What really matters?

     As I was getting dressed this morning, I made the unusual (for me) choice to dress down for work.  I often wear jeans on the days our hiking group walks but otherwise I usually dress up in "business professional" wear.  The reality is, though, that I really prefer what is comfortable to what looks good.  Maybe in part this is because I'm just not a really visual person.  I understand my world primarily kinesthetically and secondarily through hearing.  Vision is somewhere pretty far down the list for me, and so, more than most people, I just don't care about appearance.  Those of you who know me well know this.  I don't wear make-up, I don't spend time on my hair, I don't wear jewelry or paint my nails.  Almost all of my clothing is either gifts or hand-me-downs, and all of it is old.  The dress I wore to church on Sunday I was given when I was ordained 25 years ago.  The boots I'm wearing today were a gift when we moved to Ohio 13 years ago... you get the idea.

    None the less, as I was getting dressed this morning and decided to wear jeans instead of nicer pants, and a t-shirt under a sweater, I had to wrestle with myself a bit about it.  I kept remembering an incident at one of the other churches I served years ago.  That congregation had an evening praise service that was more focused on younger families and children.  It was, intentionally, a very informal service.  So we would all come wearing jeans and whatever clothing was comfortable.  We had a visitor come one evening for this service, but when she walked in and saw that those attending were dressed casually, she was so offended she turned around and left, commenting to the greeter by the door that "it's disrespectful to God when you don't dress up for church!"  It was a flippant remark made by someone I never saw before or since that evening.  None the less it stayed with me and its weight was reinforced for me by other comments other people have since made in my hearing.  I heard someone else say, for example, that he didn't respect another pastor because that pastor didn't dress up for church.  

    From a scriptural perspective, I can't support these attitudes.  1 Samuel 16:7b says: "God doesn’t look at things like humans do. Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but God sees into the heart.”  In proverbs 31:30 it says "Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain."  And maybe the most clear passage is 1 Peter 3:3-4 which says, "Don’t try to make yourselves beautiful on the outside, with stylish hair or by wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes.  Instead, make yourselves beautiful on the inside, in your hearts, with the enduring quality of a gentle, peaceful spirit. This type of beauty is very precious in God’s eyes."

    From a theological perspective I also struggle to understand this.  Do we really think that God cares about what we wear?  Or how much money or time we put into our clothing?  Amos, among other prophets makes it really clear that what God cares about is our service to one another, our caring for the "least of these" rather than how we adorn ourselves.  

    That being said, I do understand the thinking of those for whom this is important.  Taking the time to put on your best says that the one you are going to see, to worship, to spend time with is important to you, is someone you value.  So the choice to dress up for church is a choice to make a statement that God is worth your best, worth your time, worth the effort it takes to dress up.  

    I understand this.  I also understand that God knows that sometimes the best I can do is to be the best I can be that day in terms of my behavior rather than what I am wearing, and that sometimes wearing what will be comfortable, what will not be distracting and need my constant care to make sure I stay tidy and neat, is the best way for me to be the best I can be.  The bottom line for me, again, is that people come with different values and different things that take priority in their lives on different days.  For me, today, the priority has not been on looking presentable, but on being able to be my best in terms of how I emotionally present on a very hectic and busy day.  

    This may feel like a small and insignificant thing, but my thoughts around all of this led to thinking more deeply about judgment on the whole. We are so quick to judge those around us who make different choices than we make.  Perhaps we are needing their affirmation of the choices we have made in order to feel okay.  Perhaps we need them to think and act and look and make choices that mirror our own so we feel good about our own choices.  Perhaps we need to be critical and then to feel superior about our choices just to feel okay about ourselves.  I don't really know.  But I do know that we don't get very far by focusing on what others are doing or failing to do. We don't grow through our judgments of others.  We grow by focusing on our own choices and actions.  The choices others make can help us to see alternatives and to think through what really matters to us.  But determining that the only way we can make the best choices for ourselves is to judge other people's choices is false.  There is room for diversity, there is room for differences in our thinking, acting, and living.  

    I can't change the judgments that come my way about my clothing choices or anything else.  But I can use my experience of those judgments to remind me that similarly judging others is not what I choose to do.  It is not kind.  It is not loving.  And judging can waste a lot of space in my heart and head.  I'm not saying I won't ever be judging.  Unfortunately it is in the nature of our culture to be critical of those around us.  But I will work harder to put those judgements aside when they do come and to just focus on what I will choose for myself.  Today that's the best I can do.

