But for the one

Human experience in terms of our spiritual life is a dichotomy of relevance. We know, as God's creatures, that we are irrelevant, in the sense that we as individuals cannot alter the Will of the Almighty, nor can we even perform a single act of goodness without His assistance. However, as the readings today pointed out, each of us as individuals is essential to God's designs, because He desires it.

When God's wrath was prepared to descend upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham engaged in a bit of bargaining. It's almost comical to see Abraham, like a small child, going, "but how about this? And this? And this?" God bears this patiently, each time granting Abraham's requests. I think that a lot of scholarly examination of this would parse God's justice, about how He would never destroy an innocent. I see it totally differently. God didn't spare anyone on account of their innocence. God spared them on account of Abraham.

I am often reminded of the situation with Job, because when it comes to human pain and agony there is scarcely a better portrait of it outside the Passion of our Lord in Scripture. The Book of Job is almost a trial simply to read, watching how this poor man's life was devastated through no fault of his own. What I really like is the end of the book where Job gets it all back times two. However, most people miss the condition that is attached. In Job 42:10 (RSV) it reads:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.

We all like to cheer and say, yay! Abraham got Lot's family spared from Sodom's destruction, and Job got back all his family and stuff! The fact is, Abraham and Job weren't granted these things because they deserved them, or even because they were persistent in questioning. The reason that these things occurred is that both Abraham and Job stood as intercessors. Abraham begged for the lives of the righteous to be spared. Job prayed for those who had calumniated him during his trials. For this, and for no other reason, were they rewarded.

The Gospel for today is a valuable one for several reasons. First, it addresses the Our Father and the way in which we should petition God. This is crucial, of course, because no word of the Savior was wasted breath. There's more going on here, though. Jesus stresses that God answers prayers and gives good gifts when we ask for them. I think this passage of Scripture gives people trouble. "Ask, and it shall be given." Well, why am I not getting what I asked for? people think. The honest answer is it depends on what it is you're requesting.

Then there's that pesky Psalm 37:4 (RSV).

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

People are all too happy to think about getting their heart's desire that they miss that little verse 5:

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will act.

God is infinite in His goodness, His mercy, and His generosity. He desires the best for us, but the best we can have is to desire what He desires, to want what He wants. God desires that all men come to repentance, to come to Him, to love and be loved by Him. However, He won't give if we don't ask.

We are obliged to stand as intercessors. It is the nature of man's relationship with God. While childlike persistence is needed, learning to stand in the gap for all of God's children is the desire God most wishes to grant us.

So here we are, the product of that dichotomy of relevance: invaluable to God, but totally unnecessary. However, as He repeatedly shows us in Scripture, one single person does make a difference. We were individually dreamt of by the Infinite and made perfectly according to His own plan. When we are able to intercede in prayer and action for those others who are the products of His handicraft, He is most pleased. But for Abraham's hope and Job's obedience, the stories end very differently. We might not ever save people from brimstone or double our money, but only will we know in Heaven what our one prayer, said with childlike persistence and faith, could accomplish.

But for the one who hung on the Cross to stand in intercession for us all, we would be lost.

What happens to a dream deferred?

I love Langston Hughes. As the Harlem Renaissance goes, he speaks to the core of what that movement in literature stood for. A Dream Deferred always spoke to me, strangely. I remember reading it for the first time at about age 12 and thinking it an infantile piece of poetry. Only as I grew in age and understanding did I realize that such a wealth of soul, such regret, such yearning, could be packing into such a sparse piece of poetry. For those unfamiliar with it, here it is:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The thing that brought this particular poem, and this topic, to mind was watching one of my favorite television shows, So You Think You Can Dance.

OK, go ahead and laugh now if you need to. There. Feel better?

Watching the dancers on this show, and the magnificent work that they do, makes me think of some of my own dreams deferred, or even some that were lost or abandoned outright. One of those was to be a dancer. I danced ballet as a child, and always danced on my own, but never had the money available for the type of lessons that would get me to such a high level of ability. The exquisite ability of the human body, in concert with the power of music, combining to tell a story that needs no words.

Want to know what I mean? Watch this, and then tell me some part of you doesn't understand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wr42lSuo8

The power of emotion is such a scary thing. A feeling can take you somewhere you want to go, somewhere you've been, somewhere you might never want to go again. It can thrill you, frighten you, fill you with awe. All the emotion we bank is intrinsically intertwined with all our dreams, deferred or otherwise.

