Every morning, I write a few pages. Not pages for any sort of paper or blog, I write what I am thinking or wondering or whatever comes to mind. Today my writing was filled with questions. On some days, I recall and reflect on what has happened or anticipate what will happen or maybe even what I hope will happen. And somehow, God is in the midst of all the meanderings.

Anne Lamont says that we don’t think our way into becoming ourselves. We take action and insight follows. For me, writing is an action, a spiritual practice, and yes, insight does often emerge. Somehow in the words I write, God speaks; occasionally in that moment, but most often over time. I’ve been pondering across the pages how my life unfolds without so much purposeful striving but with some intention.

 I just finished reading the first novel in Buechner’s The Book of Bebb. Buechner weaves this intriguing analogy throughout the story.

In Hindu iconography, I have read somewhere, the mind of man is portrayed as a monkey swinging from tree to tree, witless, purposeless, grabbing out at whatever new branch happens to come to hand, which I take to mean that it is not we who control our thoughts but circumstances that control them. Let me smell bacon frying, and in spite of myself I am hungry; wave a red flag at me, and I am made as hell. Or subtler stimuli—a drop in barometric pressure, the look in somebody’s eye…

 Buechner goes on as the narrator of Lion Country to wonder how our perceptions of or attitudes toward people (his of Bebb) change “just because these were the branches that presented themselves.”

A few evenings ago, two graduate students were slated to be community readers at parent/child-reading events at two local elementary schools. As the adult students’ instructor, I wanted to be there to support each of them. Leaving another event at the University early, I drove just a few blocks to find Garret welcomed and comfortable in a school cafeteria filled with teachers, parents, and young children. He was confident and assured in the opportunities the evening held. After a few conversions with others there, I headed for the door and the next school, a few miles away.

The school was farther than I had anticipated. I felt a bit anxious that I would arrive in time. Janelle, my other student and community reader, would be beginning in just a few minutes. However, the monkey’s arm presented in that moment made me even more uneasy; actually more than uneasy—indignant and then self-conscious of my own reputation—how I might be perceived instead of her dilemmas.

You see I am trying to establish new relationships between local schools and my University. Some of the schools provide field education and student teaching placements for our students. My desire is to create more equitable partnerships where we support one another. One way is to provide community readers and other support for these “reading parties” where children read with a community member while their parents are encouraged in new ways to support their young learners. Everyone in attendance shares a meal together and the children leave with a new book and a stuffed animal. For these teacher candidates and me, this is an incredible opportunity to share this time with these children and their parents.

As I drove, my phone was next to me giving directions when a text message from Janelle popped up. She simply said she would be “heading that way” as soon as an issue at her work was resolved, She was so sorry.

What??  She wasn’t already at the event like I expected?  That meant there wasn’t anyone from the community there, from my university community that had promised a guest reader for the evening. Like the narrator in The Book of Bebb, the branches that flung in my face as I drove faster moved me from anger to disappointment to action. I was disappointed that she hadn’t made work arrangements that freed her to keep her commitment. I was angry with her for not being there, at the school, as our University’s representative. I felt compelled to make it right—to get there myself and somehow make up for the fact that she wasn’t there.

More texts came but I didn’t have time to safely look at them. I pulled into the parking lot and ran into the cafeteria filled with busy parents and teachers. Fortunately, a lady happened to be passing by the entrance. Anxiously I inquired, “Our community reader is late, could you direct me to the children?”

I paused to introduce myself and she smiled and led me to the kindergarten classroom filled with young readers. A young girl jumped up to grab my hand and ask if I had come to take her back [to her parents]. The teacher who had just finished reading looked my way. I explained the predicament. She didn’t actually respond to me and began handing out books and stuffed animals to the eager recipients. I helped.

After the books were passed out, another adult noted that there was time for another story. I quickly suggested that I read the next one and the teachers could do what they needed to do. I grabbed a book from a nearby bookshelf and began reading.

Funny how reading to a group of engaged five and six-year-olds, taking a logical next action, changed things. I didn’t have time to be angry or disappointed or even think about the “real” circumstances that lead me to this action.

I didn’t see her arrive, but I could see Janelle standing forlornly a few feet away from our group.

