The Myth of Strength

There is a myth, the myth of strength.  It says the less we feel the stronger we are.  It says people should show no emotion; no tears, no laughter.  It frowns equally on tenderness and fear.  Because it is myth, it is an attempt to say what is not real.  Despite its lack of reality, it has any number of subscribers.  They think, or have been told, it is what should be and so they try living in the myth, hiding or denying what is.  They think they are being strong when they are being dead.  A myth is a poor trade when we prefer it to life.

A Poor Defense

Stop being angry.  You haven't the need, nor is it that good a defense.

The Illusion of Substance

Television allows us to see but not experience, to look at but not participate in.  It is illusion, not substance, trying to pass itself off as actual.

The Importance of Winning

Winning seemed so important that losing must have had a terrible consequence.

Voices That Need Listening To

Many voices crying out, wanting to say themselves, to speak who they are, shouting what they mean.  They want to be heard, to be shared.  They assault with the realness of their being and all that makes them need to speak.

To listen, rather than only hear, is to let the voices possess you, allowing if not welcoming this intrusion into our silent apartness.  To listen would mean being more than an object hurling back their echo, remaining unmoved by the wailing, shouting, crying, pleading, and demanding.

It might seem easier trying to believe the voices have nothing to say, that they are just noise, that they come from no one, that no human heart gives them birth, that no soul seeks like in their utterance.  If we could believe they were not there, we might be safe.  Yet, the voices keep breaking in, crying and wanting and needing to be heard.

If Only

I hadn't meant to start, but now I think it often, and each time it hurts like the first.  I say, "if only..."  If only you hadn't died.  If only there'd never been cancer.  If only life were fair.

Not Having to Choose

Why, after talking of what is right, must we then talk of what is practical?  Couldn't they sometimes be the same?

Beware

The Gospel is in danger of making sense.

Changed By Words

Having once said I love you, can I then walk away?  Can I pretend it never happened?  Can I say nothing is changed?  These are words I never said before to you, so they are different.  If I say them, I will be different, too.

Ghosts of Old and Young

He said an old man's ghosts are not scary.  They are, unlike those of the young, welcome since they are the friends of our youth and those we have loved along the way.  They are guests in a life made less for loss of their touch.  They are memories, and their gift is in the sharing of a time gone sadly by.  "No," he said, "they do not scare me.  Friends don't do that."

The ghosts of the young are fears of what might be.  Their faces haven't yet the fullness of what has been, and so cannot say there was nothing to be afraid of.

Confusing Activity

Go on.  Jump up and down.  Run in circles.  Make noise.  But don't be deceived.  Activity is not the same as progress.

Poverty and the Church

Poverty is the natural state of the Church and so it cannot associate itself with the poor only in the role of giver, a visitor to that condition.  It has to be poor.  It is where it should live.

Defined By Consumerism

It is unfortunate, but however much he has it can never be enough.  The more is just more, and new has to be better.  He is a consumer devouring the good and useless in a single gulp, attracted to the offerings of almost any store.  He is always scanning the horizon for what might be next, and so cannot focus on - much less appreciate - what is already his.  Once it has left the store, before it is even out of the box, it is old.  No matter the cost its value is diminished, except to say it is owned.  You could call it greed.  You might better name it sadness.

Driving Peace From the Streets

How did they handle the riot?  They surrounded it.  They chased it.  They gassed it and beat it, until finally it gave up and seemed to go away.  But only the external violence was stopped, and then just for now.  On both sides hatred increased, enmity festered, the gap widened as understanding became less possible.  Peace was driven from the street.  Why instead couldn't they listen?  It may have been a different voice in a new wilderness.  Why didn't they ask why it had happened, instead of how?

The Company He Keeps

Jesus, when accused of being a Samaritan and of having a devil, denied only having a devil, finding nothing wrong with being identified with the most despised of people.

Meanings Behind Meanings

Some things, and maybe most, are not all that deep and can be taken at face value.  Searching for meanings behind meanings is not necessarily a productive task.

Someone Else's Rules

As long as he can feel bound by someone else's rules he has no need to make his own.  He can complain.  He gets to feel noble, and all it costs is his soul.

Part of Freedom

Part of freedom is the right to be inconsistent.

