A Deep Dive

           It was suggested to me recently that perhaps I am not self-reflective enough.  Perhaps that is true.  After all, as I say repeatedly, we tend to project out onto others that which is our own issue and then condemn it.  And I can honestly say the thing that bothers me the most in other people is the hypocrisy of those who condemn something in another that is a huge problem in themselves (failing to take the log out of their own eyes as they attack the speck in someone else's).  So, if I am listening to myself here, it would make sense that that which bothers me in others is the thing that I am struggling with most in myself.  So the fact that I condemn an inability to be self-reflective in others may indeed be a sign to myself that this is something I am deeply needing to work on.

    Additionally, I remember very clearly a situation several years ago (one I wrote about here) in which I was on a retreat where we were all asked to put together a "life plan" that looked at what in five areas in our lives we needed to work on (physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, vocational).  Once I had done my piece of this, I told my group that I saw no connection between the five areas for me and the group was able to show me in what ways they all intersected.  I had not seen it.  I had even been using the same phrase to describe each area of needed growth but somehow had failed to hear myself repeating that phrase and had not seen the connections.

    All that being said, I spend a great deal of time in self-reflection.  I do this because I don't want my own "stuff" being dumped on my parishioners or my children.  I don't want to be a person who is unaware or blind to my own issues.  I am more than okay naming, recognizing, and working on those areas in myself where I fall short.  I want to be the most whole I can be and I don't know another way to get there except by being willing to look at, name, confront and work to change my own shortcomings.  From a faith perspective, I deeply want to be the person I believe God is calling me to be and I don't know how to be that person without doing the work.  I also am deeply aware that there are areas within each of us that are frankly very hard to see.  We need the reflection, the mirroring of others to be able to see those areas.  Sometimes the logs in our own eyes truly blind us even to seeing the logs themselves.  We cannot get there on our own.  For that reason I have worked with counselors and spiritual directors over the years, too, as well as meditating, journaling and doing the work on my own.  When people accuse me of being too "intense" I often think what they mean is that I spend too much of my time trying to look, see, do the work, and go deep.  

    Still, the truth remains that each person in our lives will see us differently.  Each person will see things that maybe we can't because each person comes from a slightly different perspective, with different experiences of their own.  It is also true that each person brings their own issues that also will necessarily skew how they see every other person.  That means that the judgments and "insights" of others into anyone else will always be flawed and inaccurate as well.  So for today I am simply sitting with the accusation that I am not self-reflective enough.  I will ask for more understanding of what that person believes they are seeing that they believe I am missing.  And I will take it to God in prayer and meditation to listen for what is truly mine, and what is truly theirs (again, we project our own stuff out, so at least a part of this belongs to that person).  It is part of the journey and commitment to growth to do so, and I will take it for the gift that it is.

Choice

Ephesians 1:1-14

Mark 6:14-29

               Today in the narrative lectionary we begin a look at the book of Ephesians.  And for today what I want to say about this passage is simply that it is in many ways the elevator version of Christianity.  It talks about our being chosen first by God, our adoption, redemption, forgiveness, grace, mystery; the pleasure and plan of God for all to be gathered in, inheritance, the seal of the Holy Spirit.  But to be honest, as I looked over the passages for today, I felt much more called to focus on this very disturbing passage from Mark.  So, we will be discussing that today.  And what I want to look at in particular is this idea that Herod had, this belief that Herod had no choice but to behead John the Baptist. 

We know this story.  He imprisoned John the Baptist, and according to this story in Mark, it was because John had told him that he had acted unlawfully when he had married his son’s wife.  But at the same time as he had imprisoned him, it was also clear that he valued John the Baptist.  Herod was getting something from that relationship, it was freeing for him, it was teaching him, it was touching him.  He respected John.   

Then we come to the second part of the story.  His daughter, Herodius, dances for Herod and his guests.  Herod is so pleased that he says to her “ask me for anything and I will give it to you.”  Herodius asked her mother and her mother asked for John the Baptist’s head.  Now here is the interesting part.  The story says, “although the king was upset, because of his solemn pledge and his guests, he didn’t want to refuse her.  So he ordered a guard to bring John’s head. The guard went to the prison, cut off John’s head, brought his head on a plate, and gave it to the young woman, and she gave it to her mother.”

Herod believed that he had no choice.  He had no choice but to take a man’s life, an innocent life; a life, furthermore, that he greatly valued.  Now we can go into the specifics of why he felt this way.  We can talk about shame culture and the huge consequences he would have faced if he had done anything differently.  We can talk about what it means to have choice in this situation.  But regardless of whether you feel he did the right thing or the wrong thing for his place in that time and in that situation, the fact still remains that he had a choice to make and he made it, despite the things he told himself about lack of choice.

As I read this story, a Joan of Arcadia scene came to mind in which God asks Joan to play chess.  She joins the chess club at school and ends up beating the school chess champion though she really does not understand how to play the game.  Other disasters happen in which she is a part and finally she ends up in a chess game against God.  She still doesn’t really know how to play chess, but she sits down to begin.  She says,

“I don’t really know how to play chess.”

God responds, “Well, that’s fairly obvious.” 

“You know, God, for once I’m very glad to see you…  Because my life is completely unravelling.  I’m up to my eyeballs in the drama of the high school mating ritual and now, thanks to you, I’ve been mistaken as the high school chess champion.  How did this happen to me?”

“Which part?”

“How did I beat that kid at chess?”

“He was using logic.  You weren’t.  it’s impossible to guard against chaos.  It’s rare but it happens. Black’s move.”

“I don’t want to.” But even as she says this, she picks up her pawn and moves it.  “I don’t know how to play this game,” she says again.

“And yet you play the game.”

“Because I’m forced to!”

“Forced to!  Your friends make a suggestion which you follow up on and then you are surprised at the outcome!  It’s a causal universe.” He says as he moves his piece.   “Your move.”

“Wait a minute.  I’m being punished because I made a tiny little effort to fit in?”

“It’s not about punishment.  It’s that actions have consequences.  And to be in denial of that is to be disengaged from the laws of the universe which renders you powerless, and vulnerable to an inordinate amount of pain. Other than that, it’s no big deal. Move. ” Joan picks up a piece then puts it back down and reaches for another.

