Generosity

Keep Coming Back

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Two of the churches I served hosted 12-Step groups: AA, NA, and OA.

Sometimes, I would run into stranger in the community who would say, “Oh, I go to your church!”

When I looked puzzled, he would say, “I go on Wednesday nights.” The guy might have been wearing a suit and tie, but the lines on his face told me that he had walked some hard roads. And the tone of his voice told me that “going to my church” had saved his life.

I sometimes wondered if anyone who came to church on Sunday mornings would feel that “going to my church” had saved their life? It recalled something I had heard more than once at their meetings:

“Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there.”

I sometimes came to work the on Thursday morning after one of their meetings and, although they were good at cleaning up, they sometimes left up a sign or two. These had slogans that sound like cliches, until you need them to save your life.

  • Let go and let God.
  • Nothing changes if nothing changes.
  • One day at a time.
  • Easy does it.

Sometimes they left a sign hanging on the inside of the front door. It would be the last thing the members saw when they left the meeting.

“Keep coming back.”

The older I get, the more I think that this is THE fundamental spiritual practice: keep coming back.

Like in meditation, for example.

Many people say they can’t meditate. “My mind wanders.”

I meditate almost every day. My mind wanders. I need something for my mind to come back to when it wanders: counting my breaths or a mental image of a candle flame, for example.

The Bible I read suggests many objects to focus on in meditation: new born babies and the stars above (Psalm 8), or anything good, beautiful, and true (Phil. 4:8), to name just a few.

Whatever you choose will be something you can come back to when your mind wanders.

“Wander” is not quite the right word. When my mind “wanders” it gets trapped in addictive thoughts: my worries, my fears, my resentments, my to-do list.

I think I am meditating when I am watching my breath or focusing on a Bible verse. But, I’m not meditating when my mind is captured by one of my addictive thoughts. The first is a “spiritual practice.” The second means I’m not “spiritual” enough.

In fact, the real spiritual practice is when I recognize that my mind has wandered into addiction and I bring myself back to my focus. “Coming back” is the center of the practice.

Coming back is the fundamental practice of a life worth living.

It is no accident that the first word Jesus says in the gospels is “T’shuvah.” It is usually translated as “repent,” a word that is covered with almost as many barnacles as the word “God.” At heart, T’shuvah means “turn around.”

He illustrates the meaning of this word with one of his most famous stories:

A young man can’t wait for his father to die. So he demands his share of the inheritance and gets as far away from home as he can. He spends all his money. He winds up living in a pigpen. It is there that he, first of all, “comes to himself.” Second, he decides to return to his father’s house.

Just as my mind wanders when I am meditating, so my life wanders away from its true center.

This “true center” is where we can be our truest selves: Home.

We may run as far away from home as we can — and stay there for years. Some of us have never felt at home, anywhere. But, sooner or later, most of us will feel so uncomfortable in the place we are in or the skin we are in, that we will long to find that place that feels like Home. We may remember it — or not. But we will know it when we arrive.

In his story, Jesus doesn’t tell us how the Prodigal got home. I think the road is different for everyone. Finding that road is where Jesus’ advice to “ask, seek, and knock” comes in. You can try this door or that road. Keep looking until you find it.

You could do worse than just turn around. After all, if the road you are on carried you away from Home, why wouldn’t turning around take you back?

Or, you could ask for directions. AA began when one drunk asked another if he knew how to get sober.

Maybe the best road Home is to treat someone else the way you need and want to be treated. (Note that the “Ask, Seek, Knock” passage ends with the Golden Rule.)

You may not be as far away from Home as you think. That is what a lot of people find when they pray or meditate. When we quit running away into our addictive thoughts and actions and just watch the miracle of our next breath, or call out the name of Someone we believe will save us, we often find that our True Self was right there waiting for us all along.

Wandering — even getting lost — is a big part of life. Everybody does it again and again.

Just remember the sign on the door:

Keep Coming Back.

Everything I Needed to Know for the Pandemic I Learned in Kindergarten: How to Live on the Margins

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One thing the current pandemic has killed is camaraderie, a feeling of belonging. The bars and the churches where we used to gather with others who knew our names are closed (or probably should be). We feel sidelined and lonely.

I recognize the feeling. I dealt with it in Kindergarten.

I had three major disadvantages when I went to Kindergarten:

  1. There was no one my age within four miles of my house. I had no social skills.
  2. My bus was among the last to arrive every morning. That meant that the kids on the early buses had already commandeered all the best toys. 
  3. My fifth birthday was only a month before school started. Most of the kids in the class were older than I was.  Developmentally, I was behind. In fact, my mother made me these nifty overalls because my fingers could not manage the button at the top of a pair of regular pants, to say nothing of a belt buckle. It worked, but it wasn’t a ticket to the cool kids’ table.

So, my morning went like this: 

I watched the girl who got on the tricycle first ride around and around the room. 

