From "Fight" to "Friend"

     Today in my good news e-mag I saw an article about a new cancer breakthrough where cancer cells are "re-taught" to be normal cells rather than cancerous cells.  This is a huge breakthrough for many reasons but it also caused me, once again, to reflect on the deeper lessons being learned.  

    As humans, we appear to tend towards violence in all areas of our life.  When someone is nasty to us, we often will fight back, at least verbally, or up the ante, returning evil for evil.  When there are problems in the world, rather than negotiating or talking, we often jump into war, into fighting.  When we have problems within ourselves, we talk about fighting - fighting the demons within or fighting the addiction, or fighting with our own anger.  As I've written about many times, when someone does something wrong in our society, we "fight" or seek to harm them in return with retributive justice prison sentences, too.  And with our diseases: we fight disease by trying to "kill" it.  

    Does it work?  Not so well, in any of these situations.  Might does not equal right, so our wars don't always favor the right.  Those who go to a punishing prison usually end up entrenched in their lives of crime.  The addictions and inner problems we fight with tend to just fight back.  And even the diseases we fight by killing what is within usually do more damage to us in the end.  The things we use to kill diseases kill us as well.  

    I actually believe that this is a metaphor for all of life: in trying to kill what we deem to be the "other", whether it is a disease or issue within us or an "enemy" without, we end up destroying or damaging ourselves as well.  

    There are alternatives and we are just beginning to really figure those out.  Restorative justice is a much better approach in terms of our legal system, for example: bringing healing to all those involved in a situation where a crime has happened, rather than an escalating revenge/punishment.  This is true in our raising of children as well: when we yell at our kids, they aren't as able to hear, to learn.  But when we work with them, seeing the mistakes as invitations for learning, invitations for growth, not only is the growth more permanent and effective, but it builds their self esteem as well.  If we were to learn to talk to each other rather than going to war, relationships and lives would not be torn apart or ended in the name of justice.  

    I loved the children's book series, "The Secrets of Droon" by Tony Abbott.  One of the things I loved most about this series, was that the children were not encouraged or taught to kill the "bad guys."  Instead, they were encouraged to understand them, and to grow with them so that those "bad guys" might be met with enough compassion that they would change.  We have the same opportunites throughout our lives in all areas.

    I've seen a person screeming at someone else about something who was met with patience and an open heart, and as a result they calmed down, were able to be rational and to have real conversations, moving from stances of enemies across a line to friends, working together to solve a problem. I saw my own son, as a kindergartener, make the decision to befriend a kid who bullied everyone.  My son was able to change the stance of the other child by doing so, and as a result, the "bully" was finally able to ask for the help he needed, learning to trust that not everyone was against him, that some were truly there who would love and care for him, even when he told the truth about what had been happening in his home life.

    I've also experienced people trying to fight off the grief and pain within their own hearts who, when encouraged instead to befriend that pain and grief, were able to truly work it through and therefore to let it move through them and out. It is a different way to approach our inner struggles and pain, but an effective way to really work through and come out the other side.  When we fight our inner problems, the best we can hope for is to suppress them.  But when we befriend our shadow side, we can learn and grow together until we are changed for the better.

    This new way of approaching cancer is incredibly hopeful to me.  It recognizes that change, rather than destruction, is a better way to deal with cancers of all kinds, within our bodies and within our lives.

    

Day 9 and 10

      I don't sleep well. Ever since our children were born, I have become very sensitive to noises that might indicate that one was in need of attention. Then with our family crisis, my mind would race all the time and I could not turn it off. Now that we are in a really good place and the children are all adults and for the most part 2/3 out of the house, you'd think sleep would be easier, but my ability to sleep has never returned.  Up until this sabbatical time my mind still raced with things that needed to be done or issues that were happening both at church and at the Presbytery level. Up until now, I have still been oversensitive to noises in the house. For the first week of sabbatical, that was still the case. I hoped that with time and space, this might ease a little. But it has not. I'm still not able to sleep, still oversensitive to noises, and more, now my mind races with other thoughts, memories, questions, and concerns. 

    How I usually handle this inability to sleep has been to put in ear buds of some kind that connect to my phone or iPad and put in a movie I either know really well or have no interest in seeing: one that doesn't pull me to want to actually watch it either because I can see the scenes in my head based on the dialogue, or because I simply don't care about what's being said. The noise of dialogue then usually drowns out my own thoughts as well as the noises in the house, and distracts me enough to sleep... for a while. When the movie ends, I usually wake up and then we repeat the process all over again: try to sleep, find I can't, put in another movie, sleep for a couple more hours, repeat.  

    All that being said, I "sold" my sabbatical to the Lily grant committee that awards a certain number of clergy sabbatical grants each year by saying that I really needed some healing time. I worked throughout the time my family was dealing with crisis, then I moved to a new job and began working again. I had to: I needed to keep busy, I had to support my family, I needed to help the kids and my congregation get through their traumas.  But now there is space. My current congregation is doing well, my kids are all in college, my husband has a job he likes for the most part.  It feels like there can be a moment for me, finally, to maybe do some of the deeper work. So now, when I am awakened by memories or struggles or pain, I am stopping the "drown out" response. I am letting those memories surface, always with the question, why is this coming up for me now?  What is this thought or concern trying to tell me, teach me, or ask from me?  And always, again, where is God in this?  I am taking the time to listen: what do I need to hear?  Why now?  What is it I need to gain from this moment?

    I am learning. Today my learning is focusing on the fact that wherever you go, there you are. What I mean by that is that it doesn't really matter if I'm working at church or working in my yard or doing errands or even writing: I bring myself to each and every situation so I am going to be the same me with the same issues unless I am very conscious about doing things differently.  I am still intense, and I am still high energy, which many interpret as being "stressed" but does not always mean that I am. I still struggle with anxiety. Since that's a clinical biological thing, telling me to "just calm down" will never, ever work and usually just upsets me more.  If I could "calm down" I would have, so telling me to "just" do something I'm incapable of doing "just" makes me feel inadequate. In order to change things, I have to be very intentional. I need to take time to look at the plants and to walk in the woods. I need to take the time to do my yoga and to meditate. It's important to continue to write, which is always helpful for me. Remembering to breathe can be an extraordinary gift. This is today.  