I thought tonight about my own life, and my dreams. Dancing, singing, performing. Writing. I've often been accused of not communicating my thoughts and feelings well, and it's a charge that is not leveled at me without cause. My heart and my mind exist in a world of words, of texture and sound and movement. My feelings and thoughts are better encapsulated in a snippet of a song than in an hour of conversation. I am my own composition of sorts, and the problem is that I have not yet found the medium with which to translate that into a form visible and accessible to others.

The best thing about a dream deferred is that it is not, as yet, a dream denied. I may not ever be a professional dancer, or have a record, or write a book. But that won't stop me from trying. I can still sing for anyone who wants to listen. I can still write whatever the spirit moves me to write. And maybe I can go take a ballet class. Who knows.

Regrets do sag like a heavy load, but we can lighten that load by finding fewer things to regret. Defer the dream if you must, but once you get the chance, grab it and don't let go. A sore that festers cannot heal.

Reclaiming what was lost.

Sit still for a moment. Close your eyes. Let your mind wander.

There, nestled snugly in the recesses of your heart, is a pain. There are days when it comes fully, achingly into view, standing nose to nose and daring you to blink. On other days it is content to nudge gently, unexpectedly, during interludes where you found yourself gracefully blank.

There, amidst the filtered rays of sunlight, you feel it. That anger. That bitterness. The tears you shed, and those you didn't. The resentment. The burning, seething urge for vengeance.

The bird sings softly. The hymn drowns in the pounding of fury in your ears.

It is our brokenness.

No matter what that thing is that lurks inside us, it is inherent to the human condition to be broken. We are the children of the Fall and within each of us lies a portion of that empty space, a space once filled with the unmitigated glory of the Divine that now cries out to be full. We fill it, with fleeting amusement, with numbness we find in a bottle, with the momentary comfort of skin on skin. We try, and we fail, for the space empties as soon as the moment passes, like the sand of an hourglass.

"You have a God-shaped hole." While a basic truth and a well-meaning sentiment, it's a wretched cliche. The problem is not that we have a magic God puzzle piece that, once installed, makes it all good. That just isn't going to happen, and many who fall away from God do so because some well-meaning soul has tried to convince them that finding the Holy Puzzle Piece will make them somehow 'fixed.' The truth is, the emptiness that we have as a result of our first parents' fall from Grace is a gift that God has given us.

A gift? (You're shaking your head.) How could this emptiness, this pain, be a gift?

Simple, really. God crafts perfection out of even the most heinous of sins. Instead of condemning humanity to a life of aimless suffering, He gave us purpose. When Adam and Eve decided to disobey, to follow their own leadings, God in His mercy and wisdom gave them purpose: work the ground. Rear children. Out of disobedience, God prospered a world.

The yearning inside ourselves comes from a deeper desire for purpose. All those angry memories, the betrayals, the disappointments, come from some place where we were following a path of purpose and were thwarted. The impulses God instills in us are quieted, even muted, by the shrieking screams of a heart that has been broken. We lose our way, because we follow the path that leads to destruction.

God permits us this suffering because on the other side of the pain is the purpose. Christ's redemption of the world could have come at the snap of His divine fingers, and yet He found it necessary to shed His Sacred Blood as propitiation. In the suffering, there was purpose. In our suffering, we share something of what Jesus experienced. The physical pains, the humiliation, the loneliness, the betrayals. Every one of these is an opportunity to praise the God who won salvation through the humblest means, but sanctified the suffering to the highest purpose.

God created us, in His image, intended to be not only holy, but whole. By submitting ourselves to the life He has given us, in all its triumphs and tragedies, we learn to be totally in Him. In Being. To embrace this life is to embrace the One who breathed it into each and every one of us, to cherish it, and to live in the purpose for which we were all created: to love and be loved by Him.

Our hearts are the repositories of God's own will. If we let ourselves be still, and submit all our heart's stirrings to Him, then we can see that small, frightened, wounded child huddled in the corner of our self reach out and take the hand of the strong, purposeful, God-filled saint of the Kingdom we were created to be. In the ache of our suffering, we find the hope that only God can provide, allowing us to reclaim our lost selves and guide them safely home.

The same question asked a thousand ways.

