Tag: questions

Love God, Love Your Neighbor

Background: Last week I preached at Christ Church Easton’s weekly Wednesday healing service and led our Zoom Prayer service and Gospel discussion. The lectionary Gospel was Mark 12:28-34, where a scribe asks Jesus, “What is the first (greatest) commandment?” This is the text of the homily and what we used to get us discussing the reading on Zoom.

“Love God, Love Your Neighbor”

What is the first/greatest/most important commandment?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

How many people have heard this answer from Jesus? It’s one of his teachings we’ve become pretty familiar with, I think.

I’m curious, if you’d never heard Jesus say this and someone put a list of the commandments in front of you, which one would you think is the most important commandment?

Jesus always seems to understand what is behind the questions that people ask. To use a saying that goes around, the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees are all playing checkers while Jesus is playing chess. And I’ve always laughed at the line Mark gives us at the end of this reading, “After that no one dared to ask him any question.”

I’m serious when I say that I thank Jesus for this teaching every day. In part, because I hate having to memorize long lists, particularly of rules to follow. Two is a good number for me to remember.

The reason there are only two is because Jesus has taken it down to the very essence of all the laws. And he’s done it with one action verb: LOVE.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

If we were to paint a picture with words, what would it look like in our world and in our lives if we loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Can you give me any examples that pop into your minds?

Part of it for me is that we would love what God loves. Have you had the experience of loving someone so much that their love of something becomes your love of it too? When there is something that your loved one gets so charged and excited about that you then come to love it as well?

What if we allowed ourselves to love God so much that what God loved, we loved as well, feeling the joy that God gets out of something.

How about Creation. The universe, the world—Creation of which we are a part. In the creation story in Genesis, God looks around at the end of each day and says, it’s good. And as he is finished, he looks at mankind and says, you are in charge. Take care of it.

If there is anything we have royally screwed up in modern times, it’s caring for Creation. But darned if we aren’t willing to ruin the world for lower gas prices, a better economy, and convenience for ourselves.

I can remember reading Dr. Seuss’s book, “The Lorax” to my girls when they were little and thinking that we should be reading this book to grown-ups every day in regular conversation. That and Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.”

Under Michael Curry as our Presiding Bishop (whose nine year term ended on October 31), the Episcopal Church prioritized a few core initiatives to focus on along with its program ministries. What it picked as the key things we need to focus on as a church to further the work of Jesus are: evangelism, racial reconciliation, and Creation Care.


This is the charge for Creation Care:

“In Jesus, God so loved the whole world. We follow Jesus, so we love the world God loves. Concerned for the global climate emergency, drawing on diverse approaches for our diverse contexts, we commit to form and restore loving, liberating, life-giving relationships with all of Creation.

“The Episcopal Church’s Covenant for the Care of Creation is a commitment to practice loving formation, liberating advocacy and life-giving conservation as individuals, congregations, ministries and dioceses.”

“We follow Jesus, so we love the world God loves.” That’s it in a nutshell. We’ve got our work cut out for us. To form and restore, loving, liberating, life-giving relationships with all of Creation. I can’t think of anything more important than that when it comes to living out what it looks like to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.

Don’t forget, Jesus gave us a second commandment—whether we want to call it number two, or 1-A, because it is absolutely connected to the first. How about loving our neighbors as ourselves? What does it look like if we take this commandment seriously?

One of the things you are taught not to do when preaching is not to use a different Gospel, say Luke, to make or prove a point when talking about Mark’s Gospel. So let me tell you a parable:

A man was going down to Oxford and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half-dead. Now, it happened a priest was going down Oxford Road, and when he saw the man beaten and in the ditch, he crossed over and passed by him on the other side. Likewise a deacon came to the place, saw him, and passed by on the other side. But a pagan biker while traveling down Oxford Road saw him and was moved with compassion. She went to him and bandaged his wounds and spared no expense of her own money. Then she put him in her sidecar, took him to an inn, and gave the innkeeper money and said take care of him, and if it costs more than this, I’ll pay you when I come back.

Which one of theses three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

If you’ve ever heard a different version of that story, the Samaritan, or pagan biker, is the one least likely in the minds of those hearing the story, to stop and offer help.

And yet, we can all agree that the biker is the one who treated the wounded man as her neighbor.

If we take a point from the story, it might be that everyone is our neighbor, when it comes to caring and being cared for. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor, what race, how they vote, who they love, how they dress: we are all created in the image of God and we are all neighbors to each other, and if we are to take the commandments by their name, we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the same way we look after our own self-interests, we are charged to look out of our neighbors’ care and well-being.

Our Mark reading today begins with a scribe asking Jesus a question. This wasn’t a scribe who was trying to trick Jesus, as we’ve seen in some other cases. This was a scribe who saw people arguing and heard Jesus answer questions so well, that he put the question to him: which of the commandments is the most important?

And hearing the answer Jesus gave, the scribe thinks about it and says, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

What an amazing answer. Not nice job, or ‘atta boy’, or even ‘your faith has made you well.’ You are not far from the kingdom of God.

We’ve heard this throughout Mark’s Gospel, and we can agree that the kingdom of God is what we are all aiming for—that’s the end result we want.

The scribe, in taking Jesus’s words to heart, letting them sink in, letting them work on him, has moved close to the kingdom of God.

If we are to take Jesus as his word, wouldn’t the same thing be true for us? If knowing and fully understanding that loving God and loving our neighbor are the most important commandments God has given us, and that Jesus has summarized and made easier for us to remember; that if we have this understanding, then the only thing standing between us and the kingdom of God is actually putting it into practice, actually living it out in our daily lives—that fully realized and lived, LOVE of God and loving our neighbor is what brings us to the kingdom of God…

If that’s the case, and Jesus says it is, shouldn’t we spend a bit more of our time, effort, and resources trying to do so?

At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has already entered into Jerusalem. He’s already cleansed the Temple. He’s about to get arrested and be put to death. He’s put his life on the line for us. What are we willing to do for him?

‘Hear, O Believers: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Amen.

