Advent: Righteous

What's the one thing God desires above all else?

"Justice! Justice you shall pursue," writes the law-giver. In Micah 6:8: "He has shown you, O man, what is good .What does the LORD require of you, but to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

We think of justice as a social value and righteousness, so it may surprise that the Greek word used in the Christian Scriptures is the same. Translators render it according to context. Is the author talking about a virtue, or about a social value.

God makes no distinction.

Don't be duped into thinking God's desire is for us to be personally virtuous while the world around us goes to hell. Advent is about awaiting the arrival of a king who shelters the vulnerable from the mob who believes that in seeking a death sentence they are doing God's will. Advent is about waiting for a priest who asks a scorned woman for the favor of a drink but who never seeks a conference with the governor.

Advent is about waiting for a troublemaker who is going to be marked an enemy of the people and become another faceless victim of calls for law and order.

Advent is a promise that justice is coming.

"Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."

Advent: Justice

 
We think of justice as a social value and righteousness as a personal virtue, so it may surprise that the Greek word used in the Christian Scriptures is the same. Translators render it according to context.
 
Don't be duped by thinking God's desire is for us to be personally virtuous while the world around us goes to hell. Advent is about awaiting the arrival of a king whose dream is to dance with a transgirl at Homecoming and let her know that he has her back, to stand against police brutality and to defend women from sexual predators in high places.
 
Be someone who hungers and thirsts for justice for the powerless.

Advent: Time

Imeant to post this earlier, but time got away from me.

Time does that a lot, not with events too large for life, with dramatic close-ups and string orchestras that swell with violins but in tedious paperwork, numbing commutes, missed connections and a loneliness of being that slowly drains color, hope, dreams, life, all.

Time is a father who devours his own children. Time is a woman who gives birth astride above the grave. We see the sun only for an instant, and then it is gone and night falls.

Fill every second of the unforgiving minute. Make each one count so that the Angel of Death is ashamed to tell you when your time is up.

Advent: Fulfill

I think we often consider fulfillment a once-and-done sort of thing. Once a prediction is fulfilled, that's all she wrote, with nothing more to see.

But fulfillment is a many-layered thing. An employee doesn't do a job for one day and consider their obligation fulfilled. A person doesn't commit before God to love, honor and cherish their partner for a couple weeks and then wander off. Commitments, like promises, are fulfilled not in single moments but in long arcs.

How much moreso the promises of God. Christmas comes at the end of a long period, and yet the strains of that ancient longing remain. Christ's coming marked the end of injustice, but our next president is a rapist, a bigot and a convicted con man elected with the overwhelming support of white evangelicals. The Resurrection has begun, but people die by the millions every day, often of things we could prevent.

The Kingdom of God, it is said, exists in a liminal space: here and not yet. By faith, we celebrate the "here" even as we ache amid "not yet."

Advent: Promise

A promise, it may be said, is a bridge to the future. Assurances like "We'll get through this together" and "You're going to be OK" can convey us safely across some of the deepest chasms and over the most treacherous seas. The best promises aren't conditional or based on the merit of the recipient. They draw their strength from the integrity of the one who makes them.

Teaching Jesus

 I was sitting in the kitchen Wednesday when I overhead on Zoom the pastor at my wife's church tease the next week's Bible study with a question: Is it possible for someone else to teach Jesus?

As questions go, that one’s a no-brainer. I haven’t seen set foot in the church for two years, but I couldn’t help myself. I answered immediately.

“Yes.”

The proof lies in Mark 7, and in a parallel passage in Matthew 15. Mark explains that a Syrophoenician woman came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter, whom the distraught mother said was afflicted by an unclean spirit.

If you've been paying attention to the gospels so far, you probably can guess how this will play out. Jesus will rebuke the spirit. He'll embrace the girl in a hug and breathe on her. He might be dramatic, or he might be matter-of-fact, but this story is going to end with the girl better and her mother relieved and grateful. One thing that will not happen, is Jesus will not say no.