Our choices determine how we respond to crisis

           I think that crisis brings out in all of us an exaggeration of the things that we've practiced daily, both the good and the bad.  We become more fully the people we have chosen to be, with all of our good qualities and all of our challenges when things are stressful.  That means that strong people can become stronger, kind and compassionate people become more so, generous people tend to step up, and people who are good under stress show themselves to be capable and hard working. People under stress can live more fully into being the best that they are, especially if they are trusted to do so, expected to step up and become the people they are called to be, meant to be.  Unfortunately, people who have acted out badly in the past to deal with discomfort, people who have not built up the skills to handle challenges can end up acting out in extreme ways their personality issues during times of crisis as well.
            On an individual level, I've watched several people in my life deal with difficult diseases.  In one case, the person tended towards victimization before the illness struck and she embodies that to a much greater degree.  She sees herself being mistreated in every situation and, as the disease progresses, she becomes more helpless, more quick to blame, attack and accuse, and more prone to dwell on previous insults whether they were real or simply perceived.  Another person with the exact same illness is acting the opposite way: continuing to be positive, to have good humor, to be kind and gentle, even as he grieves the limitations that the disease is imposing on him.  It is difficult to watch and see that personal choices throughout one's life about how to be in crisis, how to face challenges, how to walk through difficulties, are manifesting in these exaggerated ways when those with these illnesses have less choice later on about how they will react.  It is hard to not proclaim to the first person, "you could still be choosing differently!  You would be happier if you chose to see how you do have power rather than focusing on the places you don't!" But I know that a lifetime of choosing predominantly to focus on her limitations has engrained in her very being a pattern that will not allow her, now, in this time of decline, to choose a different perspective.  In contrast, the man with the same disease has also had a lifetime habit of looking for the good, seeing the humor in life, and treating others with kindness.  And his lifetime choices are also manifesting in this pattern of response to crisis.
          I've watched this with people "out in the world" as well.  Some people are becoming angrier during this time, more confrontive, more attacking; while others have become kinder, more compassionate, more caring.  My guess is that again, those acting out that hatred and anger were people who chose to respond this way before the crisis.  The crisis has just exaggerated this behavior.  As I take walks around my neighborhood, I've experienced some people being kinder, saying "hello" as we pass, laughing with me about the situation we are currently in.  I've also had people in cars drive by cursing and screaming obscenities for no apparent reason.  This crisis has brought the best out in some, and the worst out in others.  Still, these are choices that people are making.  And every time I do hear someone yelling or being nasty to someone else, I want to say to them, "this day you choose if what you give to the world is kind or hurtful.  Why are you choosing to give harm today instead of something good?"
           This doesn't just happen at an individual level, but in communities as well.  I think about one of the congregations I served in for a time. Every church has its challenges, every church has its problems, and every church has members in it who "act out" behaviors such as gossip, power-mongering, and a desire for drama that can lead to dissentious behavior and even splits in congregations.  In this particular church, when crisis hit, the congregation did an incredible job of banding together, of supporting one another, of caring for one another.  As a congregation, they had practiced kindness, always, regularly.  When crisis hit, then, they did what they knew best how to do, and they still practiced kindness and compassion.  Still, there were a few members who went into negative, destructive behaviors in response to the stress of the crisis.  At first their acting out was extremely upsetting to me.  But what I saw in this congregation utterly and completely amazed me.  Because it was a healthy community, the "acting out" behavior was given no power.  The gossip did not take root and spread into poison.  The dramatic demands for people to "choose sides" did not morph into anything concrete.  The congregation simply did not empower the bad behavior.  As a result, the few truly dissentious people in the community ended up leaving.  This was not reassuring to me.  The usual understanding of systems of behavior suggests that if one person leaves the group structure or family "mobile", that undoubtedly someone else will rise to take their place.  Family systems theory says that if a person who is acting out badly leaves a community, they will be replaced with someone else acting out in a similar way.  But again, in this very healthy congregation, in a crisis situation, that simply did not happen.  I think, again, using systems theory, that the mobile had never made room for this behavior.  The choices of the community were to not empower that behavior at any time, and that choice continued into the crisis situation.  The difficult pieces had never claimed a real place in the mobile.  We worked through the crisis time, therefore, and the church continued to be a loving, caring, supportive place.  The people who left did so feeling that surely their leaving would impact the church in the way they had tried to do so by being problematic when they were part of the community.  But instead, the feeling I got from most of the members was one of relief that those who tried to incite disruption were no longer there to do so.
       As we know, this could have gone the other way.  In communities where unhealthy and problematic behavior has taken hold, has become part of the DNA, has carved out a place for itself in the system mobile, problems can often grow.  When people in a group thrive on being key players in drama, where bullying is rewarded, and choosing polarizing sides becomes the norm; crisis situations provide fertile ground for painful implosion and turmoil.
        Our society right now is under incredible stress.  Nothing is normal, nothing is what it was or as it has been.  And we are seeing different responses to that stress, as individuals, as small communities and in the larger communities of state, country and world.  How we will respond to crisis will vary.  Some will act out with insensitivity, a failure to self-reflect or to learn, violence, anger, and hate.  Others will use this time to deepen as communities, to build networks of support, care and love, to step into new ways of doing things that are more inclusive and kind, to learn and connect with others in different ways.  Each of these must start with the individuals that we are, with the choices that each person in a community makes.  Then, as a community of individuals strives for compassion, forgiveness, understanding and communication, those communities will grow, learn and become what they are called to be.  In places where dissention is exacerbated and fed through behaviors such as gossip, intolerance, and violence of word or deed, communities will be disrupted and may fail or become more entrenched in unhealthy behaviors.  We will have to make some choices about who we choose to be during this time.   And that has to start with each one of us.
             Who will I be this day?  What behaviors do I want to practice in my person that will be habits that may be hard to break in the future?  How do I want to respond to crisis?  And how do I want to choose to interact with those around me when they are upset, acting out of crisis, or misbehaving?  Can I love and support a person without exacerbating their worst behaviors, passing on or even acting out gossip?  Can I care about someone without feeling I have to choose sides?  Can I respond to anger and violence with peace and love?  Can I take a step back from drama and choose to see a bigger picture, a picture that recognizes the stress of this time and chooses to be a grounded voice of peace?  These are questions we will not only have to ask ourselves in the larger context, but perhaps in each moment of every day.  The answers to those questions will determine the future of our communities.  May you have the space within you to listen for the Spirit's guidance in this day.