Was Blind But Now I See

Background: Last weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel story in the lectionary was Mark 10:46-52, the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus and Jesus giving him his sight back. Following is the text of the sermon.

“Was Blind But Now I See”

This is a story that begins and ends in faith. Sometimes faith starts in the dark. And sometimes things go dark or at least get obscured without us losing our physical sight.

Faith is not about seeing. Faith is about trust. And trust can lead to vision.

Over the past several weeks, Mark has shown us the disciples failing to understand what Jesus is telling them, failing to understand his mission, and putting their needs and desires before his.

In contrast to that, Mark gives us Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, who shows all the characteristics of being a faithful disciple.

Profession of Faith

Bartimaeus is blind and an outsider and all Jesus has to do is come close to him for the beggar to know who Jesus is and what he can do.

He shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Doing this, Bartimaeus proclaims both Jesus’s identity and his own faith, his trust in Jesus’s power and what he can do.

Even as people try to silence him, Bartimaeus calls out again, louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

This stops Jesus in his tracks. We’ve seen this before in Gospel stories, where someone’s extraordinary belief or faith in Jesus causes him to stop.

Jesus calls him over and in his response to being called, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak—everything he owns—and he leaps up to come to Jesus. Does that remind us of the rich, young ruler, who Jesus tells to give away everything he owns and follow me? Bartimaeus has already done what the rich man couldn’t, and he wasn’t even asked.

The Big Question

As Bartimaeus comes before him, Jesus asks the key question: “What is it you want me to do for you?”

I wonder if there are two questions that Jesus asks in Mark’s Gospel that are the primary questions of our faith:

  • Who do you say that I am?
  • What do you want me to do for you?

Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And they’ve been working on what that means for the disciples and for Jesus ever since Peter’s answer.

Last week, Jesus asked his followers James and John, “What do you want me to do for you?” The same question he just asked the blind man. And their response was, “We want to sit at your right hand and at your left hand in glory.” They wanted glory, prestige, power. Jesus wasn’t going in that direction, and he told them they didn’t know what they were asking for. Their desires and Jesus’s mission were not aligned.

Now he asks Bartimaeus, a man who has been a beggar, who has been blind, who has figured out how to live his life on the charity of others, what do you want me to do for you?

Bartimaeus being blind, that may seem like a simple answer. But getting his sight will require him to try to live a completely different life, to leave everything he has known and learned, and to go in a new direction.

I wonder, if we are living lives we aren’t happy with… lives that feel empty, or broken, or even just less than we would like them to be; but lives that have become comfortable…. Would we ask for something miraculous that would give us new life, but also ask something of us in return, something that would require us to leave our current lives behind?

If Jesus asked you, what is it you want me to do for you, and you had every feeling that he would give you what you asked for, what would it be?

How We Answer

“The blind man said, ‘Teacher, I would like to see again.’”

He has cast off all he had, he has stepped out of his old life and is taking a risk. He is asking for sight, to go along with the faith he has already shown.

“Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ (And) Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

Bartimaeus expressed the faith that the crowds lacked. He gave up everything in a way that the rich young ruler wasn’t able to do. And he answered the question Jesus also asked the disciples, with humility and gratitude. This is what discipleship looks like.

Blind = lost

Last weekend we were in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and I got up early to walk trails through meadows and along the woods to look for and listen to birds. It was a beautiful and quiet morning, and overnight, fog had settled in.

I went to bed with my full eyesight and woke up and my eyes still worked (at least after coffee) and yet, as I was walking around, fog had taken over and I couldn’t see as well as I could the night before.

We live in an area that has fog delays for schools, so I know you can all relate to trying to see through a foggy haze.

I wonder if you’ll take a step with me when I say that fog is also a helpful metaphor in our own lives for when our vision gets obscured, obstructed, and we can no longer see clearly.

I wonder if we can go blind without losing our physical eyesight.

It would be nice to dismiss the story of Bartimaeus by saying, hey, I’m not blind, this story doesn’t apply to me. But I think we are all blinded from time to time, often without realizing it.

Thinking about this reading during the week, I’ve had the lines from the song “Amazing Grace” in my mind:

“I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see.”

I wonder if being lost is like being blind. Have you ever felt lost in your life in a way that you couldn’t see to find your way out?

From 2010 to 2014, I commuted across the Bay Bridge to Washington, DC, writing for the Coast Guard. It was a cool job and I met some great people. I never thought I would be able to stomach commuting like that every day and driving into the city.

The jobs I had before that were non-profit jobs here on the Shore. They kept me in touch with the community, they connected me to parts of my family history and opened new doors and new ways of seeing and being in the place where I grew up. And I felt like I was doing something for, and contributing to our shared community.

But it’s hard to make ends meet working for non-profits. My DC job more than doubled the salary I was making on the Shore. I remember driving one day—I don’t remember whether it was on the way to work or on the way home—and thinking, I’m stuck now. I am going to have to keep commuting, keep working in DC for the rest of my career, now that I’ve started this and found the proverbial pot of gold.

There was a slight pause in 2013, when the contract we were working on didn’t get renewed and I had to figure out what was next. I started interviewing for jobs on the Shore and out of nowhere, I had this uncanny and sure sense that I was supposed to go to seminary. Which made no sense, we weren’t even going to church. But that feeling was there.

During that time, I got a job offer on another contract for the Coast Guard, which solved all the financial concerns. It didn’t shake the sense that I was supposed to be doing something else; that I had become completely alienated from the community around me, that I had less time with my daughters for having to commute. But I convinced myself that this was the right decision for my family.

The fog was thick. I took the DC job. During that next year, my entire life fell apart. Family, job, sense of self and self-worth. I had become lost, even though I saw every step I was taking.


Last weekend, when I was walking in the fog, a cool thing happened. I was walking up the hill towards the B&B where we were staying and the fog was laid in, but the sun was also coming up. And as we know happens, the sun started to burn off the fog. If you can take the time to stand in one place, facing toward the sun, and watch as it overcomes the fog, and the fog begins to fade, clarity sets back in. It’s nothing short of miraculous to watch.

