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Butterfly

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I’ve noticed that I want to pin down words like butterflies. They come to me and I want to stop them, to hold them. I want to look at them again and again.

I’m doing it right now.

I write to understand. I write to discover. I write to remember.

I don’t want to lose a single idea. There are so many. The more I write, the more things I have to write about. It is a deep well. But then I’m afraid it isn’t deep. I’m afraid it will dry up and leave me stranded, holding this bucket, looking stupid, standing at this well.

I remember the story of Jesus standing at the well with the Samaritan woman, in John 4:1-26. She was an outsider, someone that Jews weren’t supposed to associate with. Jesus is all about that. Jesus is all about the outcast, the outsider. The leper. The menstruating woman. The tax collector.

He tells her about living water, water that will never run out. He is that water.

Maybe if I tap into that living water I’ll feel safe. I’ll feel like I’ll have an inexhaustible supply of words.

I have a feeling I’m only standing in the shallows right now. Knee deep, looking out at the ocean, breathing in the salt air, listening to the gulls.

I feel like I’d like to jump in, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of drowning. I’m afraid of losing myself. I’m afraid of it all being too much.

I catch words in my journal and I string them together in my blog. I feel like I’ve put out an antenna to God. Hey, I’m here! I’m listening! Give me what you’ve got. Talk to me.

I feel like if I stop listening then God will stop talking.

Well, deep down I know that God won’t stop talking, but I feel like I’ll stop being able to hear.

But butterflies are more beautiful when they are flying. And the truth that can be spoken isn’t the real truth. Truth can’t be pinned down, but you can point towards it.

I know my words aren’t everything, and that not many people read them. I know that I understand things more when I write. I’ve had a few people tell me that they understand things better when they read what I’ve written.

So I keep writing. I’m trying to find a better balance with my notebook though – to not be so obsessive about writing every thought down. Patience and faith are part of it I think.

Thankfulness or Blessing – what comes first?

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What comes first, the thankfulness or the blessing? We give thanks for our food before we eat it. It is sitting right in front of us. But we normally give thanks for our blessings after we receive them, if we remember to give thanks at all. Often we are so caught up in the fact that we finally have what we want that we forget to be thankful.

But what if we are thankful before we get what we want? What if we pray our prayer of thankfulness even before we can see what we are going to get? What if we are thankful even before we know what we are going to get?

Jesus tells us to pray as if we already have received. In Mark 11:22-24 “22 Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God. 23 I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, all the things you pray and ask for—believe that you have received them, and you will have them.” (HCSB)

Then you may think, but I don’t have that much strength in my prayer. I can’t pray that well. I have doubt. It is hard to believe. In Matthew 17: 20 we learn from Jesus that not much faith is required. “For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (HCSB) Just pray for it, and know that God will do the rest. A tiny bit of faith is a lot in God’s hands.

Does God need us to pray before we get our blessing because it is already on the way? Might it be that we need to be prepared to receive our blessing?

I have noticed that when I pray before anything, I’m the one to change first. I start looking for God. I start looking to see where God is going to pop up and surprise me. I pray before helping patrons at work. I pray before leaving my house. I pray before meeting with friends. I am trying to be in a constant state of prayer. I’m not very good at it, but I’m trying.

I remember when I used to smoke pot. I’d smoke, and I’d wait to see what happened. Food would taste better. I could hear parts of an album that I’d never noticed before. In reality, all of that was already there. I just put myself in a position where I was looking for it. I expected to experience life in a different way. I think prayer is the same way. I think prayer opens us up to receiving God. We open the door and God steps in.

I think that God was going to send us that blessing anyway, but we just wouldn’t have noticed it. How often do we take things for granted? How often do we think that what we have is just OK and not that much?

I heard once that praying before meals proves that we are not animals. One goal in Judaism is to be a mensch, a real person. We need to become human, to win over our animal nature. The goal of true alchemy is to transform the lead of our animal nature into the gold of our human nature.

Praying makes us human. Praying makes us better.

So what should we pray for? A new car? Extra money to pay off our mortgage? The get-rich-quick pastors of the megachurches would tell you that. Their message is the “prosperity gospel”. The fact that it has to have an extra word to describe it should be a clue that it isn’t the Gospel of Jesus.