“Noooo,” God said.   “It’s a rule called touch move.  Once you’ve touched a piece you have to move that piece.”

“I’m not allowed to change my mind?  What kind of universe is that?”

“Oh, you can change your mind, but you still have to play that piece.  So you should think before you move.”

“Wait a minute.  This is a metaphor, right?”  She stares at the board for a few more minutes, mumbling under her breath and finally moves her piece.  “I took the bait so now I’m in the game.  How do I get out?”

“There are many ways to get out.  Surrender is one.  Losing is another.  Winning.  Cheating, which I don’t recommend.  But you have to do something.  You have to have a strategy.  You see, the number one rule of chess is this: whatever you do, don’t play the other person’s game.  Play your own.  Your move.”

-- 

Herod was playing the other person’s game.  Herod allowed the rules of a shame society to tell him that he had no choice but to have John the Baptist beheaded.  He played the other person’s game, and one man lost his life, and Herod lost his grounding.

I’m reminded of the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”.  The movie’s main character, Andi, starts as a person with goals and integrity.  She wants to be a journalist, and she has written about injustices such as poor work conditions.  She is in a committed relationship and values her time with her friends.  She enjoys her life, and has a cause or meaning, a purpose in her future.  Her values do not include shallow things like appearance, being thin, high fashion, owning expensive purses, clothing, things.  She puts work in its proper place as one aspect of who she is.  She is down-to-earth, centered, and knows where she is heading and what she wants.  When she first applies for the job as Assistant to the Director of Runway Magazine, she is appalled by the value system that surrounds her – the emphasis on accessories that make no real difference to one’s well-being, the insistence on being thin, on looking “right,” on dressing “right.”  But when she takes the job, she finds her values and her identity being slowly challenged, slowly and subtly being undermined and eroded.  She finds herself giving up more and more of her time with her friends and significant other in order to work.  She finds herself being pulled into the drama and the appeal of a fast-paced career with models and glamour and eventually into valuing the entire system of clothing and accessories and being thin and owning purses that cost thousands of dollars – all things she didn’t used to care about.  The choices she is faced with – to choose depth, meaning and relationships, or to choose appearance, glamour, fame and achievement are subtle choices, but she finds herself choosing for the latter again and again, and she finds herself saying to those who would challenge those choices, “well, I didn’t have a choice!” She chooses to do what her boss asks her to do, even when it means that she ends up deeply hurting a colleague who was becoming a friend.  And the entire time she is slipping she repeats that phrase, “I didn’t have a choice.”

What made her descent, her decline into a life that the movie, and I imagine many of us, would consider sinful so easy for her was that she didn’t realize she was playing by the rules of the other person.  Like Joan in the Joan of Arcadia episode, she kept saying to everyone, but especially herself, “I didn’t have a choice.” But that lie that she told herself, that she didn’t have a choice meant that she lost her friends, she lost her significant other, she lost her sense of self and her values.  As her boyfriend breaks up with her, she receives a phone call from her boss, and she says, “I’m sorry.  I have to answer this,” STILL not realizing she is making a choice.  As her boyfriend walks away he says to her, “You know, in case you were wondering?  The person whose calls you always take – that’s the relationship you’re in.”  Even after all of those losses she still didn’t realize the choices that she was making or that she had a choice to make, until her boss, Miranda, in the film pointed it out to her by comparing Andi’s choices with her own.  Andi could see that Miranda’s choices were hurtful, were harmful, were devastating.  But until Miranda pointed out that Andi had made the same choices, Andi couldn’t see. She could not see the choice she was making, or even THAT she was making a choice.

                In the movie, “You’ve Got Mail”  the main character’s book store has lost all kinds of business when a huge Barnes and Noble type store moves in across the street.  She tries everything to get her store to succeed, but it cannot compete against a Costco-like enterprise.  Finally she meets with her employees and says, “I’ve decided to close the store.”  Her dearest and longest employee responds, “closing the store is the brave thing to do!”  Meg Ryan’s character says, “What bull!”  To which Bertie responds, “It is!  You are envisioning a new future.  One you never expected and stepping into it boldly.”

               She did not have a choice about responding or not to the competition from across the street.  But she did have a choice about how she would respond.  And she made a choice that was her own game, her own step forward.  As sad as it made her, it also was a choice of hope.   

               As Dumbledore said in the Harry Potter series, “It is our choices that show who we are.  Not our abilities.”

I think about the stories I heard from a prisoner of seeing other prisoners saving food from their lunches and then calling the skunks. “Here, kitty, kitty!” they’d say and leave food for the skunks and other wildlife in the area.  They are in a situation over which they have very limited control, and certainly very few choices.  But this is a choice they can make: eat their food, or save it to share with the creatures around the prison.

Finally, I want to share with you one more movie story.  In the movie, Keeping the Faith, there is a wonderful conversation between a young priest and an older priest.  The young priest doubts his call into the priesthood after falling in love with a woman who is his friend.  Nothing happened between the two, but he found that the very fact of falling in love made him doubt a call that included celibacy.  He said to his older priest mentor, “If she had kissed me back, I would have given it all up.  She didn’t, but I keep thinking about what you said in the seminary that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself doing anything else you should do that.”

The older priest responded, “Well that’s my recruitment speech which is good when you are starting out because it makes you feel like a marine!  But the truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one that you could be.  If you’re a priest or if you marry a woman, it is the same challenge.  You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it is a choice that you make again and again and again.  I’ve been a priest over 40 years, and I fall in love at least once every decade.”

The thing is, in every situation there are choices to be made. EVERY situation.  We choose how we see things, we choose how we act.  Sometimes we are making decisions between two terrible things.  Sometimes we are deciding between two wonderful things.  Sometimes it feels we don’t have a choice, but we still choose how we understand a situation, where we put our focus, whether we find gratitude or pain.  We choose whether we grow and learn, or whether we become bitter. And we choose whether we see God, whether we see the grace that is offered in every moment.  We choose whether or not to take the grace that is offered in each moment.  No matter how terrible a moment is, we still can choose to see the gift in having each breath we have to breathe.  In every single moment grace is offered.  But it is a choice we make whether we see it or not.  As Rick Warren said it, “I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.   Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.   No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:   If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.”