    And here's a couple more plants I put in:

It's time...

          I am in a season of transition.  And it is time.

          It is time for me to go on Sabbatical, to have space for myself, to step out of serving a congregation for a few months, to step away from the intensity of raising children (they are now all in college).  It is time for me to carve out space for rest, renewal, prayer and reflection.  

          It is also time for me to work through some of the traumas of the past that have not had space to be dealt with in depth. Some of these are presenting themselves now in a way that is gently calling me to pay attention and to learn the lessons that were present in those events. It is time to be intentional in healing, imagining, and reconnecting with God.

          It is time for me to begin writing again regularly. COVID shut me down in terms of my writing.  I've continued to work on my book, but that work at this time is strictly editing and is less a creative endeavor than a reviewing experience. It is time to start writing again, and to listen for where I'm being led in terms of using my voice.

          It is time for me to build my garden. I mean that literally, as the focus on my Sabbatical is garden centered.  But I also mean it metaphorically. I will be digging in the dirt of my life, planting seeds for flowers and trees to grow from the mud and silt, hoeing up the weeds that have infested and taken over areas that need rototilling, churning up the worms that help provide needed nutrients and rooting out the pests that are destructive. 

         It is time for me to move my feet forward. I will be walking part of the Camino de Santiago with my son for a couple weeks: doing the work of talking, listening, and actively moving forward in place, time, space and in the inner steps of spiritual pilgrimage.

          It is time for me to breathe, deeply.  For those who are interested, I will take you along on my journeys of Sabbatical through my writing once more.  I invite you to join me for the journey.  

Anger and Hate

     Years ago I had someone come to me for pastoral care and counseling who was in a great deal of pain.  She told me that she had been the victim of a predator, someone who found her in a time and situation of crisis or trauma and, in the guise of offering care, took advantage of her.  When she finally found the strength to end the predatorial and abusive relationship, the predator sought revenge by turning others she cared about against her.  Because the predator was a charming and likeable person, no one even asked for her side of the story.  It seems people mistakenly believed that the one doing the talking must be the one telling the truth, when instead, he was doing the talking because he was trying to preemptively spread his lies before the truth could come out. She became a pariah as the people around her chose to believe the person they preferred without ever asking her side or seeking her truth in what had occurred.  She was thereby victimized twice by the predator: first by the initial relationship, and second by the damage to her other relationships. She told me that she had come to see the predator as evil, and she hated him with a white hot hate that did not seem to fade with time.  She told me she had never known hate before this event, but now it seemed to consume her and she did not know what to do.  

    She came to me seeking help.  As a pastor, couldn't I tell her how to let go of the anger?  The hate?  Couldn't I help her to figure out how to forgive so that the rage and abhorrence would no longer wrack her body and spirit in a way that seemed to poison everything in her life?  

    I passed along the tools that I had: Pray for the ones with whom you are angry the same good things you would want for yourself.  Talk to God.  Journal.  Distract from your anger by focusing on the beautiful things in this life.  Keep a gratitude journal.  Surround yourself with people who will care enough to talk to you when they have questions or are hearing gossip about you.  Choose friends who will be open with you and will believe what you say to them.  Surround yourself with people who understand about predatory relationships, the deep damage they do, the abuse they infict, and the ways they manifest. Meditate.  Exercise. Eat healthy foods. Practice self-affirmations. Reframe your experiences as growing and learning experiences. 

    I don't know if any of those tools helped her in the long run.  In the short run I believe they were inadequate.  She was truly consumed by her anger and hatred, and those feelings were damaging her to a greater degree even than the original predatorial damage.  What she had experienced as harm was real.  But the daily re-living of that damage did more to hurt her.  And while she knew this intellectually, she could not let go of that anger.  She knew she was allowing the predator to continue to victimize her through her feelings, but she could not let them go.

       As I look back, I realize that I had missed an important step with her.  I've said before that I am a firm believer that we have to go through our grief and pain to come out on the other side.  Stuffing feelings down means they usually manifest in unhelpful ways and they don't resolve.  What I had failed to name was that anger is a secondary emotion.  Hate is often a further step removed and is a tertiary emotion that follows anger.  Both ultimately mask grief and fear.  It feels more powerful to be angry or to hate, so we often move to those feelings when we don't want (or don't have the strength) to feel those more genuine but more vulnerable feelings of sadness and fear.  Until we deal, truly and honestly, with those deeper feelings, we will stay stuck in the anger.

     Personally, I don't want to be an angry or hateful person.  So I write this as a reminder to myself, as I reflect back on my parishioner's experience, that letting these feelings pass through us is essential for our own well-being and wholeness.  Not always easy, especially when you've been deeply harmed, but necessary.  When someone hurts us, it is often our own feelings that do more damage than the other person could ever do.  And while working through those feelings is not easy, it is life-giving to do so.

Restorative Justice at the College Level

           For my youngest child's spring break we went and looked at colleges that had interested her.  Without naming names, I want to talk about one of those colleges very briefly.  Most of what this college had to say for itself was very positive and seemed like a good match for Youngest.  They talked about being inclusive and aware, though aparently one of their professors had made an inappropriate comment in a fit of anger that was caught on video and was being shown all over the place.  

           This college also talked about using a restorative model for justice on campus rather than a retributive model.  I've written about this before, but to explain again: In a retributive model for justice, misdeeds, mistakes, errors are dealt with by punishing the person who made the error.  Those who use this method seek revenge on the person, often an escalated revenge of what was done in the first place.  This model has many problems with it, beginning with the fact that punishment simply does not work to effectively change behavior.  In fact, the extremely high rate of recidivism in the United States prisons, for example, shows that the punishment we exact on our prisoners ends up cementing their identity as criminals most of the time.  They then have extremely little chance of changing, doing better, or choosing a different way of life.  We also make it almost impossible for those who've been incarcerated to find housing, jobs, or a way of getting out of that system.  We make them into criminals, even if they weren't actually criminals before.  It is also estimated that at least 10% of those who end up incarcerated are not actually guilty of the crimes they were incarcerated for.  Additionally, our retributive system does not provide healing for the victims either.  In our legal system, in fact, our retributive justice system usually ends up revictimizing the victims as they must tell their story in a court of law and have that story attacked and dismantled by lawyers seeking to defend the accused.  