When I finished reading it was time for the children to go back to their parents. As I walked toward Janelle, I surprisingly remembered my intention to support her. So I did something I usually only think to do after I say too much, I listened.

Janelle was almost in tears. In fact,she said, “I’m about to cry.” She told me how she did get her supervisor to take over her usual responsibilities at her work, however, she was caught waiting for a teen girl’s parent who didn’t show up on time. Janelle was doing what she had to do, wait. Waiting when she knew she had other obligations. Waiting that required surrender to circumstances beyond her control. Waiting that challenged her own resources—could she… should she… would she…

My learning was to let both our anxiousness and disappointment remind us of our need for embracing God’s love that is beyond our experience and meets us over and over again in these everyday moments as we honor one another.

How can I make this sacred center home? To think from here, speak from here, act from here instead of reacting to a world that controls, rewards, and enables other possibilities. To act in ways to gain insight from these moments when, as Buechner says, we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know.

In No Man is an Island, Thomas Merton makes a distinction between two kinds of intention, a right intention and a simple intention.  Merton says,

When we have a right intention, our intention is pure. We seek to do God’s will…we consider the work and ourselves apart from God and outside of Him. Our intention is directly chiefly upon the work to be done. When the work is done, we rest in its accomplishment…

But when we have a simple intention, we are less occupied with the thing to be done… We are more aware of God who works in us than of ourselves or of our work.

I decided to begin this post as it began for me, with an uncomfortable quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the small book,  Life Together.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.

Isn’t visioning productive?

I’ll begin with something simple (that’s really not). I have a vision of being welcoming here, in my house. So I just rearranged the living room furniture. It looks and feels like it would be an encouraging place to sit and have conversations, however, usually I’m sitting in here alone, like now, pondering. So my vision isn’t exactly realized, yet?

I long for community—in my work-life, in my neighborhood, where I go to church.  I miss the people in my former church– an incredible community of people who aren’t much alike really, yet the conversations and care are ones that thrive in that differentness and common lives of faith.  Yet, I also have vivid memories of the first months I went there; sitting in the back so I could leave right after worship, terrified of going to the “fellowship” happy hour afterward. I do imagine the kind of community I want but that doesn’t quite match what seems real. I also imagine how I think people should be and act in that community.

Bonhoeffer continues to make more sense of my initial troubledness:

 The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, than an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Lately, I seem to be considering more acutely (I don’t want to say judging even if that is true) others whom I perceive as believing or being a certain way – from a distance—some aren’t people I really even know. I act the same way though with people I’m closest to – my next-door neighbors, colleagues on my hallway at work, my family members who live their lives outside my everyday view. Even if they were here, I complicitly make assumptions about how we all should or could live in the world.

My kingdom or Thy kingdom?

When I bring my own ideas of what my life should be and try to realize that vision, I eventually become disillusioned with others and myself. While this quote from Buechner might seem a bit contradictory to Bonhoeffer, on the contrary, he clarifies the distinction between our own vision and what is God’s.

 If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world; we should know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to use that is greater than our own strength.

The Clown in the Belfry  and Listening to Your Life

 If only…we would know that the Kingdom of God, that community we seek, is already here. Because God has already laid the foundation for community, our common life together, Bonhoeffer contends,

We enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.

 If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary… everything…is so far from what we expected…

 We live as thankful recipients and our community grows when we dare to be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us.

Yesterday, the day after the election, many people I encountered were full of emotion and wondering for a myriad of reasons. At lunch, a colleague wondered aloud how she could live through what seemed like a dream.  A student in class was lamenting that she’d just lost two friends over the events of the past day. On my drive to work, I listened to a lady say that this morning she was “wide awake” to difficult realities in the world and her own response. Being “wide awake” is a good way to describe the intentional ways we love, especially those who are most challenging to us.

Alive with synchronicity, I read these words from Buechner’s book Listening to Your Life  on this day.

Matthew the tax collector and Thomas the doubter. Peter the Rock and Judas the traitor. Mary Magdalene and Lazarus’s sister Martha. And the popcorn-eating old woman. And the fat man in the pick-up. They are all our family, and you and I are their family and each other’s family, because that is what Jesus has called us as the Church to be. Our happiness is all mixed up with each other’s happiness and our peace with each other’s peace. Our own happiness, our own peace, can never be complete until we find some way of sharing it with people who the way things are now have no happiness and know no peace. Jesus calls us to show this truth forth, live this truth forth. Be the light of the world, he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his Church, tells us, to be and do. Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons. That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that – no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead—then it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that.

