Ah St. Patrick...

Ah St. Patrick, are ya rolling in yer grave?
(Everyone: repeat that last sentence with a bit of a brogue.) All those stories about you and the snakes... and now some megamammoth country in the West celebrates your feast day as the biggest drinking holiday of the year. Whadda ya gonna do? as my friend's ex-mother-in-law used to say.

Well, in my community, we were celebrating too. We sang your first vespers last night and this morning and noon extolled your bringing the faith to the Irish people.

However, since we are Americans (and Episcopalians) and not to be outdone by our secular counterparts, (or only to be outdone in the sense of no moderation) we also celebrated your feast day... with corned beef, cabbage, Irish soda bread, and wine and beer. Killian Red to be exact... none of that green goop for us.

We ate in silence and drank to your health (or at least your spiritual health) in silence, and in absolute moderation. Except... I had poured a glass of red wine for one of my sisters who really wanted white. (It was corned beef, but she is a vegetarian... white must be the preferred color for vegetables, sort of like fish or chicken. Anyway, I had to pour her a glass of white , which left an extra glass of red that nobody wanted (since we were drinking in moderation) so... not wanting to waste good wine (waste not, want not, as St. Patrick used to say... or was that my grandmother?) Never mind. I drank the aforementioned glass (actually chug-a-lugged it since sister was waiting to wash the glass.)

All that said, I should probably not be blogging... except I haven't mentioned anything outlandish or derogatory about anyone except myself. And I will certainly sleep well tonight. Sweet dreams, St. Patrick.

seasons of the soul

That's seasons with a small s... don't expect anything too profound...

It's just that I go through "phases" (as my mother used to call it), and I find that these phases or seasons are as predictable as the seasons of the year, as regular as my hormones used to be. Now that I have no hormones, there's extra energy to devote to other endeavors, and one of them is as simple as noticing.

I notice that as I age I procrastinate less. Perhaps that's because my body now assures me that my life span is not immortal. "Do it now or it may not get done" seems a good mantra these days. That is not to say I never procrastinate... case in point: a small package with Christmas gifts, never mailed, has been under my bed since December. It's now March. The Post Office is two blocks away. What's that about?

I finally asked myself that the other day as I busily attended to other things and kept skirting the box. Ah... it's about not being enough. Of course. The childhood message, reinforced over the years, comes back to haunt me at the weirdest times. Because the gifts are meager I have not sent them.

When I lay it out on the table it seems a little silly that I'm letting some chocolate go stale and a book which could be enjoyed sit under my bed because I'm feeling wanting. It's so lose-lose that I'm embarrassed, yet it is what it is.

So the season of: finish it up-unless you're afraid it's not enough-then don't do it at all, is upon me. What other projects fall into that category, I wonder... do I really want to open this can?

Cameo appearances

John 5: 1-18

Today's Bible Study was bizarre. I was in one of my "I know what you need to do" moods. (Always a dangerous thing...) I had overheard a conversation earlier where one sister was upbraiding another for something not done correctly, or sufficiently, or something... and I had heard the sister on the receiving end offering excuses, and the sister on the giving end not buying them. So of course I knew what both needed to do. One of those sisters was in my Bible study.

We sometimes take a moment of silence before we begin, and it was only by the grace of God that I asked for help to speak... not what I wanted to say, but what the Spirit wanted her to hear. (Imagine that.)

We read the lesson. It was the passage where Jesus meets the man at the pool of Bethesda. The man had been afflicted (with something) for thirty-eight years, and Jesus cured him. It just happened to be on the Sabbath. The whole controversy over healing on the sacred day of rest, and the subsequent retort by Jesus that "My father is still working and so am I" got him into even more trouble.

But that wasn't the thrust of the reading for me. I was onto something totally different. I remember one of our celebrants mentioning that the "cameo" appearances by so many of the bit players in the stories of the Bible can tell us more about ourselves than the plot line.

If Jesus was the star, then the man at the pool played a cameo role. His dialogue and actions shed light on a bitter truth about us... this guy was invested in his identity.

