Cultivating Love

"There is really only one thing of importance in my life - cultivating the capacity to love."  --Anonymous

The most loving thing we can for others is to be our authentic self.

Our authentic self is not the self the world tells us we are.

It is not the self our parents tell us we are.

It is not the self our siblings tell us we are.

It is the not the self our media, culture, and society tell us we are.

It is the not the self the government tells us we are.

Our authentic self is not even the self we most often tell ourselves we are.

Our authentic self is the self that God tells us we are in declaring that we are created in God's image.

Our authentic self, then, is not:

• broken
• destructive
• less than
• inadequate
• limited
• profane
• ugly
• bad
• steeped in sin

All of these are lies designed to keep you from the seeing the truth of who you really are.  Because if you saw yourself clearly, you would know that none of the above is true; that nothing done to you or by you has the ability to change your authentic self.

If every time you looked in a mirror (physical or emotional or spiritual or psychological) your true self was reflected back to you, you would know that you are:

• created whole
• possessed of great creative potential
• more than your circumstances
• more than your choices
• more than adequate
• limitless in your capacity to love
• holy
• beautiful
• good
• and that the distorted image you carry has been redeemed, transformed and sanctified

If you were to see yourself clearly, and if you were to show this authentic self to the world, then you will have committed an act of unbounded love.  In cultivating your own ability to be your authentic self, you are cultivating your own capacity to love better.

In cultivating your own capacity to love better, by being your authentic self, you are cultivating in others their ability to be authentically themselves, thereby cultivating a greater capacity to love better in them.

And the cycle continues.

Marianne Williamson understood this, as she wrote what is perhaps her most quoted and most misattributed truth:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

A Feast for the Animals

I just want to know that when I die someone will be there to find my body before the dogs and cats start feasting.

I worry that my cats will eat my undiscovered body.  To be disposed of with so little dignity.  *sigh*  I suppose, however, it is a very environmentally friendly was to go, so perhaps it wouldn't be so awful after all.

As I understand it, they go for the soft tissue first.  This, to me, means the eyes.   The thought is terrifying.  Not necessarily because I find the loss of my eyeballs particularly undignified, but rather, because, after waking up repeatedly in the past few months to cats licking and biting my elbow, my feet, my hands, I fear these horrible beasts will not wait until I expire.

As this point, I fear they will go for my eyes directly, as I slumber, using their razor sharp claws to slice off my eye lids before devouring the tender globes within.

To be perfectly clear, I anticipate that I would, in fact, awaken at first swipe.  However, if they strike in tandem, in my sleepy stupor, I just may not survive with my sight intact.

This is what really terrifies me - the notion of being blinded.  I won't even go swimming with my contacts in for fear I'll lose one in the pool/lake/ocean and be visually impaired until I arrive at home where more lenses await me.

This is neither here nor there.  I fear I am growing old.  And I am growing old very much alone.  Certainly I have friends and loved ones.  But how often, honestly, do I see them?  Hell, forget see.  How often do I even get to talk to them?

If I died on a Sunday night, it might be 2, even 3, weeks before my church called after me.  And would anyone think to come looking or call the police to perform a welfare check?  My boss would likely fire me as a "No call, no show."  But again, I doubt he'd be bothered to call or send in a search party.

Would anyone think to inform my best friend?  And what of my seminary friends?  Would they inquire if they hadn't heard from me in a month?  A season?  A year?  Might my picked-clean-by-fine-feline-teeth skeleton remain in my bed, on the couch, in the shower (though in that case, I imagine the cats would not eat me - cats and water and all), at the desk collecting dust and cobwebs until the walls fell down around me?

Perhaps I am getting neurotic in my old age.  Or maybe I simply have a very clear vision of my future.  Regardless, I just want to know that when I die someone will be there to find my body before the dogs and cats start feasting.

Transfigured into the Likeness of Christ

At the end of December, my mother and I went to see Les Miserables, starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Anne Hathaway.  I really, really, really liked this movie.  Most people I know who have seen also really liked it.  There are some who dissent.  For those of you unfamiliar with either the play or the movie adaptations, it is loosely based on Victor Hugo’s novel.

