Prodigal Prophet

At the end of a previous blog, I posted a link to Matthew 25:14-30, which obviously stirred something in my friend Susan Carson. If you aren’t blessed by this, you’re not listening. VMS

Matthew 25:14-30 is the story of the master who gives ten, five and one talent to his three servants, and commissions them to care for his property while he is gone. You know this parable: the servant who is given ten talents and the one given five both double the investment and are praised highly by their master upon his return, while the servant given one talent buries it and returns it, intact but un-multiplied, to his master, who berates him and throws him out “into outer darkness.”

I don’t know about you, but this parable makes me a little nervous.  I see myself as a very average servant, mostly doing just a fair-to-middling job of staying between the lines in life, trying to live in God’s world in what my understanding of what I was raised to believe is the  “right” way (it occurs to me that right there is a fallacy worth exploring, but I will forge ahead for now).  I try to be a kind, honest soul; I pray every day—several times a day, actually—try to listen carefully to discern what God would have me do in any given situation, and generally try to ease the burdens of those around me where I can. But is that enough? Actually, does any of that even necessarily count (it is, after all, the most basic of what is asked of us as Christians)?

I really want to believe that what I’m doing, in general, multiplies God’s love in the world I live in (for that’s what I read “talent” to mean in this parable—love).  But how do I know?  There is this tiny corner of me that wonders if he one day will call me to him ,  point to the path of life I didn’t take (pick one of any number of life or career paths over my lifetime) and say, “That’s the one I intended for you, weren’t you listening??”  How do I know??

The fact is, I don’t know, haven’t really any clue if I’ve been on the right track or not at this very late point in my life.  Whatever it is that God might have planned for me otherwise I have no idea, but here I am.  I look around and take a survey of what I’ve been up to so far, and hope that God will, indeed, at least honor the intention of how I’ve lived. I have to admit though, I’ve done better sometimes than others, and I’ve often gone my own way, picking across a rocky trail off the path instead of sticking closely to the markers.  Oh wait, there were markers? Darn.  See what I mean?

The most I’ve been able to discern about living life in God’s world is that it seems to me we’re here to help each other along the way, whatever path we’re on.  There are lots of ways to do that, and some are, let’s say, “showier” than others—but those are the things I didn’t do.  I haven’t had the means to be a philanthropist, and my early years were spent rocking babies instead of marching for civil rights.  I didn’t hand out sandwiches or ladle soup in homeless shelters; my time was spent feeding toddlers and gathering book bags and homework for my children and a few neighbor children who I “kept” during the week, and helping out at church where I could, when I could.  But since life is messy I’m afraid I wasn’t very consistent with that, either. 

What I hope, what I pray is true, is that things like the time I helped that confused elderly lady find her car in the Rich’s parking lot counts for something in the larger view; that talking the runaway teenager into calling her parents and helping her bridge the communications gap with them when they came to get her, is something I was meant to be here to do; that God intended me to be the one to offer that thin rail of a teenage boy with the mohawk haircut (one of my son’s shadier but so-needy friends) the bowl of soup that he shrugged off so carelessly but then devoured with obvious need.  The smile at the grocery store clerk; a pause in traffic to let someone in; waving thank you to someone who has done the same for me…those were little things.  Yes, little things, so insignificant, and yet, what would the world be without them?  Where would I be without the large and small kindnesses like these done for me?

If there is a connection to the “return with interest” part of the parable we started with, it’s that little things done with love grow and multiply into something bigger than ourselves.  Each tiny act of kindness, done with the love of God at its center, makes up part of a larger whole, and that whole is the body of Christ, poured out for us, in us, through us.  Please God may I be even a small vessel pouring out your love in my tiny corner of your world, as you were Love itself, pouring yourself out for all of us.  It is a small return to make for what you gave us, but it is all I have to give.

It was 1991, the first year the Atlanta Braves went to the World Series. The “chop” had taken off – they even did a take-off on it on Saturday Night Live that year – and because I had been one of the faithful few who’d gone down to Atlanta-Fulton Co Stadium even when 7-8000 people was an average crowd, I had tickets to the Series. Those of us who are rabid fans will remember the extra inning game in which Mark Lemke played the role of “goat,” which sent us into extra innings, but came through with what would be the single that scored the winning run.

