How Do You Stay True to Yourself?

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Wrestling with the Question

How do you stay true to yourself?

That question appeared in my journal app as I passed my seventy-sixth birthday.

I thought back to who I was fifty years ago. I remembered that young man’s hands typing on the keys of his green second-hand IBM electric typewriter. Every cell in the skin, muscles, and bones of that guy’s hands has been replaced with the cells that make up the old, wrinkled hands now typing on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro. I wondered, “Who is this ‘self’ to which I am to stay true?”

Back then, I was the son and grandson of some special people. Today, I am the father and grandfather of some extraordinary people. (Plus, I am the father-in-law of two of the most remarkable women I know.) Back then, I stood in the front of the church as a preacher. Now, I stand in the back as an usher. Back then, I had a systematic theology to rival Karl Barth’s. Today, I cling to the few beliefs Life hasn’t shaken apart.

Yes, the name of the woman who shares my life is on a 1969 marriage certificate. But don’t get me started on how many surprising transformations she has undergone!

Again, who is this “self” to which I am to remain true?

Acquiring a “Self”

My earliest memory is of a little boy pulling himself up to stand on two feet to look out a window. That is the “self” that still seems to exist after all these years. My “I” is an eye that observes — that witnesses — my life with the openness and curiosity of that little boy.

But even that has changed. I could idealize that little boy’s openness and curiosity. But that same openness and curiosity also wanted to stick my little fingers into a light socket or pull the tail of a gray, ill-tempered cat named “Topper.” My parents, my religion, and my education did their jobs. They helped me see through filters that divided safety from danger, right from wrong, and good from evil the way my sunglasses divide visible light from UVs.

The other thing the little boy had to learn was his name. My first name was my identity as an individual. My last name was my identity as part of a larger group. These were the first building blocks of my ego. My ego is a container for everything I call my “self..” By my mid-20s, it was the size of Jay Leno’s garage. I stored my diplomas, certificates, successes, and failures in it. I sorted some of these things into a drawer called “Pride” and others into a drawer called “Shame” because I scanned everything I thought, said, or did with my filters.

No wonder I confused this filtered eye with the Eye of God.

Eye within triangle representing the Trinity. Oden, Vector after Renaissance Christian Iconography.

Letting Go of the File Cabinet

When I retired in 2016, I donated my professional books to a library. I threw out all my old sermons. I admit it was hard. What if I needed one someday?

I consoled myself that I could borrow the book back from the library and admitted that I had never in my whole life ever repreached an old sermon.

Two years later, Jacquie and I sold our three-story, five-bedroom house in Cleveland Heights and moved to a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. We got rid of about 95% of our stuff. Again, we debated each thing we sold, threw out, or gave away. What if we needed it again?

We decided that we could always buy a replacement. You can count on one hand the number of things we have had to replace.

However, I kept those two files, “Pride” and “Shame.” They only took up space in my head. I resolved to go through them in what gerontologists call a “life review.” But under the Eye that I confused with God’s Eye, I kept transferring stuff from the Pride file to the Shame file. After all, I did a lot of good things for selfish motives.

At the same time, I also began practicing contemplation and meditation. I had help from some gifted teachers, including Jacquie, who admits she would have labeled these practices “WooWoo” a few years ago. Fleetingly, at first, and then more consistently, I began meeting Someone who reminded me of that little boy looking out the window with curiosity and openness — and something else born of all the years I have lived — compassion.

I don’t believe I was wrong when I identified the eye that sees all that I think, say, and do with the Eye of God. I was wrong to think it was the eye of judgment waiting for me to slip up. Instead, God’s eye sees us with compassion. When I reread my Bible, especially the Gospels, I see how often Jesus looked at people compassionately. I have come to see that Jesus is not Godlike; God is like Jesus (John 1: 20; 2 Corinthians 5:19). So, the Eye of God sees us as Jesus does.

Looking through those two file drawers with a compassionate eye, I don’t find excuses for what I did wrong. I see a man who, like everyone else in this world, spent a lot of time wrestling with his demons. I also see him projecting what he didn’t want to see in himself onto others. I see myself stumbling around in the dark like a tourist who decided to wear his sunglasses when he entered a cathedral. (John 3:19).