Set against the backdrop of post-Revolution France, it is the story of a man, Jean Valjean, who spends 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed his dying nephew.  Upon his release, he encounters a priest who shows him mercy and the love of God.  Valjean is a man whose life is at its lowest point when he has a mountain top experience in which he meets God, his life utterly transformed.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus goes up a mountain to pray.  He takes with him Peter, James, and John.  On that mountain, Jesus’s appearance is changed.   We are not told what his face looks like before, or after, this time on the mountain; but we are told that his clothes become dazzling white.

While on the mountain, Jesus meets two other men who have also gone to mountains in order to meet with God:  Moses and Elijah.  Generally speaking these two men represent the two facets of the Jewish faith:  The Law and the Prophets.

The Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.  The first time, God created the tablets.  After Moses broke the tablets in a fit of rage, he went back up the mountain where Moses met again with God and etched new tablets himself.   These were the Ten Commandments, God’s covenant with the Israelites.

When Moses came down the mountain with these tablets of the covenant, the skin of his face is shining.  But this terrified Moses’s brother Aaron and the other Israelites.  So, Moses hid his face.  He put on a veil and he hid his face.

This happened repeatedly.  Moses would go before the Lord, take the veil off of his face, speak with God, return to the people, his face shining, and Moses would put the veil back on, hiding his face again until he returned once more to speak with God.

The story of Elijah, who represents the prophets, is that after speaking zealously for the Lord, angering those in power.  Every other prophet has been killed.  Seeking to save his life, Elijah ran away to the wilderness.  From there, he is called by God to a mountain.  God promises that the presence of the Lord will pass before Elijah.  A great windstorm, earthquake and fire pass by.  But God was in none of these.  Instead, God was in the silence, as a still small voice, that followed.

So here we are today, on a mountain, with Jesus and his trusty sidekicks, Peter, James and John.  This takes place eight days after Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus responds by predicting his own death.

These four men ascend the mountain, Jesus is transfigured, and Moses and Elijah just pop in for a chat.  They begin to talk, Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, of Jesus’s impending crucifixion: the departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. 

Now, Peter, James, and John were really tired, but they stayed awake and witnessed this sight.  And Peter’s response was, “Hey, maybe could pitch a tent for each of you!”  This, to me, is hilarious.  I sometimes wonder if Peter really was a bumbling idiot or if the writers of the gospels just needed a bit more comedy in their work.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the book Fahrenheit 451, but it’s a story about a future America in which books have been outlawed.  In order to protect literature, a conclave is formed of individuals who each memorize a book.  They become, in essence, these living texts, and each person teaches their book to a new arrival such that none of the stories are ever lost.

This gathering of on the mountain is similar.  If people are books, Jesus is meeting with the Old Testament.  And Peter wants to build himself a portable library.  God, however, has other ideas.  A cloud encompasses them.  Terrified, they hear a voice that says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  The cloud disappears, taking Moses and Elijah with it.  And the four men go down the mountain.

The story continues in the weeks to come during the season of Lent.  It is a story of the unveiling of God’s goodness.  Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that “To this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds.”  Paul is referring to Jews in the first century who have rejected Jesus.  Those who reject Jesus cannot see the glory of God.

Indeed, Paul states, Jesus himself is the glory of God.  Those who hold to the Law continue to be veiled from God’s presence, for it is only Christ who sets aside the veil and reveals the glory of God to all people, and in knowing God’s glory through Christ, there is no fear.

Through Christ, you see, we have access to God.  The veil is removed, and we see and are seen by the divine.  No more hiding behind a veil; truly and deeply known; what Christ gives us in the reconciling work of his death is true intimacy between us and God and between each other.

We are, Paul writes, “with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”  We are not merely permitted to see God in Jesus, we ourselves are being transfigured with him, into the very image of God, and we can see it in ourselves; we can see it in each other.

When Moses met God on a mountain top, his face shined.  When Jesus met with God on that mountain top, his face and clothing shined.  Frankly, I think Paul is right.  In many respects this phenomenon holds true today.  When people encounter God and come to know the depth of the love of God, they are transfigured.  They look different.  They have a tendency to shine.

In Les Miserables, after meeting the priest, Valjean assumes a new identity—he looks different, he is transfigured—and he devotes the remainder of his life to doing good works.  This many Christians I know, who love the movie, claim is the gospel message.  However, Valjean also remains on the run from his past and an overly zealous lawman, Javert, who wants to bring Valjean to justice for breaking parole.  Valjean spends the remainder of his life running from the law and hiding his past from those he loves.  Though he dies in their presence, he dies without ever truly being known by them.

