Author: David Pierce

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” 

So said the Apostle Paul a long, long time ago to a small band of Christians in Rome.  Granted, Paul didn’t think of himself as speaking to Christians any more than did those to whom Paul was speaking think of themselves as being Christians.  Paul and his audience were both Jewish.  (Paul called them “saints, God’s beloved”.)  They thought like Jews, they practiced their religion like Jews, they ate like Jews.  Like their ancestors of old who looked for the Almighty and found the Almighty in some of the most eye-splitting places, they were Jews through and through.  That this last quality of being Jewish would cause some many centuries later to call them not Jews, but Christians, would perhaps have sparked within them as much surprise as distress.  But so it went that this small band of Jews in Rome who had heard of God once appearing to their great-great uncle Moses in a burning bush and to their long-lost cousin Elijah in a whisper of silence, one day saw something else they’d never truly seen before: a man.

What made this man so different was not his miracles–feeding 4,000 people on a couple fish and a few loaves of bread; calming stormy seas; or his views on power–that money can be corrupting and poverty crippling beyond self-repair.  Moses had split the Nile River and Amos ranted against social injustice.  Rather, what made this man so different was his mercy…

He forgave women that others would have stoned.

He leveled evil by inviting its perpetrators to see both the consequence of their ways AND the possibility for change, in him!

He prayed first, which is to say, he insisted on letting others talk first.  He listened to understand, and then he spoke, and this was his compassion.

Yes, on occasion he was known to flip tables mercilessly, but he did it only to those who should have known better than to sit down and lick their plate in the presence of a starved beggar.

And what the small band of Jews saw in this man was something of God, the divine spark igniting a bush again.

True, it would not have been unusual to hear a Jew say that God had met them in a way never seen before.  To say that God Almighty had descended to earth in flesh and bone even was not entirely new.  The Greeks and Romans had been setting their caesars up in palaces, trotting them around in chariots, giving them dominion over the sky and sea, and calling them God for years.  What made the elevation of the mercy-man Jesus to divine status so different, however, was that it depended entirely upon the testimony of rather shaky witnesses to say over and over again, it’s true, we believe this about him.

Where the Greeks and Romans upheld their gods and caesars with proclamations and doctrines, giving them the necessary and unchanging justification to do most anything and to never be questioned (at least not to their face) about it—so if Poseidon chose to churn up the seas and cause a massive typhoon to wipe out an entire village, as terrible as this may be, Poseidon must have his reasons for doing so and those reasons must be good—Jesus never laid claim to being anything close to a god, or even to good.  As far as we know he didn’t write anything down that couldn’t be erased and the few proclamations he did make tended to make those who once called him God to rethink their position.

Consider the rich man who once called Jesus, Good Teacher, and asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus threw off the title, saying, “God alone is good,” and as for eternal life, start with the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your mother and father.  At the heart of Judaism is a concern for law, for a system that works to nurture justice and to protect the innocent.  That the rich man responds to Jesus by telling him, “I’ve done all of that,” makes clear that he is well on his way to eternal life.  But then this: “You lack one thing: go, sell whatever you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come follow me.”  It’s our reminder from Jesus that social responsibility without compassion will get us no where except further away from eternal life.  We can live our lives following all the rules.  We can never join a march, never disrupt the public square, never steal from our neighbor or even want what they have.  We can sit in a pew every week, drop some money in the poor box, keep to ourselves and never pass a judgment.  We can do all of this and still be miles away from the goodness of God, because while all things do work together for good for those who love God, the operative word is not “good.”  It’s “love,” which is nothing short of a revolution.

It seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians have come to hear these words differently today.  We hear that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, and we forget that if we are to love God, we must first work together.  That the purpose of God is to love and to work together.  But instead we stake our claim on working only with those who share our purpose, who love like we do, and most notably, who love us like we want them to.  So “liberals” tell “conservatives” who in turn tell gays and lesbians who in turn tell gun owners who in turn tell pacifists that all things will not work together for good for you because you are not living according to the purpose of God.  We hone in only on the parts that make us feel good about being us, forgetting that there is no goodness, or even any hope of goodness for us, if we don’t give up some of our goodness to love.  Perhaps we need reminding that these words—“all things work together for good”—these words were not spoken so much to Christians, or for the sake of Christians, as to those who, on account of their generous orthodoxy and unassuming ways, would come to be called Christians.   

Not too long ago I was sharing with a group of children the story of how Jesus once fed those 4,000 people with just a couple fish and a few loaves of bread and how after everyone was done eating there were 12 baskets of leftovers.  One little girl asked if the story was really true.  (I thought this was a very brave thing for her to do.)

     Another child, equally brave, said, “I don’t think so.”

     I asked them then, “Do you not think Jesus could feed that many people?”

     “Yes, I think he can,” the two said together.

     “But I don’t think he did it on his own.”

     Overcome with curiosity, I had to know.  “How do you think he did it then?”

     “I think the people just kept passing the food around, taking really small bites to make sure everyone got something.”

     “In the story, though, it says that everyone was filled and that there were leftovers.  How could everyone be stuffed if they only had a little bit?”

     “I don’t know how the leftovers got there,” said yet another child, “but I think everyone was filled because it feels really good to share.”

If Paul had been asking a question when he said, “all things work together for good for those who love God?” the answer must have been “yes.”  In fact we know it was, and is.  That somehow, in a world like ours, someone had the guts to say, “all things work together for good, now go out and make it so,” is indeed a call to love and revolution.

But would our vision fit the call.  In the wake of this past week’s shootings at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston I have heard a lot of questions.

Is this a time for politics or healing?

Is this the appropriate time and occasion to raise the platform again to talk about gun control?

Was this a hate crime or a crime against Christians (I understand the difference, but seriously, wouldn’t we do better just to tell ourselves that all crime is hatred?)

None of this surprises me.  We’ve heard these same haunting questions before.  The same people ranting so singularly about their position.  For my part, I just don’t think they are the right questions for today.  Maybe we can ask them tomorrow, but as long as we insist upon asking them today, we wait for the next gun to go off.  These questions will not lead us to the more urgent answers—the right answers—we need today.  Some ask, is this a time for poltiics or healing?  But what about,  can our politics be a force for healing?  And what about our religions and our families?  Can they be of that same force?  Can we start a revolution with just a few loaves of bread and a couple fish?   We already know the answer: all things work together for good for those who love God.  Are we humble enough and gutsy enough to prove it?

