Chipmunk Grace

If I am faithful about anything, it is feeding the birds. Both my husband and sons will attest to that. In fact, now that our sons are no longer living at home, we spend more on sunflower seed than on groceries.

Last summer, in an attempt to add some color to our garden and, ever so slightly, defray the cost of sunflower seeds, I purchased a packet of sunflower seeds and planted them in one of our garden beds. A few days after planting, I checked to see if any were sprouting. Where my nice row of seeds had been planted, there was now a neat row of holes. The chipmunks or squirrels had dug up every single seed! I decided that it was a waste of time to plant sunflowers, for all my effort produced nothing.

This spring, I did not give sunflowers any consideration for my garden. Yet this summer, I am enjoying sunflowers blooming continuously in my garden. I have sunflowers at various stages of growth in almost every bed.

Chipmunks can fill their cheek pouches under our bird feeders because brown thrashers sit at the feeders and knock out lots of seeds as they look for something particular. I enjoy watching a certain chipmunk whose home is apparently at the back fence of our yard. He fills his cheeks, runs through our garden, and carries his loot to his hole for safekeeping. Or at least that is his intent. Apparently along the way, he has dropped clusters of seeds in the various beds of our garden. And now, we have sunflowers!

This chipmunk has taught me a lesson about God’s grace and gentleness. All my effort to grow sunflowers produced nothing. My planning and productivity resulted in no fruit (or flowers, in this case). Yet my faithfulness in feeding the birds, day in and day out, rain or shine, produced the flowers I had tried to get by my own effort and in a way much better than I could have ever planned. You see, the planting has been done all through my garden, not in an isolated bed, and has been staggered over time so that as one group of flowers begins to wane, another group is about to bloom.

If you follow my blog, you will know this is my first post in several months. Try as I might to be productive, to create some good piece of writing, I was coming up dry. I finally gave up trying so hard to produce something and instead have been trying to rest in God’s presence and let God simply shine on me and to accept God’s graciousness to me. When I quit trying so hard, God sent a chipmunk with a cheek full of seeds to show me that all I really needed to do was to let God be God for me, and to let myself be God’s creature.

Who is Lord?

In a recent devotion by Richard Rohr, he points out that to say "Jesus is Lord" was a political statement when Rome was in power because Caesar was the one who was to be called "lord." While we are not required to say the same thing about our president, the furor that accompanies the presidential race would make one think that it is of the same magnitude as picking who will be our lord. Is the authority for my life the one who lives in the White House?

Maybe the stir is because we want to belong to the winning candidate. We don't like to lose, and some act as though the loss of "their" candidate is the end of the world, as if God was watching for just the right (read "wrong") person to get elected so God could throw the switch on the end of time.

To me that shows how inflated our national ego really is. Some act as though our nation is the only nation that matters in all of time (the U.S. is only 235 years old). When we do this, we act like small children who thing the world revolves around them alone.

I have to think that God is shaking God's head at the fervor with which some view election season. I wonder if it grieves God that we view the source of all power as a flawed human being rather than the Creator of the universe.

What really matters is not who is elected president, but how we will live as followers of Jesus Christ. It is Christ to whom I belong, not some person running for office. They are only temporary, a puff of wind, just as I am. If I will do what Jesus did, then who is president really won't matter to me, for I am living in God's Kingdom (to which, by the way, the United States does not have exclusive rights).

A Crown or a Cross?

Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. . .If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person. . .”

                                                                Mark 8:34, 38

Jesus isn’t much of a salesman. The way he chose and asks us to choose is outrageous by the standards of our culture. We want the crown but not the cross. We want to be accepted by society and still call ourselves disciples of Jesus. How much does the Church even encourage us to live against the grain of our society, which is certainly as “adulterous and sinful” as Jesus’ society, if not more? So why does Jesus challenge us with these words about rejection and suffering and losing one’s life? Why is living any other way characterized as selfish?

Frankly, I’m not sure how I can be who Jesus challenges me to be as long as I have possessions, power and prestige (Richard Rohr calls these the 3 P’s). As long as I have any of these I don’t really need to rely on God. How can I say I trust God to provide when I have the influence and the financial wherewithal to provide for myself? I can say I know it all comes from God as a gift, but do I really believe that? Does my attitude support that belief?

