"Great Gathering Sunday"

I was catching up on FCS sermons online, and I loved the "Great Gathering Sunday" one -- which Molly and Laura Ruth co-preached, Molly's first Sunday back from a three-month sabbatical.

Molly talked about a church camp she attended one week during her sabbatical.

The conference was called “Running the Good Race,” and took as its heart the very scripture we are breaking open today. Naturally, the youth who signed up for it were all very athletic, and expected that they would be spending plenty of time outside, running relays, leaping tall buildings, choosing sides for teams, sweating and burning carbs. The problem is, they got me for a leader. The city girl. Gym in my high school consisted of walking the halls in shorts and combat boots. What crazy person named this conference Running the Good Race? Well, I did actually. I didn’t think they would take me so literally.

I had intended for the conference to be about competition and cooperation as elements of the Christian spiritual life. Does God want us to ‘be our best’? What does Jesus think about cliques and competition, about turning the world into winners and losers? I wanted to explore this with them, because I well remembered what it was like to be 12 or 13 myself—painfully so—and wanted the kids to learn that God had a plan for them, and that God and Jesus evaluate their progress by very different criteria than their peers do, or their coaches, or even their parents and teachers.

I wanted to set them up to get out of the race entirely, so to speak. But this group of kids changed the game on me—when we began to talk about the scripture, they quickly noticed that it didn’t say you should win the race, and it also doesn’t say you should get out of it—it says, what? You should FINISH the race. Just this week I heard about a woman in our church who was on her high school track team. She came in last, every event, every week. And she didn’t care. She didn’t play to compete with others. She played to beat her own time. And often she did. She knew intuitively what Paul meant, when he said he has finished the race.

Molly went on to talk about how one of her goals for sabbatical was to learn how to swim, and with the help of a personal trainer, she did. And then she went to church camp. And there was swim-time every day. And she expected the kids to keep to their cliques, because that's what middle schoolers do. Only they didn't.

Everyone piled into the water, and I started doing my laps, freestyle, breast stroke, back stroke, freestyle. And the kids, who had been in twos and threes, began to come together into fours and fives, and into eights and nines, and finally, finally, all 23 middle-school youth were in the shallow end, together, playing a game of volleyball, every single one of them. Perfect participation. It was only Monday, and already they had figured out how everybody could win.

So may all your people, from all the ends of earth, be gathered into one in You.

My son Rafe and I were the only ones who were not playing with the youth. I was doing my laps, and Rafe was being Rafe in the deep end, until he decided he’d rather be Rafe in the shallow end, and since I was his buddy I had to go with him. I walked down the dock past the volleyball game, agog at this miraculous display of unity and cooperation that had not in any way been mandated by adults; I stared at the girls I’d thought were snobby and the overweight boy, the cool kids and the bookworms, marveling, and then something even more remarkable happened.

They asked me to play with them.

I murmured the automatic response, “Oh no, you don’t want me, I’m terrible, a definite liability.” And they wouldn’t let me be, until I stepped into the game. They made me serve, a lot. And when the ball made it over the imaginary center line, they all cheered, and slapped me on the back, and when I accidentally spiked it into the head of a girl in front of me, they commiserated, and gave me a second try, and no one kept score. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The minister shall be ministered to, and the snob and the nerd shall play volleyball together.

It was holy. And it was FUN.

How often do we hold ourselves outside of things, because we’re afraid if we get into the middle, we’ll be the weak link? We’ll be the reason why it fails? Isn’t it just better to avoid any risk of failure, even if it means withholding from ourselves the joy of belonging?

A few days later, we did an exercise in deep sharing with the youth. Each person in the circle told of a time when they’d been excluded. They told heartbreaking stories of family trauma, of feuds with best friend. And when it was my turn, I was all set to tell my standard story of the gorgeous, popular girl in junior high making me miserable with her bullying. And instead, God said to me, “don’t tell that one. You don’t need to tell that one this time. Tell them instead about how you excluded yourself, for so many years. Tell them how you told yourself for 3 decades that you weren’t an athlete. Then tell them what they have done to change that, by their kindness and their love.” So I told them.