In his  book Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer says that the world needs people with the patience and the passion to make the pilgrimage toward our authentic vocation, cultivating God’s truth, not only for our own sake but also as a social and political act.

Brendan is Frederick Buechner’s tale of the sixth-century Irish saint told through the eyes of Brendan’s loyal friend and follower, Finn. I struggled, to be honest, to finish this book. This sixth century Saint seemed to have little to say to me, for my life in the twenty-first century. I was lost in the language and images of sailing the world over 1500 years ago, however, there were moments that truths of humanness in relationship trumped the obscure settings.

Finn was the one I listened to through Buechner’s crafted voice.  He was a constant companion to Brendan on journeys to the end of their known world and beyond. Finn literally left his new bride and young son behind to continue his whole life as a faithful observer and confidant. On the last page of the novel Brendan speaks his final dying words to Finn.

I fear the presence of the King, Finn…I fear the sentence of the judge.

Remarkably, Brendan’s life had been one of continually seeking to do and be God’s servant in every way and Finn intimately witnessed this journey.  Finn’s words in response after Brendan’s death are more remarkable.

 As to the sentence of the judge, I’m not one to know nor even if there be a judge at all. If I Finn, was judge I’d know well enough though.

I’d sentence him to have mercy on himself. I’d sentence him less to strive for the glory of God than just to let it swell his sails if it can.

 While the ways and extreme of Brendan’s striving are far removed from my own, I, too, want to take Finn’s words to mean the same for me. Somehow, I, too, want to learn to cease striving and rest in God’s provision. That’s the powerful thing about stories; we locate and make sense of our own lives in someone else’s words about their own.

Today, I planned to spend the day in contemplation; it is just the dog and I here.   I went to early Eucharist at the local Episcopal Church where the liturgy supports such contemplation and I don’t know many people there so there is no need to chat. During the brief sermon, the rector said something that spoke to my needs for this day.

You see, I’ve felt a great source of joy in my new job. However, I’m beginning to wonder. I’ve been working really hard on some things—and I have so many ideas for teaching and for writing and for making friends and supporting colleagues and making this house more comfortable and sustaining goodness in all those communities. I am pushing too hard—expecting and considering too many things. The trouble is that I am thinking about doing much more than I am actually doing. And, am I doing things that matter anyway?

I want to have mercy on myself; to strive less for my own glory that I’m not sure I can always distinguish from the glory of God. What does Finn mean just to let [God’s glory] swell his sails if it can?

In his sermon today, Joe said we don’t have to work harder. Sure, there are some limiting habits we might need to change. The Holy Spirit is doing the real work. He was talking about the larger church, actually, but maybe there is a bit of truth in there for me as well.

In Wishful Thinking Buechner writes,

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s noting you have to do.

 We don’t earn God’s favor but live into it; to let it swell his sails if it can.

Jamie Smith explores these three verbs in his chapter “You Make What You Want: Vocational Liturgies.”

Image             Unfold                        Occupy

Smith understands each as a doing. First, we are called to image God so that image is a task or mission rather than a characteristic. Secondly, we are called to unfold creation’s potential. This is our task as image bearers. Lastly, we are called to occupy creation; to be a faithful presence, people who occupy creation and remind the world that we belong to God.

Smith argues that we are called to “image God” and that ruling and caring for creation includes “cultivating it, unfolding and unfurling its latent possibilities through human making.” Maybe we begin by imagining or glimpsing God’s imagination regarding how we might unfold and unfurl possibility in our own lives.

For me, coming to this new place and position did unfold over time or maybe even was imagined in unacknowledged ways all my life. Was the process culminated in landing here in this job and place after all that struggle to find the “right one” or was it a mutual finding?

I think of how this place is bits and pieces of things I imagined as the “good and perfect life” over the years without actually knowing or consciously searching for this kind of place.