Last week, Missy told me that, after I went to Mass, I would write about the readings. I knew upon hearing them that she was right...the only thing was, I had no idea what I was going to say. There are literally a thousand things that could be commented on. I'll start by simply repeating the relevant readings.

1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21
The LORD said to Elijah:
“You shall anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah,
as prophet to succeed you.”
Elijah set out and came upon Elisha, son of Shaphat,
as he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen;
he was following the twelfth.
Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak over him.
Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said,
“Please, let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,
and I will follow you.”
Elijah answered, “Go back!
Have I done anything to you?”
Elisha left him, and taking the yoke of oxen, slaughtered them;
he used the plowing equipment for fuel to boil their flesh,
and gave it to his people to eat.
Then Elisha left and followed Elijah as his attendant.

Gal 5:1, 13-18
Brothers and sisters:
For freedom Christ set us free;
so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.
But do not use this freedom
as an opportunity for the flesh;
rather, serve one another through love.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement,
namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you go on biting and devouring one another,
beware that you are not consumed by one another.
I say, then: live by the Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Lk 9:51-62
When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him.
On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.
As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him,
“I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus answered him,
“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
And to another he said, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead.
But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
And another said, “I will follow you, Lord,
but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”
To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow
and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This is one of those unique days when the readings obviously tie together fluidly. They are challenging readings, to be sure, exhorting the faithful to lives of service. My pastor gave an excellent homily on what it meant truly to be Christian in being His hands here on Earth.

However, to my utter discomfiture, one word leapt at me from the page, a stinging slap.

Slavery.

Oh no, I think. No, Lord, not this. Tell me anything else.

No, He says. I won't force you to listen, but he who has ears, let him hear.

While all these readings have tons to say about the Christian walk, they all contain one commonality that breaks down our faith to its most essential nugget. It's the question that was asked a thousand ways.

Elisha asks of Elijah, may I kiss my mother and father goodbye before I come?

The Sons of Thunder ask, may we call down fire from Heaven to consume those who do not like what we stand for?

Jesus asks: can you follow me into homelessness? Can you bury the past? Can you leave behind those you hold dear?

It's not just a matter of semantics. The essential heart of our faith leads us to that singular question.

What are you willing to give up in order to follow Him?

This is so difficult. I have often pondered a situation where I would be forced to choose my faith or death, and it seems a simple choice. No one could convince me to forsake my God. Yet, day after day, I am asked that exact same question, and I give a completely different answer. I sin, just a little sin, but it's the same question. Will you give it up? I say no. Time and time again, those thirty pieces of silver change hands and I sell myself into a slavery of my own making. I think I would proclaim the name of Jesus even with a gun to my head, but it takes far less than that to cause me to forget Him. The cock crows and I have denied Him, over and over and over.

What is so valuable to me, to you, that we should cling to it instead of to our Saviour? What are those little pet habits we won't give up, what 'just this once' sins do we allow ourselves?

The truth of Christ is martyrdom, but not in the sense we typically perceive. It is daily martyrdom, the killing of those impulses that keep us in corporeal ties of servitude. It is the willingness to put our hand to the plow and not look back.

In contemplating this, I realize most profoundly how wretched, how worthless a creature I am, and how unworthy of His love. I think, then, of Jesus looking with love and pity at Peter as he denied Him in the courtyard, and how He is imminently ready to forgive us our infidelities. Praise God for this divine mercy, for without it, we would all be slaves to our baser natures.

We stumble, day to day, through a myriad challenges of our faith, presented with chance after chance to deny Him, to please ourselves. We have to continue to ask ourselves what we are willing to do to belong to Him. Only in His grace will we find the answer.

One foot in front of the other.

The concept speaks to a number of situations. It's a common adage that applies to the idea of keeping on moving forward in life, whether in a specific situation or in general. In the world of modeling, it's a tip they give you while walking the catwalk, because the motion of placing one foot directly in front of the other keeps your line straight and also makes the hips swing. In a worst case scenario, you walk the white line, one foot in front of the other, to prove to the nice man in the badge that you are not, in fact, drunk. :)

It's not that I had any particularly profound thought on this phrase, other than its connotations of propelling oneself forward through difficulty, but it made me think of the many situations where the same phrase could mean such dramatically different things. Does it mean perseverance? Looking sexy? NOT looking intoxicated? Will it get you arrested, or famous, or just to tomorrow?