I don’t have 20/20 vision as my glasses attest to. But over the course of the last 10 years, I have gone from feeling lost, to being found. From being blinded, to regaining my sight.

And the question that helped me get there—though at first, I didn’t recognize that it was Jesus asking it—was, “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want your life to become?

Following and Freedom

On my West Virginia morning, and really anywhere there is fog, it takes the sun to burn it off. There was nothing I could do on my own to see through it, it was the sun that had to do the work. In my life, in Bartimaeus’s life, and for many others, it took the S-o-n, Jesus, to give us back our sight, our vision.

Bartimaeus needed his sight to live the life he wanted to live. But he showed it wasn’t just about him. When he regained his sight, what did he do with it? He followed Jesus. In doing so, with his new life, I think it is fair to say that the seeing Bartimaeus was more truly who he was supposed to be than the blind version of himself ever was.

He used his sight in the service of God. Not because he was told to—all Jesus said was “Go.” Bartimaeus followed Jesus in act of gratitude and of realizing what his sight was for.

Author, pastor, and theologian Frederick Buechner put it wonderfully when he said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

It’s been my experience that when we put our trust in Jesus and start to follow, when we let the sun burn off the fog, that meeting place of our deep gladness and the world’s hunger becomes more and more clear.

Are you seeing clearly or do you feel lost? If you feel lost, when Jesus draws near to you, do you trust him enough to call his name? If he asks you what you want him to do for you, do you know what your answer will be? Will it be to ask for the sight to live your life to the fullest, to live the life that God has envisioned for you? To align your sight and your life in following the one who gives us both life and sight?

“I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind but now I see.”

Let’s Get Back to Love

Background: October 5-6 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel reading for the lectionary was Mark 10:2-16, where Jesus is questioned about divorce and he goes on to say, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” This is the text of the sermon I gave.

“Let’s Get Back to Love”

In the not quite three years I have been preaching, this is the second time I’ve landed on one of Jesus’s divorce readings. As someone who has been through a divorce, last time out I bounced off personal experience to talk about how devastating divorce can be and how it is to be avoided if at all possible.

This time I want to take a step back and look at why Jesus always seems to make our lives harder by making the laws and rules even more strict than what the Pharisees and scribes bring to him.

Something to keep in mind: Jesus fully engaged and answered everyone who came to him with an honest question or concern. We’ll see that next week in the case of the rich, young ruler. But Jesus is wary when the Pharisees try to test him or trick him into saying something that will get him in trouble. He is wise to what they are up to.

The Pharisees ask: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus asks: what did Moses command you? They said: Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

And now Jesus gets to the crux of the matter: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

The law gives us the least we have to do to in order to play by the rules and to get what we want. The Pharisees who repeatedly question Jesus are concerned with the law for the sake of the law. They aren’t concerned with the why behind the law, the intent of the law.

First of all, if you are approaching marriage with the attitude and question, is it legal to get divorced? You probably shouldn’t be thinking about marriage.

People then, and now, want to know what rules or code do I have to follow to be considered righteous, to be a good person, and to go to heaven, right? We’d all like to know that, and to know if we are on the right path, or if we need to make some adjustments.

That’s putting the cart before the horse. Jesus, then and now, is concerned about our hearts, about our relationships, with God and with each other. About us living life and living life abundantly. If we are going to do that, our abundance can’t be at someone else’s loss, pain, or cost.

Jesus was aware of what happened back then to a woman who had been divorced. It would be hard for her to find protection, provision of any kind, dignity, or to have much of a future. That does not give her much of a chance to live life abundantly, to be in right relationship with God and her neighbors.

The laws are the lowest standard. Let’s look just quickly at the commandments that are concerned just with how we treat each other:

  • Honor your mother and your father
  • Don’t commit murder
  • Don’t commit adultery
  • Don’t steal
  • Don’t give false testimony against your neighbor
  • Don’t covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

If we live and follow those laws, does that sound like a happy life? Does that sound like abundant life? That sounds like the bare minimum you can do to stay out of trouble.

All of these laws address the hard-heartedness of people; what they had become, what we are still, and where we fall short in needing clear-cut rules to keep us straight and spell out how to treat each other.

That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “murder? That’s a pretty low bar. You’ve got to deal with and address that feeling when it’s still anger, long before it gets anywhere close to murder.” It’s not about the law, it’s about the heart. We need soft hearts to love.

Here is what we’ve lost: LOVE IS OUR DEFAULT SETTING. Jesus gets that.


In Mark Chapter 12, one of the scribes asks Jesus, which commandment is first (or greatest) of all? And Jesus gives the response we’ve come to know: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love. Be passionate. Care for each other. Live life to the fullest. There is no, “thou shalt not…”; there is no, “is it legal if…”

Jesus is trying to help us get back to our default settings. But we’ve put so much in the way of that, even as the church, which is the issue Jesus kept having with the Temple leadership who cite laws left and right, but keep out the people—the poor, the sick, the marginalized; the sinners and the tax collectors, who Jesus was at the table with and caring for.

In last week’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

These little ones, who are learning to believe, learning to love, don’t go quoting Scripture, quoting laws at them, don’t belittle them or cause them to stumble. Help them. Encourage them.

But how? How are we supposed to do all that? People are so weird and hard to deal with. They’re too people’y.

On the road with his disciples, Jesus has been trying to get it through to them. You’ve got to put down, you’ve got to give up, these lives that society is trying to hand to you. You’ve got to put down the things that divide us and put barriers between us. You’ve got to give up the lives you’ve been living, pick up your cross, and follow me.

If we put down the crap that we’re being fed, if we give up the lives that are full of judgment, hatred, power, and status, we are free to pick up and be filled with Jesus’s love. We give up our small, ego selves so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

When we let go of the doubt, the fear, the skepticism and pessimism we are being handed, we become like children: free to love.

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

As a little child. Open, innocent—not jaded, tainted, asking which laws are the ones that really count.