        In contrast to the restributive justice system, a restorative model seeks to understand and provide healing for both victims and those who have done wrong.  There are still consequences for the offenders.  But the consequences tend of be logical or natural consequences: ways for the offenders to correct their mistakes, fix them, look at their own issues that caused the offenders to behave badly in the first place, and invites them to choose to start on a different path.  

       Many of our native tribes (throughout the world!  New Zealand has a wonderful restorative justic program based on the methods of the Maori) have used a restorative model rather than a retributive model with great success.  It sees everyone involved as people not "bad guys" and "good guys" but human beings, all in need of growth and healing.

       Our child development strategies are tending more and more towards a restorative model as we learn that children act out when there is something that needs healing, something that needs training, something that needs help.  It has moved from identifying kids as simply "bad" or "good" into recognizing that all of us are mixes of bad and good and are all on a path of growth.  Many of our schools are also learning and moving more towards a restorative rather than a retributive model.  For example, rather than expelling a child who has done wrong, many schools now work with the child, their family, the victims, and the school system to try to understand what wrong has happened and to do the work to make sure the offenders are not continuing in their behavior.  They are also working more to help the victims obtain healing help.  Expulsion, for many kids, was not only an uneffective punishment, but sometimes was experienced by kids to be a kind of backwards reward.  It encouraged further "bad" behavior rather than correcting what was wrong, teaching more fully about empathy, and helping everyone involved in these situations to heal, grow and do better.  

         So, this college we visited prided itself on teaching and using a restorative model of justice.  It proclaimed that when something happened that was "wrong" that it was explored, analyzed, and addressed individually, working with those who made the mistakes to correct them, to learn from them, and to fix the mistakes rather than to simply be punished, expelled or thrown out as "bad".  

        That's awesome.  I believe deeply in restorative justice and was very excited to find a school that declared its commitment to that system at the outset.

        HOWEVER, many students at the school were protesting, demanding for the firing of the above mentioned professor.  The firing of a teacher follows a retributive model of justice.  It does nothing to correct the problem or even address it.  It does nothing towards healing the victims.  It also simply dismisses the professor, leaving him and his family without income or without a way to correct the problems.  It responds to an error (or even a series of errors) by adding to the list of what is harmful, destructive and angry, rather than offering a way forward that teaches, heals and restores relationships.  It stops conversation, rather than exploring, learning together and working together to truly address the issues in productive and constructive ways.  It also entrenches the professor in a place of simply defending his comments rather than inviting him to do the self-reflection a more restorative process would encourage.  

       I continue to be amazed at the lack of compassion that humans show to one another.  I continue to be deeply saddened by the ease with which people choose to label, categorize and "other" those around them.  This professor stopped being a person to these students.  He is just a "bad guy" now to throw out, another person to be "gotten rid of,"  to punish, to condemn.  It was obvious that for all the rhetoric at the school claiming to follow and teach a restorative justice model that they have not been able to actually instill that value into the student body.  We have a long way to go.

Gifts of Advent

 

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

John 14:27

               We’ve been reading a lot of difficult passages lately.  Looking intensely at some of the harder and harsher words from the Old Testament.  And I feel that today’s readings are a deep blessing instead.  They are a breath of deep and fresh air.  Today as we begin Advent, we begin with this promise of something beautiful.  We begin with seeing once again the deep love of God. 

While Jeremiah is addressing a people in captivity and in exile, I want to invite you to think for a minute about how these words might apply to you, too.  While we are not literally in captivity or in exile, there are areas within each of us that are in captivity and/or in exile.  Maybe you are in captivity to anger that you are holding against someone else.  Maybe you are in captivity to fear about what is happening to a loved one, to yourself, to the country.  Maybe you are in captivity to an addiction that you just can’t shake, no matter how much you may want to, or something you have to finish, a chore, a promise, a commitment that you simply do not want to fulfill, that is holding you captive in that it prevents you from moving on, from doing what you may want to do.  Maybe you feel your body is holding you in captivity in its limitations, in the ways you may now be limited physically, or prevented by bodily issues from doing the things that you would like to be able to do. 

And exile?  Are there people in your life from whom you are estranged?  Are there relationships that you cannot reconcile?  Are there places where you feel uncomfortable, uneasy, separated, distant?  Are there places that have meant “home” to you that are no longer accessible?  Or people with whom you felt at home that you can no longer be with (because of many things, even death, that keeps us apart)?  Where are the areas within you that you have pushed out or that you cannot face?  Where are your shadow sides that you have exiled away from you?  Are there parts of yourself that you hold off, keep distant, exile?

With those images in mind, I invite you to listen again to these beautiful promises of love, these sweet and awesome promises of the future.  Close your eyes and hear these words for you again:

“I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.  When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you.  When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.  I will be present for you, declares the Lord, and I will end your captivity. I will gather you …, and I will bring you home after your long exile, declares the Lord.”  

I want you to hear those words in your hearts. These are advent promises, promises of a time to come, a time of unexpected release and comfort, a time of hope, a time of reconciliation and healing, a time of peace. 

In the book The Life of Pi, Pi had been on a boat that sank with all his family and everything that he had.   He was the only human who survived on a lifeboat.  But he was on that lifeboat for a very, very long time.  It was an incredibly difficult time.  As he described it, sometimes there weren’t any fish to catch, to eat.  And sometimes the sun was way too hot and the despair was absolutely overwhelming.  When he was asked how he survived it, if it was all just miserable and awful, he said, “You reach a point where you’re at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you’re the luckiest person on earth.  Why?  Because at your feet you have a tiny … fish [to eat].” (217).  