Grace is offered to everyone in every moment.  But that doesn’t mean it is always easy to accept.  It also doesn’t mean that grace is always happy or even painless.  Sometimes the very breath we breathe is painful.  That grace, ruach, spirit, wind, breath that we are offered in each and every moment does not always come wrapped in a pretty package.  And sometimes that very breath itself is painful.   We know that sometimes wind becomes so strong it destroys things.  We know that sometimes the Spirit’s words to us are hard to take.  I think about at the end of Harry Potter, when the evil Voldemort was given a choice.  He could choose remorse, have his soul healed and live, or he could continue along his path of destruction that would lead to his ultimate destruction too.  He chose the latter because the pain of remorse was too much.  He chose to turn away from the Grace that was offered.  But that did not change the fact that it was being offered in that very moment.

In the story of Herod, we see that Herod’s inability to see his choices, to think beyond what he felt he had to do ended badly for John, and ultimately for Herod, too, who became obsessed with worrying that John’s ghost was haunting him.  He thought Jesus himself was John.  “But when Herod heard these rumors, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised to life.””.  But his inability to see did not mean that he did not have choice.  He could have pointed out to the girl that this request she made was really what her mother wanted and not what she, herself wanted.  He could have reasoned with her, talked to her.  After all, she was HIS daughter too.  But instead he felt bound by a blind, spur of the moment commitment he made.  And that feeling of being bound left him feeling impotent and blind to his choices.  He played her game, did not choose the grace of other options that were before him, and everyone suffered.

We have those same choices.  And my prayer is for us to see God’s grace, to choose God’s grace and to play the game the way God calls us to play it, for ourselves and for the world.  Amen.

Sermon - Sight

Isaiah 9:2

Luke 24:13-25

We read today’s story as part of Easter-tide, but I found myself coming back to it again.  Because it is an odd story that calls us to look deeper. The disciples were walking with Jesus.  But they did not recognize him.  How could they not recognize Jesus?  Why did they not see? Just as on Pentecost I talked about how sometimes it is really hard to hear and understand one another, sometimes it is also very hard to see. So I ask you to take a moment and reflect on these questions: What do we fail to see because we don’t expect what is actually there? What do we fail to see because we don’t want to see it? What do we fail to see because we don’t believe it? What do we fail to see because something isn’t where we expect it to be?

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!

One day a boy was walking down a road when a frog called to him, “Boy, if you kiss me, I will turn into a beautiful princess.” The boy picked up the frog, smiled at it, then placed the frog into his pocket. A few minutes later, the frog said, “Boy, if you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, and I will stay with you for a week.” The boy took the frog from his pocket, smiled at it, then put it back into his pocket. A few minutes later, the frog said, “Boy, if you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will do anything you want!” The boy took the frog from his pocket, smiled, and put it back. Finally, the frog cried, “Boy, what is the matter, I have told you that I am a beautiful princess, and if you kiss me, I will stay with you and do anything you want!” The boy took the frog from his pocket and said, “Look, I am an engineering student, I have no time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool!”

The boy saw a different reality from the frog.  The boy saw farther, or at least he saw differently. 

About twelve years ago, on my birthday, Eldest brought me a present wrapped up.  Eldest was the ripe age of four and a half.  She was little and she was a typical young child who couldn’t really see beyond herself in so many ways.  I knew it was a store-bought present, as opposed to something made for me.  And I had been told by all of the adults who knew what the gift was that I should not to expect much in this gift because Eldest had insisted on buying this particular present despite being strongly encouraged to pick something else.  It was given to me with looks of apology and even discomfort from the adults who knew what the gift was.  So I opened it without much hope or expectation.  This is the gift (show them the miniature).  What do you see in this? 

I’ll tell you what I see.  I see Eldest herself.  Especially at that age…a little dancing fairy girl.  She found a replica of herself at that age, what I saw most profoundly, most deeply within herself at that age. And that is what she gave to me: a memory of Eldest at the age of almost 5.  And I felt that in her insistence on this particular gift, she actually had a deeper insight into what I loved most than anyone else around her at the time.  She had sight into who I was, into what I saw, and into what I valued, that the adults around did not see.

A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me something so very precious -  Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.”

Sometimes the darkness or the challenges in life themselves carries a gift for us.  I am reminded of a MASH episode in which Hawkeye had a stove explode in his face which caused eye damage in both eyes.  He lost his vision and he didn’t know if that loss was permanent or temporary.  The day before he was to see the doctor to have the bandages removed – the day before he was to discover if the eye damage was permanent or temporary – he seemed in a frantic mode of insisting on walking around and moving around. BJ confronts his frantic walking around and going out saying, “Hawkeye, I know what you’re trying to do. And I know how you feel…You don’t want to think about what might happen, so you keep running.”  But Hawkeye insists that that’s not the case.  He says, “Look, when Dr. Oberman comes in here tomorrow, and unwraps my eyes, I hope to God I’ll have my sight back. But… something fascinating has been happening to me…One part of the world has closed down to me but another part has opened up.  Sure, I keep picturing myself sitting on a corner with a tin cup selling thermometers, but I’m going through something here that I didn’t expect. I spent two incredible hours this morning listening to that rain storm.  And I didn’t just hear it, I was part of it. I bet you have no idea that rain hitting the ground makes the same sound as steaks when they’re barbequing. Or that thunder seems to echo forever.  And you wouldn’t believe how funny it is to hear somebody slip and fall in the mud…  This is full of trap doors, but I think there has to be some advantage to this.  I’ve never spent a more conscious day in my life.”

            When we are given the opportunity to see things, hear things, understand things from a different perspective, it is an incredible gift.  It helps us to see, to really see, beyond what our eyes tell us. And sometimes our eyes get in the way.  I have a friend who did some work helping people fix up their houses.  She was painting rooms in a house one time and told me that the old paint in one room had had to be scraped off before they put on the new paint because the wall had been textured.  However, the previous paint had been sponge painted on.  That meant that the wall looked textured even where the texturing had already been scraped off.  She told me she had to scrape the walls with her eyes closed because her eyes did not tell her the truth about what she was seeing, about whether the wall was still textured or just looked that way because of the sponge paint. 