Messages we deliver without meaning to.

         I've been thinking, recently, about a number of situations in which people communicate much more, or at least a different message, than they perhaps intend to deliver.
     A man I often see at Presbytery usually does not acknowledge me.  When we pass each other, when we are in the same groups, when we are at the same table, he doesn't talk to me or smile or nod his head in recognition, although I usually try to make eye contact, smile and say hello.  I assumed that was because he simply didn't know who I was and, in a conversation with a mutual acquaintance I must have made the comment that we really didn't know each other: that I knew who he was, but I didn't think the reverse was true.  About a month after I had made that comment, this man actually approached me and said, "I DO know who you are!  See, I'm telling you that I do know and have known who you are for a long time!"  Okay... except that I had actually been giving him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he didn't acknowledge me because he didn't know who I was.  Frankly, it hadn't occurred to me that he was actually being intentionally rude or dismissive.  I just really didn't know how to respond to his acknowledging that he knew me.  Perhaps I should have named what I heard from him directly, "So, what I am hearing is that you haven't acknowledged me before, not because you don't know who I am but because you didn't feel it necessary to acknowledge me.  Perhaps it wasn't worth your effort to respond to me.  Or...?  Help me to understand this."  But I didn't.  Which leaves me wondering what he was really trying to communicate with all of this.
        Another situation:  A good friend of mine invited some folk over for dinner.  Since she (like many of my friends) is a vegetarian and doesn't cook with meat, she made what I felt was a hearty meal of a vegetable stew that was packed with beans, tofu, pasta and tons of vegetables and cheese, along with homemade bread, salad, hors d'oeuvres (including fruit, cheese, dips, vegies) and a home baked-fancy dessert.  A couple days later one of the people who attended the dinner said to her (within my hearing), "Well, I never before thought it was okay to just serve people soup, but now I know I can and I won't work so hard on meals I make for others."  I was shocked.  Um... how about "Thank you for the meal and the company"?  But what was interesting was that I don't actually think she meant to be hurtful.
        A person I know has been very fond of sharing the fact that when her daughter was very little (2 and 3 years old) the little girl would beg anyone passing by to come play with her.  The mother has no realization at all that telling this story always makes the hearers wonder why SHE didn't make the effort to play with her daughter herself.
        Another person I know has a husband who was trying to quit smoking after having some related health problems.  As we know, the first 30 days of trying to conquer any addiction can be trying.  This person bragged though that after 15 days of her husband acting grouchy, she went out and bought him a pack of cigarettes which she then insisted he smoke because, "Well, I didn't like his grumpy attitude."  So, half way through the hardest part, his grumpiness was more important to her than his health?
        One time I was standing with a group of people discussing plans for an event and the director of the project asked if someone on the committee could do a specific task.  One of the other members of the committee said, "Say 'Please'!" much to the embarrassment of all of us.  I was struck with wonder that someone could be trying to correct another person's social skills in such a completely socially unskilled way.
        On Facebook a while ago a friend of mine posted "happy birthday to three of my favorite people!" and she proceeded to name three close friends.  A person who is also a friend to all three of those people responded in the comments, "I'm tagging on here.  Happy birthday to..." and then named two of the three folk, even though the third was also his friend on Facebook and a close acquaintance, at least, in the real world.
        What do we communicate with our slights?  What are we really saying when we are rude to other people, or when we share times we've been unkind or inattentive or lacking compassion for others?  Why would we act this way?  Are we unaware that our own behaviors (as well as our words) reflect so much more on ourselves than on anyone else we might be trying to confront, make fun of, or judge?