The truth is that we can, almost always, find signs (like a fish meal when we are hungry) of God’s love, of LIFE.  And those gifts, those signs of hope and of life are promises in themselves.  They are reminders that God created you because God loves and that is God’s very nature to love you into being YOU.

In the book, Finding Chika, Mitch Albom wrote about caring for Chika who was a little girl dying of a brain tumor.  He wrote about what he learned, how he grew during that time.  One of his chapters was entitled, “Lesson Three: A sense of wonder” and he wrote, “We took you to Disneyland once, Chika.  Do you remember?  It was after the radiation treatments.  You had been wondering about Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, which they show at the start of every Disney movie.  ‘Is that real?’ you’d ask, and we’d say that it was, and someday we would take you to see it.  One night, after putting you to bed, Miss Janine and I looked at the missing patch of hair above the back of your neck.  Your forehead was perspiring.  And we said to each other, ‘What are we waiting for?’  We made the reservations.  We flew to California.  I bought tickets for a weekday, hoping for smaller crowds, and we arrived before the park even opened.  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!’… With all those amusement park attractions calling, you got low to marvel at another living creature.  … Children wonder at the world.  Parents wonder at their children’s wonder.  In so doing, we are all together young.”

This is the awe of Advent, the wonder of Advent.  Does it mean everything is okay?  Of course not.  Again, that story I read you about Chika was from a child who was dying.  A very young girl (5 -6 years of age) who died of a brain tumor.  An extremely tragic experience full of pain and loss, of painful treatments and hospital stays.  But it was in the midst of that that she found joy, wonder, delight.  God’s promise for us is one of peace: a place of rest, a place of healing for our souls: a freeing from the captivities of our minds, a return from the places of exile within.  Those moments of joy, of sight, of feeling, sensing, resting in God’s presence.  These are the gifts of Advent, the promise of that new life to come, of God’s being with us in person.

But Advent does not just leave us here.  Advent also calls us to be part of the movement, part of the growing, to pass on that hope, that peace, that joy and that love to those we encounter. 

Bishop Michael Curry, in his book, Love is the Way (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020.  P 154), wrote about the ministry his congregation was doing in the “rough” neighborhoods, in the poorest areas.  The congregants made a commitment to make a difference in those neighborhoods.  They started by singing on the street corners, and they preached five minute sermons about God’s love on the street corners.  He wrote, “During the winter holidays, we shifted to Christmas caroling.  One night, as we walked the streets near the church with our flashlights, I could sense that enthusiasm was waning. Caroling on the streets isn’t like singing in church.  In a church, voices bounce off the walls with a resonance that amplifies and improves the sound.  A mouse can belt like Patti LaBelle.  But on the streets, we got no such lift.  Our voices seemed quiet and flat, lost in the air of boarded-up and derelict homes.  Still, we stuck with it, determined to share some spirit that night.  We stopped on one block near an alley and began a quiet rendition of ‘Silent Night’ even though we couldn’t see a soul.  As we neared the finish of the first verse – ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ – we were about to walk on.  And then from the darkness of the alley, we heard a response.  A voice sang out from the darkness finishing the song, ‘Sleep in heavenly pea-ace, sle-eep in heavenly peace.’  I experienced surprised elation, but also sadness. Down that alley someone was listening.  And also down that ally someone was possibly cold, possibly hungry, possibly high.  I would never know, because he didn’t show his face.  And yet, he had responded.  Thanks to that unseen neighbor, we understood that even when it didn’t seem like it, somebody was listening.  That was a beginning, and over the years, a relationship between the community and the churches in the community began to emerge and grow. 

“I came to see that night as symbolic of the same transition we were going through as an entire congregation – a reawakening toward the community outside our walls, which was leading to a reawakening of the reality of God within and without.  It was, I suspect, part of why I was brought to St. James, and it was the hardest work any of us had ever done. 

“This is a hard and necessary work, for all of us.  It’s easy to contribute money and time to ‘do good’ and help others, whether through compassionate acts of service or by joining the movement for social justice and change.  It is far tougher to maintain a humble and dedicated relationship with God and with others, especially others who are not like you.  But that kind of relationship – the I-Thou relationship – is how we create a new dynamic, where there are no saviors, but only people working together for a better future for the good of all.  Without that mutuality our good acts all too easily replicate and reinforce the status quo.  When we draw on the ‘energies of love,’ to use Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase, we reconnect with God and others, and in the end, with the whole world.

“As that happens, even if episodically, I-Thou overcomes I-It, and life becomes less about egoistic ‘me’ and more about altruistic ‘we.’”

MLK said it this way, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

So, during this advent we are invited to rest in the peace God offers, but also to extend that peace in every interaction we have.  To step forward with courage and confidence and to invite those around us to do likewise. 

There is a beautiful Amish proverb that says, “Faith gives us the courage to face the present with confidence and the future with expectancy.”  Those are the promises of Advent.

This first Sunday in Advent we focus on hope, the  hope that comes through trust, through faith.  We are invited to find that hope within, to lean on God to be able to pull that hope to our hearts, to claim it as the promise that it is.  And then to pass it along to those we encounter.  So I want to end our sermon today with the words that Jesus spoke in the scripture we read this morning.  These words are for YOU.  As we enter this Advent season, I invite you to bring them into your heart as the promise, the hope, the Advent of a new day that they are.   As we heard today from Jeremiah:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope for the future.”  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

If a certain category of people are always a problem for you, perhaps the problem is you.

          I found myself today remembering a kid I grew up with who had trouble in school every year.  Every single year the mantra was, "My teacher is mean to me."  "My teacher doesn't listen."  "My teacher doesn't care."  Eventually, he decided that all teachers were just unfeeling, un-listening, uncaring people.  His parents supported this attitude.  I remember often seeing them on campus, headed in to talk to teachers, to the principal, to administrators.  While as a child I was rarely privy to these conversations, I can remember coming in from recess one day in time to hear the parents shrieking at the teacher with whom they had been meeting that "All teachers at this school have it in for our child!"  I was in 6th grade at that point: old enough to realize that all his teachers probably had had conversations about this boy.  I was able to suppose that those conversations probably did set each one up at some level to be predisposed to see the worst in him. I wondered if any of them had given him a fair chance.  I wondered if they didn't begin by being impatient and a little stern with him from the get-go based on what they already "knew" of the boy. 