So, how do I stay true to myself in this Third Half of Life?

By continuing to throw things out. I won’t leave this world pulling a U-Haul. I can go through those last two file cabinets not with the filters of judgment but with the eye of openness, curiosity, and compassion. Doing so allows me to exchange pride and shame for wisdom and understanding. And I suspect that if anything gets through the needle’s eye we call death, it will be the Eye that has seen it all and loves me anyway.

Night Watch

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And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Matthew 26:40 ESV

Sorry, Jesus. I would have been there for the whole hour, but this is how my Good Friday morning went . . .

I am a lark, not an owl. So, when our church asked for volunteers for the night watch, a prayer vigil in our chapel between the Holy Thursday service commemorating Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, and the first Good Friday service at 8:00 AM, I volunteered for the 4-5 AM slot — a time I was sure no one else wanted.

I had set my alarm for 3:00 but woke at 2:30. I was a little anxious. The press has reported more random acts of violence in the subway in recent weeks. Someone is punching women in the face. A guy was pushed in front of a train last week. I chose my outerwear with some thought about how well it would repel a knife attack and whether my boots could provide a painful kick to an attacker’s shins. Nobody better mess with me. I’ve been working out!

Hey, in the Garden of Gethsemane, one of the disciples carried a shiv.

At 3:20, I didn’t find any muggers on the subway platform. I didn’t find anyone. It was the first time I ever saw it empty.

According to the MTA app, a train should have brought me to the church by 3:45, but it was now 18 minutes late.

After a few minutes, I saw a man slowly walk down the stairs to the platform. NYC is hard on people whose joints hurt. He got to the bottom and then sat down on the steps. That is a good way to get run over by people running to catch their train, but not at 3:30 AM.

After a few minutes, I walked past him to recheck the expected arrival time. As I did, I saw that he moved slowly because he was wearing a man’s white sneaker on his right foot and a woman’s low-heeled pump on his left. I suspect neither fit him well, but they matched the rest of his wardrobe.

I returned to checking my email but felt bad for the guy. Finally, I pulled a bill out of my wallet and handed it to him. He looked at me in surprise but didn’t take it. I thought at first he had no hands, but he had pulled his arms out of his sleeves to wrap them around his shivering body. He had to struggle to get a hand out to take my handout.

The amount I gave him might buy breakfast from one of the vendors who set up on the sidewalk outside the station. I don’t know. Inflation hits the poor even harder than people like me.

But it bought me an easier conscience. I’ve kept that price down.

I got on the train and started reading a story about how right-wing podcasters and politicians are attacking Catholic Charities for helping “illegals,” even though the director of one agency that has received threats against their staff says that everyone they help has papers. He agreed that there is a lot wrong with our immigration system. All the church is trying to do is pick up the pieces.

One center received about 75 threatening or obscene phone calls after Fox News targeted it. When the director said they were only trying to carry out Jesus’ command to welcome strangers, he was told “that the gospel was wrong.”

As I finished reading this, my watch told me that my 4:00 AM time to keep watch in the chapel had started, but my train was still crawling under the East River.

I looked at the other people in my car. There may have been twenty. I had no idea whether any of them were “legal.” What I did know is that my city can’t run without them. Four years ago, we were hailing the people who clean floors, deliver food to groceries, and empty bedpans in nursing homes as “essential workers.” They were “heroes.” Now, they were just people who would be late for work.

It was 4:00 AM. I said I would keep watch, so I started praying for the people around me, who were so tired that they slept sitting up.

I finally got to the church at 4:15. It is an architectural jewel on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. The 12,500-pipe organ is the largest in New York City, and the preaching is world-class.

I call it “Jacquie’s church.” When we retired, she got to pick. It is an Episcopal church whose rector calls it “the poorest rich church in Manhattan.”

Jacquie and I go there because of the line of hungry men, women, and kids that stretches around the block every morning and every evening, waiting to be fed at the church’s hunger program. We also go because everyone is welcome at worship regardless of who they are, what they look like, what they wear, and who they love.

I took a seat in the chapel.

The clergy had left a plate of bread and pitcher of wine on the altar from the previous evening’s communion service — “Christ’s offering for us,” as the communion liturgy says.

