care, perhaps this group dynamic is true as well of praise, thanksgiving, and worship - it is an intersection for many relationships ongoing; it is a weekly pulse in one's passage through the year and the cycles of one's life that helps one's heart to thrive (tender, not calloused or hardened) and that help's one to realign daily cares, keeping things in perspective to what matters most in a life well lived among others in the world.

This photo of the passages we talked about shows a lovingly marked up copy of one man's Bible. As he says, "it is an old friend by now; one that invites conversation and wondering out loud."