I don’t think it is inappropriate, given the nature both of this crowd and of the one who has gathered us all here, namely Margery, to tell a story about…sheep.  This seems to be the theme we are running with this evening anyway.

“The Lord is my Shepherd,” we have just heard played and sung.  And in a moment,

“My Shepherd will supply my need, 

Jehovah is his name.  

In pastures fresh, he makes me feed, 

beside the living streams.”

We’re talking of course about sheep, about us, about the places we wander to—sometimes knowingly, sometimes against our wills—and about the things that happen to us in those places where we feel lost and yet free.  And most especially we are talking about the people, the shepherds, who lovingly track us down in those places and gently nudge us onward.

This all part of the story I want to share with you, and I promise I’ll get on with it in just a moment, but first, an observation about sheep that may be helpful to the story.  (Keep in mind, this observation is coming from a guy who’s never really observed a sheep.  Even at the petting zoo, I don’t pet the sheep.)

From what I can tell, when looking at a flock of sheep, their ability to travel together and stick together does not depend upon the individual sheep.  In other words, in order for there to be unity, oneness, among the sheep, they don’t have to know each other.  It is, however, necessary that they at least recognize each other as sheep.  Stick a moose or a pig in the flock and the sheep will baa in unified protest or just shudder in fear of the one who is different.  But their togetherness, their togetherness rests solely upon the shepherd, and not upon the loyalty of the sheep towards the shepherd, but upon the loyalty of the shepherd towards the sheep.

Now I can’t speak for you, but this comes as good news to me, because as I look around, I see only one or two people that I know and who know me.  Not many of us have been introduced.  But here we are.  Thanks to the generous, spirited welcome of those who call this hallowed sanctuary home, and of Margery, here we are.  And I submit to you that in this time and place it is not necessary to our unity that we know each other.  For us to share grief and hope, as we are here to do, it is only necessary that we recognize each other as human beings.  Or, if you will, as sheep.  Which brings me, finally, to my story.  It comes from scripture, from the gospel of Luke.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  So Jesus told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

I picked this story to share mainly because it’s one that Margery and I read together a short while ago on the day we first met.  Margery had just received the news that what had been ailing her for months was cancer.  Life as she knew it had changed and before long it was about to change again.  “I’m not afraid to die,” she told me.  “It’s not the moving on that bothers me.  It’s the leaving behind.”

Leaning back in my chair, I pulled a page out of my Counseling 101 textbook, drummed my fingers and said, “Yes, tell me more about…leaving behind.”  And that’s when she started in about the 100 sheep and the 1 who got away.  “I worry about people who aren’t saved,” she confessed.

Now it was clear from listening to her tell it that Margery did not think of herself, nor was she likely to ever think of herself, as the sheep who got away and needed saving.  At best she was the shepherd who went off in search of the lost.  At worst she was a member of the herd of 99 who followed the rules and kept to the straight and narrow.

What we ought to remember, though, is that right or wrong, all judgments aside for a moment, we’re never told how or why the 1 sheep got away.  I mean, what kind of shepherd are we dealing with here who loses track of sheep and then abandons 99 to the wiles of the wilderness to go off in search of just 1?  Why are we so quick to wag a finger at the sheep?  Perhaps we ought to indict the shepherd for negligence?

Moreover, how do we know the 1 sheep didn’t want to get lost?  Maybe they’d had enough of living under the watchful, arrogant eye of the flock.  Time to find greener pastures.  How does the saying go?  “Not all who wander are aimless.”  Amen to that.  Sheep are not as dumb as they look.  If anything they are stubborn, persistent, far more certain of themselves than we give them credit for.

Truly, to know Margery was to know that she was the 1 sheep.

At a young age, following the separation of her parents, she and her sister had to live many years in an orphanage.  When her parents did patch things back up years later, it was Margery who kept the family afloat, who bounced from job to job, working her way up whatever ladders she could to provide for the family.

It strikes me that in recalling Margery, her youngest nieces and nephews remember her as their source for comic books and bedtime stories.  “The bedtime stories were clearly made up on the spot.  Every night she would invariably paint herself into a corner and not be able to get out of it.  That’s when she would declare, time to go to bed!  But the next night the story would pick back up and go on.”

As an adult she loved to read fantasy books about dragons and vampires, so long as the vampires were good, and she took on the Harry Potter series with all the enthusiasm of a 13 year old.

And though she was banned from the kitchen on account of being an absolutely terrible cook, she had an uncanny ability to keep cats and dogs alive forever just by giving them a lap to lie on.

I don’t know but that you don’t get through life and also help others get through their life by being just another one of the sheep in the fold.  I’m sure Margery loved dragons because they are fierce fighters, and cats because they are winsome and gritty.  She took to bedtime stories and fantasies as a way of creating more beautiful, holier worlds for us to live in, even if just for a moment.  Yes, she was in her own right more the shepherd who rescued us than she was anything else, and we owe her our gratitude for that.

But she was also the 1 sheep who wandered off.  She was the stand-out in need of saving.  And while she may not have liked to think of herself as such, I will tell you how the rest of my visit went with her that first day we met.

After reading up on the 99 sheep and the 1 who got away, and her telling me that she didn’t much care for my particular take on the story, but she did like me, she agreed that it wouldn’t be so terrible to discover after all that we may not have gotten it all right.  That while we have surely gotten some things right, we may still have a thing or two left to discover about God, ourselves, and who, or what, saves us.  Because it wasn’t the sheep who stayed put that got saved by Love.  It was the sheep who got away.

 I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  I know that Margery believed that in death God would meet her in the love of Jesus, the shepherd who traveled far and wide to seek and save the lost.  And if only for the sake of Margery, I do believe that’s just what Jesus did. 

But still, I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Rumi once quipped that “Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.  When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.”

