A Sense of Wonder

We must not allow the two “mass shootings” of yesterday (Alexandria, VA and the UPS warehouse in San Francisco, CA) or the 17 others this month in the United States to undo us.  The constant barrage of “bad news” has a tendency to do just that.  We must not allow the actions of one person or group, acting out of  hatred, evil, insanity, or whatever, to divide and conquer us as a nation, or to take from us our sense of wonder as we wander through this wilderness sojourn in our developing democracy. 

A tale long ago told of a people escaping the bondage of Egypt may need to be re-told to help us remember our own story and retain our balance as a people.  This ancient people braved great dangers to find their freedom.   When they came to a sea, with their foe’s army close behind, the sea opened and they made safe passage—the army did not.  They rejoiced as they began their trek into a desert wilderness.  After three days without water they came to a spring, but the water was bitter.  They complained.  The spring water was sweetened in some mysterious way and they rejoiced.  But not for long, because soon they became hungry.  One morning they awoke and found the ground covered with a white substance like frost which they called manna.  They rejoiced.  Every day, every month and every year for forty years—they ground it up, they baked it, they boiled it and made it into cakes—trying to give some variety to this daily fare. It did not take long for them to complain once again.  Then a flock of quail just happened to be blown into their encampment and once again they rejoiced.  They did not know the way to go, and they bitterly argued among themselves about direction, and somehow or another, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, led them through. Finally (and the full story is forty years of story) after a long and arduous journey they arrived at a place they called “Promised Land.”  But even in this Promised Land they faced new obstacles—rejoicing at the wonder of it all and complaining when they forgot the wonders that had happened before.

In that tale long ago told, I see the story of our own nation.  The story of that people and the story of our own people makes me wonder how we have survived.  How have we, as a nation, survived wars, depressions, civil upheavals, crooked politicians and great politicians, and now, even these mass shootings?  Is there some guiding principle, some destiny at work, or divine providence that has put up with our frail performance and our constant complaints?   Hang on!  Do not let anything, not even these tragic shootings, undo you or cause you to lose your sense of wonder.

The Inner Voice

Our time parallels that of the boy, Samuel, in the Old Testament “when the word of the Lord was rare…”  For me, ‘the word of the Lord” means that inner Voice which dwells within each of us.  It is not the voice of conscience, nor is it a voice out of our own creative genius or imagination.  Thomas Kelly in his book, “A Testament of Devotion,” says it best, “Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice…It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it…And He is within us all.”  

Why is it so rare for me, and no doubt for you, to hear that Voice?  I think it is because there are so many voices clamoring for a hearing (including our own).  There is a saying, “Quiet, quiet, I can’t hear myself think.”  Who can hear their own thinking these days given all the voices bombarding us?  There are the voices coming at us from the Right and the Left, the voices out of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Africa.  There are the voices of Europe, China, Russia and the United States. There are so many voices bursting into our lives that we can’t even determine what is true and what is false anymore.  It just all runs together.   A cacophony of voices fill all our waking moments via social media.  We have become so accustomed to the babel from the TV in our living rooms that we cannot stand to be without the babel. How can we hear our own thoughts unless we break away somehow from the insistent voices outside (and the babel within) ourselves?  How can we hear what has been called “that still small voice” if we can’t even hear our own?

Now it is said, that a person who begins to “hear voices” no one else seems to hear is on the verge of insanity or has already succumbed. The truth of the matter is that some of the most influential characters in history heard the Voice within and made a real and positive difference in the life of the world.  “In every man [woman],” wrote George Fox, “there is something that is not of dust or earth or flesh or time, but of God.”  This Voice speaks within all of us, no matter our  religious belief or our situation.  Was St. Francis of Assisi crazy?  Was Jesus a lunatic?  Perhaps I am, too!  Let all the badgering voices of our every waking moment be silenced; listen for that Inner Voice, for we live in a time when the word of the Lord is rare.

"Singer of Songs"

Do you remember the song, “Singer of Songs,” written and sung by Johnny Cash?  I have it on what I call my “traveling music” CD and play it often when I’m on the road, along with Woody Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” and Bing Cosby’s version of “Don’t Fence Me In.”    That CD also includes Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” and “America, the Beautiful,” and many others.  I love to listen to my traveling music, for I think Plato long ago stated the truth when he wrote, “Music is a moral law.  It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”  And when words are added to the music—when a song is born—the power of the music and the power of the word can become a profound message.  Christian hymns speak a message that have touched the souls of many.  Most songs, religious or secular,  speak a message that speaks to our depths.  This messaging seems to reach us in ways that other forms of communicating do not.  Leonardo da Vinci said, “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”  Researchers have suggested that a song actually facilitates biological changes in the heart rate and affects the blood flow in the brain.  In Plato’s words, music and song give “wings to the mind, and flight to the imagination,” where we both see, feel (emotionally, spiritually, even physically) and we know and we find a meaning in our deepest beings.