All my life I have been drawn to these mountains. As a child my dad was from a different part of Eastern Tennessee and we visited the Smokey Mountains often. My husband and I met in these mountains and have longed to return. Volunteering in Eastern Kentucky, vacationing in Western Carolina and North Georgia, and visiting friends in Western Virginia have fueled those longings. The low clouds hovering in the mountains, the cold mountain streams and the embracing presence of tall trees; however imagined, actually living here was a continuously visited possibility. And now I look out each morning on the Holston Mountain Range and walk up steep inclines to enter my office that looks out on a similar vista. The Appalachian people I read about are my next-door neighbors, people I go to church alongside, and colleagues and people whom I am honored to learn from and teach. Virginia is a few streets away and Western North Carolina an hour’s drive in more than one direction.

At my daughter’s graduation from Hanover College—a place with many similarities to King—I remember a visceral tug as I watched the faculty in full regalia lead the graduates through the crowd. Those robed people represented the pinnacle of my love of thinking and knowing in a tangible way. Maybe it was a longing I didn’t even know about then—that was before I even considered a Ph.D. as a wild and crazy thing to consider. Now here I am in a similar school where that same practice happens multiple times a year. I was the robed one on a recent August morning as we, the faculty, in all colors of regalia, filed into the chapel behind a bagpiper for opening convocation where an honorary degree was being conferred.

Finding out that this place existed is filled with synchronicity. The Buechner connections: learning about the Faith and Culture center’s lectures (formerly the Buechner Center), imagining what it would be like to be able to be in such a community, listening to student lecturers who drew from Buechner’s writing to make sense of their own lives. Finding this University as an aside to finding the Buechner Writing Workshop at Princeton led me to consider a faith based community as a place to teach, without even realizing what I was imaging. Even though I felt like a fish out of water in connection with the other workshop participants, many of them clergy, I realized how much the corporate worship in a community of scholars fed my soul. The chapel at Princeton is in a circle of buildings with a large grassy area in the middle where I sat or stood each day imagining this as a place of wonder and creative thinking and spiritual rest. Not even considering that I might actively look for a “Christian” or faith-based institution, I wondered how and perhaps longed for faith and scholarship to be whole in me—a “hidden wholeness” as Parker Palmer calls it. Remembering the Princeton Chapel and grounds, I see the King Chapel and oval as a lived fulfillment of my imagining.

A few weeks spent tutoring adults at a GED center in Eastern Kentucky for the Christian Appalachian Project were in the same summer I attended my first spiritual formation retreat in Indiana and went to digital storytelling camp in Colorado. These were formative events that led me surreptitiously to my dissertation work and now I am occupying this place as remnants of storytelling, teaching, and formation continue to be part of what I do in new ways.

 Perhaps that is at the essence of what Jamie Smith says about being called to unfold creation’s potential. Being attentive to how our desires, our work, become aligned with God’s desires.

In Luke 18:41, Jesus asks a blind man sitting beside the road, “What do you want me to do for you?”

For days I’ve read and reread this question. Our friend, who was visiting us for a few days, wondered why I’d written in this blog so much about my struggle to find the “right place”  and for me that also meant to even recognize the rightness where I was.  I was convinced I needed a platform to do credible good in this world.

Actually I had a “real job” if that means one you get paid for and has actual work you do that you are relatively qualified to do.  So, the question, “What do you want me to do for you?” takes on new significance.

I did ask God to do something, for a place—a place to use my gifts—for almost two years.  And in my struggle to find a “place” was unacknowledged tension between scholarship and practice; between thinking and doing; between everyday and extraordinary; between faith and “a job;” and between personal (faith/heart filled) writing and scholarly writing.  “Between” is a key word here.  I thought I had to land somewhere in-between what was my daily work—that I immerse my self into and consciously do some good for the world and get paid for doing –and my longing for being known and knowing God’s presence in that extraordinary everydayness.

In the life I imagined for myself, the academic thinking self would find room and enable (since I had a “real job”) those deeper desires that I couldn’t articulate concretely or tacitly recognize as they emerged.  Or maybe you could just say I was simply hoping for a place that was right and good and sustaining and that resting in God’s provision would miraculously make that “place” appear.  Nonetheless, I rested only after much anxiousness and striving and not only “after” but in the midst of more striving and wondering. I wrote about and lived that part of the story well.

“What do you want me to do for you?” was never supposed to really be answered.