Whether it is the subtly shaded meanings of a phrase, or teasing out the honest truth behind the most common of words, our lives are full of opportunities for taking chances, putting ourselves out there and seeing what it's all about. What does it all mean?

Why are we here??

Do you want the secret to life? Here it is, listen closely...fall in love with one thing every day. Passionately. Doesn't matter what it is. Could be a person, a picture, a color, a smell. Love it passionately, experience the amazing feeling of loving something, and then do that everyday. We were created for the purpose of love. I think living out our greater purpose makes life so much more than it could be otherwise.

When we spend each day putting one foot in front of the other, eyes fixed squarely on love, the words themselves fade to grey and what appears instead is the brightly illuminated joy of living in concert with our own being. We live, each step pushing us forward, hips swaying, intoxicated with the heady fragrance of peace. We immerse ourselves in what is created, and in the One who created it, and we become all the words, all the phrases, all the meanings...because we have chosen to walk, one foot in front of the other, squarely into the arms of I AM.

God is a bringer.

No one shoot me for my choice of grammar in the headline. I'm not even sure "bringer" is a word technically, but for my own purposes it is for the moment. A bringer. One who brings.

God is a wise God, beyond all other superlatives we might assign Him. His wisdom is born of love, a desire to see us brought to our potential in Him. There's the bringing thing. He is not one to force a point or to cause a ruckus to make something manifest. Not that He's beyond doing something big...that's not the point. The point is that He never uses the big thing He does to drive you to do something. He simply lets the truth be manifest in the fullness of a situation and lets you take it from there. He never forces, He woos...He brings. He brings us to the truth. He brings us in to His heart. He brings us to Himself. Never drags, never takes. Brings. Allures. Moment to moment, He gives us glimpses of something that is indefinable, beyond the connotations that the word "eternity" confers, because it's so much more than that. The love of God is more than the love we know from person to person. God's love is the very thing that binds the universe together. It IS. In the really big sense of the word.

I have been able as of late to perceive God's way of bringing me to truth in a million little ways. He knows that I'm too simple to have it blasted at me. I need to see it revealed, bit by bit, to understand the immensity of it.

Everything is perfect. It's hard, so, so hard, to understand that. We think of sin and evil and say, well, of course it's not perfect. Humanity certainly isn't. In the hands of God, however, everything is perfect. He knows the ending and works it all out. Perfect. In our weakness He is made strong. Perfect. We sin and He triumphs because of it. Perfect. One great day this will all make perfect sense to us, but for now we have our faith, and it's perfect. Just the way He intended it to be. Bringing us to Him, moment by moment, a graceful dance choreographed by a God whose love is so immense that He had to create dancers just so someone could watch the moves and be amazed.

Father's Day

Today at Mass we said a prayer for all the departed fathers. That was good.

We all lose things in this life...some losses greater than others. From the void created by those things that leave us can spring up strength, passion, fortitude, and, sometimes, even peace.

I was reminded of a blog entry I wrote on my old Xanga when Daddy died. For some reason I remember writing this better than I even remember his funeral.



Written March 27, 2006

54 degrees, and partly cloudy.

At least that is what the weather channel said, matter-of-fact meteorological observations that seemed to be a strange headline for this little tableau. I sat quietly beside my father, now a drying husk rasping for uneven breaths, holding his hand and feeling a peculiar still smallness in the moment.

I have a soul that is hard as steel. I am the one people turn to in crisis, the lee of the stone, the one who will not bend in tempests. It is amazing how something so small as a whispered request can take the iron resolve of one and break it cleanly. My father's little gravel voice came to me and asked me to give him a kiss. I did, holding him close to me in my arms. It was the first time I think my father ever asked me to kiss him in the entirety of my life. It will be the last.

I wept bitterly at times over the last two days, periodically allowing myself to experience moments of grief, knowing without really knowing the empty that is coming. The first time I have to clean a room where my father's things will remain in his stead, shirts and knick knacks, his shampoo and electric razor. They will remind me of the fact that he will never again have need of them in this place.

There is an echo that lingers after a person dies, a hollow sound in a room once filled with them. I can hear it already in my mind, feel the unoccupied space like the vibrations of a television in an empty room.

My daddy called me Pete. Somehow it's the only part of me that ever made sense.