Jesus, Rumi, a great big field, a heavenly gate, I don’t know what you believe about who or what meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Perhaps we can all agree though that if we want to be found we must first step away from the flock, jump the fence, and get ourselves lost?

If only that we might also rejoice over each other when we are found again.

Writing about tonight, the gospel writer John says that when they were gathered together for supper, Jesus took off his outer robe, put on a towel and began to wash the disciples feet.

John doesn’t say that Jesus asked anyone if they wanted their feet washed.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Andrew, I’d be glad to wash your feet for you if you’ll just kick off your Nikes.”

Jesus doesn’t ask them if they want their feet washed.  He just knows that their feet need to be washed.  He knows this because for one thing, he can see that their feet are dirty.  There were no closed-toe boots or sneakers or Uggs back in those days.  At best you had a pair of sandals and the dirt on your feet told the story of where you’d been that day.

There’s an ancient saying that goes, “If you want to know where you are, look at your feet.”  So we can imagine what Jesus saw, and what he could have said, in washing the disciples feet tonight.

“Wow, Peter.  I can see that you’ve got a lot of dirt here from your bedroom floor.  You’ve been in your bedroom a lot today, have you?  Behind closed doors, doing some praying, some thinking, trying to figure out your next move.  Peter, let me wash those feet of yours.”

Then there’s James and John.  The dirt on their feet is the same.  Two brothers, they’ve been out on the soccer field all day kicking the ball at each other’s head, trying to prove who can kick the ball harder.  In a few minutes an argument is going to break out around the table about who is the greatest disciple.  Make no mistake about it, James’ and John’s voices will be the loudest.  “Here guys,” says Jesus, “let me wash your feet for you.”

There’s also John the Beloved Disciple.  He’s at the table, too.  He’s caked with dirt from his feet all the way up his shins.  It’s the dirt from the field at the edge of town, the one covered with flowers.  John’s been out there all day shuffling back and forth.  We’ve heard that John is the disciple who just needs some extra reassuring.  He needs to be told that he’s loved the most.  So he’s been out in the field all day pulling the petals from the dandelions.  He loves me, he loves me not.  He loves me, he loves me not.  “John,” says Jesus, “give me your feet.”

And of course there’s Judas.  His feet are covered with the dirt of the temple and the dirt from the local sheriff’s office.  He’s been hanging out there a lot lately, scheming and plotting with the authorities on how best to capture Jesus.

They’re all at the table with Jesus tonight, but soon none of them will be at the table with Jesus. They’re all going to run, to say they never knew him.  And they know this about themselves, and Jesus knows this about them.  That it’s not just their feet that are dirty.  It’s their hearts and souls as well.  So Peter says, “Lord, wash not just my feet, but my hands, my head, and every inch of me.”  And Jesus does, because to Jesus those gathered around the table are his friends.  That’s what he calls those who are so dirty, so insecure.  He calls them friends, and he reaches out to touch the dirtiest parts of them.

I don’t know where you’ve been lately.  If we looked at our feet, what would they tell us about who we’ve stood beside, and who we’ve walked away from, what good we’ve said and what good we’ve not said?  I don’t know but Jesus invites us still to come to his table with our dirty, messy lives, to eat bread—his presence with us, his body broken for us; to drink a cup—his blood poured out for us, his life given to us.  For in these gifts and in this moment Jesus himself draws near enough to touch us, to wash and heal us, for us to hear him call us friend, that we might call each other the same.

One of the most audacious declarations in scripture, that perhaps sums up all of scripture, is from none other than the 23rd Psalm.  “My cup runneth over.”

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

If the language sounds a bit out-dated it’s only because we’ve been hearing this for as long as there’s been air to breathe.  

 “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”  This is, I believe, the love of God, though it makes me want to scream out, “What the hell?”  What kind of shepherd goes to the trouble of laying out cloth napkins and lighting candles so I can sit down with people who make my blood boil?  I much prefer the shepherd who doesn’t hold my own stupidness and stubbornness against me, who leaves a herd of 99 faithful sheep behind to set out in search of me.  Then, finding me, throws me on his, or her—I’m going to say her.  In this case you got to figure on the shepherd being a kind grandmotherly type—she throws me on her shoulders and skips me home.  But lay me out in green pastures, lead me alongside quiet waters, restore me right down to my soul, only to sit me down with my enemies?  Take me back to Death Valley please!

Of course, there is no place that begs us to be friendly more than a table.  Is this the love of God?  To provide a six-course meal and enough beer and wine to keep us at the table until all the enemies have drunk themselves into friendship?  Given that we know drunkenness wears off, this would be a strange way to show love and make friends.  For we would wake up the next morning only to see a less-dazzling version of ourselves in the mirror.  We’d remember what we did or did not do the day or night before and we’d loathe, resent, and hate ourselves.  What is more, our enemies would not be our friends.  They’d still be our enemies.  No, this is not the love of God.

Indeed, in coming to any table we might play the enemy as much as the friend, or at least the stranger, which is too often taken to be the enemy.  We have nothing in our hands, no gift to offer by which we might even win a friend.  We’ve just stepped out of death’s shadow.  We’re barely breathing.  Before us, a table; we sit down, and if we see only our enemies sitting across from us, who’s to say that they don’t see it the same way?  But our cup runneth over!  Someone has decided to treat us like we are a friend, to show us not just a little bit of generosity, but more generosity than we can contain.  God makes us her friend and gives us a spillover of kindness in hopes that we’ll use it to make more friends.  

This is the love of God.

A three year old—specifically, mine—is standing in the hallway trying to put his shoes on.  His older sister is going outside to play with the neighbors and he wants to go too, if only he could get his shoes on.  He is leaning against the stairwell bannister.  He can hear the doors to the shed opening and the squeals of children proclaiming liberty as they climb aboard their bicycles.  He can see that someone who doesn’t even know how to ride a bike is using his Spiderman Big Wheel!  Anxious and terrified, he begins to pound his left heel into his right shoe.  His right heel is simply pounding directly against the hardwood.  His shoes are velcro.  He won’t need to tie them, but the harder he pounds the more the back of his left shoe is getting folded, smushed underfoot.

“Can I help you,” I ask him.