Pictures of the recent tornado outbreak bring home to me afresh that all this stuff I have is just temporary and can be gone in an instant. It won’t protect me or save me or even bring me happiness without effort. It all possesses me and makes demands of me and burdens me. Carrying these burdens prevents me from being able to carry the cross that Jesus offers me.

It seems to me that we excuse and deny the depth of this challenge given by Jesus. As much as we want to be dualistic in our thinking about who’s saved and who isn’t, who’s right and who’s wrong, we want to view this challenge of Jesus as a both/and proposition: carry our stuff and carry his cross, save our selfish ways and be saved, please ourselves and society and please God. How badly we have missed the mark! Lord, help us, help me to change!

The Simplicity of Silence

Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified.

                                                    Mark 9:5-6

Why is it that we so frequently feel we must say something to fill the silence? Nobody had asked Peter to speak in this moment when Jesus was transfigured and was with Moses and Elijah, yet Peter felt that he needed to speak up, to make his presence known, to fill the silence instead of being an observer.

We use noise of any kind to soothe us because we are afraid of silence. It makes us uncomfortable, often when we are alone, and always when we are with another.

In my Sunday school class, where our attendance is usually around 20-30 each week I struggle sometimes to remain silent when there is a time of open discussion. Observing Peter, I recognize that many times my speaking is not about sharing some profound insight but about the desire for acknowledgment. Like Peter, I speak to make my presence known, and like Peter, much of what comes out of my mouth is equally as irrelevant.

In Freedom of Simplicity Richard Foster speaks of simplifying our speech. He says we shouldn’t say we’re starving when we are merely hungry. Doing so diminishes real starvation, a plight all too real in our world. My hunger in no way is anything like the real starvation another faces.

I think simplicity of speech also extends to the “filling the air with words” that we sometimes do. It’s understandable that we do it, for our entire days can be filled with words from television, radio and work. We sing songs in our heads, read words on a page or a screen, talk on the phone, text or e-mail (or even blog!). Even if the words aren’t audible, they fill our heads.

What if I used fewer words? What if I could disconnect, unplug and shut down the constant river of words that beats on me like a waterfall and that spews forth from my own mind and mouth? Maybe a good Lenten discipline would be to use fewer words, especially words directed (or aimed, as the case may be) at others instead of God. Maybe if I used fewer words, I would learn to make my words more meaningful.

Maybe too, I could enter into a silence that is without words, a place where being present in the presence of God is sufficient, where nothing needs to be said (or even thought), where the glory of God simply shines into me, and I receive it in silent, wordless gratitude.

Popularity vs. Purpose

Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” But Jesus replied, “We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.”

                                                                           Mark 1:36-38

Sometimes it seems that Jesus gets pulled in every direction and responds to every request made of him. But here, in Mark 1, Jesus gently says no. I expect Simon, Andrew, James and John wanted Jesus to remain in Capernaum—it was home for them. Had Jesus stayed there, they could follow him without leaving what was familiar and comfortable, not to mention revel in what was likely newfound status and popularity by their association with Jesus.

The previous day had been exhilarating for these men. Jesus had taught in the synagogue, cast out an evil spirit and healed Simon’s mother-in-law. The day had climaxed with the whole town gathered at the home of Simon’s mother-in-law. No wonder Simon and the others went out looking for Jesus. They likely wanted more of the same!

But Jesus not only denies their request, he calls them to leave even as momentum is building. He tells them to leave a half-begun ministry and move on. I imagine it must have given them pause to consider what this call to follow Jesus really meant. It meant leaving their families and their work. It meant leaving the familiarity of their home town. And now, it probably meant some embarrassment, because, among those who knew them best, this group of men was walking away from an unfinished “project,” leaving many of their closest friends and family disappointed and angry. I know I am speculating about this, but human nature being what it is, the desire on the part of the disciples for earthly popularity and the desire on the part of their fellow townspeople to get more of Jesus certainly seem like natural behaviors.

Jesus could have stayed in Capernaum and met the expectations of this community, but if he had, he would not have been who God called him to be. He had to keep his focus on God’s expectation for him, not the expectations of the people around him. I wonder if he was torn between staying in Capernaum and building on the ministry he had done there and leaving for other towns. I wonder if that was why he withdrew to pray, to keep his focus where it needed to be.