Love is our default setting. Jesus and gift of the Holy Spirit are the reset button. God’s grace is our fresh start.

Well, sure, that’s easy for Jesus to say; He’s Jesus. What about us, who are flawed and human and who mess up? What does it look like for us to let go and start again?

Let me introduce you to Francis. Saint. Francis. Of Assisi. October 4 was the Feast of Saint Francis, who is often held up as the human being who most fully lived a life of Christ-like love. He saw the divine in everything and everyone and lived his life in a simple way. He didn’t start out that way, he found it as a new way of being.

Francis let his love of Christ guide him, rather than rules or laws. Franciscan Friar and author Richard Rohr describes Francis like this:

“Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. His love for creation drove him back into the needs of the city, a pattern very similar to Jesus’ own movement between desert solitude (contemplation) and small-town healing ministry (action). The Gospel transforms us by putting us in touch with that which is much more constant and satisfying, literally the “ground of our being,” which has much more “reality” to it, rather than theological concepts or ritualization of reality. Daily cosmic events in the sky and on the earth are the Reality above our heads and beneath our feet every minute of our lives: a continuous sacrament, signs of God’s universal presence in all things.”

Wow. Not a bad way to live and look at the world.

Imagine being so filled with God’s love that when we go out the doors of the church, we carry it with us and give it to everyone and everything we encounter. Imagine someone’s impression of us being, “wow, they were full of love and light”—where did they get that? How can I get some too?

The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus questions to try to trip him up and to get him in trouble. They were the law-abiding citizens. They wanted to know if it is legal for a man to divorce his wife.

That’s one end of the continuum: following the rules for the rules’ sake. Righteousness is following the law. Now listen to the words that St. Francis is most known for, the prayer that is attributed to him:

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

That’s not about the law, it’s about love; the self-sacrificing love that Jesus modeled for us with his life and through his death—the love that overcame death. The love that opens the door for us.

Which do you want your life to be about? Let’s go with Jesus and Francis. Let’s get back to love.

Amen.

Interdependence (It Takes Three)

Background: July 6-7 was a preaching weekend for me and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 6:1-16, where Jesus goes back to his hometown and is not accepted as a prophet and then sends out the 12 apostles with the bare minimum of possessions.

I’m going to throw a word out here at the beginning that is our word and theme of the day: interdependence. We need God and we need each other. That is always the case. Anytime we try to deny it or get around it, we are deluding ourselves. With that in the back of our minds, let’s dig into today’s Gospel.

There are two parts to the reading. First, Jesus comes back to his hometown, where he faced doubts and criticisms; where they weren’t willing to see him as anything special, certainly not a prophet.

I don’t and will never claim to be a prophet. But I have had a very different experience becoming a preacher and going into ministry in my hometown. People who have known me for all or most of my life have been accepting and enthusiastic of what likely on the outside looks like two different lives.

I grew up hard-headed and rebellious in a small town that has a good memory. At 42 years old, after working for the government in Washington, DC, for the previous four years, I became the director of the Oxford Community Center. This was a building where my father had gone to grade school and my sister had gone to summer camp. I had kind of shunned it, thinking I was too cool for it.

I remember on one of my first days at work there, seeing Jennifer Stanley, one of the people who had saved the building from being torn down and founded the community center. Jenny is an Oxford icon, riding her bike through town with curly red hair and a trail of kids behind her.

I said, “Hi Miss Jenny, I don’t know if you remember me…” To which she said, “Oh Michael, I remember you… everybody remembers you on your skateboard, with your hair—you were frightening!”

Those who remembered were excited that someone could grow up, change, and find some sort of a calling in the place where they are from. It’s been the same here at church where people who remember my “lost years” have each said something to the effect of, “Huh. Wow. Okay, go for it!”

If the outcome of casting a new light in your hometown is going to be positive, it takes a receptive and open-minded community. That’s something Jesus didn’t have.

They took offense that Jesus claimed to have something to teach them or show them that they didn’t know. And Jesus felt it.

He said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” He wasn’t able to do much with them or for them. Mark tells us that Jesus was “amazed at their unbelief.”

In Jesus’s hometown, they knew his family. They knew his siblings, they knew his background, they watched him grow up. They remembered Jesus as a kid and a teenager, Joseph and Mary’s son, the carpenter.

Why in the world would God use this lower-class family, this unremarkable person, to be a prophet? Surely, if there was a prophet coming out of Nazareth, it would be someone from a better family, or with a better education—someone who they could look at and feel better about God using to tell them about His will for the world.

They thought that God’s prophets should look a certain way, be formed a certain way, and come from a particular background. Or more specifically, they thought that there were some people God wouldn’t use.

The people in Jesus’s hometown let their biases get in the way of seeing and hearing God.

It’s fair to say we still have this problem today. In “Feasting on the Word,” a series of books on our lectionary readings, the authors ask a couple of great questions from this reading that we should ask ourselves:

“Whom do we take for granted? What wisdom, what deeds of power are missing because we make judgments about who and through whom God’s work can be done?”

How many people do we encounter in a day who we might dismiss while we are on our way to see someone whose views or knowledge we are seeking out. People working in restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, grocery stores, road crews.

I’ll tell you a quick story. In the summer of 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Tidewater Times Magazine asked me to write a story about the Palestinian family that runs Four Sisters Kabob, Curry and Halal Market. The mother’s name is Shahida Perveen, and her four daughters are: Andleeb, Shanza, Areej, and Bushra. Four years ago, they were taking meals to the staff at the emergency room at the hospital, giving food away to anyone who came to them hungry, and taking food home to make sure people in their neighborhood didn’t go without.

As I got talking to them, Andleeb, who is the oldest, mentioned that her sister Shanza received a full scholarship to University of Maryland, where she had graduated with honors with a degree in public health; Areej was on a full scholarship at Washington College, where she was studying political science; Bushra, the youngest was a student in Queen Anne’s County Schools; and Andleeb felt responsible for making sure that all her sisters were going to school and to help their mother run the restaurant. But in her spare time, Andleeb graduated with honors and her liberal arts degree from Chesapeake College and was enrolling in their nursing program.