Les Miserables is one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen.  While it is a story of the transformative, redemptive, and reconciling power of the love of God accomplished through the death of Christ juxtaposed against the hard power of the law, it seems to miss the point entirely.

Too many people hold to the law.  Too many people climb a mountain, spend a bit of time with Jesus, and the Moses, and Elijah; and when the moment is over, and they are left only in the presence of Christ, they continue to hold to the Law.  They judge their past according to the laws of Moses ; they forget that they have been redeemed and transformed by Jesus.

They live their lives in fear, running from their past, and hiding it from those who would seek to know them; as though their story only began at the moment they met Jesus and they must hide what came before.  Too many people hide the shameful things, and continue to be haunted by them.

This is not the gospel message.  The gospel message is one of freedom.  The gospel message is one of reconciliation.  The gospel message is one of removing the veil, and sharing our stories with each other, that we might know and be known by one another.  In hearing their stories, we enter into their life and share our own stories and lives with them.  It is in the shared experience and in the knowing of others that we come to love them.  And this is that is at the heart of the gospel message:  that love is everlasting.

Here in the Midwest, we do not have mountains we can ascend.  We do not get to climb a hill and pray in the bodily presence of Jesus.  We must settle for the fact that we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.  And in that transformation, when we meet our brother and sisters, they are reflection of his glory as well.  We have the opportunity to see the reflection of Jesus in them.    And remember the truth that once was spoken:  To love another person is to see the face of God.

Broken Tea Cups

Broken Tea Cups

One broken tea cup, tiny cracks
     too fine for the eye to see.
     I pour into you all my best.
     Each time you end up burning me.

Broken tea cup, fractured deep,
     you hold so much but always seep.
     Wholeness is the illusion you cast,
     but you're not what you pretend to be.

Broken tea cup, such fine cracks, never to be repaired,
     one cannot correct what remains unseen.
     Tea you shall continue to spill,
     your purpose always unfulfilled.

But this other:
Broken tea cup, many shards,
     well beyond repair,
     who left you in such mean estate?
     Who showed so little care?

Broken tea cup, there you sit,
     in pieces, sharp and broken.
     Can it be you have a purpose;
     one, to date, as yet unspoken?

Broken tea cup, please join me
     in creating something new!
     A mosaic of new life,
     transformed, redeemed in Truth.

Broken tea cup?  You are not!
     It was never your true design.
     Now you're something different--lovely, wonderful and whole:
     something I want to claim as mine.

One Desperately Depressing Movie

I saw Les Miserables again this weekend.  I saw it over Christmas when it was first released.  Try though I did, I couldn't keep myself from crying toward the end.  The whole movie was just desperately depressing.

Certainly Fantine's character is tragic.  While Anne Hathaway's rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" is powerful, her story isn't the one that leaves me most sad.

While many will vilify Javert for the role he plays in his ever persistent hunt for Jean Valjean, I feel incredibly sorry for him.  He is a man who has spent his entire very carefully constructing an understanding of who he is.  Javert clings to his identity with a desperation born of shame at his roots.  In the end, when he commits a single act (an act of mercy no less) that is contrary to his understanding of his identity, he is unable to reconcile the two.

Javert finds himself incapable of change.  He is unwilling to accept that his actions were, in a moment, at odds with the identity he had so carefully crafted.  Without any hope of holding these two things in tension, Javert commits suicide.  How horribly sad that he should spend the whole of his life convinced he is pursuing good, only to do one truly good thing, and to be unable to reconcile an act of mercy with his understanding of what it means to be and do good.

And Jean Valjean himself, saved by an act of mercy, a priest who could have charged him with theft and returned him to prison, instead claims Valjean for God.  This priest invites Valjean into the sanctifying love of God, and calls upon him to become an honest man who serves God.

Valjean dedicates himself to doing good.  He treats people with kindness and respect.  Thinking of others before himself, he saves a man's life, though doing so may well condemn him.  He raises an orphaned child as his own.

But Valjean is constantly aware of his precarious position.  He is constantly aware that he is a single step ahead of Javert.  And while there is much singing, this is no silly dance as found in Aladdin.  Valjean hides his past from those in his employ, as he must.  He hides his past from those in society, as he must.