Last night, I read what Thomas Merton wrote in his journal after contemplating these symbols. He saw them flowing through and dissolving life’s compartments—the walls we build between sacred and secular, clean and unclean, holy and profane, Republican and Democrat, rich and poor. All things come together here.

After spending (almost) an hour “watching” with Jesus, my train ride home was faster. My neighborhood was beginning to wake up — or had not yet gone to bed. One of the things I learned when I started going to my gym before dawn is that the “ladies of the evening” work into the morning. I’ve quit pretending that I don’t see them. One young woman I often pass wished me a good morning and I told her to stay safe. Another tugged my sleeve and used what may be the only English word she knows to tell me what she had to offer. I wished her well, too.

It’s a tough world out there, and the nights are long.

I am grateful that Jacquie’s church has taught me this prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary; bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Blessed Are The Anguished

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— Demonstration supporting Sammy’s Law, March 22, 2024. Photo: Roger Talbott

This is the week when Christians recall the passion and death of Jesus. On Thursday, we have a service to remember his last supper. On Friday, we often have long services in the afternoon that recall the seven things he said on the cross or the 12 events that happened on the way to the cross.

All these are in preparation for the joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Day. 

Some churches also have a service of Tenebrae — a word that means “darkness.” The service consists of lamentations from the Psalms and the prophets. No one preaches. If there is music, it is also the music of lament and grief — think, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.” Periodically, a candle at the front of the church is extinguished, and the church grows so dark it is hard to see anything but the candles.

In the end, only one large candle remains lit and it is removed from the sanctuary. The congregation sits in silence. Then there is a loud noise. Last night, someone beat on an unseen kettle drum. The large candle is returned to the front of the church, a symbol of St. John’s words, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.” 

When I used to lead Tenebrae services in the suburban church I pastored when our sons were growing up, our son Matt helped me by making the loud noise at the end of the service. He created a loud, hollow noise that sounded like a door slamming shut on your tomb. 

As an adult, Matt sometimes attended a Tenebrae service even if he didn’t attend church on Easter morning. He said, “It is the world’s best horror show.” 

As I recited lamentations in my church’s Tenebrae service this year, I remembered how all of us who loved Matt felt when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and watched over the next ten terrible weeks as he slowly wasted away in front of us, even as the light of his love for life and his family fought back against the darkness. 

The feeling we had, like the feeling the followers of Jesus must have had in the last few hours of his life, was anguish. 

It is the same feeling I have had for the last six months about Israel and Gaza. 

I have Jewish family and friends for whom Israel’s national security represents a kind of psychological safety net in a world that periodically decides to blame Jews for everything. The brutal attack on October 7-8 poked a hole in that safety net. Many of them see the net being further degraded as Israel’s short-term military objectives risk the long-term safety of all the world’s Jews. 

As what might have been a just war has become just war, my friends and friends of friends who are Muslim, Arabic Christians, and people whose skin doesn’t match the paint samples Americans arbitrarily call “White” see our country’s support of Israel (now waning) as a clear indication that some lives matter more than others. 

The great temptation is to feel nothing.  After all, I can’t do anything about it. It is the way of the world. As one of my pastors said last Sunday, most of the people involved in Jesus’ crucifixion treated it the way we Americans treat mass shootings. It was just another day. 

His Sunday sermon, the Tenebrae service last night, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday remind me if I am to remain whole and human in this cruel world, I am called to feel anguish. 

I Googled “anguish” and found this:

“Anguish is often referred to as emotional distress or pain, and it can encompass several different emotions, such as trauma, grief, sorrow, fear, and anxiety. It’s a reasonable, typical, and sometimes even a rational response to a horrible situation.” 

Betterhealth.com

It isn’t easy to choose to feel distress and pain. No one can do it all the time, as the exhausted caregivers of dying loved ones know all too well.  Yet we also know that shutting those feelings out entirely makes us less than human. 

We need rituals and seasons that bring us back to our anguish.

 In the last few years, I’ve been fascinated by how people who never go to church, especially young people, show up for Ash Wednesday. Having ashes applied to your forehead while hearing “Remember you are dust” is as grim a ritual as there is in Christianity’s toolbox.  Yet, if a clergy person is willing to stand in a public place and perform that ritual, people will line up for it, showing that it reaches something that happy, clappy weekly “celebrations” do not. It helps us get in touch with the anguish of life itself. I suspect that if there were some way to take Tenebrae out into the streets, people would line up for that, too. 