Pray for big stuff. Pray for things not for yourself. God is big. God wants to hear from you. That is part of why God made you.

Pray for nuclear disarmament. Pray for peace and understanding among the nations. Pray for an end to war and greed. Pray for people to wake up to their true nature. Pray for us all to take care of ourselves and our planet.

Don’t be hesitant. Pray hard. Pray without ceasing. Pray as if we already have it. And remember that God always answers prayers. Sometimes it isn’t what we want it to be – but it is always what is needed. Pray for the grace to be able to accept God’s answer. But most importantly, pray.

Be persistent.

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There are two stories in the Gospels that I like that I keep mixing up. I’m going to try to get a grasp on them here and maybe figure out why I like them so much. Most of the translations are from the NRSV translation, but I may have gotten those mixed up too. I have used several different websites to copy and paste these verses from and they have different defaults.

One is about the faith of a Gentile woman whose daughter was possessed by a demon. Let’s look at Matthew 15.

“21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”

There is another telling in the Gospel according to Mark, in Mark 7:24-30. In Mark’s telling the woman is a Syrophoenician, not a Canaanite, but the point is the same. The details don’t matter, the story does, and the story is the same in both. In both, the woman is a Gentile. In both, her daughter is possessed by a demon. In both, Jesus was a little ticked off that she would presume to ask him to heal her daughter. He dismisses the woman twice, finally referring to her as a dog. He thinks that he is just there to bring healing to the Jews. He can’t be bothered with someone who isn’t Jewish. But then, she is persistent. She doesn’t turn away from his first rebuff. She doesn’t stop when he calls her a dog, which is a pretty low insult.

Then there is this story. It is a woman who suffered from an “issue of blood” as some of the accounts translate it. This had gone on for 12 years. She was unclean in the most basic way in Jewish life. Menstrual blood was seen as a sign of defilement. Not only was the woman unclean, but anything she sat on was unclean. Anyone who sat on something she had sat on was then, themselves, unclean. Women who were on their periods were treated like lepers. For twelve years she was ostracized because of this malady.

Let’s look at Mark 5:25-34. “25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” 29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

This story also appears in Matthew 9:20-22 and Luke 8:43-47, with little change. I like this version because it points out that she had spent all her money and “endured much “ from many doctors and they hadn’t helped, and in fact she had gotten worse. This makes her plight even more sad.

In both, he was surprised at the faith of the women. In both, he tells them that their faith has made them well. He doesn’t say that they were healed because of his power – it was their faith in his power, which comes from God.

They have other things in common. They were persistent. They were active in their faith. They didn’t wait for healing to come to them, they went to it.

Somehow when I tell the story, it is a Canaanite woman who suffers from an issue of blood. So I’ve mixed up the stories. Somehow I never cross the story the other way – it never is a story about a sneaky woman who is trying to steal power to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Demon possession? Who is to say that wasn’t the first century explanation for mental illness? But I digress.

I also like the fact that the person who is sick in the first story isn’t the one who is asking for help. It is the woman’s daughter. It is the woman herself who is asking. Her prayer is known as an intercessory prayer. Her faith in Jesus brought healing to her daughter, who was unable or unwilling to ask for help.

How many people do you know who are like that? They think they are beyond help? They think that they are not worthy of healing? They think they deserve their pain?

This now reminds me of the story of Jesus and the Centurion. This is in Luke 7:1-8.
“After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2 A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. 3 When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. 4 When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, 5 for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” 6 And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; 7 therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” 9 When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10 When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.”

Here’s another story where Jesus was surprised by a Gentile’s faith. The Centurion served the Romans – the enemies of the Jews. This one had done good things for the Jews, so he was allowed by the disciples to get close to Jesus.

Now I’m reminded of Matthew 7:7.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (NIV)

Here’s another translation, and I find it significant that in translating it as “keep on asking…” it refers again to persistence.

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (NLT)

Here’s another one that tells us to be persistent.