Except no is exactly what Jesus  does say. In fact, he doesn't just give the poor woman a paper cut; he pours lemon juice on it and delivers a biting insult.

"It is not right to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs."

This is the sort of thing that can sink a political campaign. Over the years I've heard lots of attempts at damage control by God's PR team. None of them has been especially convincing.

"Dogs are beloved pets," goes one. "Jesus was basically calling this woman a member of the family."

Except the gospel comes from a culture without $70 bags of Purina dog food for small breeds. Jesus was not comparing the Syrophoenician woman to a toy poodle named Fifi. Dogs in ancient Galilee were unclean animals that inhabited the city dump. They known for their viciousness. not their adorable penchant for sitting on your lap.

"Jesus was testing the woman's faith."

By calling her a dog? We've already seen Jesus heal lepers and blind people without such tests. Luke reports that a woman simply touched the hem of his robe and was healed with no effort on his part.

Here's the simple explanation, in Jesus' own words: "I was only sent for the lost sheep of Israel." He wasn't going to provide the healing because the woman and her daughter weren't Jewish.

But this woman was determined. Her daughter needed help,, and she was confident Jesus was the one to help. Don't give your children's bread to the dogs? OK, then. She had a quick wit and a  ready response.

"Dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."

One imagines Jesus stopping, stunned. Of course she was right. The Bible was filled with stories of favored Gentiles. Ruth the Moabitess, a woman from a people so reviled that the book of Genesis recounted a crude ethnic joke about their origins. Rahab of Jericho, who hid Israelite spies scouting out the land. Naaman the Aramean. whom Elisha the prophet had healed of  leprosy.

Blown away by the response, Jesus turned and fed the dog a whole loaf of bread, straight from the oven.

“For such a reply, you may go," he said. "The spirit  has left your daughter.”

It's a stunning moment, mostly because it goes against our notions of Jesus as a perfectly enlightened bodhisattva, but the gospels note that Jesus' whole life was an odyssey of learning. It began with his birth , when he had to learn to latch on to his mother's breast in order to eat. From there he had to learn to crawl and then to walk, and somewhere along the line he picked up Aramaic, along with Hebrew, Greek and probably some Latin. The evangelist Luke notes that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, while John reports that he could write as well. Someone had to teach him these skills, along with the trade he learned at Joseph's knee.

This should be no surprise to us. The gospels describe Jesus as one with the Father, and to look at God in the Hebrew Bible is to see a God who is eager to try new things, to see what happens.

God plays in the dirt and sculpts a man. Then he breathes life into this new creature and names him Adan, (There's a first time for everything.)

He brings the animals by. What's Adam going name them? ("Well, this one is a frog. I'm calling this thing a badger. This one is an oliphaunt, and this useless lump over here is called Kevin.")

Any suitable companions to be found? ("Well, the capybara is kind of funny, the way it eats watermelon and soaks in the hot tub; and it's really cute the way the hamster stuffs its cheeks just before we say grace. But the bananaquit seems kind of vicious, and none of them is a big conversationalist...")

The adventure plays out over the years. "Come, let us make bricks," man says, and God drops in for a closer look. "Well, what have we here?' he asks, and then he finds out.

God learns.

Sometimes what we teach him isn't what he wanted to know. "You're doing things that never even occurred to me!"

Sometimes God is impressed by our ability to change, and a great city (and its cattle) are spared judgment.

Sometimes it even seems people manage to teach God about himself.

"Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right?" Abraham asks. And God blinks, and he changes his mind.

God, it appears, is always willing to learn about showing mercy. The real question is whether we have anything to teach him.

This coat I wear

I don't remember when I first got this coat. It must have been when I was very young, because I've had it for almost as long as I can remember. I've no idea how someone else might have enjoyed it; for my part, I have found it to be perfectly suitable for long and meandering walks.