Jesus asked him: "Do you want to get well?" Instead of answering, the man went to great lengths to explain why he hadn't been able to get well. He had nobody to help him down to the pool; somebody always got there first. He identified with his own martyr complex. Jesus cut straight through the excuses, didn't bat an eye, said "Pick up your mat and walk."

At that point the man was immediately healed. (This was not one of the cases where someone's faith set them free, this was Jesus' work. The man had no say... one minute he was ill, the next he was well.) So off he went with his mat and was soon accosted by the Sabbath Police. "It's unlawful to carry your mat on the Sabbath," they said. So what did he do? He blamed Jesus. Except he didn't know it was Jesus at that point, just some guy who had healed him.

Later... Jesus found him in the temple. What was he doing in the temple, I wonder? Was he thanking God for his miraculous healing, or was he wondering how he was going to survive with no excuse for sitting around the pool? Jesus then said something very strange: "You are well now. Sin no more, or something worse may happen to you." That implies (to me) that Jesus knew something about this man's past that hit a nasty nerve. Because what did he do next? He ran and tattled to the Sabbath Police that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Too much too soon. The man had an identity. If not comfortable, it was at least familiar... he was a martry. Poor man, waiting at that pool all those years, nobody to help him... Along came somebody who cared enough to cut through the bullsh*t and ask a straight question. "Do you want to get well?"

I think of the identities that I'm so attached to. What are the restrictions of those identities that I'm not willing to see? Not willing to risk giving up, because what would be left is too far out of my comfort zone?

We can be the voice of Christ to each other. But it's so hard to hear. It's easy to think that if Jesus Himself spoke to us we'd listen. I don't think so. I am able to take the truth in bits and pieces, but too much too soon makes me bristle, just like the man at Bethesda.

God's will... not!

"It was God's will."

I hear that sometimes from people who think they should somehow be thankful, or if not thankful, at least resigned to some tragedy they have endured, or some calamity they are facing. Poppycock. God does not will us to suffer. Suffering happens. It seems to be an integral part of our mortal lives. Just as there is darkness and light, joy and sorrow, life and death, salt and pepper... there are variations in our physical and emotional experiences and responses that go hand in hand with the whole mystery of being.

This is, perhaps, my biggest beef with the Old Testament... that strong image of God as jealous and wrathful and punishing... that He gets mad at us and makes us pay. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." And when I die I may very well find out that parts of that are true, but for this mortal life, the idea gives me no comfort, no reason to love, and certainly no reason to worship such a small-minded, hateful deity.

We can offer thanks to God, not for being the cause of our troubles, but for being the promise beyond our troubles. Thanks be to God.

The dreaded "m" word

What are those things? some might ask, and some will know only too well. For the uninitiated, they're stickers, band aids, attractive little markers that point out to the lab technician just where the nipple is when she views the indescript area of flattened tissue on her film.

"Just remember, the more compression, the better the image" said my technician as she began the smashing process. A few minutes earlier she had yelled down the hall "I only need the small plates!" (Thank you so much for announcing my shortcomings to the entire staff of Westside Radiology.)

Most of the time I'm glad I was born a girl. One of the things that does not make me glad is my doctor's insistance on yearly mammograms. My daughter-in-law just sent me this joke... a list of exercises... any of which will prepare you for the exam:

1. Open the refrigerator door and insert one breast in door. Shut the door as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds. Repeat again in case the first time wasn't effective.

2. Visit your garage at 3 AM when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat with the other breast.

3. Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the bookends against one of your breasts. Smash the bookends together as hard as you can. Set up an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.

A couple of weeks ago was my turn to have the car backed up so I too could be "sufficiently flattened and chilled." We can put a man on the moon but we can't find a better way to check for breast cancer?

Mirrors

Spokane, Washington: Living Stones Conference

It has been a long time since I've stayed In a hotel room. There was a double-wide full length mirror right outside the bathroom. (It's been a long time since I've seen myself in a full length mirror too.) My roommate was gone to a coordinators' meeting and I was alone for the morning. I puttered around, made coffee, sampled the hotel's shower gel, meditated on the conference ahead of us. When I'm alone I forget to close the bathroom door... it's a carryover from my life outside community, when the only person I ever worried about walking in on me was the cat.