         As a kid myself, I don't remember being able to expand my thinking too much beyond that.  It didn't, for example, occur to me to remember that this boy was not just difficult in the classroom but out at recess, too.  Nor did I remember that he was a person all the rest of us kids avoided at any cost because he was mean and demanding, loud and pushy.   

         It also didn't occur to me to realize that I'd had many of the same teachers that this boy had had and that my experience of them towards myself had been consistently positive.  I wasn't able to have a wide enough vision to see that the common denominator in all of these interactions was the boy, not the individual teachers.  But then, I was a kid, and I identified more strongly with other children.  The school understood the situation better.  But again, because of previous interactions with the boy, I am certain the teachers as well as the administrators did approach this child with at least a little un-ease, and no doubt each year a pre-conceived idea of who he was, a bias.  In every interaction there are at least two people.  Therefore when there is conflict, when there are problems, at least two people have a part in those problems.  Sometimes the responsibility is more heavily weighted towards one side or the other, but where there is human interaction, both sides have at least a little culpability.  So, I'm certain the teachers were not completely blameless in this situation.  This kid obviously had problems and approaching him as someone in need of help rather than as just a problem to be dealt with might have changed the dynamic immensely.  But I write from the place of knowing I was a kid at the time, not privy to the exchanges of the adults, and certainly not knowledgeable about what had been tried, or what even could have been done.  I also know that we've come a long way in understanding the challenges our kids face and in finding appropriate ways to deal with them.  Resources exist now that simply weren't available when I was young.  It's easy to be condemning of the past and fail to remember that time has taught us some things.

        But my point here is that it was not easy for the parents or the child to see that if the kid was the one having an issue with all of these teachers, while other children were not having issues with all of these teachers, that chances were good that the kid contributed something to the problem.  They were so busy attacking and categorizing "all teachers" as uncaring, unfeeling, and unkind that they could use this label "teacher" to divide the world into the good and bad, with "teacher" being on the bad side.  Just as the teachers probably approached this kid with some preconceived ideas, this boy and his family approached "teacher" with a lot of preconceived ideas.  

        They all came with their tunnel vision to the conversations.  And while it was probably easy for an entire school to band together in mutual condemnation of this boy and his family, it was also amazingly easy for the boy and his parents to band together in a conviction that it was "all the teachers" in the school that were at fault.  From that place, there wasn't going to be a whole lot of movement on either side towards reconciliation, healing, change or growth.  There just wasn't.  

      Condemnation is easy.  Labeling is easy.  Deciding that one side is wrong/bad and the other side right/good makes the world neat and tidy.  In this scenario, I know who my friends are and I know who my enemies are.  I know what to think and believe.  I know who to trust and who to fear.  I know where to place my anger and my disappointment with the world, and I know where to look for salvation and hope.  I know who to convict and who to redeem, and I know that to be loyal means to choose the clear-cut side I've come to believe is always the right side.

      Oh, if only that matched reality in any way!

      The truth is so much more complicated.  But truth is very, very hard.  No one of us will EVER have a complete grasp of truth, because truth includes everyone's experiences, and opinions and feelings.  We will never have everyone's experiences and opinions and feelings so none of us will ever grasp the full truth.  Truth is also hard because it involves seeing that everyone has good gifts, and everyone has faults.  Everyone does some things right, and everyone makes mistakes, whether they are able to see them or not.  The best any of us can do is to keep trying to do better.  The best any of us can do is to keep searching for genuine understanding.  But let me just say the obvious here:

      Genuine understanding is not easy.  And it is far too easy for us to avoid seeking it.  If we were to seek genuine understanding, we'd have to expand our views.  If we were to strive to listen to the other side, or to engage those with whom we are angry, we might have to change.  If we were to open our eyes to a bigger vision that goes beyond us and them, black and white, my side and your side, we might have to face the reality that we aren't always right, or good.  And we might have to admit that we have not always been just to people who have deserved to be treated better.  

      This seems like such a hardship for most humans.  And that makes me very sad.  But my commitment this day is to try harder to see the greys, and to hear the other side of things.  My commitment is to be quicker to say "I'm sorry" and to forgive the other, but also faster to forgive myself for my part in conflicts (because, really, it is easier to face the truth of our errors if we know there will be forgiveness for them!). My commitment is to not just take the easy way of deciding who is right and who is wrong, but to recognize that everyone in a conflict is both right and wrong.  Everyone comes with stories and histories and everyone is in need of healing, reconciliation and forgiveness.  That's all I can do.  I can't change anyone else, but I can strive to do my part.

Mistakes, growing, learning, forgiving.

     As this New Year begins, I find myself reflecting on events in my own life from years ago.  I've been taking a webinar on forgiveness and I think that it, too, is prompting this reflection.  My biggest challenge in terms of forgiveness, as I think is the case for many people, is learning to forgive myself.  I think that these arising memories of things that happened as far back as my childhood are opportunities to step more fully into self-forgiveness as well.

   Today I found myself reflecting on my first call.  When I was in seminary, and frankly my years as a young adult before going to seminary, I felt pretty clear that my primary call into ministry was primarily "prophetic".  What I mean by that is that I knew that while ministers are called to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" that my call was very much on the "afflict the comfortable" end of things.  I regularly stood up against injustices, taking concrete actions to confront oppressive government behaviors, to organize rallies and non-violent protests, to preach and speak and organize on behalf of the "least of these" - those who are often overseen, neglected, abused, oppressed and worse.  I didn't care who I angered by these actions - seeing their anger, if anything, as a sign that I was on the right track.  After all, we know that Jesus angered people enough with his standing up against the legalists and the hypocrites that they killed him.  I felt if people were angry that I was standing up for the poor and oppressed, then I must be doing something right.  At my ordination, the friend I had invited to preach spoke about this.  He said that I rattled cages, but that this was the gift, this was the call that I clearly had been given: to confront the oppressor, to challenge the apathetic into truly learning to love those others would disregard.