I experience the same “vibe” when I attend Yom Kippur services at Malkhut, the Jewish spiritual community my daughter-in-law, Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg,  has formed here in Western Queens, and hear my son, Jim, chant in Hebrew alphabetical order the names of the sins we all commit. (You can taste that vibe by listening to Leonard Cohen sing “Who by Fire.”) I suspect that my Muslim friends who are observing Ramadan are getting in touch with the same feelings. 

 I have recently seen the importance of secular rituals of lamentation, too. I have attended demonstrations led by Jews and Muslims demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. I recently marched with neighbors who are demanding a radical change in New York State law — to give New York City the right to set its own speed limits — a week after another child had been run over in Queens. All of them are acts of communal anguish and lament.

As the Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has repeatedly pointed out, lamentation is prophetic. It expresses humanity’s resistance to the Powers that Be, who insist cruelty and death are necessary. Living in this world without anguish means caving to the Powers that are trying to squeeze us into their image.  

Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We find comfort because we are not alone; we are part of the human race made in the image of God, who often weeps over us.  

This is part of a larger project on the Beatitudes. I would appreciate any comments you would like to share.

The Marvelous Grandpaphone

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Photo by Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash

The word “grandpaphone” came to me as I woke from a dream.

In the dream, I was at a family reunion. Some youngsters were showing me a trick that they learned. They poured a liquid on an old LP record. It flattened the grooves, making the surface shiny and smooth. I said they shouldn’t do that and explained what the grooves were for. I wanted to tell them about playing my grandmother’s old wind-up gramophone as a boy. It played recordings on cylinders instead of disks. But first, I wanted to figure out whose grandkids these were. They must belong to one of my siblings. However, they seemed not to know who I was talking about when I named my brother and sisters.

I realized the meaning of this dream in what my son calls “Ha-Ha time” (half asleep and half awake).

The children who erase the LP and do not remember my generation’s names will be my grandchildren’s grandchildren. I don’t know all the first names of my sixteen great-great-grandparents. Do you know yours?

Unless your ancestors are the kind of people recorded in history books or you are an obsessive-compulsive genealogist, you are unlikely to know much about that generation.

The dream confronted me with an aspect of mortality that may be even more profound than the eventual death of my body — the erasure of the fact that I ever lived.

I heard this hymn playing in the background:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away,
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies in the dawning day.

Isaac Watts revised by Brian Wren

That was when I woke up, and the word “grandpaphone” came to me. A grandpaphone picks up and plays the vibrations of the ancestors through the generations.

That is the best I can hope for. My efforts to become immortal aren’t bearing much fruit.

If my descendants have an enormous trust fund, it won’t bear my name, and they won’t have other reminders of my existence.

I did publish a book of sermons, but it went out of print in the 1990s. The paper in the copies I have on my shelves is already turning yellow.

I can count on appearing in the histories of the churches I served, but I fear that most of those churches won’t make it past the middle of this century.

The dream was calling me to recognize a truth my culture ignores –the importance of ancestors.

My particular Christian tradition has been guilty of looking down its nose at what it calls “ancestor worship.” So we reduce one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the earth,” to handing out corsages on Mother’s Day.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was once asked what this commandment meant for people who had been abused or abandoned by their parents. Rabbi Heschel said the commandment does not require us to pretend that bad behavior is honorable. What it does command us to do is to have a reverence for the mystery of our own existence. Our parents, their parents, and all our ancestors are the symbols of that mystery.

Our ancestors do, indeed, represent a mystery: the mystery of who we are, how we got here, and, maybe, where we are going.

I was lucky to know all four of my grandparents, one of my great-grandmothers, and a step-great-grandmother. Some people come from family lines full of the kind of people who get biographies written about them — or at least an article in Wikipedia. Some people don’t even know the names of the two people who made them. But we all have this in common: a family tree that doubles in size with every generation: four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents — you can do the math. We don’t often realize that if even one of our 128 ancestors seven generations ago had not “come through,” as it were, you and I would not be here.