If you had made any assumptions about who these women were based on their accents, skin color, or how they dressed, you were missing out on five brilliant people that certainly knew more than I did about so many things. And whose sense of charity, hospitality, and community, we could all learn from.

When we judge who God might use and who God wouldn’t use to deliver a message to the world, or to us, we make ourselves poorer.

Here is another thought from “Feasting on the Word”—

“Jesus’s powerlessness is not primarily about him but about us: about those who are unwilling to believe the great things God can do.”

God is frequently waiting on us. If I dismiss Jesus as not my thing, or I say maybe 2,000 years ago, but that kind of stuff doesn’t happen today, I’m cutting off the lifeline to love, peace, healing, and the grace I need to live every day. I love the quote often attributed to Einstein that says, “There are two ways to look at the world: that either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.”

Imagine waking up in the morning open to the possibilities of the great things that God might do today and not limiting our thoughts as to how or through whom He might do them.

The second part of today’s Gospel is Jesus preparing his disciples and sending them out as “apostles.”

He sends them out two-by-two and gives them authority over unclean spirits. He tells them they can take a staff, but no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; they can wear sandals, but they can’t take two tunics. I picture apostle action figures, staff and sandals included, but nothing else. Collect all 12.

Jesus says: whenever you enter a house, stay there (be present with them) until you leave. If anyone won’t welcome you, if they refuse to hear you, shake off the dust and move on.

Why does Jesus send them out with so little? Why are they traveling so light?

Without money or food, the apostles have to rely on the hospitality of others. They may feel like they know something and have authority that other people don’t. With the nature of the work they do, they may feel special, like a big deal.

Jesus wants to make sure they are also humble. The apostles need those they are speaking to and visiting as much as people need to hear the good news. Without the hospitality of those they are calling on, the apostles will perish. Without the good news they bring the people, the people will perish.

Establishing a relationship based on mutual need and hospitality isn’t a bad foundation.

Back to our word of the day: “interdependence.”

In order for Jesus’s words and works to be effective, those who hear or witness them need to be receptive and open to them. They have to be willing to believe.

For the apostles being sent out, they are being equipped with exactly what they need to understand the relationship they need to have with those they are sent to. The apostles don’t hold all the cards, they need the people in the community. And those in the community have to be open and receptive, or the apostles are to shake off the dust and move on.

It’s not helpful, effective, or true, that those in the know, those in the Word, have all the answers and are God’s sole gift to the rest of the world. If we are fortunate enough to be on the inside when it comes to faith, we still need everyone else. And how we carry ourselves, and what we carry with us, matters.


The other part of that interdependence, besides being dependent on the community they are serving, the apostles have to rely on and depend on God. They are not self-sufficient, and the healing and casting out demons, that power doesn’t come from the apostles. It comes from God. And Jesus sends them out in a way that will help them come to learn that. Without God, nothing the apostles are sent out to do will work.

As we go out today, let’s ask ourselves a few questions:

Do we make judgments about who we think can do God’s work? What or who are we overlooking or missing out on?

Do we believe that God can do great and powerful things in the world? Will we let Him? Will we help Him?

And are we willing and able to be sent out into the mission field with the bare minimum so that we can learn to depend on God and not just on ourselves?

Doubt and Faith

Background: This past weekend (April 6-7) was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading was John 20:19-31, which is popularly referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” story. I also preached on this passage last year and wanted to make sure to take it in a new direction. I am grateful especially to Debie Thomas and her book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which is quoted and referred to.

“Doubt and Faith“

It’s today’s reading where our friend Thomas earns the nickname that history and culture gave him: “Doubting Thomas.” And we are told not to be a Doubting Thomas.

I want to discuss whether doubt is a bad thing and whether in Thomas’s shoes, any of us might not do the same thing.

This is not the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel. The first story he is a part of is the raising of Lazarus.

Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus that their brother Lazarus is sick, hoping that Jesus will come to heal him. Jesus famously waits a couple days before going to see them. And when he’s ready, he says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

They know there are people in Judea who already want to stone and kill Jesus. Going back to Judea is exactly what they don’t want to do. They try to hash out whether this is a good idea and Jesus says, “Lazarus is dead, let us go to him.”

This is where Thomas pipes up and says to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

If Lazarus is dead, and Jesus is walking straight into the storm and facing death head on, Thomas says, alright gang, let’s go die with him.

And off they go. Thomas has no fear and no problem going to die with and for Jesus.

Fast forward through John’s Gospel: there is the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, then his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Now the disciples are caught up in uncertainty, grief, and the lost feeling of what was going to happen now.

The story of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus there that we just heard last weekend on Easter, has just happened. It is evening on that same day, the first day of the week, and the disciples are locked in a room fearing the same fate that Jesus met might be waiting for them at the hands of the Jews.

Jesus appears to the disciples. This incredible experience. But Thomas isn’t there. He gets back after the fact. And the disciples all tell him, “We’ve seen the Lord,” he was here with us.

Thomas says, unless I see it for myself, unless I see HIM for myself, I will not believe.


Author Debie Thomas was born in India. Her father was a Christian minister there and their culture has a special relationship with the apostle Thomas.
In her new book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which we’ll have a few small groups reading and discussing, she has this to say about Thomas and his doubt:

“Cautious. Skeptical. Stubborn. Daring.”

“A man who yearned for a living encounter with Jesus—an encounter of his own, unmediated by the claims and assumptions of others. A man who wouldn’t settle for hand-me-down religion but demanded a firsthand experience of God to anchor and enliven his faith. To me, this speaks not only to Thomas’s integrity but to his hunger. His desire. His investment. He wasn’t spiritually passive. He didn’t want the outer trappings of religion if he couldn’t know its fiery core. He was alive with his longing.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to just accept something that people tell me without finding out for myself. This didn’t make for an easy job for my parents. They came home once when I was 9 or 10 years old, to find me stuck in the mud in the middle of the creek behind our house at low tide. I didn’t think I would get stuck, despite people warning me. My mom’s boots are still at the bottom of the creek there.