It didn't mean much to me for the longest time. I wore it like I was expected to, but it wasn't until I was almost 17 that I really began to appreciate what having a coat like this means, and what it could mean for me personally.

For a while I ran with a crowd that wore coats like it, but they were a fairly unpleasant group: a little snobbish, very cliquish and carrying a huge chip on their collective shoulder. I took the coat off for a while, but discovered on the eve of college that it was worth more than I had realized. Over the next four years, I patched it up, made alterations and tried to get it to fit but it never did.

I realized eventually how bad a job I had done with it, and I took it to a tailor. He didn't say anything about the alterations I'd made to it, but he took them out and mended the coat properly so that it fit comfortably for the first time that I could remember.

Some years ago, I took a bad spill in the coat, right down the rocky side of a hill, all the way to the bottom. The coat was shredded on the way. The buttons came off, I lost one of the sleeves, and a few pockets ripped open. A few people thought I'd lost it for good.

Nothing doing. Some people don't like the way it looks, or think that their coats are better than mine, which is fine. I've found that the raggedy look suits me. It's certainly not too stiff and uncomfortable, and if I'm cold sometimes, at least I know why.

The coat's got me through a lot. All those tears, those holes, those stains and those missing pieces remind me of places I've been, experiences I've had, and even things that I didn't need after all. I've worn this coat for years, and I expect I'll wear it for many more.

See you on the trails.

Holy Week and Broken Community

 I heard today from my wife that the pastor of her church plans to invite me back to the church this Good Friday and Easter. Faith is best observed, best celebrated in community.

I get that. I agree with that view. Heck, I endorse it.

But please tell that to the people who broke the community, not to the people who kept getting hurt on the jagged edges where they broke it.

I was a part of Point Community Church for 16 years. For years I attended faithfully, pitched in when asked, and expressed an interest in becoming an elder, in leading a Bible study community group, in starting a drama ministry, in reaching out to the communities our church served. It wasn't I who turned a cold shoulder to those offers of time and talent.

When the church's lead and founding pastor left, I expressed an interest in joining the search effort and offered to contribute professional experience and knowledge to the search. I wasn't the one to ignore the offer without a word of explanation. That was the elders.

When I pointed out that the silence was rude, I wasn't the one who apologized for my feelings instead of the offensive behavior. That was Howie.

When I decided I was done with being ignored but wanted to follow the example of Christ in seeking a reconciliation by expressing the wrong done and inviting the elders into a dialogue so bridges could be repaired and they could avoid the same mistakes going forward, I wasn't the one to send a brush-off that showed zero interest in discussion, in reconciliation or mending what had been broken.

That was the elders again, in a one-line email sent and signed by Steve D.

Holy Week is here. It's a time of forgiveness, for reconciliation. 

You want forgiveness? To the extent it can be given without being sought and asked for, it's yours. Giving sixteen years to a church only to get ignored cuts deep. and wounds don't heal by leaving the knife in them. But I forgive you. I owe my soul that much.

But reconciliation? Mending the community? Talk to the people who tore it apart, not the one who'd had enough of it.

I didn't ignore people when they had ideas or offered to help with ministries where they had experience, knowledge and enthusiasm.

Lent: Celebrate

 A few weeks ago at a therapy workshop intensive I met Ron. Ron is about 25 years my senior, and he revealed that his wife is receiving chemotherapy in her fight against cancer. He discovered that I'm a cancer survivor, he asked me for tips on dealing with it.

"Beer," I said. "Lots of it." He laughed appreciatively. and I said more truthfully that I'd found it helpful to keep a sense of humor, even if it's a dark sort of gallows humor that other people don't get. He acknowledged the legitimacy of humor in rough times, we talked about his wife and how they've both been coping. and then break ended and we started talking more about psychodrama.

Two days later we explored Ron's situation in a psychodrama act, and I understood  how badly I'd failed him with my trite answer.