    But then I went to my first church call.  I went in roaring and pushing for the church to take strong stands on justice issues.  And instead of being able to make those changes, I found that I got the ire and suspicions up from those who saw me as an inexperienced upstart who didn't really understand my position or my place.  Instead of making the changes I knew I was called to make, I was disregarded and discounted more and more.  My voice, which had carried weight and value in college, at seminary, and even during my internship, was pushed aside.  I was effectively limited in voice as well as in action.  I was an associate pastor, so people weren't leaving the church, but they were closing off the work I could do, tightening the reigns on my options, and closing doors to relationships.  I left that position after only a year.  And while much of my leaving had to do with a difficult senior pastor who simply did not "play well with women," I'm certain that my decision to leave was exacerbated by my own sense of not doing well in that call.

    Fortunately, I didn't leave without learning and growing.  I learned that relationships must be built, trust must be gained, people must know that you love them, and not just because you've said it but because you've shown it, before they will be able to hear things that challenge their thinking, that encourage them to look at things differently, that then call them to different actions.  I learned that pushing too hard leads only to anger and separation, not growth in others.  I learned that listening first is extremely important.  I also learned that first impressions are sometimes the only impressions you will be allowed to give.  And that once we have alienated someone, rebuilding those relationships can be extremely hard to do.  While apologies are important, the "other" may not always accept them, so being thoughtful from the start is important.

    When we talk about "repentance" in the church, we are talking about taking another path, choosing a different way to go, to walk; turning from one direction to another.  And we take this seriously.  But my experience tells me that most of the time while we can see our own growth, and we can celebrate the steps we've made to become different people, more loving people, more faithful people, people who are more whole, we don't always trust or see that others are also growing.  Part of our failure to forgive other people is an inability to see or accept that the other may have genuinely changed, grown and moved from wherever it was that caused them to do damage to us or to someone else that we care about.  When it comes to self-forgiveness, I think that I struggle with actions that may have hurt or upset others in part because I believe that THEY don't understand that I, too, have changed, moved, grown, "repented", chosen a different path, seen where I've erred and strived to do better.  My fear that they can't see that in me, and that they can't forgive me in part encourages me to not forgive myself.  It shouldn't be that way.  I can't control what others see, feel or think.  And I should not allow what others judge in me to determine my own behaviors or the ways in which I view myself.  But this is easier said than done...

    I'm still learning.  I'm still growing.  I'm still making mistakes.  And there are people who cannot or will not forgive me.  There are people who will not accept that I change and grow, too.  There are people who will choose judgment and rejection over an open-heart when it comes to relationships with me.  When you are in a leadership position, it sometimes is easier for people to simply write you off then work through the hard and painful process of reconciliation.  I understand this.  I don't like it, but I understand it.  So today my goals are two fold: first, I will work more on self-forgiveness.  I find that self-forgiveness leads more deeply into a change in behavior than any intense self-judgment can possibly do, anyway.  So I do this for the "others" in my life as well, so that I may have the grace and compassion to truly grow in my actions, to be more loving, to be more aware, to listen more deeply.  My second goal is to remember how it feels when others box me into "that's just the way she is" kind of thinking and to be more open about the possibilities that others are growing too. These are my goals for this day.  I invite you into deeper self-forgiveness as well. And I encourage you to remember that just as you are growing and changing, others are too.  Perhaps we can be better at giving all people the benefit of the doubt: both ourselves and others.  

Gift of Renewal

 

Luke 3:1-22

Mark 1:4-11

There once was a little boy named Sam who was very excited about Halloween.  But his parents kept putting off getting his costume until finally the day of Halloween his mother came home with a costume that Sam hated.  It was of some comic book character who had been big once but who now was seen by all the kids to be ridiculous and only for the littlest of children.  Sam was devastated.  How could he ever wear this?  He couldn’t possibly go out on Halloween in this costume!  He was so upset, he ran down the street to where an older couple who had become surrogate grandparents to Sam lived.  He ran into their house and cried and cried about the terrible costume his mother had picked out for him.  Well, Norm, the older man thought for a few minutes and then he said to his wife, “Don’t we have some old costumes up in the attic from when our kids were children?”

“Why, I believe we do!”  she replied.  Up they all went into the attic and down they came with an old ghost costume.  Really, it was just a sheet with holes cut in it for the eyes.  But Sam was so thrilled with the costume, he just couldn’t wait to put it on.  With a look of awe in his eyes, he pulled the sheet down over his head and before anyone could stop him, he went running out the door to go trick or treating and ran straight through the yard and bam into a tree!  Norm saw this and he dashed out after him, picked up the little boy, but before he could stop him, there Sam took off again, running as fast as he could until bam he ran smack into another tree!  This time the force pushed him flat onto his back where he lay still until Norm came running up.  Norm wondered what on earth was going on until he looked into Sam’s face and realized that Sam had not lined up the eye holes to match his eyes.  He had been virtually blind, running around the yard, completely unable to see where he was going.  Norm gently but firmly took hold of the sheet, pulled it around until Sam was able to see through the eye holes, tied a rope around his waist to hold the costume in place and sent Sam off on a much more successful and enjoyable Halloween evening of trick-or-treating!

Blindness.  The inability to see without help.  Walking around in the dark, not because it is dark, but because our vision is covered, obscured in some way.  The darkness of failing to realize that we could see, if someone were to just help us adjust our costumes, adjust our outlook, adjust our approach, just a little bit.  Oftentimes it is this blindness which causes us to err, to sin, to take a wrong path so that somebody gets hit, whether it be just a tree or another person, someone gets hurt: and we obviously do as well. 

We all have our costumes a little bit askew.  We all think that we are speaking the same language, like the little boy knowing it is Halloween, knowing he is supposed to wear a costume and go out into the night.  Sometimes when we come thinking we know how things are supposed to work, we miss the very cues that tell us our eyes are not seeing clearly right now.