Another time, my mom had to come extract me from the clay they dredged out of Town Creek in Oxford, which I walked into–waist-deep to see how far I could get.

As a teenager spelunking in John Brown’s Cave in Harpers Ferry, in the pitch black with headlamps, a friend and I climbed up a wall about 20 feet to see what it was like. It took a minor miracle for us to make our way back down.

My Mom’s boots are still under the water in that creek.


I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was baptized and confirmed at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, I attended St. James Episcopal School in Hagerstown for a time. As I got older, I kept at the periphery of church, I appreciated the teachings, I liked what this Jesus guy was all about, but I couldn’t make the leap from interested to invested.

I think I have always been Thomas when it comes to faith. I needed my own experience.

How does that happen? How do we find that kind of experience?

Let’s look at something that happens right after Thomas says he won’t believe unless he sees for himself.

After Thomas says he’s not on board, John writes: “A week later… his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.”

A week has gone by, and Thomas is still there.

What does that tell us about Thomas? Even though he wasn’t ready to believe, even though he didn’t have the experience that the others had, he didn’t quit. He didn’t hang it up. He kept showing up. He was willing to give it time when he himself wasn’t feeling it.

What does it say about the disciples? They didn’t shun him. They didn’t ostracize him. They stood by their experience, they trusted Jesus, and they loved Thomas. They were willing to let things work themselves out.

Life goes on. The disciples stay together. Thomas keeps working through things. And a week later, Jesus comes back and gives Thomas the exact thing he asked for.

What do we learn about Jesus? He gives Thomas the experience that he needs to believe. He meets Thomas where he was and gives him his hands and shows him his side and says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, man of his word, says, “My Lord and my God.” He believes.

What does that mean for Thomas? What does it mean for us to believe?

Here’s the thing about belief when it comes to faith. It sounds nice, it sounds reassuring: if you believe, you’re all set. If you believe, you’ll have eternal life. So how do we as Christians today show our belief? We go to church, meaning worship services. We take Communion. Maybe we wear a cross around our necks. If we’re on social media and someone says, “bet you won’t post the Lord’s Prayer,” we say, oh yeah, watch this… and post it… Hhhmm… that’ll show them.

I subscribe to the idea that if you want to know what someone believes, watch their actions. I think that’s what Jesus was and is banking on as well. If you want to know what the disciples did after their encounters with the risen Christ, go take a look in the Book of Acts. They risked their lives, they met in houses and walked and sailed hundreds of miles to win new followers of Christ. If that was a part of belonging to a church today, I think we’d all be in a bit of trouble.

One person whose journey isn’t outlined specifically in Acts is Thomas’s. Scholarship points to the idea that Thomas is who took Christianity to India. They have statues of him and monasteries and they hold that their Christian roots go all the way back to one of Jesus’s first disciples. A lot further than our roots in the United States go.


Debie Thomas outlines different stories that are associated with the apostle Thomas in India: the pared down version goes like this.

Thomas sailed to Kerala in 52 CE, so about 20 years after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension–20 years after Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ. He wanted to preach to the Jewish colonies that were settled near Cochin.

He was very successful, converting both Jews and Brahmins and he followed the coastline south, winning hundreds of new followers and believers of Jesus and establishing seven churches along the waterways of Kerala. He crossed over the land to the east coast near Madras.

He was so successful as a preacher and a community builder that he made the devout Brahmins in the region jealous and angry and they speared him to death in 72 CE.

For 20 years, Thomas worked with the other disciples around Jerusalem and the Middle East spreading the good news of Jesus. And for the next 20 years after that, he went to strange lands where he didn’t speak the language, where he was an outsider, where it was Thomas and the Holy Spirit and the communities of believers he helped build. Right up until the religious authorities killed him for it.

The apostle Thomas’s actions show how deeply he believed.

Debie Thomas asks this question: “What if doubt itself can be a testimony?”

She says, “If nothing else, Thomas assures me that the business of the good news–of accepting it, of living it out, and of sharing it with the world–is tough. It’s okay to waver. It’s okay to take our time. It’s okay to probe, prod, and insist on more… I need Thomas–doubter and disciple, agnostic and apostle–to show me what faith truly is.”

His doubt is honest. It is heartfelt. It is a part of who he was and part of the process of who he was becoming. Maybe you can see yourself in Thomas. Maybe doubt and questions are a part of your faith journey. They are still a part of mine. God can use our doubt as a starting point or to lead us further down the path he has laid out for us. As long as we don’t give up.

I wonder about Thomas and what his style of evangelism would have been. I picture him having a meal with a group of people who are eagerly listening to what he has to say. Except for one person sitting at the end of the table who has a raised eyebrow, shaking his or her head. Slow to accept, skeptical to believe.

I see Thomas smile, laugh a little, and say, “You’ve got doubts, huh? Me, too. Let me tell you a story about doubts and how they can be a part of faith.”

Can the fishes see it’s snowing?

The Christmas story I re-read every year has firemen and a house fire, snowballs waiting for cats, mentions of wolves, postmen, a celluloid duck, and a possible ghost joining in for caroling. And it’s all true. Or at least remembered true.

Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is the kind of opening of nostalgic floodgates you expect from a poet’s vivid and quirky memory. And what he remembers aren’t gifts (those get a comic couple paragraphs) but the experiences he had, what he and his friends got into, uncles and aunts visiting, and what the town looked and felt like in the snow.

As Thomas and his friends walk in the snow along the shore, trying to decide what to get into, someone asks, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?” Maybe those are the moments of true and honest friendship and the things we build our memories around.

Christmas is certainly a time when nostalgia hits us over the head like a cartoon wooden mallet, this year especially. I stumbled across this piece I scrawled out a couple years ago and if nostalgia is the path you want to run down, it might walk there with you. As I sit here with waves of Christmas memories crashing over me, I have written about for 30 or so and thought about Christmases past for maybe 45 years (the memories had to build up for the first three). I find myself coming back to the same thoughts, the same books, the same memories, and the same themes.