We cast ourselves into roles, sometimes when we are very very young, and then find it darned hard to get out of them. We are the deciders in our own lives, and we decide ourselves into a corner. But God keeps giving us a way out of that corner. God puts the right person into our path, the right volleyball game, and before we know it, we are playing. The indwelling Christ, who has been living in our hearts all along, sees the opening, and takes it.

Even if it’s taken you 30 years to do it: you can change the game, you can rewrite the rules of the race; you can get off the bench and into the running, not to compete, but to feel the exhilaration of being part of something bigger and beautiful, to live up to not just our human potential but our Godly potential. God is waiting to set us free, because we are meant for freedom. One day, as Rafe and I were walking up from Davis Square, I suddenly started to run, out of sheer giddiness. My son, not used to displays of spontaneous exertion from me, started jogging along beside me, his face filled with light. “Mom!” he panted. “Mom! Why…are…we…running? Why…are…we…running, Mom? Is…it…for…the…feeling…of…freedom?”

What a terrible thing, to live your whole life without that feeling of freedom.

The good news is, you are not the person you think you are. You are the person God thinks you are.

She closed with reflecting on the phrase, "I have fought the good fight."

So I have finished the race, and you have kept the faith. There is one more phrase here that God is turning our minds to, the first one: I have fought the good fight. What is the good fight? How is it even appropriate for Christians to talk about a fight, we who are supposed to be people of peace?

Whenever I am stumped about what some part of the Bible might be trying to say, I go right back to the Gospels to see what Jesus was actually doing, and how it might shed light on the rest of the Bible. In this case, I think about the fights that Jesus fought. Every one of the fights that he fought were for somebody else. When there was a fight about him, he didn’t fight—he’d change the subject, or he’d disappear from their midst, or even allow himself to be crucified, rather than fight.

Laura Ruth: But he fought plenty of fights on behalf of others, people in no position to fight for themselves. He fought for the blind, the lame, the poor, for those in prison. He fought for women and he fought for children, he fought for the chronically ill and the mentally ill, and he fought for immigrants from other countries. He fought to keep some things sacred, like the Temple, so that God wouldn’t die on the altar of capitalism.

Molly: The race we race is fundamentally for ourselves. We do it to develop endurance, to build muscle, to feel the feeling of freedom and belonging. But it has a higher purpose. The muscle it builds, God means us to use in the service of others. Because of the gift of sabbatical and the people who were in it, I am now a swimmer who can perhaps save my own life, and, more importantly, may be called upon someday to save someone else’s.

Laura Ruth: The good fight is a fight to be fought for others. Church, it is fall, a time of fresh energy and commitments. What will we do this year? What fights will we fight so that others may be free? We can’t fight every good fight, but what if we fought a couple fights, really well? Can you imagine, if this year every single person in this sanctuary committed their spiritual strength to fight ONE fight that Jesus would have fought? What kind of power will we unleash, if we have perfect commitment, perfect participation, in unleashing the reign of God in this world?

---

How often do we hold ourselves outside of things, because we’re afraid if we get into the middle, we’ll be the weak link? We’ll be the reason why it fails? Isn’t it just better to avoid any risk of failure, even if it means withholding from ourselves the joy of belonging?

This resonated with me a lot. I recurrently get really avoidant -- not wanting to do any of the things I'm supposed to be doing -- and it's been worse this year than usual, and I was telling my best friend earlier this week ('cause I was really feeling it on Monday) that part of that is a fear of doing it wrong, of upsetting/disappointing people, of failing to live up to expectations, of showing people that I'm not actually as awesome as they think I am/I would like to be.

(I am also a really risk-averse person and want Molly's personal trainer to teach me to swim.)

The good news is, you are not the person you think you are. You are the person God thinks you are.

I talk a lot about how each one of us is a bright, brilliant, beloved child of God (and you are beautiful to behold), but I'm not so good at TRUSTING in God (see above re: risk-averse). "Stubborn, independent baby -- I can do it myself, maybe," to quote a poem my mother wrote about me when I was small. I freely admit that believe in a benevolent Creator because I want that to be true, that I want someone I can hand all of my prayers over to -- but I still hold so very fast to controlling my own life.