"I realized during the play that I misunderstood you," I said. "You weren't asking me how to deal with cancer. You were asking me how to deal with grief and loss. the answer is, you lean into it."

The fact is we're all mortal, but the sad truth is that we spend most of our life in denial. Coming face to face with death, whether it's by finding an unexpected lump during a mammogram, a near-miss, or a devastating injury or loss, is something that teaches us to number our days correctly.

You no longer put off that trip until next year. You go this weekend.

You stop waiting for a special occasion. Today is special.

You stop taking people granted. You say "I love you" every chance you can, you bury the hatchet and make peace before resentment sets in. You savor bedtime stories, phone calls and sunsets because they're fleeting and won't come back around for a second try.

You stop trying for the golden ring and you decide just to enjoy the carousel while it lasts. You live each day like it's your last because you never know. It just might.

It's Lent, and you are mortal.

Celebrate.

Lent: Spoken

I I wonder what it was like when God spoke to his people in the ancient times.

Was it like you see in revival services, when the preacher has the crowd so whipped up that you can see what is coming, coming a mile away? Amid the whooping and hollering there falls a sudden stillness as people gasp for breath like a goldfish at the top of the bowl. Eyes unprepared for the sight of glory roll back in people's heads. Men and women fall to the floor in a heavenly swoon as they are brushed with the wings of angels. Now there comes a loud cry like a woman giving birth, and in the silence that follows, a voice speaks.

"Hear, O hear, you rebellious and stiff-necked people, the word of the Lord."

Is that what it is like? Or is it more like the hushed and measured tones of a parent speaking to an exasperating child? "I am your mother," the voice says, "and I need you to listen to me."

It is spoken. 

When the Word of the Lord arrives, that's how it comes: directly from the lips and straight to the ears. The word is conceived, the word is spoken, and the word is heard. Listen, or you may miss it and have nothing left but the recollection of what others think they heard.

"Hear the Word of the Lord," the prophet begins, and that's our cue. Creation is not set on runes that God has carved  into the side of a mountain; it is brought into existence by the power of a word that is spoken. 

Rarely does Scripture contain the phrase "Write this down, O Son of Man," and when it does the words are set down for future generations to study. More typically the decision to write is taken at the initiative of the prophet, and surely even though the writing conveys some of the glory, think what it must be like actually to hear the words themselves.

"Let there be light." The words are spoken, and light separates from darkness; and there is evening, and there is morning, the first day.

"My spirit shall not contend with man forever, his days shall be 120 years." The words are spoken, and 120 years later, right on schedule, it starts to rain. Terror builds in the cities of the world as the rivers leave their banks, but the rains just keep coming.

"The spirit of the Lord is upon to me, to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 

The word is spoken.

The world begins to change.

Lent: Light

 When we think of light, we like to go big.

We think of the sun breaking over the mountains, painting their peaks with bright strokes of flaming orange and fiery red. We picture a blanket of snow at high noon on a cloudless day, when it's so bright that it hurts to open your eyes. Or maybe we imagine the big one, as God speaks into the void, and the universe explodes into existence as he speaks four simple words.

"Let there be light."

But sometimes the most important light isn't dramatic, but understated. It's not that big, overbearing moon that children treasure as they steal sweet minutes of extra reading time under the covers. It's the cheap flashlight with Duracell batteries. Sneak out to the beach late at night in Archaie, and it's not streetlights that show you the way home, but the twinkle-twinkle of little stars. And for hundreds of years European sailors navigated the Atlantic by the light of Venus, a candle so dimmed by the day that most modern sailors can't find it.

Even the tiniest light puts shadows to flight.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it."

Ash Wednesday: Live it up

 I'm told Ash Wednesday is a somber occasion, marked by meditation on one's mortality. For centuries it's been the bottle we break to ceremoniously launch the Lenten vessel into penitent waters.