          I know we all make mistakes.  And we all can do things or say things that affect other people in ways we don't see, don't expect or don't understand.  I am grateful to those people who actually tell me when I've communicated or done something that hurts others or hasn't been received well. But these other incidents end up also being gifts because they call me to pay more attention to what I'm communicating that I might not even be aware of.
         I think that during this stressful time we have choices to make about what we will contribute to the world in each day.  Do we give support and kindness, or do we act out with anger, harm or unkind actions?  Do we offer grace and compassion, or are we unforgiving and unkind?  We have a choice. Do you want your time on this earth to have contributed in a positive way to the lives of others, or did you want it to have negatively impacted the world?
         As I said, we all make mistakes.  And we are not always aware of what messages we actually send out, good or bad; the long term affects of our behaviors, for better or worse.  I hope you will tell me when I have done harm so that I can work on doing better.  For this day, I am working to hear more deeply what others are communicating and what I may be intentionally communicating as well.

Treasure in Small Places

2 Corinthians 4:1-18

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46. 51-52

We make choices in life, especially about what we value, often without even realizing we are making those choices.  I think about this regularly, especially as it pertains to spending money.  I often have conversations about this with my kids, too.  Are we going to eat out tonight?  Or would you rather I put $100 towards paying off your student loans.  Would I rather have that mocha and scone at the coffee shop, or would I rather put that money towards a vacation with my family.  Should I give the money we received from our tax return to Hope Solutions, or should I put it away for college for the kids?  I try to be very intentional in our spending choices, recognizing that every time I choose to buy something that is a luxury or something to fix up the yard and or the house, which are still a mess, frankly, I am also making a choice NOT to spend that money towards my kids’ college expenses or towards feeding people who are in dire-straights right now.

We come today to some very interesting parables about the kingdom of heaven.  And while there were a bunch of them that we read today, there is definitely a predominant theme within them all, and especially within the last two.  The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that someone hid in a field, which someone else found who then bought the field to obtain the treasure.  And the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. When he found one very precious pearl, he went and sold all that he owned and bought it.  Both of these tell the story of something so valuable that the protagonist in the story will give up everything to obtain it.

As you make your choices in life, is there something that you would give up everything for?  Everything?  Have any of you ever done that?  Given up everything for one thing?  Or for one person? 

“The kingdom of God is like…”  Jesus spoke in these parables and the disciples claimed that they have understood.  But I find myself both deeply blessed by these stories, but also a bit confused.  Is Jesus saying that we should seek the kingdom of heaven as the merchant sought the pearl, and as the person who bought the field, give up all we have to seek it because it and it alone is worth everything?  That interpretation would make sense.  We know that it is true.  God’s realm, God’s life, the life and love and connection that God offers should be and are worth everything.  But that doesn’t seem to be what he is saying here.  Does Jesus mean that WE are like that pearl or that treasure to God and God will give it all up for us?  This too makes sense and is true.  We know God did and does and will give up everything out of the deepest and truest love for us.  God gives up power, gives up control, gives up life in order to have real and genuine relationships of love and care with us.  But I don’t think that’s really what’s being said in these particular parables either.  I think perhaps these parables are much more straightforward.  The kingdom of God is the place where you come to KNOW what you really want, where you have the opportunity to gain it, and where you will happily and joyfully give up everything to attain it.   