Lo and behold, I’ve landed in this place that began with the charge to write an essay integrating faith and culture in my discipline.  Vocation or avocation?  I’m actually not sure of the difference or the fact that there is or should be one.  Like Robert Frost, maybe my “object in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation.”

Yesterday I wrote in my morning notebook that our work (leaning into a community) is about furthering or living into the kingdom of God.  I can be flexible in how I approach this day knowing I am in the midst of God’s presence and acknowledging and leaning into that presence is my first work.  Seeking that presence in all that I do also means surrendering not striving—and I’m still figuring out what that looks like.

I hadn’t really noticed it before, the house that sits diagonally across the street. Gazing from our front porch the other evening, Mitch wondered aloud about the place.  I think he actually asked, “What is the story of that house?” 

On our block the houses are fairly well established and well kept—at least on the outside, to those looking on.  The house we were wondering about is almost invisible because the yard, bushes, and trees are so overgrown. Whoever lives there, if anyone, has been invisible to us too.

It just so happened that the next evening my next-door neighbor Dee sat on the porch with me and mentioned the same house—without my asking—and her version of the house’s story.  Also new to our neighborhood, Dee told me about a lady walking by with her dog one recent evening who indicated Dee might join in getting rid of the “problem.”  I guess the problem could be the overgrown yard or a house in disrepair or most likely, as Dee surmised, the neighbor whose story intertwined with the house’s story Dee decided to rescript.

Dee’s interpretation of the “problem” was that the man who lived in the house was seen as an outcast by the neighbor who walked by.  Dee’s silent defense of the man, whom she called one of “those who look on,” incited her to action.  She knew a man lived in the house alone but she had never seen him.  So again, it just so happened that the next evening, she paid attention and noticed when he drove up and got out of his car.  She yelled “hello” and the man continued to walk toward his door.  Deciding that the man was fully aware of his outsider status and hoping to avoid her, Dee and her husband ventured across the street.

Dee noticed his workday clothes and deformed foot that limited his gait.  Their hello noticeably unexpected, he slowed and turned when they greeted him as their neighbor.  “If you ever need anything let us know, we are right across the street.”

Maybe this man was expecting to hear admonishment for his overgrown yard, for shutters that needed paint or bushes out of control, but instead he heard, “I’ll write our number down and bring it over so you’ll have it.”  And it just so happened that the following day, as Dee was putting a card with their number in the man’s door, the lady, who had warned Dee about the “problem,” was walking by with her dog again.

The one’s who look on.   How often we construct stories of people we don’t know and amazingly also about those we do know very well.  The stories not only create my perception of part of our world but also shape my response or perhaps even more acutely limit how I live in community— or dare I suggest—the kingdom of God among us.

It’s easy to tell the story of my neighbor.  It is much more challenging for me to recognize (and admit) the stories I hold of my children, my husband, my new colleagues; people who are closest to me.  I tell myself the stories with trust and mistrust to make sense of the kingdoms I create.

The Kingdom of God is NOT a place of course, but a condition; Frederick Buechner says in Wishful Thinking.  He tells this story in one of his sermons that maybe gives a glimpse of what we are trying to do with our stories—as flawed and counter productive as they may be for me.

In 1963 I went on that famous March on Washington, and the clearest memory that I have of it is standing near the Lincoln Memorial hearing the song “We Shall Overcome” sung by the quarter of a million or so people who were there.  And while I listened, my eye fell on one man, with a face like shoe leather and a sleazy suit and an expression that was more befuddled than anything else; and I wondered to myself if, quite apart from the whole civil-rights question, that poor old bird could ever conceivably overcome anything.  He was there to become a human being.  Well, and so were the rest of us.  And so are we all, no less befuddled than he when you come right down to it.  Poor old birds, poor young birds, every one of us.  And deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome some day, as he will, by God’s grace, by helping the seed of the kingdom grow in ourselves and in each other until finally in all of us it becomes a tree where the birds of the air can come and make their nests in our branches.  That is all that matters really.

Seeds of the kingdom.  The kingdom of God is a relational place—however it is more than a casual mixing of our faith, culture, and everyday experiences that is necessary for the kingdom.

