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Blessed Are The Givers
Midterm elections are less than two weeks away. Although we have been hearing about them from the national media for months, the real indicator of how close they loom is the increased frequency of candidate exposure through television ads, newspaper coverage and the lawn signs dotting our streets. Our political process in the United States is unique, still relatively new, and carries with it the heritage of the marketing manifest destiny that more is always better. Inherent to electing our leadership by plastering communication systems with messages claiming to say what a candidate supports, is the reality that we are not being told what the candidates support. We all have come to expect that what we will be seeing, hearing, and eventually avoiding, is all the negatives each candidate wants us to perceive in their opponent. My own conclusion, after muting the third round of commercials between "My Name is Earl" and "The Office," is that I can tell you who is running for the senate in my state and their party affiliations. But I don't know what each person running would like to accomplish if they get the job.
Personally, whenever I have interviewed for a position, I have made it a point to answer all questions directly and honestly, and I especially don't slander other people interested in the same job in the hope that I will look better. This whole campaign process seems to defy the Biblical concept of treating other people how we would like to be treated. We tell our children not to be mean to each other, not to speak badly of other people, but we adults really seem to struggle with that. What if we considered for a moment what a political campaign of common courtesy and respect might look like? Going even one step further, what if political candidates decided to say only positive, hones things about each other and they had debates that focused on making our country a better, healthier, more hopeful nation? What would that say about us as a country?
The potential for that kind of open dialogue in a political campaign simmers with possibilities. We might witness well-thought out questions designed to welcome another's genuine concerns and ideas to improve education, the environment, tax reform and any number of issues. Whether or not the candidates agreed with each other would be a moot point because each would want to understand the other's position and how they came to their beliefs and convictions. The mutual courtesy and respect inherent in that kind of exchange couldn't help but spread the word that working together means more to all of us who live in this country than getting our own way, being right or controlling the overall process of government. My guess is that living that kind of message would translate more positively to a world that mostly sees us as a country with a need to exploit other nations for our own gain.
God's principle of abundance comes into play here, and that is in direct opposition to what we can describe in far too many places in our world today. But describing the world isn't where Jesus based his ministry. He acknowledged his surroundings - the oppression, the hardness of life, the struggle to survive. Then, he asked those around him to take a step back and view the world, not through rose-colored glasses, but through the eyes of a loving God who intends only the best for each of us. If we can learn to stand next to God and act as God would, with love and grace, we would always be able to feel the double blessing that giving imparts. We are often told it is more blessed to give than to receive. Removing that observation from Christmas gift giving, imagine instead applying that principle to daily exchanges between human beings that matter the most: conversations with our families, communications with co-workers and the simple courtesies of smiling, saying hello or holding a door for a stranger as we pass by each other on our journeys. Individually these would add up to innumerable opportunities to give strength, hope, courage, joy, peace and kindness to each other. When some of that comes back your way, it is easy to see what Jesus was trying to convey.
Jesus' lesson is about giving the way God does to us, without attachments to how we have responded in the past or how we may behave in the future. We aren't, as people of faith, to be about basing our choices and behavior on how we see other people acting and reacting, but on what God's abundant mercy, compassion and grace have already given to our lives. Simply because other people are behaving badly, whether it be a co-worker, friend, spouse or political candidate, it doesn't mean we have to respond in kind or expect that the world will never change because that's the way it is. For all those children who jumped off the bridge despite what their parents told them, more of us can walk across that same bridge and meet the people on the other side with a handshake and an appreciation for what can still be.
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Abiding Grace
While puttering at my computer last Friday night, I decided to search out an old friend whom I haven't heard from in years. Unbeknownst to me, another friend from this same era of my life was searching online for me. I believe this practice is held safe in the Biblical concept of, "Google unto others as you would have them Google unto you." Both friends had been on my mind lately, so when the latter friend's email popped onto the screen yesterday, the surprise revealed a two-fold blessing. His own life is rich, meaningful and filled with love. He had also been in touch with our mutual friend, the woman I had been searching for, and was able to share a bit about her life. My hope is to contact her in the next few days, completing a circle begun thirty years ago. I have missed them both much more than I was aware.
Our lives, as a general rule, are like that. We move through them at warp speed, doing the best we can with what we've got, only to wake up one day trying to remember who and what matters to us. Planning our lives as 20-year-olds around a university commons table is so very different than reflecting back from middle-aged moments at our kitchen tables before turning out the lights and heading to bed. Somewhere between the two points of passage lie our hopes and dreams, blended thoroughly with the circumstances, events, choices and relationships that have shaped us. Perhaps "The Way We Were" isn't only a song, but also a way to understand and accept our own history.
As I stand in the doorway of my own kitchen each evening, I am circled by three impatient cats, ready to settle in for the night, and a life that is much more than I ever imagined it would be. All the steps that have brought me to flipping the light switch and walking down the hall to my bedroom are stored somewhere in my memory. Although I have a very good memory, I don't nave a need to bring up every finite detail of every experience from day one to the present. It's all there, I have used my time well and, like a casserole with just the right mix of ingredients, it tastes better and better each day.
There is also that unifying factor known as sauce. A classic Midwestern potluck dinner will always include several dishes with noodles, hamburger and vegetables. Depending on the cook, there will be a cheese, mushroom or tomato sauce, frequently supplied by the Campbell's Soup Company, blended with the other ingredients. While wholly practical, and completely un-exotic, the soup infuses what once was merely a pile of leftovers with something warm, inviting and nourishing, usually better than we expected.