In which case, I want to suggest, that the kingdom of God is much closer to us, ALWAYS, than we imagine.  The kingdom of God is here for us to be part of it, for us to see it, for us to enter it.  There are people who discover in this life what that thing is that they want beyond everything else, and who seek that out, being willing to give up everything for it, doing so, and finding their bliss.  It’s people who take risks, who trust that God is with them in those risks, and put fear aside to seek out what they want more than anything. 

I used to have a relative who had a dream of creating a successful business.  He really wanted to be an entrepreneur and create something that others found useful, valuable and that grew strong and big.  That was his dream.  He tried again and again, starting random businesses, which also failed again and again.  He was bankrupt on several occasions, without a penny in the world.  But he wanted to do this.  His family all thought he was nuts.  Completely nuts!  They would mention Paul and just shake their heads.  He was a fool in their minds.  A risky, stupid fool.  They knew he’d never make it and wanted him to just get a regular job, a real life.  They believed he’d be a sponger for his entire existence, just relying on his family again and again to bail him out.  But he kept trying.  He started one business, then another, then another.  Through that time he lost a spouse, he alienated much of his family.  He lost everything again, and again.  He gave everything to try to reach his pearl, to purchase the situation he wanted for himself.  Finally, he came across the idea of beginning a quick stop barber shop for both genders.  It took a little time, but Paul became the founder, owner, and CEO of Super Cuts.  He found his pearl of great cost, and he spent everything to get it, despite his family’s judgment, despite the losses he experienced.  He is now remarried to the love of his life, and he is extremely comfortably retired.  I have to admit, that wouldn’t be my goal.  That wouldn’t be what I would want or would see as blissful or the kingdom of God.  But it was what he wanted.  He wanted to create a business out of his imaginings and his gifts and he wanted it to grow and succeed. 

We may wonder what this has to do with God.  I mean his search for this job was a pearl that we may not understand or value or find godly at all.  But I want to suggest to you that God’s realm, the kingdom of God, that bliss of living in God’s light, God’s way, God’s presence can often be found in your heart’s desires.  God is in the dreams that you have, especially when you invite God in, especially when you seek for God’s will in your dreams, especially when you meditate on God’s call for your life.  Our family member, Paul, was a man of deep faith.  He remains so.  He took the wealth that he earned from his company and has done much to contribute to the church and to Christ’s work in the world with that money.  His seeking of his pearl was also an act of faith.  He trusted God to be there enough that even when he lost everything in pursuit of what we might think of as a worldly goal, he knew God would sustain him through the financial and emotional catastrophes and hard times.  Even when he lost his wife, he did not cave in, but kept working for his goal, seeking for that treasure. 

Children are often much closer to the kingdom of God than we are.  Our children have dreams, they have visions, they have hopes, they have sight that allows them to see the kingdom of God around them.  Recently a saw a post that said that a child was asked to list the seven wonders of the world and she was really struggling with it.  Finally, the teacher approached and asked her if she needed help.  She replied that she thought she was done but there were a couple more she could think of that didn’t fit into a simple list of seven.  The teacher asked what she had so far.  She listed as her seven wonders: hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, feeling, laughter, and love.  She was seeing the kingdom of God, she was experiencing the kingdom of God, not in the yearnings of her heart, but in the joy of her heart.  Children are better at having awe and seeing the wonder and majesty in the world.  We, as parents and grandparents, sometimes are given the gift of seeing through their eyes.  The kingdom of God is like the awe and wonder of our children.

I saw another story about a child who was trying out for a part in the school play. He had his heart set on being in it, but chances were very good that he would not get a part.  On the day that the kids were learning what parts they were getting, the boy’s mother went to pick him up from school with not a little amount of fear and trepidation.  But her son rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement as he said,  'Guess what, Mom, I've been chosen to clap and cheer.'  Again, that vision into joy, that vision into possibility, that vision into God’s kingdom with us no matter what our lot in life.