As you know, World War I was a very bloody and aggressive war, a time of great death and tragedy and loss.  At the Western Front it was bloody and violent like everywhere else.  But on Christmas Eve, 1915, things changed for a moment.  Soldiers heard across the lines, across the divisions in politics and beliefs, other soldiers singing Christmas carols.  In listening to one another, the German soldiers from Saxony were inspired to make a brave choice.  Bringing food across the front, and singing Christmas Carols, they came to the British soldiers they were fighting in a Christmas spirit.  The British soldiers, shocked at first, were also moved and found themselves responding by joining in the singing and offering up what they had to share in the festivities as well.  After a time of singing and faith celebration, pictures were shared, personal stories began to be told, sometimes only through hand signs, between people of many different nationalities.  In one version of this story, officers had to break up the comradery as they realized fighting would soon become impossible between these two groups if they continued to get to know, share and celebrate with one another.  In another version of the story, the bonds made that night were so great that those soldiers could not be compelled to continue fighting those they had come to see as human brothers and sisters.  These soldiers, then, on both sides, would no longer kill each other and had to be moved off the front.  In the midst of tragedy, in the midst of war, in the midst of violence and death and anger, new sight was gained, new vision given, through sharing, through seeing one another as the human beings that we all are.

A mother told this story: We were the only family with children in the restaurant. I sat Erik in a high chair and noticed everyone was quietly sitting and talking. Suddenly, Erik squealed with glee and said, 'Hi.' He pounded his fat baby hands on the high chair tray. His eyes were crinkled in laughter and his mouth was bared in a toothless grin, as he wriggled and giggled with merriment.  I looked around and saw the source of his merriment. It was a man whose pants were baggy with a zipper at half-mast and his toes poked out of would-be shoes. His shirt was dirty and his hair was uncombed and unwashed. His whiskers were too short to be called a beard and his nose was so varicose it looked like a road map.  We were too far from him to smell, but I was sure he smelled.. His hands waved and flapped on loose wrists. 'Hi there, baby; hi there, big boy.. I see ya, buster,' the man said to Erik. My husband and I exchanged looks, 'What do we do?' Erik continued to laugh and answer, 'Hi.' Everyone in the restaurant noticed and looked at us and then at the man. The old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby. Our meal came and the man began shouting from across the room, 'Do ya patty cake? Do you know peek-a-boo? Hey, look, he knows peek- a-boo.' Nobody thought the old man was cute. He was obviously drunk. My husband and I were embarrassed. We ate in silence; all except for Erik, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring skid-row bum, who in turn, reciprocated with his cute comments. We finally got through the meal and headed for the door. My husband went to pay the check and told me to meet him in the parking lot. The old man sat poised between me and the door. 'Lord, just let me out of here before he speaks to me or Erik,' I prayed. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back trying to sidestep him and avoid any air he might be breathing. As I did, Erik leaned over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby's 'pick-me-up' position. Before I could stop him, Erik had propelled himself from my arms to the man. Suddenly a very old smelly man and a very young baby united in love and kinship. Erik in an act of total trust, love, and submission laid his tiny head upon the man's ragged shoulder. The man's eyes closed, and I saw tears hover beneath his lashes. His aged hands full of grime, pain, and hard labor, cradled my baby and stroked his back. No two beings have ever loved so deeply for so short a time.  I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms and his eyes opened and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm commanding voice, 'You take care of this baby.' Somehow I managed, 'I will,' from a throat that contained a stone. He pried Erik from his chest, lovingly and longingly, as though he were in pain. I received my baby, and the man said, 'God bless you, ma'am, you've given me my Christmas gift.' I said nothing more than a muttered thanks. With Erik in my arms, I ran for the car. My husband was wondering why I was crying and holding Erik so tightly, and why I was saying, 'My God, my God, forgive me.' I had just witnessed Christ's love shown through the innocence of a tiny child who saw no sin, who made no judgment; a child who saw a soul, and a mother who saw a suit of clothes. I was a Christian who was blind, holding a child who was not. I felt it was God asking, 'Are you willing to share your son for a moment?' when God had shared God’s son for all eternity. How did God feel when God put Jesus in our arms 2000 years ago. The ragged old man, unwittingly, had reminded me, 'To enter the Kingdom of God , we must become as little children.' Sometimes, it takes a child to remind us of what is really important. We must always remember who we are, where we came from and, most importantly, how we feel about others. The clothes on your back or the car that you drive or the house that you live in does not define you at all; it is how you treat other people that identifies who you are.

            A blind person asked God once, is there anything worse than losing your sight?  To which God responded, “yes, losing your vision.”

            When we try to see with our eyes, we often fail to do so. That blindness, that inability to see without help is a common problem for humans.  We walk around in the dark, not because it is dark, but because our vision is covered, obscured in some way. It can be obscured by our politics, obscured by our beliefs, obscured by what we expect to see or what we fear seeing.  It can be obscured by our pride, or even by our shame. Oftentimes this blindness causes us to err, to sin, to take a wrong path so that somebody gets hurt, ourselves or someone else. We all have blind spots, we all need God’s help to see.   

Today’s story on the road to Emmaus is a human story.  A human story of failing to see God, to see Divinity, to see Christ, in the one who is with us, in the one walking along by our side.  The disciples didn’t recognize Jesus.  And we often don’t recognize the God in the person we are with.  But it is our call to try, to crane to see a little deeper, a little more where, what and who God really is.  It is our call to see God in the ones we are with, no matter what road we walk.  My prayer for all of us is sight, is vision.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

And their eyes were opened

Genesis 3:1-7

   Luke 24:13-35

               In the Genesis passage for today we read that the serpent said to the woman, “God knows that when you eat of the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And they ate and their eyes were opened.

               What this tells us is that before they ate, their eyes were closed.  That means God created them without sight, without understanding.  And it would seem as we read this story that God wanted for their eyes to remain closed.  God did not want them to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, did not want them to see, to understand, to know.

               At first glance this can be hard for us to understand.  As humanity continues to strive to understand the world we live in through science, through astronomy, through medical research, as we become more connected to information through the world-wide web, this idea that somehow God didn’t want us to know seems absurd.  But in today’s gospel lesson as well, when Jesus is risen, walking with the disciples on the way to Emmaus, Luke tells us that their eyes “were kept from perceiving him.”  They were kept from the knowledge of who he was.  How do we understand this omniscient God who creates us with closed eyes and who “keeps us from perceiving”?