Luke 18:1-8
18 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’”[b] 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Don’t give up. Keep asking. Keep praying. Even if you don’t think you are being heard. Even if you aren’t sure. Even if the prayer isn’t for you. Keep on praying. Know that you will be heard. It will all work out in God’s time. Remember, it is “thy will be done” not “my will be done.”

Elevator

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Today I’m going to meet Anne Lamott. She is signing her new book at the main branch of my library system. She is the author of “Traveling Mercies,” “Grace, Eventually,” and “Plan B.” All of these contain her thoughts on faith. She and Sara Miles are two of my favorite Christian authors. They both get into the trenches of faith and don’t pull any punches about how hard it is to live this life.

So many Christian authors talk about how wonderful their life got when they became Christian. They write that everything got better and easier. They live in really nice houses and drive really big cars. They write about the huge churches they started and how their congregation is growing every week.

This doesn’t synch up with what I’ve experienced.

I do not know what floor they got off on when they got on the elevator of Christianity. They must have gotten off on the floor that was marked “fancy stuff” and “easy street.” When I got on the elevator, I got off on the “broken people” floor. I got off on the “time for hard work” floor.

So many authors I’ve read have left me feeling like I didn’t do it right. That maybe I didn’t press the button hard enough. Maybe my prayers weren’t heard because I wasn’t trying correctly. Maybe my connection is faulty.

I feel like Anne Lamott and Sara Miles are my sisters in the trenches. They talk openly about how hard it is to be a Christian. Things break. New things don’t just start appearing. People are mean. Sometimes those people are the ones you go to church with. From reading Anne and Sara’s work, they’ve let me know I’m not alone in my experience. They’ve let me know it is OK for me to write about it too. They’ve affirmed me, and given me permission.

I feel that once you become a Christian, everything gets harder. You are aware of your responsibility. You realize how much you have not done well and it is time to make amends. It is like getting sober. In AA, part of the twelve steps is making amends to those people you wronged when you were drunk. Now you are aware of all the damage you’ve done, and now you have to try to fix it. There is no twelve step program in Christianity, or at least, not openly. But the same rules apply. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the same thing. Part of showing love is making amends. You have to go rebuild that bridge if possible.

Anne and Sara both tell about how hard it is to go slogging into that muddy, raging river and digging up those stones to try to rebuild the bridge. They talk about how the person on the other side yells at you because they like the broken bridge just like it is, thank you very much. That person hasn’t been through the same experience you have, so he doesn’t want the bridge rebuilt.

But what about those who have decided to follow Jesus? Is it any easier to live and work with them? No. Not at all. You’d think we’d all be on the same team, working from the same playbook. You know, same Lord, same Bible. You’d be wrong, sadly. There are many times where I wonder what they are thinking when they say and do crazy things.

I just read about a lady who objects to the term “Deviled eggs” and they call them “Jesus eggs” in her house. It is this kind of stuff that I’m talking about. Then there are people who slaughter elephants to then take the ivory from their tusks and carve them into statues of Jesus. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrified I was when I read that story in National Geographic. It was a blog post from a local Rabbi that gave words to my feeling. Rabbi Rami Shapiro said “True religions teach you to see the Lord in the elephant, as the elephant, and not collude in the murder of the elephant to honor your Lord. Jesus died for your sins, not to excuse them.”

I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think that Christianity has gotten a bad reputation, and it is often due to really whacked-out Christians. I feel the need to apologize for all of Christianity. We have sinned against God and our neighbors by not showing love. We have gotten sucked into the materialism. We have gotten greedy. We have gotten tripped up by the legalistic nature of religion. We’ve forgotten that Jesus came to fulfill the law – but by getting to the heart of it. Rather than fulfilling the letter of the law, he fulfilled the spirit of it. He worked on the Sabbath to heal a crippled man. So he broke one rule, but honored the real rule.

We humans often lack Jesus’ keen insight into what we are supposed to do. This is an understatement. The bad part is that there are a lot of sins that we Christians do, and we do them in the name of God. We are hostile to people who aren’t Christian. We are hostile to people who are Christian but aren’t members of our denomination. We are hostile to people who are in our denomination but don’t share our views. We argue over interpretations of the Bible – should we or shouldn’t we do this? We argue over whether we should have stained glass. We argue over whether women should be ministers. We argue over how old the Earth is. We argue over who can receive Communion.