I was standing in my seat, chopping and singing the “chant,” when for some reason, I stopped. Looking around the stadium and listening for a moment, I was suddenly covered in goose flesh. In almost perfect tune and motion, 52,000 people were one, 52,000 white, black, Asian, male, female, young, old…

I couldn’t help thinking that on the street, any number of us might have passed by one another without a thought. In another setting, perhaps we would have gotten into an intense political argument, maybe even come to blows. We were probably of so many religious persuasions or moral opinions or ethnic origins, that respectful dialogue was out of the question. But for one moment, as Lemke came up to bat in the 12^th, none of the differences between us mattered.

I am saddened every time I see Christians get in a brawl with other Christians and people of other faith traditions over what will, in the grand scheme of things, not matter a whit when all is said and done. I hunger for those moments of communion, when what seems almost serendipitous occurs – the unexpected joy of oneness, the alignment of hearts. But, alas, they don’t happen very often these days.

It’s been 20 years since that magic run of the Braves began, and this very morning, I got up and tuned into a link on Ustream sent to me by a friend last night. A camera focused on an eagle’s nest in Iowa is showing a 24/7 feed of three eaglets born just over a week ago, and the loving attention and protection of their parents, a couple who’s been together now for three years. These are children 9,10 and 11 for the pair. Dad lost his first mate in a freak snow storm four years ago.

When I got on this morning, 87,000 viewers were on the air, 23,000 communicating in a “social stream.” People from all over the country started piping up, and then Canada, and then I saw one from the UK. Some have obviously been watching on and off for three years. Others discovered it this morning, as I did. I, along with several others, shared the link via email and Facebook.

As I write this, at 1:00 pm, there are 132,308 viewers “on air,” whole offices and pediatric wards and school kids and soccer moms mesmerized by the sight of the most peaceful, most caring, most natural demonstration of the glory of life.

I got goose bumps again. If we can do it for a silly baseball game and civic pride, if we can do it over an 80-foot-high eagle’s nest in Decorah, Iowa, we can do it and transform the world.

Will we? Twenty years is a long time between goose flesh.

And yet, I think we just might.

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

I’ve been applying for non-profit development jobs, among others, for over a year now. Some of them require experience in raising money for endowment funds. You see that a lot in the university and private school setting especially, but sometimes on the charitable side, too.

On the for-profit side, I think of endowment funds as similar to the market capitalization accounts for companies selling shares in the stock market, there for the purpose of providing capital for new ventures and as fuel to keep the operation solvent when the economy is tough and sales are down. The good thing about non-profit endowment funds is that most times, you don’t have to watch the value of the money decline because of individual whim—people don’t take their charitable donations back. It’s only when the endowment funds are invested in a risky place, as happened with Bernie Madoff recently, that the money disappears for no good reason.

But the analogy I’m interested in today is a personal one—we have endowment funds, too. Fueled by love, the currency of our emotional support, we are empowered to expand our own loving influence, and have the resource of past experience, past donations to our endowment fund, if you will, to depend on when we suffer the inevitable blows to self-esteem that the world is famous for providing.

Because of that, I’ve never much liked the chagrined slogan of some sales people—“You’re only as good as your last sale. What have you done for me lately?” It implies that there is no endowment fund at all. When faced with a layoff, what you’ve done that wasn’t perceived as valuable or what you’ve accomplished in the past isn’t considered, and that’s counterproductive to loyalty and passion.

I’m not proposing that we rest on our laurels—it is true that you have to keep producing in order to fill the till under normal conditions. When things are going reasonably well for a company, the endowment fund is replenished so that when the next challenge comes, you can weather the storm again. Just as sales people need to always search for new customers and customer types, the diversity of people and the variety of donations we seek in terms of the richness and quality of our experiences are crucial to increasing our emotional stability and sustainability in the long run. Just like companies with a diversified portfolio, we should view the donations we receive—whether in the form of a smile on another’s face or public accolade or a bonus check—as deposits in our endowment funds.