Fast, we're told. Give something up. This is a serious time, not a serious for frivolity. Godliness is marked by how grim your face is.

Bollocks, says Scripture. Christ is near, Joy manifests itself in laughter, not in pained expressions. Holiness is measured by caring for others, not by mortifying yourself.

(And if by chance you do mortify yourself, be sure to clean up properly afterward. Remember what mom always said about wearing clean underwear when you go out.)

As the preacher says, "If a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity."

Eat, drink. Have sex. (It is Valentines Day.) Be merry. These are a gift of God, so enjoy them while you can.

But know the timer is running down.

Pride month asks us to take sides

I had this thing I used to do with teams of short-termers when they came to Haiti, called a lifeline.

I'd hand them a length of string and encourage them to tell their story as they wrapped the string around their hand. Tell the story that you want to tell, and tell it at your own pace. 

I brought the string out in 2010 when we brought our first team to Haiti from The Point, and at our first set of evening devotions, Jonathan Zila shared how he had come to faith. When it was her turn, Robin Nussbaumer told us about her childhood and some of her formative experiences.

And then one night it was Caroline's turn.

Caroline wasn't from The Point. In fact, they weren't even from New Jersey. They lived in Atlanta. Caroline had known me for about 10 years by this point, and after Jon and I had agreed the trip was strictly for members of The Point, and no one else would be invited, I'd called Caroline immediately to ask if they wanted to come with us. (Spoiler: They did.)

The team wouldn't have been complete without Caroline, but that night I knew how deeply out of place Caroline felt. They took the string, they held it, and they stared at it without saying anything.

"I can't," they finally said.

"You don't have to," I told them. "There's freedom here."

Caroline did share, later. I knew their secret, and I'd marveled the past several days as I'd watched them play the pronoun game, never referring to their ex by name or as "she," but always as "my ex" or "my significant other," sometimes coming close to the edge but always staying on the safe side of the precipice and never daring to say nor even daring to hint at the truth: "I am gay."

And when Caroline did share, it was safe, as I had been confident it would be. But they also shared something I have never forgotten: "I've always found more acceptance among the gay community for being a Christian than I have among Christians for being gay."

The words should shame us, because they are true, but they shouldn't be.

It's Pride Month, a time when gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgender and other queer-identifying folk celebrate their presence and survival in a society that keeps them on the margin. Every advancement in LGBTQ rights since Stonewall has been met with howls of outrage from conservative and religious leaders who want the right to discriminate.

Who don't want to recognize the emotional need to be loved and to express affection with a life partner.

Who think it's better for children to grow up without a family than to have two parents of the same sex.

Who think that "Mrs. Doubtfire," Monty Python, "La Cage aux Folles" and the plays of William Shakespeare pose a graver threat to children than a society awash with unregulated AR-15s.

It honestly disturbs me that so much of this fear, this hatred and this agitation is coming from the church. Look at the gospels and you'll see in Jesus a man who embraces the outcast, no matter who they are or what they've done.

"If he knew what sort of woman she is ..." his critics think.

Funny thing is, Jesus did know. He just didn't care. His heart belonged to the people whom religious folk were too good for. They poured expensive perfume on him, they washed his feet with their tears and then dried his feet with their hair. Jesus took it all in stride, and he got a reputation for eating and drinking with sinners.

That's what holiness does. It doesn't push people away. It doesn't tell people they're not good enough. Instead it pulls out a seat next to the campfire, tosses on another log and welcomes the newcomer to a meal and conversation, and it invites them to pitch a tent at the campsite.

And when someone makes a scene about the visitor's presence, it's not the visitor whom holiness encourages to find another place to camp.

In the past 52 years I've got to know a number of people in the LGBTQ community besides Caroline. I've seen them driven to the edge by family members, former friends and community leaders who justify mistreatment by moaning and howling like an open grave about choices, mental illness, protecting the children and a particularly toxic form of love that I never want anything to do with again.