…To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?  It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.        Luke 13:20-21

The kingdom is like the yeast the woman took and mixed in with the flour – until all of it was leavened.  No longer do the yeast or the flour exist.  Chemically and physically they become something new.  How do I consider what it means to be the kingdom of God in the world?   What it means to be transformed in Christ?

We are called to be in the world; to be immersed in the vastness of the world around us; to be attentive to the synergy of God at work within and among and in-between us.  Be part of the story.

Even though it seems idyllic at times, most of the time, it’s not easy to rearrange your life in a new place. “Nesting” might be an apt word to describe what I have been attempting to do. I remember many years ago and many times since, when I wrote those lists of what I wanted in my life, a “welcoming home” was always included.

I’m not very good at entertaining, the kind where you actually invite people over ahead of time. I like for people just to stop by. Mitch continually reminds me that people don’t do that anymore. But I have hope in the new house that both will happen without concern about what we eat, where we sit, or even what is said.

Many say they will come visit here and so I’m attempting to build a nest that will be comfortable and welcoming. The guest room has new bedding and towels, an attached bathroom and I can get from my own bedroom to the kitchen without passing by the guest room. All those things seem to say welcome and comfortable.

The notion of “welcome” is not just for guests and extends to Mitch and me too, I hope. I’m old enough to stop saying I’m going to have an instant hot water pot…someday. I have one now. We sat on our covered front porch tonight and watched the rain—another someday event realized.

We’ve met more neighbors in the few weeks we’ve been here than our last two house living experiences combined. Blackberry cake, lemon pound cake, and cold drinks complete with glasses and ice cubes have shown up at our door. There is a man who has taken our trashcan to the street and returned it to the garage every week since our arrival.

Welcoming.

And basically, I just had to show up.

The odd thing is that just this morning I was wondering about God’s presence in this new house. I feel like I’ve been so focused on things that don’t really matter– new things for every room, arranging and rearranging, pondering colors and shapes of the welcome– rather than in nurturing that relationship.

And just as I was typing the neighbor news paragraph I realize again, I have been so fixed on striving to create a welcome to come in time, that I have missed the welcome I’ve encountered.

In Longing for Home, Frederick Buechner writes about the disciples encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.

I believe that although the two disciples did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus recognized them, that he saw them as if they were the only two people in the world. And I believe that the reason why the resurrection is more than just an extraordinary event which took place some two thousand years ago and then was over and done with is that, even as I speak these words and you listen to them, he also sees each of us like that. In this dark world where you and I see so little because of our unrecognizing eyes, he, whose eye is on the sparrow, sees each one of us… I believe that whether we recognize him or not, or believe in him or not, or even know his name, again and again he comes and walks a little way with us along whatever road we’re following. And I believe that through something that happens to us, or something we see, or somebody we know—who can ever guess how or when or where? – he offers us, the way he did at Emmaus, the bread of life, offers us a new hope, a new vision of light that not even the dark world can overcome.

 

Even though my gaze has been averted by material distractions in search of real welcome, God’s presence has come and walked a little way on this road —in sweet morsels of cake and care—the bread of life.  No special dishes required.

We had a storm; big winds, hard rain and lots of falling twigs and leaves from the two big trees in my front yard. Yardwork isn’t something I enjoy, especially in the heat. However, the yard was a mess. For several hours I persevered; collecting fallen branches, leaves and twigs that were hidden in the patchy grass. I wanted to stop; I hated this work. I kept bending, gathering and piling the debris.

Even though we’re new to the neighborhood, as I began working, I recognized a stranger knocking on the door of the house across the street. An elderly lady lives there and he was persistent, even opening the storm door and pounding on the wooden door again and again. I considered she was home but she didn’t answer the door.

I found myself attentive to the situation. I wondered. Was she okay? Did she know him? He wasn’t someone who lived in the immediate neighborhood, he looked different than the white middle class folk on this part of the street.

Just a few days prior, the lady next door informed me there had been several break in’s in the area during the past year. She reported that even the mailman commented that there were a lot of strange people walking around. Another reason I thought I needed to be watchful—looking out for my neighbors and myself. The context of suspicion, fear, and assumptions about people that are different than me does matter here— just like the two that passed by in the bible story.

As I continued to work, the man greeted me from across the street as he started to leave the house. “Do you have any work?” He casually asked me as he made his way across the street.