That way, when we sit back toward the end of our lives, we have more than enough to draw on—memories that actually refuel us. It’s the reason the winning shot that strips the net at the buzzer in high school can still make you feel great at 54. And the reason those of advancing age begin to recognize and accept donations made, even when those who make them aren’t aware they’ve even made one. That’s the “magic” of the smile on the face of one to whom you gave your time, the gift of your presence—a deposit is made in both endowment funds.

Let the reserve funds get too low, and, in our own despair, some of us assume that our donations are inconsequential, and so we don’t make them. Likewise, in a hurry or in tunnel-visioned focus, we sometimes fail to see and acknowledge the gifts given to us by others. We don’t go out of our ways to say “thank you” for those things others do for us out of their own love that warm our hearts—the email or letter or phone call that says “You’re important to me,” the hand on the shoulder that reminds us that someone “sees” us, the unexpected “showing up” when we are in the midst of grief.

And yet, it is those moments, and only those moments, that sustain us. Because it is in those moments that we see, with startling clarity, that our endowment accounts all have the same account number, the same never-ending Source of funds.

And that as children of God, we have all been given a checkbook and are expected to use it.

Matthew 25:14-30

My dear friend Susan Carson responded to my blog yesterday in such a powerful way that there was nothing to do except share it with you. Thanks, Susan. And Amen.

I read your latest blog post, Lemonade, with interest, because I, too, am somewhat discomfited by what seems like a glib instruction to take what you get and make something wonderful with it, regardless. Some days this seeming glibness has grated on my nerves more than others. I didn’t give it much thought until your post, because as glib as that saying might be, your post made me uncomfortable, too, for some reason, so I had to examine it a bit more closely.

What I realized is that I see something different in that phrase, at least upon careful examination. I didn’t find it to be about my ability to create anything, contrary to the basic instructional nature of “…make lemonade.” You’re right that we humans are the created, not the creator of the stuff of life, but for me the phrase speaks not to the need to wait till God provides the source for the other ingredients but that the Source is already there with us, in us. We already have the sugar and water, if you will, in that infinite Living Water, which is God’s “sweet” Grace. What we do need, as you said, is the humility and the patience to recognize them whenever and wherever we are.

As I lay in bed thinking about this last night, I thought of the discussion we’ve had in EFM about the sign of the cross we make from time to time, the vertical and the horizontal motions from forehead to heart and shoulder to shoulder, about trying to live in that center where those lines intersect. The lemons that life gives us lie on the horizontal; the water and sugar of God’s Grace in our lives are the vertical. The lemonade, if you will, is at the intersection.

Or, to use your inner/outer imagery that you spoke of in that same conversation, for me I think the lemons are “out there” in the outer circle, and the sweet water of Grace is there in your inner circle with you. When I think of it this way, that God and his grace aren’t just there behind me waiting for me to turn around and notice him (one visualization that has always spoken to me of my separation from God and my failure to notice his being there for me always) but really WITH me, through me, in me, all around me…when I truly take this in for a moment, a feeling of such complete peace washes over me, and I can be, just for that moment, refreshed and stilled in that knowledge. It doesn’t change my circumstances, and it doesn’t pay my bills or calm the rest of the family circumstances down or fix my car, but it tells me if God is with me in this place I’m at, right now, then all that stuff doesn’t matter, not in the long run. The lemonade for me is this stillness.

Lemonade on a hot day is pure heaven, a momentary relief from the humid Georgia summer’s day. Recognizing God’s presence in that intersection of daily problems and minutiae is like that, a momentary glimpse of heaven on my doorstep, a sign that if I can just put my own fears aside and wait, God will act, and he will always surprise me in the best way possible. That’s lemonade, and it’s worth waiting for.

For some reason, I’ve always been vaguely irritated when I’ve read or heard the adage, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love lemonade, and I understand and embrace the message conveyed—be grateful; learn from the “sour” experiences in life; use those lessons you couldn’t have learned any other way to view the richness of life, in all its pain and joy.

What bothers me, I think, is the communication that I can make anything of anything. I’ve had my share of lemons—fewer than many, more than some—and though I’ve often tried very hard, when the lemons threatened to bury me, to find water and something to sweeten the concoction, I haven’t been very good at it. More than once, I’ve found what I thought was sugar and water enough to quench my thirst for the moment, only to discover that the stream from which I’d drawn the water was drainage from rain, and not the tributary of a river.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t search for water and sugar. What I’m saying is that I’m much better off when I realize that I am incapable of creating water and sugar. I can’t “make” anything. I’m the creature, not the Creator.