But until his dying day, Valjean hides his past from everyone, including his own (adopted) child.  He runs from the shame of what he once was.  He fears that should Cosette ever find out that he was once branded a thief she herself would be ashamed.

A man who dedicated his life to the service of others, who learned to love by taking into his care a vulnerable child with no one else to love her, is unknown by all who enter his life.

Pegged a criminal by Javert, his redemption is unseen.

Beloved by Cosette, he hides his past from her, and his redemption remains unseen.

Valjean dies without ever knowing the intimacy of being known completely by another person, and being found worthy, and being deeply loved.

This, to me, is the saddest part of the whole movie.  He dies in the presence of his daughter and new son-in-law, escorted to heaven in the gracious presence of Fantine.  But in so many ways, he seems so alone and unknown in his death.  I cannot think of anything more tragic.

Though I truly enjoyed the movie, it is not one I will choose to watch very often.

The Right Questions

Intimacy

I am more akin to a Pablo Neruda poem
than a Georgia O'Keeffe painting.
I am full and fleshly.
My genitals do not look like a flower.

What if my partner does not like the way I look?
     ...the way I smell?
     ...the way I taste?

(What if I end up judging myself by the standards of church culture rather than the standards of the divine?)



What if these "what ifs" do not matter?



What if I open myself completely to whatever the moment holds?

What if I invite my partner to see in me that which I see in myself?
     That I am beautiful, lovely, and worthy.
     That I am powerful and mighty.
     That I am tender and soft-hearted.

That I am the best there is
     and I share myself freely with my partner
as a gift.

Never to be diminished
     in either the offering or accepting.

Because I am still wholly me:
     tender and soft-hearted
     powerful and mighty
     beautiful, lovely, and worthy.

Fulfilling the Scriptures as the Body of Christ

Today’s gospel lesson, the good news, begins with “Then Jesus….”  It is curious this word, “Then.”  It begs the question, “Then….when?”  When precisely does our story take place?  This morning, I’m going to start with a recap of what has come before.

The gospel of Luke begins with the prophecy of Jesus’s birth, the story of his birth, a fascinating account from childhood in which Jesus himself claims to be the Son of God.  We then fast forward to Jesus at 30 years of age being introduced by his cousin John, he is baptized in the Jordan, at which point a voice from heaven is reported to have declared, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”   

We are given Jesus’s genealogy declaring Jesus comes not only from the Jewish royal line as a descendant of David, but reaches further back to Adam (the first man) and ultimately to God, establishing for the reader the validity of these reports that Jesus has been declared God’s son by a disembodied voice from heaven. 

Jesus, having been filled with the Holy Spirit during his baptism, is then driven into the wilderness for forty days, where he is tempted by Satan, and engages in fasting and prayer.  At the end of forty days, Satan leaves Jesus until a more opportune time. 

“Then….”  Then Jesus, still filled with the power of the Spirit, returns to Galilee, and starts his ministry of preaching. 

Having traveled around a bit (we are not told how long), Jesus returns to his home town, Nazareth, and he goes to the Synagogue on the Sabbath.  Jesus was a regular there, we are told.  He’s a good Jewish boy.  Minds his manners, holds to the law, treats his elders with respect, he behaves himself; keeps his nose, and in a cultural context steeped in religious purity every other part of his body, clean.

Jesus is handed a scroll this day, from the prophet Isaiah.  Contextually speaking, it would not be a stretch to assume that Jesus reads in the Synagogue on a regular basis as well.  Typically, when scriptures were read publicly, discussion followed.  The discussion, however, was not a lecture or sermon given by the reader.  If a homily was supplied, it would have been done by a rabbi.  More often, some scholars postulate, those gathered were encouraged to discuss the implications of the day’s text as a community, a single body of believers. 

On this day, however, Jesus breaks from tradition.  He reads the scroll handed to him, from the prophet Isaiah:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  He rolls up the scroll, hands it back and sits down.  He does not invite public discourse, nor does anyone begin to offer a homily.

Instead, his reputation preceding him, everyone looks at him, and Jesus says, “Yeah, what you’ve just heard is true.  And it’s referring to me."