I’m not a savior, and I’m not a saint.

The man with the answers I certainly ain’t.

I wouldn’t tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.

I’m just a singer of songs.

The Psalmists of the Old Testament sang their poetry accompanied by the lyre and the flute.  Even the Old Testament prophets seem to sing out their words to a music from another realm.  They were all singers of songs—and I’m thinking this morning that we are all meant to be singers of songs.

But I can take you for walk along a little country stream.

I can make you see through lovers’ eyes and understand their dreams.

I can help you hear a baby’s laugh and feel the joy it brings.

Yes, I can do it with the songs I sing.

I’m not a prophet, and I’m not a priest.

I’m not a wise man who’s come from the East.

I wouldn’t tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.

I’m just a singer of songs.

Our son, Paul--A Singer of Songs

The Basis of Morality

This morning I read in Luke’s Gospel (6:36) what appears to be a direct command from Jesus to his disciples:  “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.”  Many talk about the importance of the so-called “Golden Rule” and the Ten Commandments, but I think this directive, commandment, advice, or instruction (whatever you want to call it) is one of the most significant uttered by Jesus, for if taken seriously, it overrides all other commands, laws, or whatever.  Be compassionate.

Compassion is to have “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings and misfortunes of others.”  It means having empathy (“the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”).    It means caring.   It means having concern (to be disturbed, troubled, perturbed, and unsettled for another).  It means being sensitive, warm, tender and loving.  It means mercy, leniency and tolerance.  The Greek word used to describe Jesus’ own compassion when he saw the crowds, “Harassed and helpless (stressed, strained, worn out, hard-pressed, worried, troubled, beleaguered, under pressure, at the end of their rope, hassled)—like sheep without a shepherd,” literally means “guts.”  Jesus’ was moved down deep inside—the deepest part of his being—in his gut.

Compassion is not giving advice to the harassed and helpless, which we are so prone to do.  It is not providing answers to those who are stressed, worn-out, worried, troubled or under pressure, though we often try.   It is not explaining anything, or “setting” another straight. Compassion is not even “doing something” to resolve the sufferings or misfortunes of others.  Compassion is a matter of “feeling”—feeling at gut-level—feeling the pain, hurt, frustration, lostness, helplessness, of the human quandary.  It means feeling,  “Harassed and helpless,” within ourselves.  The German philosopher, Schopenhauer said,  “Compassion is the basis of morality.”  

But, compassion, as I’ve described it here, hurts.  “Compassion,” as Henri J.M. Nouwen wrote, “requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.  Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

Jesus says God is compassionate.  He says we are to be compassionate, too.  

Roots, Thorns, Buds, Flowers--they belong to each other.

“That They All May Be One”

Jesus' prayer in John 17 is an urgent plea that we all might be one as he and the Father were one.  Does that mean the “same?”  Does it mean that we should all dress alike, look alike, think alike, believe alike?  Is that what being “one” means?  Is that what Jesus is really praying for?  Does he mean as Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians:  “There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, for you are all one person in Christ Jesus.”   That doesn’t compute.  All people are not “in Christ Jesus” (whatever that means—and it means different things to different people).  A male and a female are different physiologically.  How can Paul even suggest that they are one, if “one” means the “same?”  The same is true for the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free (in the context of Paul’s society)—there was a wide distinction  and division between them.  How about the contemporary rich and poor, the Republican and Democrat, the Catholic and Protestant—and I could go on and on.  How can they be one—especially if one means the “same?”

Some years ago, the “Unity Candle” came into vogue in the marriage service.  In some weddings, when the bride and the groom lit the unity candle to symbolize their union (thus subscribing to the ancient law and the teaching of Jesus—“the two shall become one”) they would snuff out the two single candles representing their individuality.  I strongly opposed this practice.  I’ve been married for a long time now and I can tell you that my wife and I are not “one!”  Our individual ideas, opinions, habits, stubbornness and uniqueness have persisted—we have remained the unique persons we were and still are—and that means we are different—not one and the same!