So there I sat, attending to nature's call... I looked up and saw myself in the mirror. Flashback!! It was fifty-seven years ago. I was in kindergarten. Or primary school, or whatever they called it back then, and by accident, I had just walked in on another little girl sitting on the toilet.

The encounter couldn't have lasted longer than two or three seconds... I apologized and shut the door and waited my turn. But when she was gone, I tried what I had seen... she had been sitting sideways on the toilet seat. I had no idea why she did it. Maybe her little behind felt safer with less of a gap, but she was also lovely and popular and I desperately wanted to be that. If sitting sideways meant I could have it, then I would sit sideways too.

I copied that one action so that I could mirror her beauty, her personality and her popularity. It doesn't exactly work that way, I know. But I was four years old. Why then, almost sixty years later was I sitting sideways on a toilet seat in a hotel in Spokane? It made me chuckle, but it reminded me of how we do, in fact, mirror each other all the time.

We mirror each other's beauty, flaws, idiocyncracies. If we do that, is it so far-fetched to wonder if we are not also mirrors for God? We want what God has... union, peace, understanding... and wasn't it nice God gave us a human example we could try to copy?

Futility

Trying to understand God... now that's a foolish endeavor... a little like trying to capture quicksilver between your fingers. I remember when I was small, the dentist would pour a drop of mercury into my palm and I would watch it roll around in a little ball. If I tried to pick it up, it would disintegrate into a smear of nothingness. I was never content to just let it roll, I had to keep trying to pick it up. And so it is with this continual desire to pick God up and see exactly what He/She's made of.

It's probably one of the cosmic jokes... that we (as a species) keep trying to apply intellect to a puzzle that only requires heart to solve. A puzzle that requires centering and stillness and an openness to let all the illusions of the physical plane just disappear. How many times have I been shown that letting something go is the only way to go? A zillion? Probably. Still... I'll try to pick this up just one more time...

Not over til the fat lady sings...

Luke 4: 1-13
Today's Gospel from Luke describes Satan's defeat in the desert... all three of his temptations coming down to the question of power and when to use it. It was not that Jesus never used his power to create bread out of nothing, He did it quite willingly and easily when five thousand hungry people were stranded with him in a deserted area. It was the when and how of power that the devil (and many of his disciples) did not understand.

In this passage, the devil and Jesus both quote scripture to each other, (a point that should not be lost on those of us looking for Bible-based reinforcement for our own fears and preferences.) But the crux of our celebrant's sermon this morning was from the ending of Luke's narrative: When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

This particular battle may have been over, but the war still raged. Satan had lost a skirmish, but he was not defeated. Three years later, he was able to use Judas to achieve his purposes, able to sway Peter in a night of weakness. He was not defeated by a long shot.

Our celebrant also made an interesting point that when Jesus warned Peter that "Satan has asked to sift you like wheat" that the pronoun you was not stated in the singular in the Greek, but in the plural, implying a greater you than just Peter himself... implying anyone who would follow Jesus, then or centuries later. That would be us. "The adversary prowls like a roaring lion" but I think more often, the adversary quietly uses fear, personal preference, greed, and our insufferable pride to trip us up and knock us down.

The war is not over, the fat lady has not sung: God Bless America. What we do with the current temptations of power, as individuals and as a nation, remain to be seen. Scripture tells us: "but Christ is on our side." The best temptation the devil can use is to dupe us into thinking that means we are right, or invincible. We are neither.

In the wilderness

"The wilderness" is an expression we toss around a lot during Lent. We think we must go there (like Jesus did). For some, that means giving up the comforts of home, because in the wilderness you only have what you took with you, and because it was heavy to carry, you didn't take all that much. But I've known people to go into the wilderness well-prepared, like girl scouts, with a camper-trailer-full of amenities they didn't wish to leave behind... food, books, extra clothing in case it got cold at night. I've done it myself, and my wilderness experience, while adequate, did not transform me all that much.