Perhaps your reaction is, “I’m just a random set of genes that came together to win the life lottery.”

Or maybe you think like my grandchildren. Once, when all four of them were together, I told them how my 15-year-old self got up the nerve to reach out for their grandmother’s hand, and she let me hold it. After telling that story, I asked, “Are you here because I reached for her hand? Or did I reach for her hand because you are supposed to be here?”

They all agreed that their inevitable future existence was the reason I crushed on their grandmother.

Whatever you think—and I admit there are days when I think my life is a lottery ticket and days when I think my life is inevitable—just thinking about it should fill us with reverence for the mystery of our existence.

You can create a very simple daily discipline of remembering your parents and their parents, grandparents, and ancestors and bowing in gratitude, thanking them for the gift of life. Since I have added that to my morning routine, I feel a reverence for life that I haven’t felt before.

I think I am playing the grandpaphone.

Light in the Groundhog Hole

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Measured by the number of times I have seen and referred to it, Groundhog Day is my favorite movie. I can’t help thinking about it on February 2nd. (Spoilers ahead).

Bill Murray plays Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors. He and his producer, played by Andie McDowell, and his cameraman, played by Chris Elliott, check into an inn in Punxsutawney, PA, on February 1 because the following day they have to report the annual ceremony in which a groundhog (also named Phil) will see his shadow at sunrise and predict six more weeks of winter — not a stretch because February 2nd is smack-dab between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Phil gives a lackluster description of the meaningless event and is eager to return to Pittsburgh. However, a blizzard forces him and his crew to stay an extra night. The following day, he is awakened by Sonny and Cher singing, “I’ve got you, Babe!” — the same song that woke him up the day before, and the announcer says that it is February 2nd. Phil lives Groundhog Day over and over again, and then again, and again.

I’m reminded of the movie, not just because today is February 2nd, but because, like Phil, I keep repeating something over and over again.

I am trying to write a book about the Beatitudes of Jesus — nine sayings that each begin with the word “Blessed.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

These first three, especially, make no sense. What is blessed about poverty, spiritual or otherwise?

Mourning isn’t exactly “happy” (another possible translation of the word “Blessed.”)

And who wants to be meek?

So, I sit down every morning and write a few hundred words. The next day, I write a few hundred more without making any discernible progress toward writing a book.

I’m taking today off to think about Bill Murray’s Phil and what happens to him in the movie.

When the movie begins, Phil is an unlikable, arrogant bastard. He dislikes and looks down on his producer, cameraman, and all the people in Punxsutawney.

What makes repeating Groundhog Day hell for him is that he is stuck in this hick town with these dumb people, repeatedly reporting on a meaningless event.

However, over time, Phil begins to see how spiritually impoverished his life is. He has no friends. He loves no one. No one loves him. He isn’t doing anything that matters to him. This depresses him. Slowly, he starts to make some changes in his daily routine. For example, he takes a piano lesson every afternoon from a teacher who thinks he is her new student each time he comes to her door. The daily routine doesn’t change, but Phil learns to play the piano.

By the end, Phil begins to appreciate Larry, the cameraman and falls in love with his producer. He starts living a meaningful life, not by spending hours meditating or studying any religion’s scriptures, but by simply facing the fact that his life isn’t worth living and meekly (the word in the Greek New Testament means “teachable”) learning how to live a better life step-by-step.

The working title for my book about the Beatitudes is A Life Worth Living Forever.

I think that is what the gospels mean by the phrase “eternal life.”

Jesus transitions from the Beatitudes to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount by declaring, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” He says keeping the light under a bushel basket or for salt to lose its flavor isn’t right.

In the movie, Phil eventually gets out of his own way. He creates a community of friends that resembles the Kingdom of Heaven on a small scale. He accepts and makes amends for how he has treated his co-workers and television audience. He eventually becomes the richest man in town, measured by how much he is loved. His light shines.

I can’t seem to explain the Beatitudes, but I can point to Bill Murray’s Phil and say, “That’s what they look like.”

Like Phil, we all have a light inside of us, and Life will teach us how to let it shine if we will let it.

And thank you, friends, for reading this. I’m trying to learn to write like Phil learned to play the piano.