Through it all they've taught me about resilience and forgiveness; the unexpected seas that friendship will sail through, and the islands of wonder one can visit along the journey; a long form of patience , and the integrity that draws the line that says, enough. I will take no more of this shit today, and tomorrow doesn't look good either. 

It's Pride Month. They're here, they're queer. They will not disappear.

Jesus is standing with them. Will you?

Getting the message right for Easter

 So many churches are going to preach the wrong message today at their Easter services.

They're going to talk about the gift of forgiveness, as though we're all crushed beneath the weight of overwhelming guilt. If that's you, that message is true and it's worth listening to. More power to you as you seek it.

But most of us are looking for something different.

We want people to stop shooting children.

We want people to stop telling lies about drag queens, about the transgender and about our gay friends. They're not a danger, and we know it.

We want everyone to have a seat at the table with equal say in the conversation. We want their stories heard and not hushed up because it makes the powerful uncomfortable to hear them.

We want debt wiped away, and we want inequity balanced out.

We want justice, not law and order.

We don't want to die.

This is the promise Jesus left his church with. He announced it  when he read from the scroll of Isaiah that shabbat service in Nazareth, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” 

It's a promise Jesus proclaimed with every healing he performed. He taught it in every line of the Beatitudes, and pushed it every time he reminded the wealthy to give to the poor. He wove it like a golden thread through his parables.

Jesus never said "wait until you go to heaven, and it'll work out then." His message was always "The kingdom of God has arrived, it is in your midst." It was this life Jesus focused on, not the next.

Empire exists by order. Jesus promises to pull down empire, to disrupt order and to promote justice. Jesus is a threat to those in power because they like to claim that God is on their side, and the way of Christ reminds them that he is not.

So they killed him.

And as a sign, God raised him from the dead.

Lent: Test

When I read that today's prompt was "test," my first thought was of school, and the grades I would get on Fridays in high school geometry when Miss Loughlin assessed how well we understood the week's material.

But we're called to test lots of things that have nothing to do with school. We test ideas to see if they're good or bad by trying them out  We can test ourselves, to see how we measure up to our own expectations and the demands others place on us. And of course we can test others, to measure them and their value. 

It always comes down to success or failure, though, doesn't it? The A you earn is worth its weight in gold, while the F is scarlet and hangs around your neck like an albatross.

It's not supposed to be like that. 

Grades, and the tests that generate them, don't reveal your worth. They measure other things. How well  you understood the material. (Looks like you need to review the properties of a rhombus.) How well the teacher taught you. (Maybe interpretive dance wasn't the right medium.) How well-suited the test was for you. (Maybe asking a turtle to climb a tree wasn't a fair assessment of its ability to hide from birds.)

Those are the measurements we're supposed to look at, not to see if we're any good, but to discover the areas where we can shine and what we have to offer.

That's the longest test there is, and it's the only one worth taking.

Lent: Wilderness

There's not much wilderness out my front door these days.

It was a different story four hundred years ago when the first waves of white settlers started arriving on these vaunted shores. In those days the Midatlantic region and the Northeast were covered in a forest, and settlers claim there were flocks of birds overhead so vast that it could take days for them to pass.

To visitors from Europe, where hills, valleys and moors had long been denuded of their ancient forests, it seemed like a goldmine. There were woods to be felled, land to be plowed, animals to be trapped for pelt or meat, and plenty more.

Not so much these days.

I've got a red oak growing on my property, and there are squirrels that run around the yard; but the birds I can hear at any time can be counted with one hand, not two. You can smell out a skunk at night sometimes, and hear the coyotes yipping in a nearby park. Once I saw a fox trit-trotting up the street like nobody's business, but the wildest this city gets is at the nightclub downtown on weekends.

Paradise has been torn to pieces, and we were the wolves that did it.