Scripture tells us Jesus was driven into the wilderness. He probably was not prepared, and he may not have wanted to go. That is the wilderness we find ourselves in most unexpectedly sometimes. If he went, high on God's beautiful and powerful words about him, then those words probably did not sustain him for long. Forty days is a long time to be without food or water... in fact, it's physically impossible for humans to survive that long with nothing to eat or drink. So given the metaphor of forty meaning: a long damn time, what we know is that he was certainly ready for it to be over.

That is where I find myself when I am there... ready for it to be over. I am lost. The usual landmarks of my life, my faith... no longer point in any direction that have meaning. I am tired of being hungry, tired of being tired. I want it to be over. That transformation even occurs at all in these times, seems a miracle to me. And yet something happens. Always.

Living inside a wilderness experience when your friends and loved ones are still present is the most difficult I think. Because they want it to be over as well. It is not easy to sit by while someone you care for is going through crisis. They cannot bring you water even though they sense that you are parched. You must find the water for yourself.

Such stuff are dreams made of...

Yesterday was my first day back from living on Pacific time for the previous five days. Coming home in the middle of the night before Ash Wednesday had its challenges. For one, I wasn't sure I could wake up in Eastern time, especially since I didn't seem to be falling asleep in anybody's time. (I love to travel... but it both wires me up and wipes me out.)

I did get up and was able to function through Morning Prayer and mass, but around 10:00 AM I was fading fast. I napped and had a vivid, disturbing dream that narrowed my focus to one of my biggest obstacles to grace... anger.

In my dream it was Ash Wednesday and no matter where I went, people were talking. In the convent we try to keep strict silence on Ash Wednesday, but in my dream everyone was talking. They weren't just whispering either. They were laughing and telling jokes and using their loudest voices, and my one-ness on the Enneagram was screaming for them to shut-the *%#-up. I was the collation cook (for real, as well as in my dream) and I couldn't find a quiet place to prepare the simple dish of rice and cheese sauce. And boy, was I angry.

I was angry because nobody seemed to think the agreement we had made at conference to work on our silence had fallen down on the very first day. Angry because I wanted and needed the silence and nobody cared what I wanted and needed. I was angry because I was cooking THEM their food and couldn't find a peaceful place to do it. Angry... because I couldn't control them. I tried reason, guilt, bullying, whining, and finally, the ultimate cop-out... I refused to cook. I threw up my hands and huffed out of the kitchen, making a beeline to my mentor's office, to not only tattle, but to announce that I would not be able to provide the afternoon collation. Let them eat bread!

I woke up with a start, the angry tears still stinging my eyes, and realized it wasn't real. It was my worst nightmare. And yet on a deeper level it was very real. Anger is the key emotion for Enneagram Ones who can't get their way. For some numbers the emotion is fear, or doubt, or something else, but for us, it is anger. Fully awake, I went over the dream and realized that the biggest case for being angry was that I couldn't control my own anger.

When I arrived (awake) in the kitchen to start the rice, our housekeeper and maintenance man were talking. I did my best to tune them out and smiled. They had no clue why I was smiling.

Ashes Wednesday

Some unexpected friends (of friends) from Germany dropped by the convent a couple of weeks ago. They were visiting New York City and came bearing a gift... chocolates from Switzerland. As they presented them, they explained: "We were told that you keep something called Ashes Wednesday, and we must bring these right away, so that you consume them before that day."

When I repeated what he had said, we chuckled, but he was absolutely correct, of course. On this day we impose ashes on each other's foreheads... we do not impose one ash. We say: remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Dust is the comglomeration of a myriad of tiny particles, not just one. I naturally love to focus on my self, my own uniqueness and individuality. The idea that I can be lumped together with a million others diminishes my importance, at least in my own eyes. Yet God does not see as I see. God will not be contained in my limited selfish concept of who He/She is. I diminish myself by insisting on my own viewpoint, my own importance. For me, that is the message of Lent.

He was also correct that one of the things we give up corporately (as a group) is chocolates, or more specifically sweets... candy, cookies, desserts in general. Lent for us is a time of fasting. Our meals become simpler, our house moves into a deeper silence. We fast, not just from rich foods and pleasures, but from noise and meaningless chatter. There is no TV, the normal diversions are stripped away. It is not an easy time for many of us, because we chafe at the arbitrary way in which these things can be decided. "Because we've always done it that way" takes on a holy reference, and as irritating or amusing as it sounds at other times, it makes perfect sense during Lent.