Similarly, when new people come into our spaces, it is sometimes hard to read them as well and so we have a goal for ourselves to see our vision of God’s hand at work in this place and to try to interpret that for any who are new coming into our space.  But regardless, I think it is important that we treat one another with patience, always, knowing that even as we speak the same languages, and even when we’ve known each other a long time, we never completely understand one another, we never completely can see with the same vision as one another.  So we struggle at times to walk together, learn together, work together, as we learn to see through the eye holes of our new trappings.  We try to respect different traditions, try to honor different values in ministry, recognizing that by the very nature of our being different people, with different church experiences and, raised with different values and different visions, we will do things differently, but we know that as people, we do and will step on toes, we do and will create and experience challenges that help us all grow, and we do and will undoubtedly make mistakes.  Part of what helps is to share with one another our stories, sharing what matters most to each of us about your lives, striving to trust one another with honesty, openness, to be the people who, when we have run into a tree can come and adjust the eye-holes and with grace and forgiveness, set us going on a path that will make our walks easier, cleaner, straighter and will involve us hitting as few trees, or even people, as possible.  

It also involves forgiveness, and seeking to heal relationships when things have not gone well, when we have hit trees, when we haven’t been able to see correctly.  One of the wisest sayings I know is that you never understand what someone else is going through.  We never do, so seeking to remember that, to have compassion for the other, to be kind, is essential.  Giving the other the benefit of the doubt is absolutely necessary if we are to find peace in this life-time.  As I’ve shared with you before, it is extremely important that we forgive, not for the sake of the one we are forgiving, but really for our own sakes.  Studies are showing more and more exactly how important this is.  Our physical well-being seems deeply connected to forgiveness.  The lack of forgiveness increases blood pressure, increases chances of stroke and heart disease, and greatly affects people’s chances of surviving cancers.  Emotionally, the lack of forgiveness can lead to bitterness, depression, and an inability to move forward.  But we often don’t know HOW to forgive.  I’ve been taking a weekly course through the Board of Pensions on forgiving and forgiveness.  And this last week in my webinar, they gave us an exercise to do.  They told us to write out a story about something we were having a difficult time forgiving.  Then they said on a separate piece of paper, take out of the story we wrote only facts.  Not guesses about what the other person thought or what their intentions were or what they believed or didn’t believe.  Just write down the facts of what happened.  And then take the original story and throw it away.  I tried this exercise and found that it was AMAZING.  That most of what I had been upset or angry about were things I had assumed, guessed, “intuited”.  Similarly, I have been attacked and accused of feelings or thoughts or ideas that were never my own: that other people’s anger at me usually is based on something unreal. 

About two years ago I went for a hike with a friend from college.  She was asking me about mutual friends whom I was more in touch with than she was.  And then I asked her about mutual friends with whom she had closer connections.  When I asked her about one friend in particular, she told me that “oh, yeah!  I called her about a year ago but didn’t hear back, and then I tried again about 6 months ago.  It’s time for me to try to reach out again!”  She said this without critique, without judgement, and what struck me more, without any kind of pain or sense of being ignored.  If I had reached out to someone repeatedly and they had not responded, I would have felt rejected, intentionally attacked in a passive-aggressive way.  I would assume that the person I had tried to contact was sending me a very clear message of “I don’t care about you.  I don’t like you.  I don’t want you in my life.”  So I asked her about it.  And SHE was stunned by my reaction.  “Oh!” she said, “I just assume she was busy and meant to call me back but got distracted by other things.”  My friends’ different approach, different assumptions, different understanding caught me off guard.  It showed me once again that the things that often offend me, or hurt me, or get my “ire” up – the things that may lead me to feel hurt and to hold on to grudges: these are often, if not always, a matter of my own interpretation. 

Today is baptism of the Lord Sunday.  It is the day when God comes and washes the dirt from our eyes.  It is the day when we celebrate that God offers us first, calls us first, even before we are able to ask for it, the gift of being made new, being made clean, of being given the possibility of different sight, different vision.  It is the second Sunday of epiphany, an appropriate time to recognize that Baptism is a gift we receive from God.  With its cleansing and renewing waters, then, we can see enough to strive to talk to others, to build relationships with others, to give to others, to forgive others and ourselves. 

Part of learning to walk with one another with our costumes on straight has to start with knowing who each other are, getting to know each other more deeply as individuals within a community.  But then it must continue with forgiveness, with the willingness to recognize our assumptions that are blocking our ability to forgive, to understand, to truly see and love one another.

Today, on this second Sunday of Epiphany, we are called to reflect on the amazing gift of baptism that God has given to first Jesus, and then us.  It is a gift of remembering that God calls us into relationship with God.  It is a gift of remembering that God initiates care for us, call to us, purpose and meaning for our lives, before we are even old enough to choose to respond. It is a gift that says, “because I first chose you, because I first brought new life to you, because I begin your life by giving to you every day again and again, because I always look for the best of who you are and forgiven and erase the past that is the worst; now you are called to return that gift to all God’s people, caring back, giving second chances to others, forgiving, choosing to love and live and care for others in the way that I have cared for you.” 

Often when we are meeting together on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, I choose to do some kind of remembrance of our baptism and baptism vows.  We are apart this year, which makes this more difficult.  But instead, I want us to do two different things in our separate spaces.  First, I am going to reread to you the promises that we make during baptism. 

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?

Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?

Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

               Secondly, I would invite you to do the exercise that I was taught in my forgiveness webinar.  Think of someone you are struggling to forgive.  Think of what exactly it is that you are having trouble forgiving and write it down.  Write all of it down: all your thoughts, all your ideas, all your assumptions about their thoughts, their motivations.  “He was a selfish jerk and he just wanted to make my life miserable” kind of stuff.  Write it all down. Once you have finished with that, take a separate piece of paper and write down only the facts, the things you absolutely know.  What was said, what actually happened, what actually took place.  Not what you’ve heard, not what you’ve assumed, NOT what anyone else has told you, but the actual facts that you witnessed, that you saw, that you know.  Then take the first story that you wrote and throw it away.  Let it go.  Forgive.  By the way, that same forgiveness needs to be offered to ourselves as well: we often have the hardest time forgiving ourselves.