               This story tells us that Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, taking charge of their own best interests.  They chose not to depend on God to know or do what was best for them.  And in making that decision they set up a wall of mistrust between themselves and God.  In eating they saw, but in receiving knowledge in this way, they became filled with shame.  They became aware of their nakedness, or rather their vulnerability and weakness.  Their eyes became open to the dangers of the world and to their own lack of power to face it.  They saw that they were not gods with the power to discern what is best for themselves.  And in their fear and shame they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves.  Because the leaves were inadequate to cover them, they simply heightened their sense of shame.  Only God can cover that nakedness, that shame, that vulnerability but they had separated themselves from God.  So they were unable to cover themselves and they hid.  The serpent had spoken the truth – their eyes were opened.  But God, too, had spoken the truth – in that one action, the innocence of humanity had died.

               This story in Genesis is not a past tense event.  It is a story about growing up.  It is a story about what all of us go through as our eyes are opened, as our naivete is destroyed. A while ago on a TV program about kids and their thoughts and feelings, a well-known host asked a nine-year-old girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. The little girl in a very childlike confident and assured way informed the host that she wanted to be president of the United States.  The host responded by asking the little girl why she thought no women had been president in this country before.  Still with a face of innocence and confidence, the nine-year-old girl told the host and the audience that it was because 2/3^rd of all men did not believe in the gifts of women, and would not support a woman becoming president.  The host was astounded.  But he decided to prove her wrong.  So he polled the audience.  He asked the men by a show of hands to indicate how many would support a qualified woman becoming president if that woman represented the values that they supported.  He then asked how many would vote against her simply because she was female.  The child was right, and before her nine year old eyes and on national television, 2/3^rd of the men in that room said they would never vote for a woman president.   The pain and confusion on the face of the little girl was hard to watch as her head knowledge became the more experiential learning of seeing their vote right before all of our eyes. 

Kids’ faith in adults and in the world is broken at younger ages.  We hear too many stories of young children whose innocence has been ended by prejudice, drugs, abuse, kidnapping, rape or murder.  Our children’s eyes are opened and they come to distrust their world, to be cynical and fearful.  More frightening still, we see in their knowledge of good and evil the power and ability to choose – good or evil.  The numbers of young people engaged in violence, and even murder in this country rises each year.  School shoot outs are one example of the naivete broken in our kids’ lives.  The numbers of children abused appears to be rising.  And it is hard to blame these children who have experienced so much personal violence for turning to violence themselves.

Perhaps the most painful thing to see is our own part in the world’s evil.  We see the accelerating destruction of our environment and we know our consumerism and waste is destroying our world. We see species on the verge of extinction and know it is because our buying supports this kind of abuse of nature.  Closer to home we experience people acting outrageously in their cars.  We see cynicism in increasingly younger people.  We see the cross and wonder where we would have stood in the crucifixion. 

I’ve shared with you before about the movie, “The Color of Fear”.  A group of men from different ethnicities, backgrounds, races gathered together for a weekend to talk about racism.  One white man who was present dominated most of the weekend fighting hard against the idea that racism was even real.  He kept saying to the men of color in the room, “Why do you see yourselves as different?  We’re all the same.  Why can’t you be just like me?  You’re imagining your oppression.  No one really treats you differently because of your appearance.”  No matter what the other men in the room shared with him, he could not hear their experiences of racism, of abuse, of oppression.  Finally one of the men said to him, “What would it mean to you if what we are telling you about our experience were true?”  The man looked startled for a moment.  Finally he answered, “It would mean the world isn’t as safe or beautiful as I had thought…And it would mean that I was part of the problem,” and with those words he began to cry.  It hurts to see.  And from this vantage point we can wish desperately that the end of our innocence had never begun.  But innocence has been broken, and we die constantly in our “enlightenment.”

I took Eldest to see Beauty and Beast last weekend. One of the lines that Beauty sings is, ““I was innocent and certain. Now I'm wiser but unsure. I can't go back into my childhood, That my father made secure.”  And again, that is the story of humanity.  It is the story of growing up.  It is our story.

               So where is the Good News in this?

               I do not believe that God is AGAINST humans obtaining knowledge.  I believe deeply that God does wish for us wisdom and growth.  But God does not want our insight into good and evil to come through disobedience, through breaking the trust between God and humanity.  When it does, our first glimpse, our first understanding of good and evil comes through seeing our own inadequacy, misjudgment and our first response is always both shame and fear, often with some denial thrown in for good measure.  But the good news in this is that we don’t reap what we sow.  God is the God of life, who, even now, even after we turn from God and mortally wound ourselves, God continues to love us.  God maintains relationship with humanity, and clothes our vulnerability with grace.  Then, God leads us out of the garden so that our immortality will not be lived out in the dangerous, shameful world we have envisioned for ourselves.  In other words, God calls us to see past the crucifixion, past death.  God calls us to keep looking, keep our eyes open, past the pain.

               On CNN a while ago there was a story that traced the old legal practice of sterilization.  It turns out that in our country in the 40s there were places that regularly sterilized people with mental disabilities and other disabilities.  IN addition, some hospitals at the time were considering using euthanasia on those same people with the justification that they had no quality of life.  But this ended abruptly during WWII with people’s awareness of where such atrocities could lead.  These little insights, these small changes which come from seeing, happen all around.  Many who were abused as children work on educating the communities and on healing the survivors so abuse doesn’t continued.  Mothers Against Drunk Driving began as a result of the loss of a child from a drunk driving accident.  Mothers against Gangs which educates and works to find after-school alternatives for kids began, again, with a mother who lost her child through gang activity.  That is not to say that there is good in evil situations.  Nor am I trying to say, “just look on the bright side”.  There is no excuse for evil.  But even out of the most awful things, even out of the deaths we die each day, if we keep our eyes open, God can help us find ways to bring new life, bring grace, bring good.