Lent is not about me, it is about us. And it is about us in the broadest and deepest sense... Us as insignificant and indistinguishable as dust... yet as necessary to God as God is to us.

No, I did not die...

Just in case some of you thought I died and went to hell... uh, heaven, no such luck. I'm in Spokane, on the other side of the universe, attending a "Living Stones" annual conference. Be back sometime in the middle of the night Tuesday, just in time for Ash Wednesday.

Will catch up with you all then.

Luke 6: 17-26

I knew a guy in college who had a wonderful way with people. He fit in anywhere. He was an amazing musician, a singer... who could belt out a Puccini aria and turn around and sing with gentle sensitivity the Shaker hymn "It's a Gift to be Simple." Everyone who heard him thought he was destined to be one of the great tenors of our time. Never arrogant about his talent, he had a big heart that he shared, both in his music and in his dealings with others. I watched him work the room in a bar once. He knew exactly what to shout out to the bartender, the harried waitress, the bouncer at the door.

Jesus' words to the rif-raf on the plain shows that same kind of intuitive sensitivity. He knew what would make them feel honored, special, of value... and he shouted those words to them in front of everybody else. Shouted to them, in front of everybody else.

When I was growing up, a girl's reputation was one of her biggest assets. A nice girl did not associate with rif-raf. She did not hang out on the corner with boys or go to the bowling alley. She snubbed anyone who whistled or made cat calls when she walked by. She definitely did not ride in cars with boys. Reputation was everything, and I missed out on relationships that might have been friendships, had I not been such a goody-two-shoes.

College changed some of that. I was no bohemian, still bound by the conditioning of my youth, but I was able to experiment a little. Watching my friend in the bar was one of those epiphanies. He was not concerned with appropriate protocol or with making friends in high places. He shared himself with who was there. I knew in that moment I wanted to be like that.

I still want to be like that.

Human Nature

Discussing today's Gospel at Bible study, we talked about James and John's bold-faced request to "be seated at the right hand of Jesus in his glory." Someone mentioned it was just one more example of human nature. I attribute (blame) a lot of things on human nature, myself... and I got to thinking (again) about just how difficult it is to live up to, (let alone maintain) the standards Jesus sets for life in Him.

How radically opposed to human nature his teachings seem, how radical his example was.

The word radical is overused these days; it barely raises an eyebrow.
rad·i·cal [rad-i-kuhl]

To some of us, the word implies: extremist, uncompromising, drastic... generally in the negative sense. To others the word describes fundamental reforms, whether political, economic, or social, and compromising methods be damned. Some see radicalness as an evil, others as the highest good. (Taking the "right" side and pummelling anyone on the "wrong' side also seems to be very much in our human nature.)

And yet the word radical (like Jesus) has meaning beyond all our own labels: for it comes from both the Middle English and Latin words for radish or root. "Going to the root of origin" is the very first definition listed in the unabridged dictionary. So... if his radical example was really at the core of who we are, of who God is... then why is it always so hard to do what he says? Maybe that's a rhetorical question, for the obvious answer is "sin".

But then that only proves the point of those theologians who point to mankind's "sinful" nature as being the reason (and excuse) for things being the way they are. There has to be more to it than that.

In light of all that...

Luke 5: 1-11

Since we are now firmly ensconced in the season of Epiphany, our celebrant this morning asked us to hear the Gospel reading with epiphany light. Luke's version of Simon's call to be an apostle is much more detailed than the stories of the other Gospelers, and she went on to elaborate on the theme of his epiphany in this well-known story.

She talked about the unspoken questions in this encounter... questions Jesus will eventually ask out loud... Who do you say I am? Who are you in relationship with me? How will the answer affect your life? All excellent questions for anyone who professes Jesus as Lord, but especially in this case for Simon, his brother and their friends.