In the book Finding Chika, Mitch Album wrote about a time he and his wife took Chika down to Disneyland.  He wrote,

“What I remember most is what you did first.  We entered through Main Street, passing souvenir shops.  The rides were up ahead and I wondered which would make you scream, ‘Can we do that one?’

Instead we passed a small pond, and a gray duck wandered out of the water.  And with Astro Orbitor to your right, Thunder Mountain to your left, and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle straight ahead, you pointed down and yelled, ‘Look!  A duck!’ And you chased after it and giggled wildly, ‘Duck! Duck!’

I glanced at Miss Janine who was smiling too.  With all those amusement park attractions calling, you got low to marvel at another living creature….

…you came along Chika.  And maybe because I’m older now, or maybe because your eyes were so much wider than mine, or maybe because it’s simply different when the child is in your care, something stirred.  I began to lean over, to see tiny miracles the way you saw them.  Baby ducks running.  Frogs hiding in the weeds.  The wind lifting a leaf you were about to grab.  One of the best things a child can do for an adult is to draw them down, closer to the ground, for clearer reception to the voices of the earth…”

           

            Chika, as with all young children, saw the kingdom of God, experienced the kingdom of God.  But as adults, sometimes we have a harder time hanging on to our dreams, our hopes and our vision of God.  We lose sight of those deep, deep yearnings and tuggings at our hearts because we stop having the faith that those come from God.  But the Kingdom of God is like the man who found a pearl of great value, sold everything and went and bought it.  The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field that when found, the man who found it sold all he had to buy the field that contained that treasure.  And God wants you to be in and part of the Kingdom of God.  Not tomorrow, not after you die, but NOW. 

What is your pearl?  What is your treasure?  And do you trust God enough to let God lead you into the kingdom where you find, or with God’s help create, that which you value the most?  If you’ve forgotten what that is, I invite you to take time with God and ask what dreams God planted within you that you can’t remember.  If you’ve never had a dream like that, ask God what dreams God wants to plant within you to seek out. 

The Kingdom of heaven is here.  Waiting.  For you.