“No, I can do it,” he reverberates.  

He is quite clearly growing not only into his shoes but also into his heart that wants what it wants.  I leave him there to work things out.  A few minutes later I come back to check on him.  He’s still wrestling.

“Buddy, let me help you.

“No.”  He yells at me this time and throws a punch; it’s harmless, a swat at the breeze, except he knows that I know: he wasn’t really swatting at the breeze.  

“Time out,” I tell him.  And up to his room he goes.

I listen to him sob for a bit before pushing the door open.  He’s sitting on the floor inside his closet trying to get a different pair of shoes on now.

“Daddy, can you help me?”

This is, I believe, the love of God.  Having been turned away more times than not, God asks us if we can help.

Then, with her own divine hand she bends down to show us how it’s done.  She tucks her thumb into the back of our shoe, just enough so our heel can slide into place and we can stand up to run outside and play.

This morning my 3 year old son, Rowan, came into my bedroom to ask the same question he has asked everyday for the past two months: “What’s today?”

Now most people would know this is an impossible question to answer.  You can’t put the cart before the horse and expect to get anywhere.  How can I say what today is before today has really begun?  I’m still in bed, not sure if I’m still dreaming.  The alarm clock ticks 5:45.  I’m actually in a nightmare.  What’s he doing up already, asking, “What’s today?”

In our house this question can be answered in one of three ways.  “It’s a school day.”  “It’s a Grampy day.”  “It’s a stay-home day.”  The first of these usually evokes a level of whining that can be tampered only with candy bars.  News that it’s a school day means there’s no way in hell this day has any chance of being treated fairly or judged rightly.  There may be a fridge full of Mickey Mouse yogurt cups downstairs, but today, Mickey might as well be the Devil.  As for my own cup of coffee that thanks to Keurig can change flavors daily and brew instantly, today all coffee tastes bitter.  And school—that glorious place of pre-K-ness where recess actually counts as a class and picking your favorite color of crayon is the measure of smarts—it’s just a cover for minimum security prison.  “What’s today?”  Of all the hopeful, cheery ways to answer this question, “It’s a school day,” is just a mistaken way of saying, “Today we are condemned.”  How unfortunate.

On the other hand, news that it’s a stay-home day can raise us to levels of ecstasy reminiscent of soldiers who have just been told they don’t have to go to battle today after all, the other side has declared a cease fire.  You can leave your bunker, go into the backyard and play ball.  You can even cross enemy lines—go to the school yard and take a ride on the swings.  Today the promise is that no one will fire upon you by ringing a bell to summon you back inside.  It’s not a school day.  It’s a stay-home day.

In between these is a world of compromise, or what we call, a Grampy day.  To understand how this day works, let me back up to what happened four months ago.  Four months ago I announced to my church that I was leaving.  Leaving, as you may well know, is hard, painful, divisive work.  We try harder than hard to make it easier by saying things like, “You’re moving on to bigger and better things.”  And the person who is leaving says back, “And bigger and better things will come along for you as well.”  We tell each other that it’s not what we’d like; it’s not according to our timetable, but nothing ever is.  We appeal to reasonable irrational—“It makes no sense but somehow it must.”  In the church we give up to faith and to the plan of God, which we trust isn’t just out there somewhere waiting to be discovered but is (if you dare to believe it), waiting to discover us.  We need only to come out of the bunker, let the sun fall upon our faces and see that it’s falling on everyone everywhere.

Scripture tells a story about an Ethiopian eunuch who is pulled over on a desert road just outside of Gaza.  As in that part of the world today, so in that part of the world then, Gaza was contested territory.  Many claimed Gaza, but few belonged there.  It should not surprise us then that a eunuch—traveling in the service of a foreign dignitary, robust, having the appearance of one who should not be messed with, yet underneath all of this, castrated—is pulled over just outside Gaza’s coveted borders, for a eunuch knew what it was to be claimed and yet not to belong.  To be told, like it or not, your whole future now belongs to me.  You’ll go and not go where I say.  Did the eunuch want it this way?  Did he say, not my will but yours be done.  (That would be noble, I suppose.)  Or was it the price of being who he was, an Ethiopian?  Either way, this Ethiopian eunuch has just come from worshiping in Jerusalem.

Now I don’t know how you, my reader, worships.  Lying on your back in a bed of leaves, staring up at the stars?  Sitting perched on a porch with a cup of coffee, quietly observing the world going by?  Keeping weekly ritual in a pew or on your knees, surrounded by 10 or 10,000?  To me worship is the recognition that like it or not, we are not alone.  God is everywhere, and this means Grace and Mercy and Kindness are everywhere, too.  Because God is Love we are not only claimed, but we also belong.  We are claimed to belong.

So the story goes that this no-man is sitting in no-man’s land reading about this Extravagant God and wondering, is it for me, even for me?  Of course, the only answer he can come up with is the only answer he’s ever known.  Except along comes a fellow-worshiper who climbs up into his chariot with him.

“Do you know what you’re reading?  Do you know who the writer is talking about?” they ask. “No,” says the Ethiopian.  “How can I without someone to make it plain?”

Saint Paul once confessed that the basic reality of God is plain enough to see.  Run your fingers along a tree trunk, climb a hill and feel the sun warming up as you go, from the ocean depths to the tiny star speck, it all sings God’s praise and glory.  True enough: these are good enough for the glory of God, but only flesh and blood can confirm the love of God.

“Is it for me, even for me?  How can I know?”

I don’t know if this was the exact question that called me and my family to move four months ago, but such is the question whose answer I find myself coming up with every Grampy day when I drop Rowan and his 4 year old sister, Lillian, off with Bernard who has no arms, and who must wonder, “Is it for me, even for me?  How can I carry them?”  And it is the answer that comes to me when my 82 year old Nana who is no bigger than 5 feet offers to spring Rowan from preschool early and take him to the duck pond.  It is the answer the Ethiopian eunuch comes up with from the seat of his chariot, the answer I heard coming from the backseat of my Subaru this morning when, knowing it was a school day and there was no way to avoid it, Lillian suggested we sing on the way there.  “It will make things easier for you, buddy,” she said to her little brother.