What sauce is to a good casserole, God's grace is to our lives. What can feel like years of experiences and encounters that make no sense by themselves, are all joined together by grace, the grace by which we are called to something warm, inviting and nourishing, something much more than we ever imagined.
It is grace that surrounds al of us, inspires all of us, to share our lives with one another, bringing out the best we each have to offer at the table. It is grace that stirs and refreshes our souls and helps us find ourselves in each other again.
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A Simple Act of Forgiveness
Four Amish girls were buried on a hill in Nickel Mine, Pennsylvania, this morning. Charles Carl Roberts IV, the shooter who invaded their schoolhouse, took their lives and shattered their community's private world, took his own life as well. Roberts' wife and three children live nearby. Two other acts of school violence, one in Colorado, one in Wisconsin, occurred only a few days before Roberts' rampage on his neighbors. Trying to understand what is happening in our country, and why, is a confusing struggle of faith and fear.
But the Amish community has startled our nation into subdued silence with its simple offering of forgiveness to Roberts' family and the sincere hope that they stay because they will also be offered friendship and continued support. As an article posted on AOL;s news service pointed out, "In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and other security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue."
But that's not the Amish way.
Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher who has written a book about Amish children, has said of the impact of the tragic loss of these children, "The hurt is great. But they don't balance the hurt with hate." Before Roberts' body had been removed from the scene, members of the Amish community began gathering outside the schoolhouse where the tragedy took place. It was that night that neighbors came to the Roberts family home to offer their forgiveness for what had happened that day. On the CBS Evening News, one young Amish man simply said, "We must forgive or Jesus won't forgive us."
We are not accustomed to forgiveness in our culture. We are uncomfortable with the vulnerability it implies, the righteous anger it steals from us. Most of us know The Lord's Prayer by heart - Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Forgiveness, asked for and offered, has no boundaries, no limitations, no timeline and no prerequisites. Forgiveness simply is what we must do if we expect forgiveness in return, from each other and from God. Luke's gospel also quotes Jesus as saying, "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back (Luke 6:37-38)."
It will be said of this tragedy, as history has recorded many times before about other, equally tragic circumstances, that it is impossible to forgive such horrible acts against innocent people. And yet, the Amish of Pennsylvania have already proven that blanket statement false. While their lifestyle is quite different than our own, we share a common humanity that cannot be denied, even by our own fear to consider embodying this straightforward, honest faith we have witnessed this week. For this is our faith as well, and even though we have laid claim to technological advances and material wealth unprecedented, even in our own United States, we need to step back and see where we have lost touch with its most basic tenet. Forgiveness has never been about what has been done to us, but about what we can offer now.
God's blessings,
Cory
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Relational Faith
"Computers Loom Large in Preschoolers' Lives."
This headline caught my attention as I leafed through my Sunday paper this past weekend. While my own computer and I are rather close, spending a pretty hefty portion of our days together, I hadn't really considered what an impact this staple of everyday life has had on our youngest community members. Apparently there is a considerable impact, a lasting influence we may want to redirect while we still have time.
This particular piece of technology is here to stay for a lot of good reasons. Teaching our children to respect computers as a tool, and educating them on how to work with them in productive ways, is important. But Lowell Manke, an associate professor of education at Whitenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, suggests that, " Kids ought to be digging in the ground and playing with dogs and listening to their grandparents tell stories. Computers take that time away from them." Another educator, Lucy Payne, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of St. Thomas, said, "I'm afraid if we keep pushing this technology, we're going to have a whole bunch of people who can do data entry, but nobody who can solve problems." Having managed a retail furniture store for a number of years, and struggled to train and coach many young employees in customer service problem solving, I hear these words of caution loud and clear.
My question is where does this leave us as people of faith? Do we still want to share our faith with our children? Or have we chosen a new god in technology, one to whom we are giving our children in the name of living in the modern world?
From Genesis forward the Bible communicates how God created us for community. The Lord's Prayer begins with the familiar words, "Our Father who art in heaven." Paul's letters to the early churches talk about early Christians as being brothers and sisters in Christ. Most specifically, we speak of the relationship we each have with God through Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
We also know, sooner than not, that relationships aren't always easy. Human beings aren't mass produced off of an assembly line. And while we share many similarities and we are all made up of the same basic components, we are individuals, we are unique and getting along with each other requires our understanding and acceptance of one another's humanity. If our young people's life experience is dominated by a point/click, cut/paste mentality, it is no wonder they have trouble making sense of the larger, richer worlds of feelings, communication and respect for personality quirks and differences.
It follows that understanding and living a life based in faith is likely an even more foreign concept. How do we then pass on our faith to this generation?
Basically, we have some things to think about. We carry a legacy of faith, passed down to us in trust, a heritage we want to give over to this next generation. How we do that needs to convey the truth of God's love and the integrity of the community that embodies that truth. Technology, computers especially, inform our society in ways of which we are not yet fully aware. But what we do know is that digging in the dirt teaches a child about God's planet, and keeps us grounded as well. Petting and playing with a dog evokes the blessings of joy and compassion in loving all of God's creatures. Old stories, from those who have them to tell, show us the way on our own journeys to come. We pass on our faith as we live it the way God intended, through relationships with other people. If we lose sight of that, or feel we don't have time, or think our children can get the same message reading Bible stories online, we are wrong. Reading the story of God's love and faithfulness off a computer screen is not the same as living that story among God's people now.
Computers are machines designed to make our lives easier, tools that can be applied in numerous creative and practical ways. People are designed to interact with each other, to nurture each other and simply, to love each other. We are the conduits of community and the most important way to pass on this legacy of faith.