We can read Simon-(soon-to-be)-Peter's answers: He recognizes Jesus, not just as his rabbi, but as Lord. He recognizes himself as "a sinful man", unworthy of the relationship. And he accepts the offer to leave everything and follow the relationship. It may have been the huge catch of fish that captured his attention, but as our celebrant explained, Jesus was the one fishing that day, not Simon.

After possibly the largest haul of fish in his career, Simon dropped his nets. He quit while he was ahead, some might say. But whether he himself understood it fully at the time, he certainly came to realize that material success was worth next to nothing in the new light of other possibilities. What other possibilities will be open to us, once we drop the ways of this world that confine us? Where will our own epiphanies shed new light?

Feast of the Presentation

Another time snafu in our liturgical calendar, the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the temple, occurs on the second of February, marking the official end of Christmastide. (If your outside Christmas lights are still burning, it's really time to take them down, never mind how pretty they look.)

As we near the end of another "creativity week", today's service was a Morning Prayer/Mass combination at the very civilized hour of 8:00 am. Another priest, who often celebrates for us on Friday, rang the doorbell at 7:00, then realized he wasn't celebrating today because he had a meeting to go to.

I was asleep when the doorbell rang (I shut my alarm off at 5:00 and rolled back over into dreamland.)

In my dream I had just narrowly escaped being crushed by an overpass. (New York was having landslides and I was beneath the Westside Highway.) Before that I was part of a work crew cleaning up the Holland Tunnel from flooding. When the doorbell jolted me awake, I swore... thinking I had overslept. But it was only 7:00. An hour to go before mass. What luxury!

I was exhausted from the dream. I'd been working hard bailing out the tunnel and was covered in mud from the landslide. My fellow sister had lost her granddaughter's baby bonnet and had gone back to some hotel to look for it. She was covered in mud too. Don't go, I thought. Forget the baby bonnet. Stay here, where it's safe.

Where do these crazy dreams come from? I was relieved that I was not covered in mud afterall, and that my sister was right next door in her room. Relieved that I had plenty of time to make my bed, drink a cup of coffee, prepare for the day in leisure. How was Mary's day? ...the day they took the Christ child up from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to be presented?

Had she overslept? Was her new baby fussy or placid? Did he howl when he was circumcised? In my own internal chronology, the wisemen are still in transit when all this is happening. They have not yet visited Herod, and their questions have not yet placed all Bethlehem infants in danger.

Yet Simeon's prophetic words: and a sword will shall pierce your own soul foreshadow the life she faces as the mother of God. She may narrowly escape the sword of Herod's soldiers, but there will be many more to come.

Get off my case

It always surprises me when certain things I post invoke the ire of so many readers, especially the anonymous ones. Yesterday's passive aggressive rant on things that bug me about co-existing in community, seems to have been one of those posts.

The gist of my critical comments ranged from blaming the exposé on my now well-established addiction to alcohol (see earlier post where I wondered about the possibility here) to the fact that nothing changes... (as in: I was always a b*tch before so I'll always be one in the future.)

Give me a break. Anyone who thinks that living with nuns is somehow different than living with other human beings, needs to wake up and smell the day-old coffee grounds. Yes... we pray a lot; yes, we have a commitment to God; yes, we love each other and forgive each other for all kinds of things you'd get fired for in the secular world. But that doesn't mean we don't drive each other nuts from time to time. Can you spell H-U-M-A-N? With all the warts?

Some apparently can't when it comes to religious. There's an unhealthy need for (me in particular) to conform to some preconceived perception of what a religious should and should not be, say or do. What's that about? They conveniently forget that, in addition to seeing my sisters through very human eyes, I also look in the mirror. I am not, nor will I ever be perfect. (I'm not even sure I'd ever even want to be, for that matter.) Perfection is way overrated, and it's too subjective. Your idea of perfect could be my idea of hell. Given the comments... probably is.

Can you spell p-a-s-s-i-v-e aggressive?

Every now and then my paranoia gets the best of my compassion... and I go straight to "she did that on purpose!" Seven times out of ten I am wrong. She did not do it on purpose (at least not consciously). She forgot. Or she didn't even notice, or even think it was something that was hers to do. The she in these cases could apply to any one of my sisters at any given time, but more often than not, it comes down to just one or two... whose ways of being in the world are so alien to mine I get bent out of shape.