“It is for me, even for me?  How can I know?”

The God whose mercy and kindness is everywhere says yes it is, but only flesh and blood—mine and yours together—can make it known.

Bernard’s mother died this week.  Her name was Mary.  In the 11 years I have known Bernard I’ve only ever heard him call her,  Mother.  “Mother, how are you today?”  “Mother, what happened in the Red Sox game last night?”

I’ve been thinking the last few days about how it went the day she got the call about the accident.  It wasn’t the first call of its kind that she had received.  Mary was, after all, a mother of 9.  You can’t have that many chicks on your roost and not expect that from time to time one or two is going to fall off and even fall away.  And sure enough, some did.  A couple seemed to have decided that the roost was simply too full; too many chicks sharing the same room, the same bathroom, and they flew away in search of their own house to call home.  I don’t know if they ever called to tell Mary they were going.  Perhaps someone else had to make that call.  “Mother, she’s moved south.”  “Mother, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but he left a month ago.”

We should be neither surprised nor discouraged to discover that in a house of 9 chicks, 1 rooster, and a hen, there is going to be some clawing, some cockfights, and everyone is going to grow up with some scrapes, bumps, and bruises.  Some will even endure wounds too deep to heal.  Flying the coop, cutting certain ties, falling in and out of love is necessary trial and error on the road to redemption.

Then of course there is Bernard, my father-in-law with bear paws for hands who lost those paws in a freakish motorcycle accident over 9 months ago.  How must that call have gone?  “Mother, it’s Bernard.  He’s…”

I remember seeing her walk into the waiting room at the hospital.  It hadn’t even been 24 hours yet since death had gotten into the ring with Bernard.  He had gone from a joy ride under blue skies with his Harley buds to an ICU room with dull lighting that is supposed to make you feel like the person in the bed is just resting comfortably, when the truth is, they’re about to go 250 rounds.  The extent of his injuries were so massive that when you entered his room you had to look on the little whiteboard over his bed to see where they’d scribbled his name.  Otherwise you might not know who it really was under the sheets.  To say the least, only immediate family was allowed in to see Bernard.  The other 40 people–yes, 40–would just have to persist (and persist they did) in the waiting room.

When Mary came in there was a muted sense of awe.  Her arthritic body didn’t like car rides, even short ones, and the trip to the hospital wasn’t short.  Speaking only for myself, it’s a terrible mistake the young make when they try to suggest that old eyes and hearts won’t be able to survive the sight of their unrecognizable children.  “Are you sure you want to go in to see him?” I asked her.  She didn’t say a word to me,  which was, I humbly admit, her way of telling me that such questions are not mine to ask.  She walked down the hall, her rosary in hand, and I don’t imagine, not even for a second, that she had to check the whiteboard over his bed to know that it was Bernard she was looking at.

I never asked or was told what, if anything, Mary did or said that day she stood beside Bernard.  When I heard about her death several days ago, though, I found myself wondering again.  Did she whisper to him?  Paul McCartney and John Lennon once famously confessed,

“When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be”

In her own way Mother Mary was always one to let it be.  Let the children who have remained and let the children who have gone to far off places find the door to my home and heart always wide enough for them to fit through it together.  Let it be.  In this same way, however, Mother Mary was, I think, waging the fight to beat all other fights.  When it is love, when it is peace, when it is light, then let it be.  Until then, fight like hell.

I don’t know if Mother Mary whispered such words of wisdom to Bernard ever.   I do know that  Bernard is not much into lying in bed or sitting in chairs these days.  Ever since his right leg got a new knee 2 months ago and his left side got a new arm 1 month ago, he is now into going up and down the hallways on the fifth floor at the rehab hospital, learning (because Bernard is caring like this) the name of everyone who is anyone.  From the peg-leg woman who lives next door, to the kindly older gentleman who mops the floors to a shine, to the Filipino-accented woman who takes his meal orders and never gets upset when she has to track him down because his lunch is ready and his potatoes are getting cold, to his physical therapist whose full name is rather long and so who just likes to be called Ro, Bernard knows them all and they all know him.

For a few hours each day Bernard goes down to the second floor to workout in the gym.  At first it was all he could do to spin a few rotations on a stationary bike or to practice picking up a fork.  Now it’s all anyone can do to tell him that a half-mile on the bike and a 400 meter power walk around the gym is probably all he should do.  Not so, says Bernard.  I may not always be able to make my finger push the right button on the elevator to get me back to the fifth floor but when I get there, my sweat drenched tee shirt will make it look like I took the stairs.

Still, I can’t say what, if anything, Mary did or said that day as she stood beside Bernard in the ICU.  I mean, at her age, with all that arthritis and 8 other kids to think about, what could she have possibly given him above a whisper?  I just don’t know.  But if that’s all it was, thanks be to God for Mother Mary.

I’ve been listening in this week. You need to understand that by listening in I don’t mean I’ve been eavesdropping, or at least not on purpose. In the ancient spirited words of Saint Irenaeus, I simply mean that I’ve been trying to stay awake to the glory of God. This seems like a good and sensible thing to do right now, to expect that God is going to pass me by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way. After all, it was only 7 days ago that I celebrated Easter, 7 days ago that I went to the tomb in the wee hours with the women, 7 days ago that I expected to see nothing there but a huge stone sitting on top of Jesus, crushing our hopes and hearts into darkness, 7 days ago that I asked, “Who is going to roll it away for us?” 7 days since I discovered God already had, because this is how God works: God gives life to the dead. 7 days since the angel delivered the news: “I know what you are looking for—Jesus. He is not here. He has risen and is going ahead of you to Galilee. Go there yourselves. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

So for 7 days now I’ve been listening in, looking out, trying to pay attention to the glory of God, to catch a glimpse of that resurrection power going before me.