We share this with Jesus.  This scripture, which was “fulfilled” in the hearing of those present in that synagogue then is not a static script held in a single time, in a single place.  Scripture, by its very nature, is dynamic, active, alive.  The fulfillment of Scripture, therefore is not something that happened then.  It is very much something that is happening now.  Here.  Today.  In your hearing.  But not just in your hearing. 

We know that this scripture is relevant today because of the words of one of Jesus’s contemporaries:  the apostle Paul.  For as the body is one and has many members….so it is with Christ.  The church is the body of Christ.  Jesus is the head.  We are the members. The members of his body. 

If Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy then, what are we to conclude but that Jesus is the fulfillment of that same prophecy now?  And if we are the literal embodiment of Christ today, then it stands to reason that we also are called to be the fulfillment of that prophecy now.

And each of us has a part to play in this.  Paul tells us that we cannot say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.”  We have no right to make excuses.  We cannot rightly declare that the gifts God has given each of us are not sufficient.  We each have a part to play. 

God has arranged the members in the body; God has chosen each of us.  The design is God’s and God’s alone.  What right do we have to try to alter it or undermine it?  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.  Every member is important. 

Similarly, as “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” we cannot declare that the gifts God has given another are not sufficient, that they do not also have role to play.  In fact, those whose gifts seem small and insignificant by our standards, belong to those who deserve the greatest honor. 

In our culture, it is easy to exalt those who are most visible, most successful in the corporate world, those who hold the greatest material wealth.  Too often, our culture overlooks those who have less, who are seen less, who appear culturally less successful.  But these are the ones who make the world go round. 

Certainly we are not to cast the eyes, or the ears, or the feet from the body.  They are the members of the body who see and hear and move.  But ask anyone who’s been born blind or deaf or those who are missing limbs.  The body can go on, the body can compensate, the body can survive—not whole certainly—but it will go on without its most visible members. 

But it is the members of the body seen as less worthy of honor and praise on which the whole operation turns.  Without the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, the body would stop working altogether.  The body cannot function if those members who are less visible, and often less exalted, are not intimately involved. 

God has arranged the members in the body; God has chosen each of us.  The design is God’s and God’s alone.  What right do we have to try to alter it or undermine it?  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.  Every member is important.

We, collectively, are the body of Christ.  We, individually, are the members of that body.  We are the hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, the kidneys and liver and pancreas.  We are called, as the body of Christ, to be the literal fulfillment of Scripture.  We are each to play our own part. 

The part each of us plays is different, to be sure.  The role you are called to fulfill is one you are called by God to fulfill.  But as members of the body of Christ, we are called collectively to be the fulfillment of Scripture.  We are called collectively to seek:

• to bring good news to the poor
• to proclaim release to captives
• recovery of sight for the blind
• to let the oppressed go free
• and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

As the body of Christ, are we doing this?  Are we truly a gospel people, who preach the good news in all that we do?  Or when we leave church on Sunday, do we find ourselves believing that we are the stronger members of the body?  Do we believe we can do without the “lesser parts”?  Are we instead a people who declare that:

• the poor are lazy and undeserving of basic care
• those who are bound by sin have made their choices and deserve what they get
• the blind must have done something to earn God's wrath and this is their just punishment
• the oppressed are not so bad off and it isn't our responsibility anyway
• God is a god of judgment, and as God's people, we have a right, a duty, and an obligation to judge as well? 

Are we members who make up a body that reflects the image of Christ?  Or something else?  I know too often my membership in the body does not reflect the image of Christ. 

Only you know what is in your heart and your head when you meet those who are poor, captive, blind or oppressed.  Only you and God.  If you find this week that what you’re proclaiming is something other than good news, I would encourage you to think back to all that God has done for you, extend your hand in compassion and fellowship, and do the same for those God puts in your path. 

We each have a part play.  None of us can survive without the others.  God has arranged the members in the body; God has chosen each of us.  The design is God’s and God’s alone.  What right do we have to try to alter it or undermine it?  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 

When you encounter suffering this week, as a member of the body of Christ, enter in, just God entered our suffering in the person of Jesus.  When you do, as a member of the body of Christ, honor that person, honor their story, honor their experience, honor their life; just as Jesus honored us by doing the same.  For when you do, you truly will be the embodiment of Christ today, you too will be the fulfillment of Scripture, and all will rejoice in God’s love together.