What did Jesus mean then, when he prayed, “May they all be one?”  It baffles me.  The Apostle Paul struggled with it, too.  In his Letter to the Corinthians he writes:  “A body is not a single organ, but many.  Suppose the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it does belong to the body nonetheless.  Suppose the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it still belongs to the body.  If a body were all eye, how would it hear?  But God has combined the various parts of the body…so that there might be no sense of division in the body, but that all its organs might feel the same concern for one another.  If one organ suffers, they all suffer together  If one flourishes, they all rejoice together.”  Is this how Jesus and the Father are one?  Is this the kind of “oneness” Jesus prayed for us and our world? 

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean. (Ryunosuke Satoro)

Morro Bay, California

On Finding Words

Today I will stand at the grave-side of a friend of some forty-four years and speak the words I have spoken so many times before as a priest, a minister, and friend.  The words are addressed not to the one who has died, but rather to those of us who will go on living in a world that will no longer experience her laughter, her tears, her heartaches, her joys, and her love.  “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man [woman] dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…, wrote John Donne.  How will her chapter in the book of life be translated into a better language by those of us who knew her and cared for her?  How can that begin today and what words can I say to a grieving family that will initiate that translation into a new and better language?

There are no words I can say today that will help us understand death, for death will always be a mystery.  When Jesus heard of Lazarus’ death, he wept.  When Mary Magdalene thought of Jesus in the tomb, she was consumed with grief and mourning.  So we will weep today—an appropriate response as we confront the mystery of death.

We live in an aspirin age, when any discussion or mention of death is seen as morbid, or as a betrayal of, or a treason against life. (Elizabeth Kubler Ross, The American Way of Death) Yet it is a reality—a reality that we cannot deny or smooth over with words—nor can we only think of it happening to others—for as Donne pointedly says, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

What can be said?  Comforting words, yes.  Hopeful words, yes.  Words of gratitude, yes. Words of faith, yes.  I am in the company of  Kazantzakis this morning, who wrote, “I had nothing but twenty-six lead soldiers, the twenty-six letters of the alphabet…” to find the words, the right words, and so it is with me.  I have twenty-six letters out of which to form words that can translate a beautiful life now gone into a new and better language.  Are there any such words?  Many poets and song-writers have tried….

Turn again to life

By Mary Lee Hall

If I should die and leave you here a while,

be not like others sore undone,

who keep long vigil by the silent dust.

For my sake turn again to life and smile,

nerving thy heart and trembling hand

to do something to comfort other hearts than mine.

Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine

and I perchance may therein comfort you.

Thermometer or Thermostat?

Andrew Johnson became president of the United States of America after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.  His was not an easy task.  The Civil War had just ended and the nation was still deeply wounded and divided.  Johnson had great difficulties in his administration.  Congress and the people seemed to reject all that he tried to do.  Johnson was a good man and his deepest desire was to see that the South was received back into the Union without punishment or prejudice.  Congress rejected that plan and ignored most of Johnson’s policies, and eventually they even tried to impeach him.  He was found innocent of the charges against him, but was still viewed as guilty by the majority of the American people.

During his last months as president a bitter feud developed between Johnson and General Ulysses Grant.  The final blow came when Johnson’s own party rejected his nomination at its political convention and nominated his arch-enemy Grant instead.  Grant was elected president by a large popular majority.  Johnson was deeply hurt and very bitter.  He refused to ride in the carriage with Grant to the inauguration.

We are all guilty of snubbing our noses at people who offend us, hurt us, criticize us, and put us down.  Like Johnson, we are so hurt and so bitter by the way they have treated us that we refuse to ride in same carriage with them.   That is, we stop talking to them, we refuse to associate with them, we sever our relationship with them. This happens in families, in neighborhoods, in churches, in politics; it happens everywhere and to every person.

It is an easy matter to snub the snob, but when we do so, we become a snob.  It is easy to gossip about the gossips and do just as much damage to the lives of innocent people as they do, but then we become just his or her kind.  It is easy to criticize those who are critical of us, but then we become the harsh critic which we abhor in the other.  It is easy to hate the hateful, but then we become hateful persons ourselves.  We are like thermometers when we refuse to ride in the same carriage, for we reflect the same temperament (temperature) as the carriage occupant who we believe has created our hurt and our wound. It would be so much better if we were thermostats—attempting to affect the situation rather than simply reflecting (like the thermometer) what goes on around us.  It is always better to get in the carriage where there is an opportunity to talk and resolve and affect.  To refuse to ride in the carriage only widens the gap—and diminishes the opportunity to affect a better situation.

Exercise while you feast...at a Greek Taverna