That's an idealized view of the wilderness as Eden. There's another, older view, that views the wilderness with caution if not outright fear. In the old days, people didn't go into the forest for a weekend of camping, it was something they avoided. If you had to go in, you went in quietly, to avoid being noticed, or you went in with a small army, to be ready.

The wilderness was a hostile place, without the creature comforts of home, like food, roads, cisterns, city walls and gates that closed at night. It was a liminal place filled with fairies, lawless humans, and wild beasts. The ancients believed it was filled with pagan gods, and as late as the 17th century the Puritans told stories about the Scratchman waiting in the forest outside town, willing to make deals with anyone who'd sign their name in the book he kept.

So take your pick. We tore down Paradise and in its place built a new wilderness of pavement and steel, and filled that wild place with monsters of our own creation; or we pushed the wilderness back, hedged it in and tamed it.

Either way, something else is true. Neglect a farm, a shopping mall or an entire city for long enough, and the wilderness creeps back in. Flowers grow in the cracks of a parking lot, then brush springs up in odd places. WIthin twenty years trees have appeared and ten years after that, the forest is back in business.

No matter how you look it, the wilderness returns. 

Lent: Consume

I was into stories about Thor long before Chris Hemsworth picked up the hammer and started wearing a cape for Marvel Studios.

The stories I knew were written in the 13th century by a man named Snorri Sturluson. In one story, Thor takes Loki on a trip to Jotunheim and Loki boasts that he can eat faster than anyone. He's soon put to the test: a wooden platter is laden with meat, and as Loki starts eating at one end, his opponent begins at the other.

They meet in the middle, but Loki loses because all he ate was the meat. His opponent ate meat, bone and platter alike, leaving nothing. It was all consumed.

Consumed.

There's something so final, so total about that word. A consuming desire is one that devours you, overthrowing wit, wisdom and any semblance of self-restraint. It brooks no distraction, permits no other recourse. It's as relentless as fire itself, and ultimately as destructive.

Years ago in church we sang a tune by Hillsong, "Inside Out," that expresses the longing that drives worship: "In my heart and my soul, Lord, I give you control. Consume me from the inside out." One can almost see the worshiper drawing closer to the Eternal Flame, until they are lit from within, and holy fire consumes them beginning in their chest and spreading outward until nothing is left but embers that soon are gone themselves.

In the end we're all consumed by something, but be comforted. The experience is only as glorious or as terrible as the consuming fire that we choose to be caught in.

Mardis Gras

Today is the last day before the 40 days of Lent.

Mardi Gras caps off a weeklong celebration known as Carnival. It's a period of revelry known for music, partying and alcohol that flows like water. Amid all the hoopla and pageantry of the floats in New Orleans it can be easy to forget that Mardi Gras in its roots is a religious celebration tied into Ash Wednesday tomorrow.

The cynic might look at the Mardi Gras celebration as an attempt by the faithful to squeeze in as much last-minute fun and debauchery as possible. After this, it's off to the confessional and time to put on an appropriately penitent show to satisfy the sad-sack priests during Lent.

This misses the point. While God surely does want us to keep ourselves free of wrongdoing, fun and pleasure were God's idea. It was God who showed humanity how to make wine and rum and their cousins. It was God who gave us music and friends. It was God who invented sex and made having it his first commandment.

People might overdo it getting drunk on Bourbon Street, but Mardi Gras falls into a grand tradition of festivals rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Celebrations of spring. Celebrations of fall. New Years celebrations. Private parties. National parties. "They tried to kill us, but we're still here and they're not" parties.

There are common threads running through all of them. Eat. Drink. Let your hair down. Jesus' first miracle involved giving people at a wedding better wine than anything they'd had so far. There's even an entire book of the Bible about the joys of sex.

Enjoy yourself, God tells us. Live a little.

Lent begins Wednesday. It's a 40-day period that leads up to the events of Good Friday, when Christians of all stripes traditionally mark the Crucifixion. It's a liturgical marker of the time between when first Jesus and then his disciples realized that things were not going to go the way they had first hoped, and when things got as absolutely bad as they possibly could.