We know this, or at least we ought to, that prayer is not just a matter of words, like we cobble together some words that sound thankful or painful or joyful, babble them off to God and call it prayer. Prayer is also a matter of posture and position. It was said that C.H. Spurgeon, a well-known British preacher of the mid 1800s had a faded spot of rug in his study that was practically worn through to the wood underneath. The spot is where he prayed. He prayed so often on his knees that you could see his prayers being worked out on the rug.  For my part, there is a particular Jewish prayer practice that I’ve been trying to use this week, to help me dwell in Easter a bit longer.  I stand on my feet, I reach my arms out, I open my eyes wide, lift my head up, and pray, “O Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, my eyes are open to you that I may see your purpose and love in all things. See the suffering of your children today through me that grace may leap freely from my palms and my head never droop in shame, for you are Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, amen.”

There is no question that to pray with your eyes open is to pray as someone who expects God to pass by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way, someone who believes their prayer can powerfully roll away a stone or two.

So I’ve been listening in this week, trying to keep my eyes open, and this is what I’ve heard: I’ve heard that this past Monday in a soccer stadium in Kigali, Rwanda thousands of people gathered to mark the anniversary of one of the most heinous acts ever committed against humanity. It was 20 years ago this month that roughly 1 million Tutsi people were killed, mostly at the hand of their Hutu neighbors and mostly by being butchered with machetes and hammers, and it all happened inside three month’s time. It was a state campaign, not unlike the one that took Jesus down or the one that sparked the Holocaust under Hitler. A deadly mixture of government power and an ideology that said some people are more deserving than others. In this case, a group of extreme Hutu Rwandans deciding they are more deserving of life than their fellow Tutsi Rwandans. We need know that this decision wasn’t made overnight. It rarely ever is. You see, in the early 1990s the Hutus represented 85% of Rwanda’s population, while the Tutsis covered only 14%. With one exception these numbers were not much different than they’d always been. The one exception was that there was a time when the Tutsis, though the minority, they ruled the majority. Politics being what it is however, power changes hands, and when it does, the new majority can be ruthless. Fear of having to play the minority again someday, the sudden power of privilege, can cause yesterday’s victims to become today’s perpetrators. And so it went in Rwanda in 1994—a deadly massacre, genocide.

In Kigali this past Monday the story of the Rwandan Genocide was retold, as it has been every year for two decades, with masses of mourners carrying banners that read, “Remember.” Remember the countless slughtered Tutsis, remember the thousands of Hutu rebels who stood up to their government, who called their actions criminal, and lost their lives for the innocent. Remember the other countries of the world that for so long just stood by denying responsibility. As one person observed of the event, “It seems almost cruel. Is it really healing to keep reopening a wound?”[1]

It reminds me of a sermon that Peter preached not too many days after Easter—50 to be exact.  During this time Jesus has appeared to his disciples on many occasions. Whatever shame they may have had related to his death, whatever feelings of remorse Peter may still have been carrying around for having denied Jesus, all that should have been put to rest by now. No need to dwell on Good Friday anymore. It’s all Easter all the time now.  Or is it? For with this sermon Peter seems to feel the need to talk about Good Friday a bit more.  He gets up in his pulpit and blasts out, “Fellow Israelites, listen carefully to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man thoroughly accredited by God to you—the miracles and wonders and signs that God did through him, we all know about them—this Jesus, following the deliberate and well-thought-out plan of God, was betrayed by people who took the law into their own hands and then put Jesus into your hands.  And you pinned him to a cross and killed him.”

I think it’s appropriate to point out that in addressing his “fellow Israelites,” Peter is addressing those with whom he shares not just national identity with but also those with whom he has shared home and temple and family with. He is speaking to those he has broken bread with and sat in the pew with, those who have struggled with him through ups and downs and ins and outs.  And Peter wants his fellow Israelites to know that from the very beginning it was God’s desire for them to have Jesus, so that in having Jesus they might, in their homes and temples and down and outs, have the presence of miracles and wonders and signs of life. “But some of us let things get away from us,” Peter admits. “The power of the miracles went to our heads and we handed Jesus over to be used by people whose motives were self-serving and without grace, and when Jesus would have nothing to do with such people, they put him to death.  We put him to death.”

In other words, remember this, Peter tells us. Remember what you have been capable of. Remember the terror you have done, remember the places to which you have gone, and more than this, remember that God has brought you back from such places, remember that in raising Jesus from the dead, God has raised you, too.

I find it’s possible to get up on Easter morning, to hear the proclamation that Jesus has been raised from the dead and completely miss Easter, because Easter isn’t for those who just show up.  The women went to the tomb with their spices in hand. They were probably dressed in the appropriate outfits for the occasion. Like you and I wearing our Easter best, they were wearing black, the official sign of mourning. They showed up at the tomb knowing exactly what they were supposed to do.  But behold, the tomb was empty. “You are looking for Jesus. He is not here! He has risen,” a messenger tells them. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of them to Galilee. He will meet you there, just as he told you.” And the women, we are told, ran away and said not a word to anyone.

A few mornings ago I was in my kitchen making breakfast when from around the corner came my daughter, Lillian.  I was still wearing my pajamas and sucking down coffee in an effort to wake up.  She was her usual cheery, already full-dressed self.

“Good morning sweetheart.”

“Good morning, Daddy. Do you like my shirt? It’s my nice, beautiful, handsome shirt.”

“Yes, and you look so beautiful in it,” I said smiling at her.

“It’s new,” she announced.

I looked the shirt over.  “That’s not a new shirt,” I told her. “You got that from Reese.”

Now Reese and Lillian go to pre-school together. Reese is a year older than Lillian and every now and then she shares her hand-me-downs with Lillian, which Lillian loves. In fact, if given the option between wearing Reese’s hand-me-downs and something brand new from the store that her parents spent good money on, Lillian will choose the hand-me-downs.

“Your shirt is an old shirt that belonged to Reese,” I told her again.

“Yes, but she gave it to me, so now it’s a new shirt again.”

I thought, if ever there was a definition of Easter and how God works, that was it.  It was a nice, beautiful, handsome new shirt, not unlike a majestically, eye-popping glorious stone rolled away.

[1] From The New Yorker magazine, April 21, 2014, p. 31.

As a minister every now and then I receive an invitation to come along and offer a prayer.  Usually the invitation sounds something like, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to say a little prayer.”  It’s important to understand that it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re standing inside or outside the church’s four walls when the question is asked, the intent of those asking it seems to be the same.  “Just a little prayer — could you say one?”