Moments with a bigger view

        I was on a very quick 24 hour retreat at San Damiano Sunday-Monday of this week.  I love it there.  Beautiful in every way.  Also challenging of my soul in so many ways.
         While I was sitting at breakfast I had this sudden moment of stepping out of myself, the culture, the routines and seeing everything in a completely different way.  I was watching people walking to the food that was set up, filling their plates, heading back to their tables.  Each person did exactly the same thing: walked to the same place to pick up a plate, walked over to the buffet at the same place, picked up the same utensils to serve themselves the food, walked to their tables, sat down, put their own utensils on their plates, put their napkins in their laps... you get the idea.  The conference wait-staff were walking around filling people's mugs with coffee or hot water, checking in with folk about their food, directing where guests were to take their dishes when they were done.  It was "normal" in terms of the way we eat, serve ourselves, do things in this culture at retreat centers.  There is a flow, there is an expected movement, there is a "script", if you will, for how we move and function and work.
         But I had this moment of stepping out, a moment of remembering that this was exactly what I said it was: a script, a cultural routine that is not innate to being human or being each individual that we are.  This is a learned behavior of how we do things in this particular setting.  It does not define us, it is not set by genes or by some higher authority that tells us that this is what it looks like to be civilized, educated, "acceptable" people.  These are traditions, practices, and rituals of how we function that we've all sort of tacitly agreed to without thinking too much about it.  And in that moment those particular movements struck me as so odd, so contrived really, that I had a hard time not bursting out with laughter.  I saw and found myself questioning everything.  Why did we decide that we need to eat three times a day?  Why not 5 or 6?  Why not twice or even just once?  Why do we butter our bread on one side?  Why do we toast it on both sides?  Why do we put our napkins in our laps?  Why do we cook our eggs the way we do?  Why do we eat together at tables?  Why do we sit in chairs?  The questions went on and on.
          We've separated ourselves from the basics of survival through these rituals.  Our meal times were "normal" but decided for us based on what we do as a culture, not when we are hungry.  None of us picked the tomatoes, none of us retrieved the eggs from the chickens, none of us milked the cows.  None of us slaughtered the pig for the bacon, or cured the ham, or even saw the animals or plants: the life that was involved in our breakfasting.  We did not touch our food with our hands, but ate with utensils that further separated us from the baseness of what we were doing: supplying nutrition to our bodies, all of which was life for something else at one point or another, so that we could continue another hour or day or week.  It is a strange part of our current humanity that we try to hide the realities of what we need to do to survive under layers and layers of "culture" that separate us so fully from acknowledging our basic needs and the first level of survival that is central to living for all of us.  But I had a bigger moment, a bigger insight into seeing all of this as just a game, a play, an act.
          I heard recently about a Dungeons and Dragons game where the player rolled a 20 on perception (for those who don't play this game, that means that in the role playing situation, they rolled the highest possible number to perceive perhaps something that they were unaware was going on).  The Dungeon Master had nothing new to give the player: there was nothing there to perceive.  So he said, "For just a moment your character sees dice, a table, a group of huge giants looking over the landscape.  And then everything returns to normal."
         At my meal at San Damiano, I felt I'd been given that 20 perception roll and had suddenly stepped back to see the world as it really was, rather than as we pretend it to be.
         My daughter is struggling to find her way.  That is the job of teenagers.  She is struggling with the patterns of culture, how to fit in to what society tells her she must do to make friends, to get along, to walk through this world.  She is especially struggling to make sense of it in light of who she is.  How does she maintain her integrity in terms of being herself, while still putting on enough of the cultural garb of acceptable behaviors to walk through the world in a functional way?  We learn how to share, we learn how to greet one another and talk to one another, we learn to say "hello" when we enter a place and "goodbye" when we leave.  We learn please, thank you, and I'm sorry (if we are wise), we learn to hold doors open for one another and to smile when we pass each other while walking the dog.  But these things are not who we are.  For example, my daughter struggles to decide how much of her introverted self to honor and how much she must put aside to not appear to be snobby or aloof.  She struggles to know how much of her true feelings and thoughts she should share, and how much she needs to keep inside in order to not be "threatening" or invasive of the other.  These are the dances and lessons of growing up.  But they also cause many people to forget that these are not who we are: these are cultural behaviors and routines and not the depth of our beings.  
        The rituals of our faith are the same.  For outsiders they feel odd, different, "weird" maybe... but they are also things we put on to make sense and to navigate complex beliefs and ideas and even feelings: intuitions, hunches about what is beyond.  And sometimes I have moments in church as well where I feel it is all so contrived.  Do these rituals still mean what we intended them to mean?  Do they still serve and communicate and support us in our faith, in our love, in our growing?  Or do they keep us stuck and unseeing of who we and God and one another really are at our core?
       We've all heard stories of wild children, kids "raised by wolves" as it were, who somehow did not grow up in a culture and so did not learn our routines, our ways of being.  They seem wild, they seem untamed.  Do we also see that they are really, in many ways, so much more real?
       We need our rituals.  We need our routines.  We need our ways of navigating how to work and talk and worship and live.  But it is important that we remember that they are just that: rituals, routines, practices and ways of working with and walking with and being with one another.  They are not who we are, they are not who we are called to be. Those moments of perception also give us options as they help us to remember that we have choices about which cultural constructs we choose to adopt and which ones we can choose to put aside in favor of something different, something more true to ourselves, something that perhaps carries for us more integrity in our living and being.
       I see some of those choices in the people around me and in myself.  I know people who, out of their concern for the environment, grow their own vegetables and who bike everywhere rather than driving, trying to lessen their carbon footprint, striving to truly live with more integrity in this way.  I have a couple friends who are truly trying to "live off the grid" - making their own electricity, using well water, living in a home that is not tied in to the usual systems, growing their own food.  Personally, I am trying to use minimal plastic.
        For other people, values may center more around not spending money on things the culture decides are "necessary" but are really luxuries.  My girls choose not to cut their hair, feeling that a monthly hair cut is an unnecessary expense.  I cut my son's hair and my own myself, for the same reason.  We don't find using blowdryers to be necessary.  These are small things, but they are steps towards seeing that not everything we are told is necessary really is.  
        Our cultural activities contain within them many assumptions about what matters, what is important.  But they are often not said outloud.  They are assumed, and they take form through our daily practices.  The more we can step outside of those routines and rituals, the more we can choose for ourselves what really matters, and to make choices based on what we really value, rather than what the culture tells us to value.  So my prayer for all of us is to have more moments of perception, more times when we see the values that are behind each act, each thing, each interaction, and that we therefore have a chance to choose what we really value and to live with deeper integrity, closer to being who we truly are.