            This giving the benefit of the doubt, this erasing of the past, this creation of new relationships, new possibilities, new life – this is what God offers us.  And we are called, as I said, to do the same.  Take this remembrance of Jesus’ baptism, of your own, to remember all that God has done for you and to celebrate and offer the same to those around you.  Amen.

Angry, forgiving, thriving

    I have written often about the choice to be a thriver rather than either a victim or a survivor.  I have also written often that part of choosing to be a thriver is about forgiving, both ourselves and those who have hurt us, for whatever we have lived through.  We are all humans, none of us is perfect, and when we can have compassion, even for those who have done hard and terrible things to us, we are the ones released from that pain.  Our own anger often prevents us from healing, from moving forward, from thriving.  

    I believe all of this, deeply.  And yet, it does not prevent me from having those nights when I can't sleep because of something that happened years ago, some cruelty I lived through, something that perhaps I should have handled differently.  And I'll tell you honestly that when that does happen, my thoughts do not usually tend towards compassion or forgiveness, for myself or for the other.  Usually I envision things I "should" have done differently that would either have been a better fit for who I choose to be, or would have felt more like "justice" towards whomever hurt me.  

    Last night was no exception.  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of the person who had uninvited me to a party she was having at her house based on misinformation that she, none the less, chose not to ask me about directly.  At the time, like the man in "An American President", I felt that I should not have to defend myself or seek to clarify something to someone who was simply choosing to believe the one side she had heard without checking it out with me.  So my response at the time was just to be polite and accept the dis-invitation without expressing any feelings about it whatsoever.  But last night I woke up thinking about this, which meant that at 2am this morning I woke up angry: angry at this woman for never asking my side, never checking things out, angry that she chose not to give me the benefit of the doubt, angry that she chose the friendship of the one badmouthing me over her friendship with me who chose to keep a private altercation private, angry that charming charismatic males are so often accepted at their word just because people want to be around them, and socially-awkward women are easily discarded in the face of those men, angry that she felt it was okay to just uninvite me.  I was also angry at myself for not naming it for what it was, "So, you are uninviting me?  And can you tell me more about why that is the choice you are making?"  I was angry at myself for not defending myself.  I was angry at myself for not speaking my truth at the time.  To be honest, I'm angry still.  I miss that friendship.  And yet, it ended that afternoon despite the fact that at the time I simply said, "I understand" and continued to smile and be polite and engaged.

    Last night I was not able to get back to sleep.  So I'm writing this from a place of half-conscious thoughts.  But still, as the daylight slowly dawned this morning I found myself thinking about who I want to be in the face of these past hurts and slights.  I've been reading about compassionate communication, as well as how to talk to people about racism/race issues.  I've been thinking about the growing divide in our country along political and ideological lines.  We've been studying together (many of us in the congregation) the importance of not limiting our connections to those we agree with, those we connect well with.  The divides and struggles will continue if we cannot hear one another, cannot learn to be with others who are different.  And all of that has to begin with re-learning compassion, with hearing below the words that are said for the feelings of the other, the commonalities in experience and values, the deeper stories that connect us all.  

    So today, I'm trying to apply that as I seek both to forgive the other and to forgive myself.  I cannot check this out with the person who dis-invited me: we have no connection at this point and I would not know how to find one since we live in different parts of the world.  But I can still listen, listen to the past, listen beneath her words of the time, listen for where she was and what she was feeling and needing at the time.  I hear her desire to have this other friendship, to maintain those connections, at whatever cost.  I hear her trust that I am strong enough to handle the dis-invitation, and, frankly, that I will not reject her simply because she has rejected me.  I hear her desire to believe her other friend and to not have anything that would confront that trust placed in him.  I hear her anger at me for a story (not much of which I know since I don't actually know what she was told) that she has heard that places me in the role of "bad guy".  I hear her need for things to be clear, for there to be a clear "bad guy" and clear "good guy" in the situation.  I choose, then, to have compassion for those needs and concerns that she had, and to forgive her for living out those feelings in a way that hurt me and my family.  I choose it, which doesn't mean that I feel forgiveness or even that deep compassion at the moment, but that I'm working towards that.

    Similarly, I am listening beneath my own choices in the moment.  I did not want to be confrontive or angry at the moment because I did not know how that would play out or if I would be able to heal any breech that caused in the moment.  I did not want to share my own experiences and have them doubted or disbelieved.  I did not know how to speak my truth in the moment and I was afraid of speaking in a way that would have deeper consequences. I was going through huge changes at the time and I could not bear one more.   I also did not want to harm her friendship with this other person and have to carry that on my conscience.  For all these reasons I responded with an acceptance, which did show a strength in myself to withstand cruelty and to even have compassion for it.  And maybe that was a gift that I gave back at that moment.  I choose, therefore, to have compassion for my own decisions at that moment.  I also choose to explore with myself, in the future, whether there is something more I need to do with this situation to heal it for myself.  And I choose to forgive the choice that I made then, learning from it that I need to find compassionate and kind ways to ask more questions, to seek more information, and to step forward into my own truth more often in situations such as this.  Again, I may not be feeling this way right now, but these are the choices I make and that I will work hard to step into.  

    Finally, I am not unaware that there are reasons this scenario was the one that woke me this morning in the wee hours.  I am experiencing something similar with another person right now who is choosing to disconnect rather than to seek out information or healing.  I do not want this, too, to become a situation I wake up from in the middle of the night in three or five or ten years, unhealed, unaddressed.  So I hear in my morning musings a call to look at this situation square in the face as well.

    We "act as if" and then we become what we take on.  Therefore I choose who I will be in this moment.  And who I choose to be is a person listening, a person trying to hear more deeply and more fully, a person seeking for connection rather than broken hearts and broken relationships.

    You, too, get to choose who you will be.  Choose well, dear friends.