Carnival is a time for wine and celebration, a season for living large and loving life for all that it gives us. Mardi Gras marks the end of that season.

Tonight is the night we celebrate. It is the last bottle, the last cup, the last drink we will have before we find that there are ashes in our wine.

The Feast of Sunday

 Today is Sunday.

In church we call this the Lord’s Day and celebrate it as the Christian sabbath. It’s meant to be holy, a sanctuary carved into time itself, a time when the most wretched of us can walk into the Presence and be welcomed not just by the Creator but by others as well.

The medieval church had more days set aside for fasting and penance than you could shake a stick at, but never Sunday. Sunday is always a feast day.

Sometimes the feast is hard.The liturgy may be clear of sour faces and there’s no vinegar scheduled for your corn flakes, but the liturgy doesn’t always match the weather. The sun will shine when it will shine, and dark clouds will block it out when a cold wind blows them in. It may be a feast day, but that doesn’t put food on the table or wine in your glass. The fiddlers may play but that doesn’t mean you want to dance.

Sometimes when you want sun, it just keeps raining. The night ends but instead of dawn, dusk comes again until the only light left is the last failing ember of a candle that has burned itself away. Joy becomes the friend who moved away with no forwarding address, who left no number to call. Holding onto her feels an impossible task.

There are times you feel so fundamentally alone that the only thing that makes sense is to yell at God and tell him off.

So go ahead and do it.

There are times life is so unjust that the only thing left is to let loose your inner Karen and complain to management that their customer service sucks.

Go ahead and complain.

It won’t make your life better. Your friends and family will still ignore you. You’ll still have lost the family home. Your goldfish will still have been eaten by the cat, and the cat will still have choked to death on the goldfish.

It will still be dark.

But you’ll have changed. You’ll have raged into the whirlwind, and while it probably won’t grant you the answer you wanted, still you’ll come away with a new appreciation for its power.

It’s Sunday. You don’t need to go anywhere. The sanctuary came to you, and it ushered you in.

Grace be with you all.

 

Copyright 2023 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Advent 2022: Rebuilding

Fort Jacques was a hillside encampment erected under the direction of Alexander Petion. Built a few miles south and uphill from Port-au-Prince, it included a storage room, a cistern, several cannons and an escape tunnel that led to nearby Fort Alexandra. Petion ordered it built after the successful Revolution of 1802 against the possible return of the French in the event Napoleon or one of his successors found the former slave colony too alluring to let it remain free.

Over the years after Petion's death, the march of time took its toll and the fort fell into disrepair. Farmers removed stones to mark boundaries. Winter chilled and summer warmed while rains pounded, and the tunnel collapsed. Cannons fell from their parapets and rolled downhill. By the mid-20th century, with this piece of Haiti's history in danger of disappearing completely, the United Nations funded a project to restore it.

By the time I visited it in 1993, it was more or less fully restored. The walls were at full height, and all the cannons that could be found had been returned. That tunnel was still collapsed, but the only major difference was the small chips of stone mixed into the mortar, a signal from UNESCO that the fort had been rebuilt. If someone hadn't told me the history, I doubt I would have been able to tell.

Things need to be rebuilt for lots of reasons. The edifice held up well, but the steady progression of days, like the march of a thousand tiny feet, slowly wore it down. The battlements met their purpose, but there were some attacks that pounded it too hard, and it came apart; or maybe an act of God shook the ground and the house, which provided shelter and sanctuary before just wasn't up to the task this time. Or -- my favorite -- someone took it apart to see how it works.

Whatever the reason -- benign neglect, acts of violence, violent acts, curiosity or something else -- it needs to rebuilt. The good news is that, having seen its weaknesses exposed, we can find a way to rebuild it, stronger.

Copyright © 2022 by David Learn. Used with permission.