When The Television Watches You

He is watching television.  Or maybe the reverse is the case.  Maybe the television watches him, making sure he remains inert and disgruntled.  The boredom leaping from the screen is saying, "I am entertaining and educating you.  I make noise against the silence closing in on you.  I fill the time that frightens you.  I am your only friend, so trust me."  The picture may be of anything.  The voice could say nothing.  What is important is its being there, filling the void.  He is the willing captive of his machine.  Having been seduced by it, time cannot move.  Nor can the silence shout at him.  Besides, it gives him "something to do."  It helps him kill (in the sense of murder) another day.

Getting Stuck on Secret Meanings

The parable of the virgins does not in and of itself make a lot of sense.  It can raise the wrong questions, and it has nothing to do with virginity one way or the other.  In itself, the story might prompt our asking:  why wouldn't the wise ones share their oil (what they did was hardly kind); why was the bridegroom so upset and his anger out of proportion to what was not such a terrible crime; why did the oil seller's store stay open after midnight?

Really, these details and others mean very little.  As with most parables this one is not trying to be an allegory where everything must mean something.  All it wants to say is Jesus is coming back.  We know he will return.  We may not know when but we want to be ready.  That's it.  That's the message and meaning.

Still, we like to find more hidden meanings.  Secrets no one else has seen.  We like finding what is not there, insisting on interpretation of what has no need of it.  We look and search and distort.  We make the oil into grace, the seller into church, or the virgins into celibates.

It can be the same with other aspects of Christianity, and with all of life as well.  We can make it difficult and complex when, like the parable, it doesn't have to be and was never meant to be.

Becoming Each Other

He was 80, and she was nearly.  They were almost too old to be anything but tender.  Yet their love was as real and alive as in those earlier days of passion and fire.  Growing older they had become each other.

Our Best Attempts

We are not unlike John the Baptist.  People asked him, as they do us, who are you and what are you doing.  All he could say is who he was not and what he was not doing.  Still he was trying to do what seemed best, and trying to do it well, even though it was only shouting in the desert.  Even that God could make important.

What I Need From God

Being God, Lord, may be all you have to offer, but some days I wish you could be more since Godness hasn't enough to offer.  It is not what I need you to be.

Innocent Activism

It was a more innocent time.  We thought all we had to do was point out what was wrong or saw what ought to be.  People would thank us for pointing out what they had overlooked and the world would get better.  That was the plan.  It was so simple, so reasonable and fair.  It ought to have worked, but told of injustice most were unmoved.  Hearing of pain and starvation, they let it go on.  They heard what we said but heard other and more insistent voices talking less of concern than of profit, and of change as disruptive or benefitting only the poor.  There is nothing wrong with innocence and it was in a way our strength, but its loss became so much harder.

Alternate Easter

What if he did come down from the cross, and what if they believed as they said they would?  What then?  In what would they be believing?  In someone who didn't have to die, in someone whose word and deeds up to that moment had meant nothing?  And what could he say to them or do, having come down and avoided death for them?  Could he say it all over again, another sermon on a different mount?  But he didn't come down, and they didn't believe.  It was as it had to be.

Listening to Silence

Silence is real and so we cannot fill it with just sound or noise or even voices.  Sometimes it has to be listened to, even if the thought of what it might say is frightening enough to drive us back to mere sound.

Bastards

Lord, why is it the bastards always win, and why do they end up convinced they were right all along?

Fools and Mosquitoes

Asking why God allows some to be such fools is wondering why he made mosquitoes.  No one really knows. We simply hope there is a reason, and hope it is one good enough to justify the annoyance they cause.

When A Law is Just A Law

They brought the woman guilty of adultery.  She had broken the law, and because they had made that law an expression of their relationship to God there could be no doubt she should die.  Violation of the law was violation of God.  It was clear and decided.  Jesus was invited to agree but said no.  He saw the woman was a woman, and the law just a law.

Eternal Principles

Eternal principles may apply only to eternal people.  Something else may be needed for those of us who are more finite.

The Security of Our Trees

In the beginning, when that first gorilla left his tree and tried to be a man, it was a new and strange role. He wasn't sure he could play it.  It would have been easier to stay with the others, but he had taken a step.  He was going to try to be what no one thought he could, or should, be.  He was trying to be different.  The progress was hardly noticeable.  It may even have seemed a step backward.  But because he dared to try, it would someday happen.  He had stopped being an "it" and began to be "he."  Because he stayed on the ground rather than accept the invitation to flee back into the trees, man was born.  There may now be something trying to be born from us, if we will let it.  If we will but leave the security of our trees.