Christmas Dinner in Heaven

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Years ago, I was waiting tables for a spaghetti dinner — a fundraiser for the church put on by our men’s group. As I refilled water glasses, an older woman with lots of red lipstick and L’Oreal’s best black hair asked if she could talk with the pastor. 

I wiped my hands on my apron and admitted that I was the pastor. 

“Could I ask you a question?” She said timidly. 

I suspected I was the first clergyperson she had ever spoken to, so I encouraged her to ask whatever she wanted. 

She asked, “When we get to heaven, will we be able to go out to eat? I like going out to eat and hope I can still do it in heaven.” 

I didn’t know what to say at first. When telling this story to friends, I ask, “Where were Paul Tillich and Karl Barth when I needed them?” And people who know who Paul Tillich and Karl Barth were laugh uproariously.

I’m proud to say that the earnestness in her voice kept me from laughing at her. Although I suppressed a grin when I pulled an old sermon illustration out of my brain’s back pocket:

“You know, the Bible doesn’t say a lot about heaven. It is kind of like trying to describe Florida to an Eskimo without the aid of pictures. You couldn’t convey palm trees and warm sunny beaches. You could only talk about what isn’t there: no ice and snow, no polar bears, or blizzards. Most of what the Bible says about heaven is what isn’t there: no pain, no mourning,  no crying, or death. But, it does assure us that heaven is good.”

I was pretty proud of that.

I now know that I got things backward. She was teaching me. Not the other way around.

The woman’s question and my response illustrate a problem all religions have. The mystics, theologians, and religious professionals monopolize the faith. They have the visions, create the philosophical systems, and perform the rituals. They often give the impression that you have to be inclined to meditate and pray for hours. You have to have a vocabulary that includes words like “eschaton,” “numinous,” and “ontological.” And you need to be able to calculate the dates of Rosh Hashana, Easter,  or Eid in your head to be religious. 

So where does that leave the lady who wanted to go out to eat in heaven? It leaves her in a category we professionals call “the laity,” whom we “serve” if they are pious enough to sit at our feet and absorb our wisdom. 

But this lady didn’t even come to church unless we were serving a delicious spaghetti dinner for even less money than Denny’s early-bird special.  What about her? 

Well, who do you think Hell is for? 

I am ashamed to say that I used to think that this religious caste system was real.  I, of course, was deeply concerned about those who were “lost.” I did everything I could to “save” them by getting them to come to church. 

In reality, I was the one who was lost — lost in the clouds of theology, biblical studies, and religious ritual, stuff that can be helpful if, in the end, it comes down to earth where people really live.  

Thank God that religion isn’t left only to us religious professionals. Occasionally, religions produce Great Souls who bypass the pros to bring faith down to earth.  

One of those Great Souls was Francis of Assisi, who helped ordinary people in the 1200s CE understand the most difficult Christian doctrine, Incarnation: the claim that God became human in Jesus of Nazareth. 

The theologians who are way higher up on the Christian caste system than I am have come up with ways that try to express what we mean by Incarnation: 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,  
⁠the only Son of God,  
⁠eternally begotten of the Father,  
⁠God from God, Light from Light,  
⁠true God from true God,  
⁠begotten, not made,  
⁠of one Being with the Father.  
⁠Through him all things were made.  
⁠For us and for our salvation      
⁠⁠he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit  
⁠he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,  
⁠and was made man.

Nicene Creed

Francis could recite these words in Latin and did so every time he went to Mass, and maybe he found them meaningful. But to most people, that theology is made from the same fabric as the Emperor’s new clothes. 

Francis found another way to teach the Incarnation to ordinary people. He lived it. That means he lived, as much as possible, like Jesus. Like Jesus, he depended on the generosity of others to give him his daily bread, believing in a God who loved him as much as the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap. He did not have a closet full of clothes because he trusted a God who clothes the lilies of the field. Maybe he couldn’t heal lepers like Jesus, but he could embrace them. 

When people saw Francis, they saw what Jesus looked like. When people saw Jesus, they saw what God looks like. 

That is tough for us. Jesus lived in a world where people thought God was like Caesar. 

Francis lived in a world where people thought God was like a King or the Pope, who was even more powerful than kings at that time. 