Inside the church it can come just as easily before a potluck dinner as before some major decision to drop $50,000 to renovate the sanctuary, like these are both somehow similar acts of humanity before God.  Granted, I don’t necessarily see these two things as being very different from each other.  Our prayer should be no less with one over the other.  They sound very different, I know.  $50,000 to hire a construction crew and get a building permit sounds like a lot more capital than $8.00 for a box of macaroni and a large jar of Ragu.  But it’s not.  In fact, if we had to say that one is a weightier decision in need of prayer, it should be the prayer we offer before the potluck (and if you’ve ever been to a church potluck then you know why)!  Simple daily gratitude for the profound gift of food can never be overdone.  We can’t think too much about our gratitude and how best to express it.  In Jewish homes, before any meal, snack, or morsel is consumed the family prays, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe.”  From this follows a list of whatever is being eaten.  “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the barley, the oats, the water that made them grow, and the dirt that warmly and safely nurtured them to life.  Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the fruit of the vine.”

There is a story about an eighteenth-century Jew whose daily work was to slaughter animals.  Each morning he said a tearful goodbye to his wife and children before setting off to meet his destiny.  He felt, every morning, that he might never see them again, that as he stood, knife in hand and prayer on lips, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe,” that God might notice and destroy him before he had time also to utter, “Have mercy.”

The fact is, this is not a little prayer.  This is an earth-shattering prayer.  One can’t just say this prayer on a whim.  If you’re going to make your gratitude count you have to think long and hard about what ultimately makes your gratitude even possible.  “For the food we are about to eat and the drink we are about to drink, we didn’t do anything to make it appear.  It comes from you, the King of the Universe, who obviously loves and cares about us.”  Yes, we have a part to play in its distribution.  Have we walked the earth carefully, making sure not to trample on the cabbage and to kick up the apple seeds?  For there are hungry people.  Have we made sure to sell the food at a fair and honorable price?  For there are poor people.  In this we also honor the King of the Universe, for without the King we’d all be poor and hungry.  It’s not a little potluck prayer.

Author Annie Dillard once observed that, “Outside of the catacombs, Christians are not sufficiently sensible to the conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may awake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

It’s not a little prayer.  Indeed, it is never a little thing to pray.  And yet when the question was asked of me one day last week, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to come and say a little prayer?” I so blithely said yes.  It was to be an annual meeting for a local charitable organization.  Most, if not all, of their benefactors and beneficiaries would be there and breakfast was going to be served.

On the day prior to the meeting I sat down to consider my prayer and that’s when it hit me: I had no idea what I was doing.  What was I supposed to pray?  No one had told me.  For that matter, why were we going to pray at all?  It didn’t seem like a bad idea to me.  I suppose we can pray with a dirt-filled heart of mean motives and selfish pursuits.  I suppose we can pray stupidly.  We can pray an “I don’t really care let’s just get it over with” kind of prayer.  We can pray in such a way that it may, and probably should, get us struck down by lightning.  We can pray without ever saying, “God, have mercy,” but it doesn’t change the fact that God will.  So it didn’t seem like a bad idea to me that we would pray.  But what was I to pray for a  gathering of benefactors and beneficiaries?  Our whole reason for showing up was to make known what we had already done.  This one sheltered the homeless for 250 nights.  That one ran a free clinic for battered women and children.  This one gave all the money for the clinic.  That one gave enough for a clinic and 20 new beds at the shelter.  What more could we stand to give and receive?  Let’s say a little prayer and eat!  The eggs are getting cold.

Tragically, this is more or less how it all went.  I stood to pray, sat down, and a circus of self-congratulations began.  One by one each group sent their president forward to receive a plaque and to have their picture taken with the mayor while the audience went ooh and ah.  We clapped so much that after a while I found myself clapping before the names were even announced.  When, after a while, there were no more names to call, it was decided that we all could leave.  But first, “Pastor, would you come back up and close us with a little prayer?”

I got up and fumbled my way back to the microphone.  I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hear some rumblings still, not of the crowd but of thunder.  What was I supposed to pray again?  Not even “God, have mercy” seemed right.  How do we pray for mercy and not come off like we’re praying for everyone but ourselves, when the truth is, the need for mercy starts with me.

“Let us pray,” I invited.  For about a minute all was silent. No one said anything. We just sat there doing the one thing that makes us all the same: breathing.  Finally it sounded like we were praying.

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Great God, some would call what we are doing a strange thing — praying.  We are not gathered here to be religious.  This is not a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a place for quiet meditation.  Is it because of where live that we pray?  Is it because we’ve heard it’s the thing conservatives do, or maybe it’s liberals?  Do we just want to be known as upstanding, morally good citizens?  Why do we pray?  We don’t even all believe in the same God or believe in the same way about God.  We don’t all call you by the same name.  Why do we pray?  Could it be because we see how divided we’ve become, that we see how easily we slap labels on one another and pass unfair judgment, but we are yearning for unity?  Is it that we are desperate to see each other differently, as brothers ,sisters, neighbors, and we pray because we believe this is how you see us and we need you to help us be more like you?  Why do we pray?  Could it be that we share a common concern for our world and its needs and we know the concerns are big and the needs greater than what any one of us, and maybe even all of us together, can meet?   Could it be that we know our world has become so troubled and the only explanation for it lies beyond this world?  So we pray.  We place our hope and faith on the line and we proclaim with one voice that things can be better and we are united to make it so.  We look beyond ourselves while also looking around ourselves.  We see how much we have and how much we have to give and we say thank you for both.  Great God, in this world there are some who have love but no food and some who have food but no love.  Open our eyes to see how easily both have come to us in this moment and give us the courage and wisdom to want less so others may have more.  We ask all of this for the sake of love and in the name of the One who is love, amen.

In our house a cup of water is a big deal.  Around bedtime a cup of water, and how we handle it, can actually be a deal breaker–the difference between a bedtime story and just lights out.  One night last week it was just lights out.  For the record, I would like to say that giving someone a cup of water is an act too simple and kind to refuse.  I’ve heard stories and seen pictures of soldiers who after capturing or mortally wounding each other, offer each other a canteen of water.  (If you’re wondering how things might have played out differently had they only offered each other the water first, so am I.)  So I ask you: what reason have we in heaven or on earth to withhold a cup of water, a little chug, a slight sip?  If enemies can get this right on the field of battle, how hard can it be for a daddy and daughter at bedtime?  Very.

