Keeping Lent

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” G K Chesterton

It’s barely the end of the first full week of Lent, and I’m already getting skittish around the edges of my disciplines for the season, even though I can completely see the benefits of many of them.  I don’t drink coffee (or alcohol) or eat sweets (except birthday cakes!) during Lent, and I know I am much calmer, my acid reflux is down, and I’m probably nicer to be around.  I’m not doing as well on not watching so much TV, although I have resisted the temptation to turn the set on first thing in the morning.

The two things that I appreciate the most, even though I struggle with them are these: 1) spending time in meditative prayer each morning and 2) Putting the best construction on what others do or say, particularly when it pisses me off.

Like I say, I’m struggling with them.  I feel at peace when I meditate, and I think I am more loving to those around me when I have centered myself by letting go of myself (there’s some brain research that supports that).  But it’s so hard some mornings, when all kinds of stuff is rattling around inside my mind.  Tasks, deadlines, problems at work, and just a whole lot of distractions.  I also, to be honest, am afraid at times of what might happen to me if I let me go.  I understand theoretically, and even deeper in my spirit that the way to peace involves this, but I have to turn off not only the voices saying, “do this...get that done…watch out for him”, but also the deep voice of the lie that says “you are all there is, and you better protect yourself no matter what.”

I’d love to hear from folks what has helped them with letting go.

The other thing, putting the best construction on what others do or say comes from Luther’s explanation of the 8^th commandment.  We read that piece from the Small Catechism in worship on Sunday, and it was good that we did, because I was putting the worst construction on several people, all at once.  A kind of judgmental multi-tasking. 

I’ve been able to practice—in the dual sense of putting it into practice, and practicing not perfecting—that discipline this week. It’s more than not judging another; it’s actually seeking to judge in the way I would like to be judged, that is, with grace and understanding.  What’s hard is that it usually needs to happen when I: 1) am angry with the person and 2) feel like I have to win the point or prevail in the decision.  Talk about not being at peace!  But when I have practiced it, it has made the relationship more loving, even when we didn’t agree.

I hope that these two Lenten disciplines can be something I incorporate into my life after the Fast is over.  I will need to be as patient with myself as I seek to be with others in order to do that.

Be patience. Be beauty. Be justice

Patrick

TENDING MY OWN GARDEN

We moved the office to the third floor in our house, a large beautiful space, with ceilings almost nine feet tall, hardwood floors, windows on three sides and a great view of the large fir two houses down, where often a lone cardinal sits in the morning, singing for his mate.  It doesn’t have heat, but except when it stays close to zero, I keep pretty warm with a stocking cap, warm socks and a small space heater.

It also has my stereo, which I bought when I was in college in the early seventies, and the records that I’ve whittled down over the last three moves.  I started a spiritual discipline of listening to the entire side of a record before putting another on, and not just doing my own “greatest hits”: picking one song from one record, then one from another, and so on.  (I still make an exception for David Allen Coe’s version of “You Never Even Call Me by My Name”, which ought to be sung at the top of the 9^th inning at baseball games, the whole crowd standing on their chairs!).

I’ve discovered, or rediscovered some real delights, including “Blessed” by Simon and Garfunkel.  The last stanza goes like this:

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long.

I’m going to have to look up what a “penny rooker” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the older, righteous son of the Prodigal Son story. 

Does this song make me nervous?  Yes.  On one hand, I want church services, including the ones I lead, to make people nervous, in the sense of challenging us to grow out of our preconceptions and hidebound pieties and get messy with love in the world.  I don’t, of course, want to get rid of the comforting part of worshipping together; I just want to get rid of the comfortable part.  When we get comfortable in any group—political, spiritual, even family—it’s too tempting to take things for granted, and overlook the new blessing that may be erupting.  When we get too comfortable in a group called together by the Spirit, we risk turning God into a little pet we call to sit in our lap.  And worse, brag about to our friends.  My God is fierce: fierce in consolation, fierce in justice, fierce in compassion, fierce in hope.

(Preacher’s note: this won’t be the sermon on Sunday, so you should still come!)

 
I also hate to confess that I get nervous about blessing rookers, hookers and lookers.  I don’t like what human trafficking and sex trade has done to our neighborhood.  But then I realize that’s what Jesus did, blessing the poor, the landless, the hungry, the persecuted.  And he ate—all the time—with prostitutes, traitors, lepers and the like. So, yeah, OK.

And as to being forsaken—well it is the season of forsakenness, in so many ways.

It’s the last two lines that really make me nervous.  I like tending my own garden.  I like being the one in charge of my life.  I have all kinds of evidence to show how great a mess I make of my life when I try to run my life, by myself, without accountability and support from God, and without accountability and support from a community.  I bristle against having to surrender my will to another, even when I know that no marriage, no relation with children, no community, no country, no world is possible without us surrendering—in trust, not by force—one to another.  I know that, but on a daily basis …

I think I know best what’s best for me.  No, I know I know what’s best for me.