“Sorry, I don’t have any,” I replied, conscious of his movement without making purposeful eye contact as I continued to pick up sticks.

He made his way on down the street in the opposite direction. I felt some guilt that I was obviously doing work that needed to be done. I didn’t know him; his motives, his reputation, his work ethic or skill. I didn’t have any cash to pay him with anyway.

That was Saturday. I had conflicting feelings. I felt right in looking out for my elderly neighbor even though all I did was watch. I felt guilty for saying I had no work, when obviously I was working. I felt suspicious of what I didn’t know: who are strangers and who are neighbors in my new town?

On Sunday, the man’s face became one of the characters in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the lectionary passage for the day. Not because he was in distress and I was passing by or even because he needed work and I didn’t offer to meet that need.

Joe, the rector where I visited on Sunday, said maybe Jesus described the man in need as naked because it took away many identifiers. Was he rich or poor? Educated or illiterate? From close by or far away? He was another human being in his nakedness.

In my suspicion, based on what I feared and didn’t know, I failed to encounter another human being. It really didn’t matter if I had work or not or the cash to pay him. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know his name or intention or background. Meeting him eye-to-eye, standing up and shaking his hand, sharing names would have engaged him as my neighbor.

Joe said something else that was new to me related to the Good Samaritan story. He said we might consider “neighbor” and “neighborhood” as more contemporary metaphors for the kingdom of God.  That kingdom is among us, when we engage people instead of fears and assumptions.

I helped my daughter move, my uncle died and now I’m back to my regular life, back in real time—that doesn’t stand still like when you are focused on a different kind of time and place. In between those life events just experienced, I realize that unlike my daughter and her husband who are just beginning their life together, most of my life is behind me. Yet I find myself pondering furniture purchases, cautiously contemplating knowing neighbors and wondering how our lives will unfold in this new place we live.

It seems like I would be more settled in at this stage of my life. So reading Luke’s gospel’s words caused me to consider the thickness of my self—and seemingly selfish—considerations.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens; they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse not barn, and yet God feeds them… And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Luke 12:22-25

 Consider the ravens and the lilies… the bottom line for me is do not keep striving or worrying – it doesn’t add to my life—it takes away.

At all the ages and stages I’ve been through, the same admonition—Do not be afraid… where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

 That is what is deeper than any measure of time I’ve lived or stage of life I’m living into—fear – of what is next or how I’m doing or what is missing.

I continue to struggle to know that truth. Figuring out what I think I need in this house is consuming. The delicate balance between comfort and aesthetics is a challenge I kind of want to bridge. I opted to take down the custom made pink drapes in the living and dining rooms that were functional (and even elegant in their day) for bare windows for now. The ivory drapes I ordered will also be functional and look good (I hope). The trouble is these decisions aren’t simply made for my over-thinking self. They involve pondering, considering, striving, and even worrying. Now, getting new drapes isn’t a transgression in itself but the amount of personal investment I use to make this decision might be. Even though these are decisions to be made; as Jesus reminded folks before the “don’t worry” part, one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, or even the color of those already hanging in the room.

So, in the midst of my dilemmas over curtains and paint and furniture, the actual Buechner’s words for today, July 8, in Listening to Your Life, were these…

I SHALL NOT WANT, the psalm says. Is that true? There are lots of things we go on wanting, go on lacking, whether we believe in God or not. They are not just material things like a new roof or a better paying job, but things like good health, things like happiness for our children, things like being understood and appreciated, like relief from pain, like some measure of inner peace not just for ourselves but for the people we love and for whom we pray. Believers and unbelievers alike we go on wanting plenty our whole lives through. We long for what never seems to come. We pray for what never seems to be clearly given. But when the psalm says, “I shall not want,” maybe it is speaking the utter truth anyhow. Maybe it means that if we keep our eyes open, if we keep our hearts and lives open, we will at least never be in want of the one thing we want more than anything else. Maybe it means that whatever else is withheld, the shepherd never withholds himself, and he is what we want more than anything else.

Watching and listening to the lightening, thunder, and steady rain from my front porch this evening, my focus shifted ever so slightly. What sustains life is not what might be hanging on the window but the vastness of the treasure that is beyond the window. If only I remember to look.