It all began with a routine question.  “Hey, aren’t we going to read a story?”  She was sitting on her bed, her paisley comforter pulled back, her polka-dot flannel sheets looking ever so inviting.  On most nights we cuddle up together, side-by-side to hear what Sophia the Princess or Amelia Bedelia has to say to us.  Tonight I just stood in the doorway to her bedroom, one foot in and one foot out.  A new episode of Modern Family was due on any minute.  

“Not tonight sweetheart.  It’s late,” I told her.

“It’s not that late.  We always read a story.”

Honestly, she was right on both accounts, but she doesn’t know how to tell time.

“Not tonight,” I said again.  “It’s late.”

“Well then get me some water.”  This is how she said it: it wasn’t a question: it was a sassy statement.

“Excuse me,” I snapped.  “You don’t get a cup of water when you ask for it that way.  We’re done for today,” I ordered.  “You can try again in the morning for a cup of water.”  I just turned and walked away.  No goodnight kiss, no “I love you.”

I stood in the kitchen, my elbows resting on the edge of the sink.  My hands, as if folded in prayer (I don’t know, maybe they were) hovered just under the faucet, which was dripping.  We had pancakes for dinner.  My two-year old son wanted to help flip them on the griddle.  It felt a little too suicidal, if not for him than for me.  I convinced him to wash some sippy cups in the sink instead.  He obviously hadn’t turned the water off completely.  Two full hours of droplet drippings had now collected in the Mickey Mouse cup.  I couldn’t help but notice it was overflowing.

  From around the corner and down the hallway came a still sob for water.  It  had a note of pathetic to it.  “I won’t survive until morning!  I’m crying!  Don’t you care?”   I was at a classic impasse.  I knew she would make it till morning and yet I didn’t know if I would make it 10 more seconds.  She wanted water.  I’m quite sure a sip would have satisfied her deepest thirst at that point.  I peered down at Mickey.  For a moment I thought evil, like maybe he had a few droplets to spare.  I picked him up thinking about how sassy, sassy-mean, she had been.  I knew she didn’t mean to be.  I knew she’d been awake for 14 hours, which is a really long time when you’re 4.  I knew she had her Valentine’s Day party at pre-school that day.  That it had been canceled twice on account of harassing snow and that she had handed out over 20 homemade cards, each one made out of two pieces of construction paper that had been sown together with yarn, cut into the shape of a heart, stuffed with a Tootsie Roll, and exquisitely decorated, and she and she alone made it happen.  I knew she was getting in the car tomorrow morning to drive 5 hours to visit her Grampy who is still in rehab, who is still not at home where she would like him to be, pushing her on her swing, dragging her around the neighborhood in her wagon.  That she doesn’t really get how someone can lose their arms but how it really doesn’t matter to her.  By combining ridiculous jokes involving Pu Pu Platters with a bowl of spoon-fed ice cream, she makes it look like the world is just the way it’s supposed to be.  I knew that had she known it was going to make me look so mean in return, she would have asked for water by saying “please” first.  I knew I was taking advantage of her inability to read a clock.  I knew, and I know still, that I wanted her to have a cup of water (a whole gallon straight out of Poland Springs!) and that the real reason she still wasn’t going to get one was, I didn’t know how to give it to her.

We had both been mean and it had caused me to forget just how easily certain things come to us.  Maybe we had both forgotten, or just not yet realized it.

I tipped Mickey over and walked back down the hallway to her bedroom.  I passed through the doorway without stopping and sat down on the edge of her bed.  Downstairs the washing machine was filling up for the third time in four hours.  Outside her window I could see a few icicles dripping winter’s glory to the ground.  The weather man says it’s supposed to be 50 degrees tomorrow and that we ought to watch out for puddles.  Yet I’ve read that a woman in Africa walks 4 miles a day on bare feet through the desert to collect water from a well.  She gets up early to get there early, lest the well be emptied before she has her chance.  Her jugs are dirty from also having been used to mix a batch of cement, which her family uses to build their house.  If the well is riding low today than a decision will have to be made about the water: drink it or mix it?  For now she just fills the jugs as much as she can, slings them on her shoulders, and hikes home.  She’ll need a couple Tylenol in the morning.  Good luck swallowing them without…you know…

I don’t blame my daughter for not knowing this.  I don’t really want her to know this, at least not yet.  And I never want her to come to realize it–what it’s like to walk so far without water to get water only to not have water.  She doesn’t need a lesson in water purification either.  For now we can just be glad that tomorrow she’ll want to put her purple-flower rain boots on to splash about the very puddles from which her brother may risk a drink, because all he knows is, water is water.  In no particular order you can mix it with sand to build castles, mix it with cement to build a house, carry it around in a jug, carry it around in your shoes, drink it.  The great and terrible truth of course is that water really isn’t water, that there is a world of difference between having no water to drink and not being given water, and that for better or for worse, we’re going to have to learn this.

I once heard it said that truth is like water, it always finds it way.  I take this to mean that on its way to wherever it’s going, water, like truth, can often wreak havoc and chaos.  Indeed, for truth to be truth, it must leave a little rupture in its wake.

Some say that God created out of chaos.  That before there was any oak trees, any slugs or aardvarks or any saints or sinners roaming the earth, the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  If there was chaos, it must have been one ballistic spirit at work, stirring up a perfect storm of grade 5 proportions.  But then, as the story goes, God, the same spirited God who brewed chaos over water, stills the water to a perfect calm.  “Let there be light!  Be still!”  God orders it, but not like us.  There is no sass.  Just the hope that if we would only step into the light, we might see each other for who we are: a daddy, a daughter, being warmed by polka-dot flannel sheets, with closets full of shoes.

I slipped my hand onto her back and slowly rubbed her to sleep.  “Sweet dreams, be still.”  I was still whispering it as I clamored downstairs to change the laundry over.