I appreciate the reminder that God loves us and wants us to be free.

I also really like the emphasis on the fact that we are called to be strong for those who cannot be strong for themselves.

The muscle it builds, God means us to use in the service of others.

[Beloved] "and the mercy of the fallen"

At my Thursday young adult church small group, we've been reading portions of Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. He talks about how we are the Body of Christ, and he uses the Communion liturgy -- taken/chosen, blessed, broken, given -- as a framing device.

Excerpts from Blessed:

For me, personally, prayer becomes more and more a way to listen to the blessing.  I have read and written much about prayer, but when I go to a quiet place to pray, I realize that, although I have a tendency to say many things to God, the real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.  This might sound self-indulgent, but, in practice, it is a hard discipline.  [...]  To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear a voice of blessing --- that demands real effort.  [...]  It is not easy to enter the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: "You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests."  [...]  Often you will feel that nothing happens in your prayer.  You say: "I am just sitting there and getting distracted."  But if you develop the discipline of spending one half-hour a day listening to the voice of love, you will gradually discover that something is happening of which you were not even conscious.  It might be only in retrospect that you discover the voice that blesses you.

I was really struck by the idea of silent prayer as listening to the voice of love.  I'm familiar with the idea of listening to/for God during silent prayer, but I usually think of that as listening for God to tell you something, but of course just being in the Presence is valuable, and sometimes what God most wants to tell us is that we are Beloved.  (One could argue that what God always most wants to tell us is that we are Beloved.)

    My second suggestion for claiming your blessedness is the cultivation of presence.  By presence I mean attentiveness to the blessings that come to you day after day, year after year.  The problem of modern living is that we are too busy --- looking for affirmation in the wrong places? --- to notice that we are blessed.  Often, people say good things about us, but we brush them aside with remarks such as, "Oh, don't mention it, forget about it, it's nothing . . ." and so on.  These remarks may seem to be expressions of humility, but they are, in fact, signs that we are not truly present to receive the blessings that are given.  It is not easy for us busy people, to truly receive a blessing.  Perhaps the fact that few people offer a real blessing is the sad result of the absence of people who are willing and able to receive such a blessing.  It has become extremely difficult for us to stop, listen, pay attention, and receive gracefully what is offered to us.

I'd been thinking recently about how when people are really grateful to me and I respond by saying that what I did wasn't a big deal, that I diminish their experience, that I implicitly say that the thing I helped them with wasn't a big deal (even though that's not what I mean) and also that in refusing to accept their gratitude I was denying them the ability to give me a gift.

    Before concluding these thoughts about our being blessed, I must tell you that claiming your own blessedness always leads to a deep desire to bless others.  The characteristic of the blessed ones is that, wherever they go, they always speak words of blessing.  It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourself are in touch with your own blessedness.  The blessed one always blesses.  And people want to be blessed!  This is so apparent wherever you go.  No one is brought to life through curse, gossip, accusations, or blaming.  There is so much of that taking place around us all the time.  And it calls forth only darkness, destruction, and death.  As the "blessed" ones, we can walk through this world and offer blessings.  It doesn't require much effort.  It flows naturally from our hearts.  When we hear within ourselves the voice calling us by name and blessing us, the darkness no longer distracts us.  The voice that calls us the Beloved will give us the words to bless others and reveal to them that they are no less blessed than we.

Excerpt from Broken:

Living our brokenness under the curse means that we experience our pain as a confirmation of our negative feelings about ourselves. It is like saying, "I always suspected that I was useless or worthless, and now I am sure of it because of what is happening to me." There is always something in us searching for an explanation for what takes place in our lives and, if we have already yielded to the temptation to self-reflection, then every form of misfortune only deepens it. [...] It is so arduous to live without an answer to this "Why?" that we are easily seduced into connecting the events over which we have no control with our conscious or unconscious evaluation. When we have cursed ourselves or have allowed others to curse us, it is very tempting to explain all the brokenness we experience as an expression or confirmation of this curse. Before we fully realize it, we have already said to ourselves: "You see, I always thought I was no good.... Now I know for sure. The facts of life prove it."