It’s about trust and patience and humility—trust that “all things” really will “work together for good,” patience to allow God time, and humility at the realization that we are powerless to initiate the creation, but called to co-create with the raw materials only God can provide. No original thoughts here.

So, if you ask me, when life gives you lemons, don’t try to make anything. Pray, instead, for living water and honey, for the vision to see them in the most unexpected places, and the will to stay out of the way of their appearance.

And then call the neighbors and invite them over to your lemonade stand, and laugh out loud at their faces when they realize it’s free.

It was late in the afternoon and I had stepped into a dark hallway in the office building and encountered a Muslim co-worker kneeling on a prayer mat. Embarrassed at having interrupted what I considered an intimate act of worship, I tiptoed back to my office and waited another few minutes before leaving for home. I had another couple of emails to send, after all.

Later, I told a friend from church about the incident and she shook her head.

“That makes me so uncomfortable,” she said, almost angrily.

“Why?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just so weird with the five times a day thing. And the pointing toward Mecca.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I thought of all the times in years’ past, before I returned to the “organized” church, that I’d found myself in a restaurant and seen people at a neighboring table join hands and pray before their meal. Since then, I’ve done it a few times myself, but I’ve been aware of the discomfort of some around me–people I know I’ve seen in church.

In every Christian church I know of, the Lord’s Prayer is a mainstay. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we repeat every Sunday. In the Episcopal church, we’re even “bold” to say it.

Apparently not enough to say it unless we’re standing in a gothic cathedral or a prayer group. Not as bold as that Muslim fellow I saw, who five times a day, knelt and prayed to Allah.

What are we afraid of? That somebody may find out we’re Christian?

Chances are pretty good, though there is no mention of it in the Gospels, that the day the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, was not on a Sunday or a Saturday. Might’ve been a Monday. I’ll bet, too, that the “Sermon on the Mount” happened on a Tuesday morning or something. Or maybe it was a “lunch and learn.” But we can’t pray boldly except on Sunday or Wednesday or in the presence of other Christians.

Can’t stop at prayer, though. Jesus didn’t command us just to pray. And he said, “Go and teach, not go and tell.” We need to do something, to be so bold as to do what Jesus told us to do. You know…oh, my gosh, look around and make sure no one sees…to be so bold as to…I don’t know, this could be tough now so get ready…LOVE our neighbors and ourselves. On Monday and Tuesday and Thursday and Friday and not just on Sunday.

It’s been at least 15 years since I stepped into that hallway. Maybe I should have asked him if I could share his mat, and knelt down right there and prayed the Lord’s Prayer alongside him. It would have been a bold thing to do.

But, I didn’t.

And yet we wonder why the message of the church today isn’t compelling.

A friend of mine, the Reverend Lori Lowe, caught me red-handed yesterday. As I told her in a Facebook message, I was guilty as charged of something I had railed about with respect to another Robert Frost poem, “Death of the Hired Man,” back in December. What I said then was that Robert Frost was rolling over in his grave because the most regularly quoted line from that poem is misquoted, and almost directly in opposition to what Frost was actually saying. (Scroll back through the blogs and read it if you’re interested.) The line I misconstrued from Frost yesterday was the title of the blog—”Good fences make good neighbors.” You might want to read it, too. In any case, after Lori’s rightful scolding, I remembered something I wrote six years ago about that poem, “Mending Wall,” and went looking for it. After I read it, I decided to reproduce it here. You will notice, I think, that the word “boundaries” appears in it. And though six years have passed since I wrote this essay, I changed only one word—once again, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

While attending a conference in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I sat in the hotel cafe killing time with other participants when another suicide bombing in Israel was reported on the news. The conversation shifted to the Middle East, and September 11, and one of us related a discussion she’d recently had with a Jewish friend in D.C. Trying to make sense of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the context of the fact that we, the US, had, with England, facilitated the reestablishment of the state of Israel in the midst of people with whom the Israelis had fought for thousands of years, the friend had asked, “What were we thinking?”