               The two disciples on their way to Emmaus had seen only enough to know that Jesus had been crucified.  They were in deep sorrow.  They had seen only enough to believe that their hopes had been shattered.  Their friend, leader and lord had been killed in a most horrible way.  The one they’d hoped would rescue them from Roman tyranny and oppression was dead.  And after three days it seemed, on top of everything, that his body had been taken from the tomb.  But God would not leave them there.  God did not leave them there.  God brought about the most amazing miracle in all the world.  Jesus was alive.  Death had been overcome.  Christ was arisen!  He came and walked among them.  Still they did not see.  He interpreted for them all scripture and the prophets, the foretelling signs of his resurrection.  But still they could not believe in the risen Christ.  Finally he broke bread with them.  He ate with them.  He was present in a most intimate way with them, and they saw him.  Just for a moment they saw – long enough for them to believe and know that he was risen!

               Still, the question might be asked, why did God “keep them” from recognizing Christ at first?  For most of time and for most people in the world, we have been unable to see first-hand Jesus resurrected.  And so God began then what God calls forth from us now: that we might learn to see with our hearts and our faith as clearly as they saw with their eyes.  God knows we are imperfect.  And for this reason God does give us signs, God does help us to see, through Bible stories, through our experiences, through one another.  We are called to keep our eyes and our hearts open.  Because while it is true that some things we have to see to believe; the things that are most important, those things with the most value and meaning and promise, those things we have to believe in order to see.

Sunday's Sermon - Being Transfigured.

Exodus 24:12-18

Matthew 17:1-9

While at first the story of transfiguration may seem like something we don’t really experience, I think when we put it into different words, all of us have experienced or witnessed some kinds of transfiguration, probably not to the degree described here, but a transfiguration, none the less.  Let me give you an example: pregnant women often have a glow about them, and when people talk about the things that are deepest and dearest to their hearts, we can see in them a light, an animation, a transformation that resembles the glow we read about in the transfiguration stories. 

Additionally, most to all of us have had mountain top experiences - those times when we go on retreat or as a young person to church camp or to trienium or a family adventure or other adventure, have fallen in love, had heard a piece of music or experienced someone’s words that moved deeply within you in which we have encountered the God of goodness and love in an entirely different way.  Can you think of times and experiences like that in your lives?  We come away from these experiences on a high.  We come away feeling God’s call raging through our very beings.  We come away with a strong sense of God’s presence and a feeling that we can, truly, do anything with God behind us or in front of us, leading the way.  We come back on a mission, with a sense of purpose and God’s presence. 

That isn’t to say that the encounter with the holy is ever easy.  Most of the time I think it can really be terrifying to encounter the holy.  The disciples response, as we read it in verse 6 was, “When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified.”  Have there been times for you in which you’ve encountered the holy and it was terrifying?

I remember as a child one night laying in my bed and praying to God that an angel would visit me.  “Please God, just let an angel come to see me this one time!  Please God, I want to see an angel and know that your love is here with me!”  I prayed and prayed and when I finished I opened my eyes.  At that moment in the corner of my bedroom I saw a bluish, cloudy haze.  Whether or not that was an overactive imagination, the strong effects of hope, simply the result of having squeezed my eyes shut for so long while praying, or in fact a genuine answer to my prayer, my reaction was exactly like that of the disciples.  After seeing the blue haze, I immediately squeezed my eyes back shut and fervently began to pray again, “God, I made a mistake!  Take the angel away!  Take it away!”

But even our less dramatic encounters with God can be disturbing.  Because a consistent result of an interaction with God is a difference in the way you perceive the world around you.  An encounter with God causes you to see things in a way you hadn’t the moment before.  And that can shake us at a very core level.  It can change the way we relate to everything and everyone , the way we understand ourselves and the world, the way we see and experience God.  It’s like the first time that you put a prism into a white light, the first time that you see the spectrum of the rainbow come from the prism and you realize that what you thought was the absence of color is in fact all the colors.  Or the first time you learn in science that while everything that we see looks solid and like it is hard matter, that in fact atoms are mostly space, and therefore all that we see is mostly space as well. 

The truth is we don’t see the many layers of any reality very often.  We tend to see only one or two layers of the way things really are but we don’t see the whole.  That’s not to say that the layers we do see aren’t real.  They are, but it is only a part of the truth.  We see the white light, but we don’t see that it is made of all the colors.  We see the people in front of us, and we don’t see the atoms that make them up or the space that makes up the atoms. In terms of the world, all our histories and news stories - all of them - are written from a perspective. No one has the whole truth on anything.For people who don’t have faith, they see the world, but they cannot see the loving hand behind creation and behind every breath we take. 

And when we then are given deeper glimpses, or rather, glimpses at some of the different layers of reality, it can be amazing and awesome in the deepest sense of the word.  But it can also be disturbing to learn that our vision does not encompass the whole picture, that our reality is only a piece of the what is “reality”, and that this extends into everything, including our understanding of and our relationship to God.  Paul says in 1^st Corinthians 13: 9-12, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  We get only glimpses into the deeper reality, and even these can be disturbing.

The transfiguration is such a glimpse into the deeper, a glimpse into the whole, an encounter with the big picture, with the many layers of reality, with God.  And that is not easy.  But it is transforming and changing.  It opens us up to a deeper relationship with God and with each other. 

The real question then becomes, what happens when the amazing, awesome interaction with the holy has passed?  What happens when we descend the mountain and return to normal life?  What happens when the prism is removed and we no longer have it out to help us see all the colors in the white light?  How do we continue to carry with us those mountain top experiences which feel so transformational even we descend once again into day to day living?

We have Moses and Jesus as examples of what that might mean.  When Moses returned from the mountain, he found that his people had made idols and were worshiping them and had turned from God.  Moses descended with the ten commandments to a people gone wrong.  But the faith that he gained from his transformative time with God strengthened him to confront their behavior and to bring them back into faith and faithful relationship with God.  Jesus returned from the mountain to a people in need of his healing, in demand of his being and presence.  Neither of them was allowed to bask in the glory of their experience on the mountain, neither of them came down from the mountain into a place where they could teach and preach about their wonderful experience of the Divine.  They both came back to this world: a world that is hard and demanding, confusing and disappointing much of the time.

And that is our experience as well.  We may have the gifts of these mountain top experiences, but we are called then to go back into the world and to use our time with God to strengthen us to face whatever life hands us.  We are not called to be monks, isolated and away from the world.  We are called to come back to the world, to be in it and to be part of transforming it.  Henry Drummond, a Scottish theologian said this, “God does not make the mountains in order to be inhabited. God does not make the mountaintops for us to live on the mountaintops. It is not God’s desire that we live on the mountaintops. We only ascend to the heights to catch a broader vision of the earthly surroundings below. But we don’t live there. We don’t tarry there. The streams begin in the uplands, but these streams descend quickly to gladden the valleys below.” The streams start in the mountaintops, but they come down to gladden the valleys below.