Clark Griswold understands the pressure of trying to create and re-create the perfect Christmas.

I’m thinking about the pressure we put on Christmas–finding and buying the perfect gifts, wanting to create the perfect memories for our families, wanting to get past the commercial and to the spiritual, communal aspects of Christmas. And I think about the fact that my Christmases as a kid are vivid memories, then not much to call up in my teens and 20s. Thinking about Christmases having young kids, crystalline again, and now the girls are well into their teens, into the age of unmemorable Christmases. And maybe I am caught in a place where the next memorable Christmas won’t be until there are young kids in the picture again (which I hope is a good ways off…).

But maybe that’s the key. Not young kids, but seeing things with eyes like that again. When he picks what memories to share, Dylan Thomas goes back to when he was a child. Because that’s where the vivid memories are; that’s where his eyes were fresh and impressionable. Maybe that’s what I/we need, especially during a pandemic year when I know my family won’t be gathering on Christmas Eve or Day.

Looking with the eyes of a child.

In his book, “Love Is the Way,” Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, writes:

“Jesus said, ‘Unless you change and become as little children, you will never see the kingdom of heaven’ (and thinking on a lecture he attended by Terry Holmes, Bishop Curry continues)… children have vivid and boundless imaginations. They dwell happily in that space between fantasy and reality. Theirs is often that land of the fairy tale, the cartoon. They fantasize, they imagine, they dream. I think Dr. Holmes was right. To behold the reign of God, the perfect realization of God’s peace, God’s shalom, God’s salaam–the dream of God–we must become as little children. We must imagine and… dream.”

I was talking to a friend recently about that exact thing, how Buddhists use the term “begininer’s mind” and Jesus talks about seeing with the eyes of a child. If re-think where I am right now and go back to my surroundings, I smell the evergreen/fir smell of the Christmas tree; I see the white lights on the tree that the girls asked for this year to replace the rainbow lights that I generally use to conjure up trees from my youth; I can smell and taste the coffee, which makes me think of my grandfather this time of year. I can see the cat and dog half-sleeping on the couch, waiting for movement toward the kitchen.

We’ve always got all the tools we need to build the perfect Christmas. If I choose to focus on sitting down to have a Sunday afternoon lunch with people I love rather than looking at what I find or don’t find shopping, I am creating the right kind of memories.

This isn’t a post about what Christmas is or what it means, but more about what lenses/eyes we use to approach the whole experience.

Our dog gets up and runs to the door or window every time the same neighbors walk by. It’s a new experience for her every time. Even she has the child-like enthusiasm and wonder idea down. I can learn from her example and reminder.

If I am open. If I see with the eyes, imagination, and wonder of a child. Maybe I won’t be stuck having a conversation with the ghost of Christmas past. Maybe I will be in the moment, caught up in wonder and conversation, and I can again ask questions like, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?”

Here to Wonder

Do you ever get to wondering? I seem to spend a lot of time that way, wondering. There is a conversation towards the end of Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple,” where Albert gets to wondering:

“You ast yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women… It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Our lives are often defined by the questions we ask. So let’s ask the big ones, the juicy ones. And the right ones. So why does Albert think we’re here?

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering about the big things and asting about the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”

Albert, via Alice Walker, “The Color Purple”

The more I wonder, the more I love. Yes to that, and so much more of it.

I wanted to read “The Color Purple” because of a quote; a quote I read and loved immediately; a quote that spoke directly to my soul and I have thought and used and felt so many times since, that I knew I needed to read the book where it came from.

And when I read it in context of the story, it was even better and deeper. Two of the main characters, Celie and Shug Avery are talking about God. And about how God is not an old white man in robes sitting on a throne. And how “God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.” Shug talking. And what a wonderful way to describe the Holy Spirit.

And Celie asks what God looks like, if not an old white man. And Shug says:

“Don’t look like nothing, she say. It’ ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe that God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.”

Shug says people “come to church to share God, not find God.” And I love that thought and thinking that sharing God is what church is for.

But none of those are the quote that made me want to read the book. Here’s the conversation:

Shug: God love everything you love–and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
Celie: You saying God vain?
Shug: Naw. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

And there it is. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” That quote has been a part of me since I first read it years ago. It describes how I go through life. God made a flower, a field, a planet, a universe for us to wonder at. To ask about. And the more we wonder, the more we ask, the more we love.

And God made us for each other. He made each of us, to love each other and to love Him. And I don’t and won’t ever claim to speak for God, but it seems in the same way, it pisses Him off when we don’t love each other; when we spew hate and not kindness; when we divide, point fingers, and blame, instead of helping each other up, lifting each other’s spirits, using our gifts and His gifts to connect us to each other and to God.

Celie and Shug keep talking (Celie writing) –

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think that pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Yeah? I say.
Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when we least expect.
You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.
Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved.

Everything wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be loved. God is giving us opportunities–what are we doing with them?

What if we try to notice the color purple? What if we try to see, to really see, and get to know each other? What if we wonder? What if we ask? What if the more we wonder, the more we love.

Need & Seek

Jesus digs questions. He likes to ask them to us and I think he likes us to ask them of ourselves. Rev. Daniel Groody points out that in the four Gospels, Jesus is asked 183 questions, only directly answering three. On the other hand, he asks 307 questions.

Groody put together a devotional booklet, “Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas: Waiting in Joyful Hope 2019-2020.” He suggests daily Scripture readings and then provides reflection, meditation, and a prayer. It’s a cool and meaningful way to guide us through Advent. A perfect coffee companion in the mornings.

Groody quotes Martin Copenhaver and then adds something of his own:

“‘Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner.’ And through these questions Jesus holds a lantern to our hearts.”

In studying and discussing the Gospels and reading commentary, one of the first things to become clear is that God, through Christ, is after our hearts, first and foremost. Everything else follows. Our hearts function best when they are full of joy, wonder, and they/we are after the right things. Groody goes on to say, “Answers can foreclose new discoveries, but questions open up new possibilities.”