Most of us laughed, but the thought resonated with all of us. It still does, at least with me.

We had another “conflict” here in the United States 150 years ago. Some say it ended in 1865, yet everybody knows that the remnants of that struggle live on, too.

Imagine that in response to the call for reparation from the African-Americans among us that we cordoned off Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, made everyone currently living there move to surrounding states, and then offered all of the living slave descendants the opportunity to occupy this new confederation. What would happen? Want to hazard a guess?

The playing field must be level and concessions given balanced in order for peace of any kind to have a chance in the Middle East or here. But leveling the field must be done with sufficient care to ensure that achieving the balance doesn’t take away the same rights and privileges from one group that are given to another in order to achieve the balance. There must be inclusionary compromise — a balance, not in power alone, but in the weight given to the value of all involved parties – and consensus between reasonable members of the groups about where their shared boundaries will be built.

Robert Frost, in his poem, “Mending Wall,” said,

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in and walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense…”

To this I would modestly add,

And if a wall offends I’d do my best

To understand the anger at its source

And take great care, if I should then proceed

To build the wall,

To not obstruct the view.

I can only ask…What, pray tell, are we thinking?

Everywhere I go, everything I read, it seems, ends up talking about boundaries. In earlier blogs, I’ve written about editing a novel about sexual misconduct by pastors and other spiritual leaders. That book, which is about to be released, is most assuredly about boundaries.

The concept of boundaries is a simple one, really. I think that’s because there are all kinds of them in a tangible sense—lines on the highway, fences around yards, even walls in our homes and offices. When it comes to emotional boundaries, though, things start to get fuzzy.

I’ve decided that one of the problems we humans face in this regard is related to something I learned about writing from my 11th grade English teacher. She was talking about the standard foundation of communication—and the bugaboo of sentence fragments.

"Write in complete thoughts," she said. "Don’t start sentences with ‘and’ or ‘but.’"

Another student in the class raised his hand. "But Miss Ginter, authors do it all the time in the books you have us read."

"That’s true," she replied, "but you have to understand it’s a rule and the reasons behind the rule before you can get away with breaking it."

When all is said and done, I think most boundary violations are simply the result of people not knowing where they are, or thinking they’re somewhere that they’re not. Of course, there are plenty of people who know where the boundaries should be, but choose to violate them anyway, and give the rest of us a bad name. The end result is that instead of assuming that another is ignorant of where the boundaries are (or simply hasn’t thought about it), we more quickly project onto him or her motives and intent that simply aren’t there. And go further, even, to act in vengeance or to punish them for their indiscretions without thinking.

There are daily examples of perfectly wonderful relationships destroyed over time because of boundary violations (perceived or real)—ranging from those between individuals, like parents and children or spouses or friends, to those in the workplace, those between elected leaders and their constituents, especially those between nations. John Locke once said, "Where there is no property, there is no injustice." But let you and I disagree where the property line is…well, you get the picture.

Repeated over and over, boundary violations in all sectors of life constitute abuse of the person violated and often result in tragedy. One might think boundary violations innocuous in day-to-day interactions, but they aren’t. Think about road rage, for instance. Definitely a boundary violation there. Just as in road rage, anger is ALWAYS the emotional response to a boundary violation. It’s a good signal, both for the violated and the violater, that a boundary, perceived or real, has been crossed. Emotionally mature people respond to the sign by examining their own feelings to determine where the breach occurred and alert the offender in a respectful way, if the violation is deemed to be reality-based. On the other side of the line, when anger is expressed toward us, especially unexpected anger, our responsibility is to look for ways in which we might have crossed a boundary without knowing. We can’t read each other’s minds, so defusing the unnecessary feelings around conflict requires that the offender and the offendee sit down together and talk in an atmosphere of mutual honor and respect.

Unfortunately, either none of us is especially emotionally mature or we have abdicated our responsibility in relationship to each other, or both.

That’s especially disappointing to me when I see it in my Christian brothers and sisters, because Jesus talked about boundaries all the time. In fact, I dare say that it’s all he talked about. In my way of thinking, love itself, in the way he described it in countless parables and demonstrated it with everyone he met, is about drawing the line carefully between ourselves and others while savoring the mutually shared bond of relationship as children of the Most High God. Our singular mission is to remember first the value we have to God and then to extend that esteem to everyone we meet–from family members to friends to bosses and subordinates, to the customer service rep on the phone to the President or the Pope.