That isn’t to say that the mountain top experiences are pointless or meaningless or unimportant.  For Jesus and Moses, their mountain top experiences were not then just for nothing.   They remained a gift that empowered them, that guided them, that strengthened them to face day to day life.  And so for us as well.  It is from the place of our own transformation that we will be better able to transform the world and bring it more into God’s realm.

I want to read you a poem written by Christian Wiman about an experience with the larger vision.

From a Window

Incurable and unbelieving
In any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree
Rise kaleidoscopically

As if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

To the pane as I could get
To watch that fitful, fluent spirit

That seemed a single being undefined
Or countless beings of one mind

Haul its strange cohesion
Beyond the limits of my vision

Over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood
Exactly as it had and would

(But why should it seem fuller now?)
And though a man’s mind might endow

Even a tree with some excess
Of life to which a man seems witness,

That life is not the life of men. [sic]
And that is where the joy came in

Christian Wiman

Those moments of transformation, those times of transformation can carry us forward on the wings of joy, to face whatever life has to offer us that day.

The final good news in this is that even though we do have to descend from the mountain into the valley, even when we struggle to hold on to our transforming experiences so that we may be strengthened for our times off of the mountain, the good news remains that God is not just on the mountain top.  While we may experience God and the holy in a new, different and awesome way on the mountain, God still remains with us in the valleys and God remains with us in the plains as well.  Take strength from the mountain tops.  But live in the valleys and plains.  Take joy from the mountaintops, so that you might be able to see God in the valleys and plains as well.  Be transfigured, so that you might transform the world.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Risking it all for something better

Exodus 14:19-31

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

As I reflected on today’s lectionary scriptures, they all seem to me to be calling us to take risks, to reach out in trust and faith for that better thing, that wholeness, that new way of being that God calls us to.  Not easy.  Never easy.  But it is what I hear, in different ways, in all three of today’s scriptures.

The Israelites were called to risk everything in order to no longer be slaves in Egypt.  More, they were called to risk everything so that their children would no longer be slaves in Egypt.  For as we know, they were in the wilderness for 40 years, a generation and more passed before they came to their own place, their own home.  They risked everything so that their children might no longer be an enslaved people.  How scary for them!  How terrifying to leave everything they knew, everything they trusted, everything they experienced and understood and lived, for the risk of a better life for their kids.  Of course it was hard, horrible, and at times they expressed great anger at Moses, at Aaron, at GOD for leading them out, for encouraging such a rick.  There were many, many times when they felt, and said, and yelled that it would have been better to just stay slaves than to go through the painful, difficult transitions of risk, of change, not knowing for sure that they would have something better, but instead only hoping, trusting, having faith that they would.

Then we come to the passage in Romans.  And at first it does not seem to be talking about risk.  But it, too, is.  The new Christian community in Rome was called to take the risk of letting go of some of their principle ways and principle beliefs about what could be eaten, when and how.  Those who grew up as Jews had strong opinions, based on their Torah, our first five books of the Bible, about what was legal and okay to eat, when, and how.  But those who joined them from the Gentile community did not share those beliefs or practices.  This was very hard on many of the people who came from the Jewish tradition.  They felt that the writings of what we now consider the Old Testament were as important in this new community as they had been before.  The laws written in scripture about what could and couldn’t be eaten, they felt, must be upheld.  They were willing to fight for these laws, insisting that those who did not follow them were not true Christians, were not people who should be part of the church.  But Paul challenged that, saying that Christ was about Love and only about Love and that these laws about eating (and other things) that people held on to so strongly had to be released.  These new  Jewish Christians were called to let go of some of their ways, or at least let go of the judgments of others that accompanied these hard and fast beliefs.  They could continue to practice their eating laws and other laws, but they could no longer judge, attack, or exclude those who would come to the faith who did not practice these same laws and rules.  But what Paul was asking of these Jewish Christians was hard.  He was asking them to take a huge risk of letting go of judgment.  That might feel so small to us.  But for them it was huge.  HUGE.  It meant letting go of who they WERE at their core, letting go of being JEWISH in their veins, or at least of being part of a community in which everyone followed the same rules.  And again, many of them simply could not do it.  They heard and knew and understood that they were called to LOVE and not to judge.  But some couldn't do it.  It was simply too hard to take that risk. 

And then finally, lastly, we come to the gospel story for today.  And we are told to forgive and forgive and forgive.  And we are told, what’s more, that in the same way that we fail to forgive, so God will fail to forgive us.  This is calling us to a radical forgiveness.  And that, too, is an invitation to risk everything that we hold on to, to risk the anger and the judgments and the fear that we hold on to, to risk letting all of it go in the reach for a different way of being in the world. 

Can we do this?  We are not being asked to leave our country of origin.  We don’t have the same judgments about food.  But we still have beliefs and judgments and practices that God may be calling us to risk changing.  When Jesus calls us to love and to forgive, even our enemies, even people we fear, can we let go of judgment and risk loving?  Can we let God be in charge of holding people accountable? 

We hear the passage from Exodus and we can only imagine how absolutely terrifying it must have been for the Israelites to pack up their stuff and to leave their homes in search of something better.  We know that people throughout history have done the same, packed up everything, without a job waiting for them or a home already picked out, without a clear image of where they were going or if there would be a place for them, or a welcome, or food to find along the way.  And we know it must have terrifying.  Many of our ancestors came to this country in a similar way, escaping persecution and risking everything to start a new life.  If you are like me you think of those people as people of great courage and faith, being willing to leave behind a country that was their own in search of something better.  But my guess is that it is even harder to risk giving up our most deeply held beliefs, rituals, and practices, in search for something better – community, a new way of relating to God.