It’s not easy to deny the expectations of others when they are asking for help. It is easier to ride the tide of pleasing people, helping with worthy causes, and building a ministry program than it is to step away from all that and move on, leaving things unfinished and people disappointed. To do that requires trust in God, deep and complete trust that is only possible through close, intimate communion with God. Such communion is not developed in the busyness of doing but in the stillness of listening. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about getting caught up “in the thick of thin things.” The problem is that without a proper comparison, we think the thin things are actually the big things. It is only in stepping back and learning to see as God sees that we can see that we have been operating on the periphery instead of in the center.

Jesus did many things, but he was always centered in God’s will. His doing flowed out of his being, not the other way around. He could say no because he knew the only One he was focused on pleasing was God. How I want to do the same!

Mastered by Time

He has planted eternity in the human heart. . .  

                                                                Ecclesiastes 3:11b

I have begun using A Book of Hours, which uses writings of Thomas Merton for praying the hours. In a recent morning reading, Merton writes that in the morning, creation awakes and asks permission of God to “be” for another day. All creation, that is, except humans, who believe we control time and our use of it. I wonder if it is that notion that keeps us from fully surrendering to God, because we always live with an eye on the clock and the clock is how we have tried to gain mastery over time.

But what if we had no clock, no calendar? What if, like the rest of creation, we lived in cycles of light and dark and each new day we asked permission of God to “be?” Would that be living out the eternity placed in our souls? Would we then take life in stride, with its times and season, joys and sorrows, difficulties and pleasures, much as the ocean ebbs and flows as the tides move it?

St. Benedict, in creating his Rule that guided monastic life, made adjustments for the seasons—the longer summer days had a different schedule than the shorter days of winter. We are not as likely to make adjustments to our lives according to the seasons. We cheat, for we fill our evenings, be they long or short, with work that keeps us up late and causes us to miss the waking of creation in the morning, which Merton says is the closest we come to experiencing paradise in this life.

We do not ask permission of God to “be.” Instead, we stumble out of bed to the sound of an alarm and put ourselves through the paces of a schedule God may never have intended for us to face, all in the name of being masters of time, when actually, what has happened is that time has become the master of us.

Could we be more fully human if we recognized each morning that it is God who gives us permission to “be,” so that we manifest God’s glory in our very “be-ing?” Is this not how the Word is made flesh and lives among us today?  

Enough

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

                     In the Bleak Midwinter, by Christina Rosetti

The carol, In the Bleak Midwinter, is probably my favorite Christmas song. The verse above is not in our hymnal. I found it online at website for The Poetry Foundation. The word “Enough” spoke to me because Rosetti’s description tells me that Jesus did not need much when he was born—a place to sleep, food to eat, and parents to care for him. It was enough. I find it humorous that even though angels fall before him, it was enough that the animals adored him!

How satisfied am I with simple things—simple, nourishing food, an adoring pet, a place to sleep, and the companionship and support of others? Maybe the reason the word “enough” keeps coming back to me is that I recently read about Evagrius Ponticus, the early monastic teacher whose naming of the eight deadly passions laid the groundwork for the seven deadly sins. Evagrius also named eight virtues, one for each of the passions (the monastics always considered passions as negative—they were states of mind that were considered destructive of love). We don’t talk about the virtues as much as we should. Evagrius said that the only way to do away with a passion was to overcome it with a corresponding virtue.

Interestingly, the first passion he named was gluttony. Considering the word “enough” against the backdrop of gluttony makes the contrast between the two especially strong. Gluttony is not only about overeating. It is about overdoing anything that is destructive of love. So how much of what we do in this season becomes gluttonous? And when we identify our overeating, overbuying, overdecorating and overdoing as gluttony, how is that celebrating the birth of the One who was born into simple surroundings and was satisfied with the simple things that nourished his life?

The virtue that overcomes gluttony is temperance. What would it look like to practice temperance in this season? Would simple meals, simple gifts, and a simple celebration allow me to focus more on the birth of Jesus, to adore along with the animals that surrounded him?