The tragedy of boundary violations is not just on the side of the violated, however. If we plow through the "fences" of others, we rob them of their ability to focus, unassailed, on developing and claiming their unique gifts, of reaching the highest purpose for which God created them uniquely. But we also rob ourselves of the opportunity to receive those gifts. I wonder sometimes how much beauty we have squelched, how much love we have rendered impotent without realizing.

As the poet Robert Frost once wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors." He had a point. So did Jesus.

"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

Peace be with you.

A few years ago, a close Christian friend of mine and I were debating about homosexuality and God. She and I were on “opposite” sides with respect to the issue.

At some point in the discussion, she told me about a previous discussion with a pastor friend of hers, in which he’d said, “What if, when I get to heaven, God tells me he made them that way?” It had stunned her out of a close-minded and rather rigid position, and had resulted in a broader capacity for empathy. She’d tried to put herself in a gay person’s shoes and imagine (because that’s all she could do) that homosexuality wasn’t a choice, and once she had, she’d been able to imagine, also, the agony of being rejected on the basis of something about herself that she couldn’t control—like the fact that she had freckles, blue eyes, and auburn hair.

If that had been true, if she’d been rejected on that basis as unworthy because others said she was, she could’ve worn pancake makeup and dyed her hair blonde, but what a sad position to be in—forced to pretend, for the sake of belonging, to deny who she was, how God had made her. Fortunately, Alleyne was never forced to hide her Irish ancestry—her blue eyes and gorgeous red hair, and her raucous laugh were her trademark.

I miss that lady. She’s gone—died way too early 3 ½ years ago. She loved me in a way I’ve seldom been loved, and because her obvious regard for me had nothing to do with anything I said or thought, I was free to allow myself to consider her point of view as well. Let’s be frank—it is equally plausible that I will get to heaven and have God say he didn’t make them that way. So I had to ask myself, “How, if at all, would that change my position on the subject?” And truthfully, “Is it any of my business?”

On this particular issue, my “self-investigation” resulted in a strengthening of my position, but it might not have. I assumed for a moment that homosexuality is a choice, and began to think about “good” and “bad” choices I’ve made and continue to make in my life. (I put those words in quotes because to call those choices good or bad is based on my opinions about those choices and not necessarily others.) I thought about some of those choices and I can’t say that I would defend any of them publicly with the fervor that gay pride groups and organizations do. I’m a smoker, for example, an admittedly stupid choice for a woman as bright as I am, but you’ll never find me supporting or participating in a “smoker’s pride parade” because it’s a choice, not a part of my identity that I can’t get rid of. On that basis, it struck me that no one would subject himself or herself to the persecution, malicious projections, or discrimination I’ve seen those folks experience on the basis of something they had a choice about, unless they were masochistic.

I don’t know what God told Alleyne about the issue when her spirit was set free in September of 2007, or what I will be told one day. And because I am acutely aware that not one human among us, including the apostles (who even Jesus said didn’t always “get it,” even when he spoon-fed them in person) and definitely including me, has “the last word” about what God thinks and doesn’t, I hope to escape the arrogance of being party to limiting the pursuit of happiness of my gay brothers and sisters, diminishing their contributions to the general society, damaging their reputations, or controlling behaviors of theirs that do not impact me.

But Alleyne and I didn’t stop with the gay issue. Our discussions went far beyond it to a host of things Christians believe Jesus said or meant because somebody else said so (especially preachers), without questioning if their interpretation made sense when considered in the context of their own lives. For instance, I suspect that the “Holy” Crusades were anything but holy, that the Salem witch hunts were an atrocity, and that my Confederate ancestors believed with no question that creatures with dark skin were not fully human because their church “leaders” told them so. But they were wrong.

And who was it that said women weren’t holy enough to be ordained as ministers and priests? Couldn’t have come from Jesus—he had the audacity to talk to a woman at the well, which was bad enough, but she was a Samaritan, for God’s sake! Just like that dastardly neighbor guy in Jesus’ story, the one who took care of his Hebrew brother who’d fallen among thieves.

Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you, says the Bible in the Old Testament  (Deuteronomy 4:2).

I find it quite ironic that it’s easy for Christians to dismiss the Koran or the Book of Mormon as being additions or subtractions to the commandments (those Ten Commandments, by the way, that followed in Deuteronomy 5), while at the same time ignoring that there are no commandments that say “Thou shalt not allow women into the ministry,” or “Thou shalt not allow those brothers to the south of you with even darker skin than yours to partake of the blessings of the great I AM,” or “Thou shalt not sleep with thy brother if male or thy sister if female.” All sounds to me like stuff somebody just might have added. The term “false prophets” comes to mind.

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 

This, which is one of the commandments, has nothing to do with “curse words.” It has to do with claiming we are representatives of God, arrogant to say that our take on the Bible is the end all, practicing all manner of evil against our brothers and sisters while wearing the cloak of God and proclaiming it as justification of our misguided deeds.

If Jesus actually said what he was recorded as saying 40, 50, 70 years after his death, then we can’t escape the fact that the words that kept coming up over and over in his sermons and conversations were “love” and “serve,” not “judge” and “punish.”

And I wonder if when we get to heaven, God will say, “How could you have missed that?”

I have to be honest. I haven’t always understood the people who spend countless hours in the activity of digging up information on their ancestors. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the importance of providing a written heritage to future generations—my sister and I grew up in my grandparents’ home and we heard the “stories.” It was that I didn’t see the point, for me.

Unlike many of our contemporaries, my sister and I were actually interested in hearing the stories when we were kids. Our father abandoned us when I was just an infant and we knew very little about his side of the family except that he was the youngest of ten. On top of that, he died in 1975, essentially closing the door to our knowing anything beyond the folklore, the few family “legends” which still persisted. In many ways, it was okay with us—we weren’t honestly sure if we wanted to know. Yet, at the same time, not knowing left both of us unable to find a sense of wholeness—to not know your father is like having half your DNA missing.

On my computer last night, I watched the episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” that featured country music star Tim McGraw. Early in the show, he talked about when he saw his birth certificate at about age 11 and learned not only that the man he’d thought was his father wasn’t, but that his “real” father was major league pitcher “Tug” McGraw. He talked about contacting Tug when he was a teenager, and being rebuffed, and then after turning 18, being invited to Tug’s home. He’d summoned up the courage to ask Tug if he thought he was, in fact, his son.

This giant of country music stopped at this point in the story, unable for a moment to hold back the emotion he obviously still feels. As you might imagine, Tug’s answer, as those who watched the program or know anything about Tim McGraw can tell you, was yes. It is unlikely that Tug knew the impact his answer would have—he’d never wondered whose child he was, had never been faced with the black hole of emptiness of not knowing who he belonged to.

“It changed who I thought that I could be,” said Tim. “There was this light that I could hold onto…something in me that I discovered that I didn’t know was there.”

By accident of fate, I was denied the opportunity to hear those words of connection from my father. To this day, even in my mid 50’s, I’m not sure how to refer to Rob Lee Sharpe when I talk about him to someone else. I have no memories, no stories to tell, so I can’t contribute to conversations about fathers, even to the extent that my sister, who was seven when he left, can. I have no visceral sense of his spirit, whatever it was.

Just three years ago now, in the midst of grief over the loss of a close friend to whom I had once “belonged,” I returned to involvement in the organized church after 30 years, and as a part of the celebration of my confirmation, I sang a song, backed up by a bunch of wonderful teenagers who were also being confirmed that day. I first heard the song when another dear friend sent me the link to a video, and knew that I had to sing it, that I had to say its words out loud. And if you know me, you know I can’t sing a song if I don’t believe what I’m singing. It will come as no surprise that the name of the song was “Who Am I?” Nor will it give you any pause that the climactic line of the song is, “You told me who I am…I am yours.”

Even at 50, it changed who I thought that I could be. There was this light that I could hold onto…something in me that I had forgotten for a long, long time.

You can see that video by clicking here. Turn up the sound. And remember, that, no matter what you’re going through…earthquakes, tsunamis, you name it…

You’re God’s too.