               I think about people who spend years in counseling, in therapy, and how hard it is to look at the old stuff, to work it through so that a new way of relating to the world might be found.  I think about the stories plastering the news this last week about Domestic Violence, and how hard it is for these beaten and abused people, mostly women, to leave their partners, their spouses, even when they are being beaten up regularly.  I volunteered for a time on a domestic violence hotline and it was the very, VERY rare victim who would find the courage to leave.  I think about people choosing to make friends and cross cultural, religious, ethnic, etc. boundaries with people who are different from them, people whom they normally judge.  All of this is hard, hard stuff to do.

               Paul Tillich said the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.  Usually I hear this quote as meaning that faith in God requires believing in something that can’t be proved either way.  But this week I heard this very differently.  I heard it being about everything else that we hold dear.  When we have faith, we are called to risk our certainty about how we see things, who we judge, how we do things, how we live, and we are called to instead rely on the faith that when God calls us forward into a new way of being, that God really does want and intend the best for us.  That no matter how hard it can be to take those risks, that is what faith calls us to do. 

               As I thought about this risk that we take, the movie the Spitfire Grill came to mind.  The movie is about a very young woman who has just come out of prison for manslaughter and is looking to start a new life.  She finds a small town where she is hired to work at the Spitfire Grill.  And while at first there is a lot of fear and judgment towards Percy, as people get to know her they come to see her and love her for who she is.  There is one exception in the movie, however.  Nahum is extremely protective of his aunt, for whom Percy works, his family and his town.  He sees Percy as a stranger, and as a threat.  He doesn’t want to know her story, or really anything about her.  He cannot take the risk of getting to know Percy or, as he fears, getting hoodwinked by her charm.  In the end, his failure to risk seeing her ends up in a terrible tragedy for the town.  I won’t give away what that is for those who haven’t seen the movie, but I will say that it is only after this irreversible tragedy that he can see his own failure to risk forgiveness, to risk love, to risk seeing this other person as a human being.  That failure to risk a new vision leads to the tragedy, a deep loss for everyone in the town. 

               Most of what we fail to miss by not having the faith to trust in love, in forgiveness, in God’s call to us to be open to both, most of the results of that are only personal.  We miss risking and living for something bigger and better, but it mostly only impacts ourselves.  Still, God calls us to something better.  But sometimes those risks are not just personal but communal as well.  I think about this in terms of Church.  As denominations and as the Christian Church on the whole, are we willing to take risks to be more what God calls us to be?  Are we willing to take stands to say, “we are God’s people and we will stand up for the oppressed, the mistreated, the outcast!”  Are we willing to risk praying, and listening and following God’s call even when it seems scary and threatening and open-ended; even when we cannot see where we are going or what God is leading us to?  Are we willing to take the risk, knowing that God wants the best for us, for our children, and for our communities? 

               I want to end this by simply inviting us into a period of silent listening.  I invite you to simply open yourself to hearing what God is calling you to do, calling US to do. 

               I pray we will have the hearts to risk it all for something better.  That something better is God’s kingdom.  Every week we pray that God’s Kingdom will come here as it is in heaven.  We help bring that about by being willing to risk listening to God’s call and God’s will, by being willing to forgive, no matter how hard that is, by being willing to LOVE.

Valuing Life - ALL life

       I took my shower yesterday morning with a fly.  Yes, I know that sounds disgusting.  It wasn't intentional.  But about half way through my shower, I noticed a fly on the shower door, let in, undoubtedly, by all of the in-outs of the house the day before.  I noticed the fly and my first impulse was to kill it somehow - with water or the shampoo bottle, or something.  But it didn't move, it didn't try to get away and that stopped me.  Was the fly a bad thing?  It was ugly.  If it had been flying around it would have been annoying.  Flies are dirty and they can carry germs.  But this one wasn't near my food or anything that it could potentially harm.  It wasn't hurting me.  So why did I want to kill it?
       We are generally very callous about life - especially other kinds of life besides human.  But just because we don't understand another life form, just because it doesn't "think" in the way that we do, or "feel" in the way that we do, does that really mean that its life is less sacred?  Or un-sacred?  And that it doesn't have the same rights to be on this planet and to live its journey in whatever way it can without my playing god and deciding when its life should end?  Buddhists especially believe that all of life is sacred and that killing any life is a sin.  I get that.  And looking at this delicate, tiny creature, I found I could not do it damage.
       So instead of killing the fly yesterday morning, I chose to watch it, see what I could learn from it, let it live out its final days or hours without my interference (since my guess was that it was dying which is why it hadn't moved despite my looming threat).  These are a few of the things I learned yesterday from this guru fly:
       1.  Sometimes just resting and being is enough.  We don't have to always be flying around like chickens with our heads cut off in order to actually live.
       2.  Sometimes there is joy is just flying around, letting the air take you where it will, without a purpose in mind.
       3.  Sometimes even genuine and real threats to our existence can change heart and become...well, less predatory, if we take the time and don't react right away to the threat (because if the fly had tried to run away, I'm sure I would have tried to kill it).
       4.  Life, God, the Sacred is in the little things.
       5. Taking a moment to be with what is right in front of you, focusing on that which presents itself in each moment and not worrying about what will come in the next allows us to fully live with whatever time we have left to us.
       Those were some of my "fly" insights from yesterday.
       This morning I woke up to a glass door covered with flies.  So here are a couple more lessons:
       1.  That which looks harmless and even beneficent sometimes just plain isn't.
       2.  Sometimes the postponing of one act, or the failure to act, can lead to serious consequences and a lot more work for us than if we had just done what needed to be done in the first place! (ie, if I'd gotten rid of the fly maybe it would not have had babies in my house, and I would not have had to spend a good part of today vacuuming up many, many flies who have all lost their lives to my raging cleaning frenzie!)
       Not that I don't still see all life as sacred.  Which leads to two final lessons learned:
       1.  Sometimes the most obvious options we see in a situation are really not the only options there are.
       2.  Sometimes the easiest options are just simply not the best.  To honor its life, while still not subjecting the family to the "plague of flies" I could have put it outside.  Or captured it in a jar for further observation: made it into a science experiment for the kids.
       The point is, that while it may be easier to simply not think about how we affect the rest of the planet, be it other people, bugs, trees, the air, the planet, that this does not in the end benefit anyone.  And it does not honor that life is a gift given to everything that has it - a sacred thing - something we should not treat lightly or thoughtlessly, no matter how small.  God is in all of it.  And to honor God, we must honor the God within all life.