***

It's been a particularly dominant theme recently that people I love reach out to me first when they're in crisis. No matter what I do or fail to do in my "real job" (either now or any job I have in the future), this is reason enough for my being on this earth.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came,
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
-from "What I Learned from My Mother" by Julia Kasdorf

***

This morning I happened upon a Magpie Girl blog post, Quiten Down: How to Shut Up your Gremlins. Excerpt:

“Gremlin” is the term coined in Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson. It’s a way of describing the little voices in your head that tell you untrue things. This American Life did a great piece on Gremlins called The Devil In Me. In the second act Nancy Updike asks people what the little voice inside their heads is telling them. The answers are at turns tragic, stunning, and most of all, utterly familiar. Go ahead and have a listen. We’ll wait…

Are you back? Did you hear your own Gremlins in there? I know I did.

When my life coach, Jena Strong, first suggested that I started working with my Gremlins, I wanted to throw the book at her head. I couldn’t pin my Gremlins down long enough to find out if they had girl parts or boy parts; I couldn’t read their name tags; and doggonit, they were LEGION! My Gremlins? They were very, VERY noisy.

Then Jen suggested that I take all the voices in my head and make hash marks. In any given day how many times did my Gremlins say something nice to me, and how many times did they say something negative? I tried this. After 48 hours I did not have one single hash mark in the positive column. The negative column on the other hand was quite lively.

Jen said that since my Gremlins were so very busy, maybe I should build them somewhere to go after work. After all, they did have my best intentions at heart. They were trying to protect me – to keep me from doing anything scary, or potentially painful, or too awfully adventuresome. So maybe I should give them a nice shag carpet and, in the words of Jena “sit them down and pour them a stiff drink already.”

So I did. I made them a crash pad in the charming urban-decay style. Wall paper, gilt mirrors, and battery operated twinkly lights…I spared no expense. As I worked on this mansion for the little demons, my un-namable Gremlins began to take dimension and shape. They became less ethereal, and more manageable. Soon the legion was happily ensconced in a pretty little Gremlin dollhouse.

Now that I was a full five feet taller than they were, I felt empowered. I could totally kick their butts. Like Jen says, if they misbehave I could just send them to paperdoll Gitmo.

I rapidly discovered I was not at all pleased that Gremlin Blythe had allowed the other Gremlins to propagate, so I made her put everybody on a neat little leash. The next step was to let the Gremlins take ownership of their own messages, so they didn’t rattle around in my busy little mind. I’ve always adored those little slips of paper that come in fortune cookies, so I cut a whole stack of them and put them next to a tin in the Gremlin dollhouse. Here are just some of the messages that filled that tin up in the first few hours:

“Where you are is not good enough.”
“You never get enough done.”
“Your passions aren’t strong enough.”
“You can’t climb out of this confusion.”
“You never finish anything.”
“WHIMP.”

Now, keep in mind that I have been writing, reading, and carrying around affirmations to counter these messages for weeks. But something about writing them down in their negative, shitty versions was totally empowering. Now they belonged not to me, but to this third person – the Gremlins. They weren’t mine to have and to hold, and they weren’t mine to carry. Now Blythe and her crew could tuck them away on their bookshelf and keep them dusted and alphabetized. Not. My. Problem.

I cannot tell you strongly enough how much of a breakthrough this has been for me. My noisy Gremlins are much quieter these days, and when they do start getting chatty I act like a staff writer from the Evening Post—I just make the report. The quote gets shorthaneded onto a slip of paper and tucked into their dollhouse. End of story.

***

Other posts from my browsing of the Magpie Girl blog:
* The Do Less Revolution - The Have-Done List.
* Sacred Commerce: on finding a new way to serve and sustain.
* Lessons from an Artist: On speaking with authority about what you do.