Today, many people believe they see God in a billionaire who lives in Mar-a-Lago and is a once-and-future POTUS.

But God is like Jesus, and Jesus is like Francis, and Francis is like you or me when we are most open-hearted and vulnerable. 

Every year, when Christmas comes around, we have a chance to understand Incarnation again. We can see God when we look in the manger. 

We don’t put up a tree at our house. We hang a quilted one on our dining room wall thanks to Jacquie’s sister, Joanne. And on the sideboard beneath it, we arrange a motley manger scene. Most of the characters were carved from thorns by an artist in Nigeria, where my aunt served as a missionary. But there is also a silver elephant from India. 

When our boys were small, we had wooden figures created by Fisher-Price. They spent the month of December rearranging them every day. As soon as they grow to be too big to fit in a manger themselves, kids understand, as they look down on the scene like angels, what the scene is telling us: 

God is here
In the messiness of birth. 
In the love of the two people who gave him life. 
With the cow, sheep, donkey, camels, (and elephant.)
And we take our cues from the shepherds and kings who bow down before him in love and wonder — the same love and wonder we feel in the presence of every new baby.
 


If I had been looking in the manger instead of up at the heavens that evening when the lady asked me if we would be able to go out to eat in heaven, I would have remembered a story that begins: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.”  It goes on to say the people you would imagine a king would invite to the feast were all too busy to come. So, the king had his servants go out and pull people off the highways and byways to join the feast.

In other words, the answer to the woman’s question was right in front of her — and right in front of me — in that plate of spaghetti set on a paper-covered folding table where she sat with her friends on each side of her and had a lively conversation with people sitting across from her whom she just met. That’s heaven. In fact, it’s where people who never darkened the door of a church get waited on by pastors who fill their water glasses and take their orders (meat sauce or mushroom?) — and the creators of the Nicene Creed wash the dishes.

When we look in the manger and see God wrapped in swaddling clothes, we begin to see God in the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, in animals, in young lovers and old ones, too. We are in heaven when we share our deepest hurts and greatest joys with a friend or vice versa.  Even a small piece of bread and a sip of wine can tell us who God is, why we are here, and where we are going better than all the theologians in the world. 

So, Merry Christmas. 

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The Light in A Winter Solstice World

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tealight candle lit up
Photo by Mohammad reza Fathian on Pexels.com

As a pastor, I knew that the Christmas Eve candle-lighting service was probably the most important religious experience many congregation members would have all year. One proof was a bride who insisted she wanted a candlelighting service at her wedding. I explained to her that it would have a different impact on a July afternoon than on Christmas Eve. She insisted. I could tell by the look on her face, as the candles were barely visible in the sunlight, that I had been right.

But, on one of the longest, darkest nights of the year, lighting those candles does pack an emotional and, yes, spiritual wallop. It still moved me, as tired and frazzled as I usually was by the time the organist began to play “Silent Night” around 11:40 PM.

The symbolism is obvious: a single candle lights another candle and those two candles light two more and the four light four more, and by the time we were singing:

Radiant beams from Thy holy face

With the dawn of redeeming grace

Jesus, Lord at they birth!

the dark sanctuary was bathed in a beautiful warm light. Yes, once again, we see that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

I got up early this Christmas morning and reread a journal entry from a few years ago in which I recorded the words of St. Symeon the New Theologian (if you can call someone who lived 1,000 years ago “new”), who had another perspective on the lighting of one candle by another:

Just as if you lit a flame from a flame,

it is the whole flame you receive.

It caused me to look at this sad old world differently this Christmas morning, guided by St. Symeon and Fred Rogers, who told parents that when there is news of wars and disasters, they should teach children to “look for the helpers.”

Where are they?

They are the people who, Jesus says, not only do the works that he does but will “do greater things than these.” (John 14:12)

For example, the gospels tell us about the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people that Jesus healed. Every day, millions of people heal millions more in our world because the healers believe in life, which I believe is the same as believing in the One who called himself “Life” (John 14:6).

Jesus is said to have fed “five thousand, not counting women and children.” Yesterday, our pastor said that our church’s hunger program serves almost that many meals weekly, and we are just one of hundreds of programs in New York City. There must be millions around the world, from the small churches that serve a meal once a month to the UN trucks trying to get into Gaza. It is still not enough, but the number grows every year.