Both Jesus and Groody are speaking my language. In 47 years, I have more questions and fewer answers than ever. But also more than ever, I’ve come to love the questions, the seeking in and of itself. It (the seeking) gets me up in the morning, sends me into Scripture, sends me into nature, connects me to people, and opens me up to wonder and mystery.

Groody quotes theologian Bernard Lonegran, who said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who need certainty and those who seek understanding.” I’m not big on anyone who tries to reduce the world to two kinds of people, but I like the distinction between needing certainty and seeking understanding. Probably there is a bit of both in each of us.

In his book, “Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems,” Gary Snyder writes:

The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
…
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.

Gary Snyder, still seeking. Photo by John Suiter. Great audio and photo essay over at Poetry Foundation.

Snyder strikes me as a seeker, not of certainty, but of experience, wonder, beauty, and understanding. Discovery is not about certainty.

Advent is a time of waiting, of staying awake, of readying ourselves. It’s a time of hope, and just finishing a study of Brene Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly,” she points out that we can’t know hope without struggle.

Part of our struggle as people, is the need to know for sure, the need to be certain–and yet, certainty precludes faith and mystery.

So on a gray, sleety, rainy Monday morning, I am going to sit in the questions, take a cue from Groody, and try to stay open to new discoveries.

Live the questions now

It’s tough sitting in not knowing. And at the same time, being able to be okay with not knowing is maybe the key to happiness or joy–being able to live in questions and uncertainty.

One of my favorite Facebook pages is “Contemplative Monk.” This week, they used a meditation on consecutive mornings by a favorite writer of mine:

Have patience with everything 
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions
themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers, which
could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live
them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the
future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way
into the answer.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It comes from Rike’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” which is a book I keep on multiple shelves, because I forget it and need to hear it a number of times.

And along with Rilke’s words, the folks at CM posted the picture at the top of the page here, and the two washed over me–the peace, the anticipation, sitting at the ready for whatever comes. With coffee. One of my favorite ways to start a day and a posture I try to take when I sit down at my desk in the morning (though my desk has more books strewn about it).

It’s always the questions that drive me, and people a lot smarter than I am point out that we are defined by our questions. Jesus frequently answered questions with questions (or stories), Socrates was known for the same thing, as were the Desert Fathers and all sorts of deep thinkers around the world.

“Live the questions now.” When we hold out for certainty, we are hopelessly stuck. There are so many things I think I’d like to know, which would put my mind at ease, make life more simple. But that’s a waiting game we can’t win, and even in winning, we lose that beginning of the day, sunrise possibility.

The times my heart beats fastest, the times my mind is most open, the times when I feel most connected to God, Creation, other people, are the times when it’s not a matter of knowing or thinking, it’s a moment or experience full of feeling, shared and reflected back. When no amount of knowledge can add a single thing to it.

When I can look with the eyes of a child, the eyes of wonder, and live the questions now.

When does the butterfly read
what flies written on its wings?

Pablo Neruda, “The Book of Questions”

You Don’t Know How it Feels

Tom Petty was right. I don’t know how it feels to be him. Or anybody else. And no one else knows how I feel, really. And that can be one of the lowest, loneliest feelings, sitting with the fact when it comes to how we feel and what we go through, that we keep running into places and points that we are sure that no one else gets it.

And I think probably we’ve all been there and that we’ll end up back there when it comes to dealing with other people. As close as we get to someone, or as long as we’ve known someone, things can still happen that throw us for a loop and leave us in the land of alone.

Then we have those moments when a glimpse of light shines in. They can often come at seemingly random and unexpected times. As C. S. Lewis put it, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” I can’t hear that quote now without seeing Charlie Mackesy‘s sketch in my mind. I like that the drawing moves beyond just people.

I go back to a Sunday afternoon during high school when a bunch of us were skimboarding on Boone Creek, a picture perfect Eastern Shore day on the water, when out of nowhere a friend said, “Did you ever have the thought where everyone else in the world is a robot and you are the only real person?” And I stopped in my tracks, astounded that anyone else thought that stuff, because it seemed like a thing that was just for sci-fi books, not conversation with your friends, and I had thoughts like that several times a day.

We all live out different scenarios and imaginings in our heads that we think are only ours. It takes guts to put them out there, and sometimes they fall on deaf ears, but sometimes, there is hope that not everyone else is a robot. Or maybe that is part of their robot plan 😉

The funny thing is, the older we get and the more of those thoughts we have stored up, the more quirky we feel like they are to the point where we are sure no one else could understand. And we’ve had more time and experience to be broken, to feel lost, to be confused. So when a connected moment like that happens, we can almost lose our breath.

Shared connected moments are sometimes just that: moments. Encouragement and affirmation; a nudge to keep going. Maybe we can share ourselves and provide a moment like that for someone else, maybe we encounter someone who does that for us.

I know when it comes to parenting right now, I have a 16 year old who might as well be quoting Tom Petty in just about any conversation we have. And sometimes I say, you know, at 46 I still feel that way. Sometimes people don’t know how it feels. But we all share that feeling, of not being understood. Of no one getting it, or us.

And that comes in different waves and different depths. T. H. White, in his book “The Once and Future King,” throws the full depth of that struggle out there:

“There was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not… Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.”

I dig those kind of questions and that kind of discussion. But in our busy lives, it doesn’t have to run that deep. Sometimes it’s just wondering if anyone else puts their hand out for lightning bugs to land on, or still skips shells, or likes hot sauce on their eggs, or tries to find their own new constellations when they look at the stars.

But I think part of what I take from White, part of what I want to tell my daughter, part of what I need to remind myself, is that before we get too caught up with whether anyone else feels what we feel, we first have to spend time with, reflect on, pray on, understand what we ourselves are feeling.

We don’t know what it feels like to be Tom Petty. Do we really know what it feels like to be ourselves?

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung

Who are you when you look into the fire of your own heart? Then let’s ask what we do with that in the world.