For instance: if I walk into my bathroom and hear the shower running next door, I don't flush my toilet. I don't get into my shower and turn the water on. Our pipes are ancient and the pressure is awful. Yet I can be showering away myself and suddenly be without water. What's with that?

Another example: Dishes get put away in certain places in our cupboards. One sister gets so upset when they are put in the wrong place or in the wrong order she slings them around and the bowls get chipped. I feel like slinging them myself, when I keep finding the large baking sheets on top of the small ones. They nest. Beautifully. Yet someone is either too lazy to bother to nest them or doesn't think it matters.

Then there's the sister who does everything at a snail's pace, and others are continually waiting for her. Waiting for her to finish eating, to finish getting dressed, to finish going to the bathroom. She takes her time no matter how many people are inconvenienced, seemingly oblivious to the resentment swirling around her.

But wait, there's more... one sister volunteers for everything and then only does half of what she volunteers for. Another sister never volunteers for anything and feels put upon when someone suggests maybe she could help with the workload. And then there are the passive aggressive behaviors that are too vague and discreet to point a finger at, yet irritate and annoy. Leaving your trash for someone else to clean up... making the coffee but not emptying the grounds, leaving one spoonful of food in the container so you won't have to wash it out, or using the last of it and leaving the container for someone else to wash. For me these are matters of common courtesy, the oil that keeps community running smoothly. But that is my take on the situation, and it is not necessarily the law. And even if it were the law, people wouldn't always obey.

When I came into community, I took the Meyers Briggs Personality test and came out on the fence between the P and J designations. You'd think that would mean I could easily swing both ways. However, the way it manifests in real life, is that if I'm in a room full of Js I'll act like a P. If I'm in a room full of Ps, I'll act like a J. We have mostly Ps in our community, so my J-ness comes to the fore way more often than I care to admit.

I hate this about myself. I hate that all these little things pile up inside me and I want to bite somebody's head off. I hate even more that when it gets to me I stoop to the same level and act passively agressive myself. I think for Lent I'm giving up judgment. Will that fly?

It's all about Truth

Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
I Corinthians 13: 1-13
Luke 4: 21-30

Jeremiah may have been a bullfrog in some circles, but he sure didn't want to be a prophet."...I am only a boy." But God sounds a little irritable when He says, "Do not say 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you; and you shall speak whatever I command you." So much for free will.

In Corinthians we hear the familiar verses: ...Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;... And finally, from Luke, Jesus reminding the congregation in Nazareth that no prophet is accepted by those who knew him when... and that being a Jew will get them no special treatment from God. That last little bit of truth riled them up so badly they tried to throw him off a cliff.

So the Gospel message points back to the Old Testament reading... nobody (unless they have a death wish) wants to be a prophet. It's a dangerous job. Speaking God's truth will get you killed.

Our celebrant this morning explored some of the reasons why people don't want to hear the truth, especially from somebody they thought was one of them. How come this guy knows something I don't? Who died and made him king? I remember him when he couldn't blow his own nose... yadda yadda yadda. Do we feel insulted? Or inconvenienced? Will accepting the truth mean we've somehow fallen short? And if so, who are you to tell me I've fallen short anyway?

Truth and human nature... like oil and water, they need to be shaken really hard to emulisfy, and even then the particles immediately start to separate. Is it because honesty is in fact brutal? Is it because honesty hurts so much that the only reaction is violence?

In Corinthians, the pretty words (reserved mostly for wedding ceremonies) mask an even harder truth... love is the only thing that matters. Without the attributes of love: patience, endurance, humility, kindness, cheerful acceptance... anything else you may be, may have achieved... amounts to diddlysquat. Fame, success, wealth, power... worth nothing in the sight of God.

In my line of work we hear it, we proclaim it, we even believe it. But it sure isn't easy to do it.

gender humor

While I've been doing as little as possible... surfing and reading my bloggy friends posts, I discovered a new site thanks to Jules at maced with grace. Here's a sample:


You can view more of these cartoons here.