Jesus welcomed into his fellowship people that others rejected. I understood early that every church, no matter how small, always has at least one person whom one of my colleagues called a “humdinger” — someone who was difficult to love. Yet, the congregation did, in fact, love that person. If you go to church, you can name that humdinger. And even if you don’t, I am sure that someone in your circle of friends and family is difficult to love, but you include that person anyway. And, if you are like me, there are days when you are the humdinger. And I believe that anyone who welcomes a humdinger welcomes Christ. As Mother Teresa used to say, “Jesus wears distressing disguises.”

I know that our world is torn apart by war. Millions are being forced out of their homelands by hunger, violence, and extreme poverty only to be met by walls built by people who have not yet been forced out of their homes. I know (too well) that cancer still kills people before their time, and new diseases appear without warning. I believe my own eyes, so I see the climate changing in real time. There is so much to be discouraged about.

But, if I look for the helpers, the people who have caught fire from Jesus — or have the same fire that Jesus had whether they call themselves Christians or not, I do not despair. They are not “little Christ,” which is what the word “Christian” means. They burn with the whole flame and fill this world with a soft, warm light if only we would look for it today.

JFK and Julius Caesar

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For about twenty years, I could get a congregation to nod their heads in agreement when I said, “We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot.”

But now, as Longfellow once wrote about another event, “Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that fateful day and year.” (There are, statisticians tell me, more women alive who remember).

I was in a 10th-grade English class. We were in the middle of reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I remember reading out loud a speech by Marc Antony encountering Caesar’s body after he had been assassinated:

O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.—

[ Act 1:Scene 1)

There was a knock on our classroom door. Our teacher, who would unexpectedly die in a car accident herself in about eighteen months, went out and then returned a couple of minutes later to tell us that the President had been shot.

That moment taught me that even the most important people are mortal and how quickly and unexpectedly life and even history can change — the same thing Shakespeare was trying to say.

Shakespeare also says that the assassination of Caesar had consequences that Brutus and Cassius never intended when they drove their knives into Caesar’s heart.

I grew up in a family and a community that preferred the upright and honest Richard Nixon to the spoiled Democrat (said with distaste) John Kennedy. And many of us believed that Nixon would have been president if Richard Daley had not been able to dig up a lot of Democrats from Chicago’s graveyards. Kennedy won by only five electoral votes and a little over 100,000 popular votes (cp. Joe Biden’s 74 electoral votes and seven million popular votes in 2020.)

But, we (following Nixon’s example) accepted the official results when Kennedy was elected and mourned along with the rest of the country when he was killed. And we wished the new President well.

That taught me what it means to be an American.

I don’t know how the world would be different if Kennedy had not been shot that day. Historians I respect doubt that JFK could have gotten the Civil Rights Act through Congress the way LBJ did. Some of them also wonder if he would have escalated our involvement in Vietnam the way LBJ did. Both of those events have shaped much of our history since.

I’d be interested in your answers to at least one of these questions:

Where were you, and what were you doing on November 22, 1963?

Do great people make history, or does history make great people?

What event or experience taught you what it means to be an American?

What event taught you that life can be unpredictable?

Memo to Self: Don’t be Afraid to Look Stupid

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You will never be completely prepared for the important tasks:

  • Living a good life
  • Mending a frayed or broken relationship
  • Building a better world for those who will come after you.
  • Sharing your creativity with others. That means sharing the things that come out of your heart, shape with your mind, and create with your hands and your voice and your presence, like:
    • A Painting or Photograph
    • A Song or a Story
    • A Frittata or a Feast.
    • A Quilt or a Quatrain
    • A Custom Car or a Community (a family, a group of friends, a cooperative, a social movement.)
  • Supporting a friend in trouble, in grief, or in making their own unique contribution to the world.
  • Dying well.

You can do your best. But nothing will ever be perfect, so:

  • You will be tempted to do one more thing, first.
  • You will be tempted to get lost in your need for safety and stability — your need not to look stupid.

Nevertheless, you are here to give the world the gift only you can give.

The stupidest thing is not to attempt any of these because you are afraid to look stupid.