But when I slow down and listen, I know that’s stupid. (Ooh, I said “stupid”!) I teach a community gardening class at Hans Christian Andersen United Elementary School in south Minneapolis.  I co-teach it with Jon Iverson, a middle school science teacher, and we try to teach it in the truest community sense: that all plants need a community—for pollination, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and so on. And any community garden needs a relationship of trust, even love, between the humans who work in it, and the plants, water, sun, air, soil and bacteria who really do all the great work.  Not to mention the Creator.

In our office, I have secreted on the top shelf of the bookcase that holds my records some blessed seeds from last year’s harvest.  Their fruits blessed our tongues and tummies, and their flowers blessed our eyes and our breathing.  I’ve tried to be more organized about labeling which seeds are which, and this year, I think I know to a certain extent about half of them. I also know, to a more certain extent that little plants will soon pop out of our ground to bless us unexpectedly.  The pumpkins we still have in our house came from plants we did not plant.  Tomatillos will burst forth in hundreds in our community garden plot, even though we haven’t seeded there for six years.  And I hope we will find gifts that we don’t even expect coming forth, as I hope that in the garden of my spirit, gifts will burst forth without my doing, and with my rejoicing.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be blessing

Patrick

I have two newly published poems you can access on line: one is about head trauma I had as an infant, in the Winter 2013 issue at: http://www.themeadowlandreview.com/

There’s also a poem about the tragedy of our immigration system in issue 85 of Painted Bride Quarterly at: http://pbq.drexel.edu/pbq/archives/3563

THE BACHELOR AND JAMES BOND

I’ve made a commitment to not watch pornography, in any form, but it’s become harder and harder to do so.  My daughters like watching “The Bachelor”, and so I’ve sat through parts of a couple episodes with them, trying to figure out its appeal.  There must be some, even if they are not easily seen by me.  I mean, what soul can honestly believe the man who tells woman after woman—with whom he’s spent an afternoon doing “fun stuff” while someone else pays for it—“I felt a real connection with you.”  Or “I could see spending my whole life with you.”  This usually occurs after a session of making out. I think most guys feel “a connection” when they are making out—I’ll leave it to you to decide which part of their being that is.

If we knew a man who told one woman after another that they “felt a connection” and then made out with them, and had “sex” with them, only to dump them, we would call him a serial predator.  And if the 3^rd or 4^th woman in line to receive this treatment thought that she would “be the one to change him”, we would challenge her for impaired thinking.  We might warn her about getting involved with a guy like that; our warnings likely would not be heeded until he had moved onto to the next woman.  And our friend would cry on our shoulder and say, “I really thought he was the one.”  And we would comfort them and restrain the part of us that wanted to remind them of our conversations prior to her experience with Mister One.

All this reasoning and support goes out the window when Romance gets televised.  We see the “happy couples” going for romantic dinners; we see them paragliding over the falls of an exotic island, where obsequious colorful indigenous folk wait to offer them a towel (or is that Survivor or the Amazing Race?).  I’ve heard my daughters say that they would love to go out with that man who is so “hot”, or go on that romantic getaway.

I have nothing against infatuation or falling in love.  My wife and I did over 25 years ago, and it’s been a blessing.  But I do have trouble with the promotion of love as something you can buy or win.  And I do have trouble with the way the images are connected to make it seem like it was spontaneous, magical, and therefore real.  (My friend Sheila O’Conner, who is a novelist, points out that the so-called “reality” shows are as scripted, if not more so than any other work of fiction.  And in TV, they are cheaper to make because you don’t need to employ many actual writers.)

Fantasy is not reality.  Which is why I think the real danger of pornography is not only the fantasy that sex and love can be purchased and consumed.  Perhaps a more deadly kind of pornography is the kind we see year after year, in James Bond movies, in Sylvester Stallone movies, in video game after video game where the object is to kill as many people as possible.  “Call of Duty” is a fantasy: that violence is good, fun and even redemptive.  It’s a dangerous fantasy because it reinforces our cultural belief that violence solves all conflicts.  James Bond kills the enemy.  Stallone kills the bad guys.  End of story. Not the robust kind of reflection we need in our morality.

“But it’s just a game, Patrick!”  “But it’s just harmless fun to watch The Bachelor!”  I’m not saying there is a direct causal relationship between watching porn or playing a violent game and then raping or killing someone.  I am saying that these games reinforce deep cultural pillars about the commodification of sex and the blessings of violence.

Besides, have we run out of games?  Have we run out of real stories?  Are there no rubber balls or sticks or things to make puppets with?  Is there no history, personal or social, that inspires us?

In the ongoing debate about gun violence, one thing I would like to challenge people to do is to say, publicly and with humility: “I won’t watch this stuff. I won’t participate. And this is why: it’s demeaning to the love we have and to our imagination.  I don’t judge you if you do.  I invite you to talk about what this means to us.”

That’s not the only step, of course, but cutting out one of the roots of our societal addiction to manipulative sex and cavalier violence might help.

Be justice. Be beauty.  And be reality, be story, be love that does not consume, but celebrates.

Patrick