We forget that everything that Jesus did was to teach us to love each other. To be servants.

Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do. Please send your Holy Spirit to us so that we can truly hear Your Word and be Your Body on this Earth. Give us the knowledge and strength to mend the divisions between us. Give us patient hearts to be loving and kind to everyone, seeing everyone as Your child. I ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus.

You keep using that word “Christian”. I do not think it means what you think it means.

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I didn’t want to be Christian. Who would? Everybody that I saw who said they were Christian were jerks. They are rude, self-centered, self-assured. Sometimes they seem like zombies – they just do what they are told by their pastor. They all dress the same and talk the same. They get all twirly-eyed when they talk about their “Savior and Lord”. And worst of all – they read “safe” books and listen to “family-friendly” music.

Even now that I am a Christian, it is kind of embarrassing to admit that I am a follower of Jesus, because there are so many other people who wear the same badge who are flat out rude or crazy. Why would I want to be associated with them?

I don’t, really. I want to follow Jesus. I don’t follow the followers. When I read the New Testament, I’m careful to make sure who said what. The apostle Paul said a lot of really amazing things that help build up the early church, but he also said some pretty judgmental things about anybody who wasn’t a straight male. According to his letters, if you were female, you’d better be quiet in church and subservient to your husband. If you were gay, well, forget it. Pretty much, he excluded anybody who wasn’t him – and that seems to be the trend today. “If you don’t do things my way, you are doing it wrong”, seems to be the way a lot of Christians think.

But Jesus didn’t say anything like that. Jesus said a whole lot about loving (he was for it) and a whole lot about judging (he was against it).

Before I became a Christian, I’d read a lot of books about other faiths. I’d learned a lot about Buddhism, and Sikhism, and Taoism. If it was a world religion, I was there. But then I thought that I was not being fair. If I’m going to give equal time to all these other ways of understanding The Big Questions, then I need to see who this Jesus guy is and what he says.

I decided to give the Episcopal Church a try. My parents had raised me as an Episcopalian but they quit going when I was very young. The service was familiar, if a little confusing. Turns out I’d picked up the service bulletin for the week before in my desire to get there early and settled in. So I had the wrong readings, and the hymns were off, but the rest of the service was straight from the Book of Common Prayer and that was familiar enough. After the service I cornered a priest with this statement – “Buddha is awesome, Gandhi is with the program, and Lao-Tsu also has it figured out.” This was a make-it-or-break-it moment right here. I knew I’d found truth in their teachings. If he dismissed them, then I knew I was done with this foray. So he surprised me. He said “Cool!” with a huge smile. OK, now we were talking. He wasn’t part of a church that acted like it had a monopoly on the Divine.

I then decided to read the Bible. Well, let’s be honest. Very few people can wade through the entire Bible. There are a lot of “begats” that slow most folks down. And there is all that interior decorating micromanagement going on with building the first Temple. So I skipped to the Gospels.

The more I read of the Gospels, the more I wanted to quote from the movie Princess Bride to the folks who said they were Christians but didn’t act like it. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” They kept saying Jesus, but turning it into a dirty word. Their Jesus was hateful and judgmental. Their Jesus was all about getting a ticket to heaven and you were done. Their Jesus was closed-minded and thoughtless. This wasn’t the Jesus I was discovering. The Jesus I was discovering was about love, and more importantly, showing love through service to others.

What would Jesus do? I’d think he’d be totally down with the idea of having friends from all different religions. And I don’t mean having friends just so he can try to convert them. I think he’d learn how to say “thank you” in a bunch of different languages. I think he’d volunteer at a food bank. I think he’d carry around extra bottles of water so he could give them out to folks he saw. I think he’d encourage people and raise them up.

I think being a Christian is about service. It is about living the life of Jesus. It is about taking up the yoke. Sometimes people need a sandwich, not a sermon. I think “being Christian” means to be Christ in this world – to take up where he left off. Saint Theresa of Avila tells us “Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” Go forth. Be Jesus, and be the nice one. Be the one that heals and feeds and clothes.

(I have now turned off comments for this post, and updated my comment policy in my About section.)