Wayne came on the first bus. He took over the building blocks. He was always the boss of building a castle. He told me every day that all the jobs were taken.

The other kids playing with other toys would just say, “I was here first,” and keep on playing. When the teacher would ask the other kids to share with me, they would resent me.

Most of the time, I just stood on the edge watching. The other kids treated me like I didn’t exist. When I hear the word “marginalize,” I remember that experience.

In some ways, I’m back on the margins again. I’m watching from the sidelines as younger, healthier people minister to others, reopen their businesses, work from home, or go back to their places of employment. Age and underlying health issues keep me cooped up at home.

In more important ways, I am now the one who was there first. I am a white male Boomer. I get a check from Social Security every month. I get another from my pension board.

My neighbors are mostly people of color. A majority are either immigrants or first generation Americans. They were living on the margins before the pandemic. But they were making it. They were hustling in ways that I never saw white male boomers hustle in my whole life. Now, our emergency food distribution lines can be 600 people long. 

I remember how it felt on the margin, watching the kids who got there first, hoping they would share with me, or at least get tired and move on, leaving something behind for me to play with.

So, Jacquie and I have upped our giving, especially to organizations that are trying to serve people who aren’t eligible for other kinds of help, like undocumented immigrants. Yes, “illegals.” I know. We are terrible people, but they are our neighbors and Jesus told us to love them. I am trying to treat them the way I wish the other kids had treated me when I was standing at the margins.

The cool thing about giving is that I feel connected to others. I don’t feel like I am just watching from the margins.

What if We Were All This Crazy?

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https://pixabay.com/get/52e1d34a4e50ab14f6d1867dda6d49214b6ac3e4565776497d2679d594/homeless-4169427_1920.jpgIllustration by – Mohamed Hassan

I’ve got another post in my series on “How to Time Travel Safely” in the works, but this happened and I want to get it down and get it out.

Yesterday, Jacquie and I caught the express train into Manhattan to see Tom Hiddleston, AKA Loki, in Betrayal. My birthday present.

It is long enough to the next stop that a busker can perform a set. If you are lucky, the busker will be good.

We were lucky. A tall thin man set up a couple of African drums, like big bongos. I can’t hear a lot of music very well. My Cochlear implants process speech a lot better than pitch and timbre. But they process rhythm perfectly. I love drums. And, this guy was good.

As usual, when we leave Roosevelt station, most of the people in the car weren’t the same color as Jacquie and I are. People from almost every continent on earth were in that car. But we were all smiling, beating time to the music, and in the end, gave the guy a big hand. A lot of us had fished out a buck or two to give him before we got to Queens Plaza.

As he was taking up the collection. A young woman who had been sitting on the floor next to the door got up. She was barefoot. Her face was scarred in what may have been a ritualistic pattern. She was wearing a black plastic garbage bag against the day’s rain. She wore it with holes for her arms and head more fashionably than I can find words to describe. It did not disguise the thinness of her body. I figured she was going to horn in on the musician’s moment to take a collection of her own. It happens on the subway.

But, she came across the floor toward the musician with a five-dollar bill in her hand. She held it out to him. I saw him hesitate, his eyes soft. She clearly needed it more than he did. Although he needed it. He took it. Not out of greed, so much as to let her have the dignity of giving. You could see the complexity of the decision on his face. After he got out at Queens Plaza, I bet he spent the rest of the day and half the night questioning it.

She went back and sat on the floor. The guy across from me was the kind of guy I would hesitate to meet in a dark alley. But he had tears in his eyes. We both kind of shook our heads. What had we just seen?

As the train rolled toward Court Square, I decided I couldn’t stand it. I fished out a five and walked over and gave it to the young woman. I won’t tell you what we paid for the theater tickets, but it was a helluva lot more than five bucks. I handed it to her with my left hand, although my right knew what I was doing. She accepted it and thanked me.

I sat back down. The guy across from me nodded his approval. I fought back tears. But, it was the best I’ve felt in a long time.

As we crossed under the East River to Manhattan, a man came through the doors connecting our car to the one in front of it. There are signs all over the subway telling us that seven people died last year doing that. He had a sign hanging from his neck and was carrying a big plastic cup.

When he got close enough for me to read the sign, it said he was completely deaf. The cup had “Hearing Aid Fund” scrawled on it. OK. A huckster? I didn’t know. I do know hearing aids are expensive. They are seldom covered by insurance. If you can’t hear, you are unemployable, especially in this economy. When I take my processors off, I am completely deaf. I am terrified of going out into the world without them.

I had given the busker a dollar. I had given the young woman five. Against my better judgment, I would have given him something. But all I had left was a twenty.

I saw a couple of kids who had given the busker money, hold out a dollar to the guy. He came over and collected it and bowed to them. He pointed to the words “thank you” on his sign. He turned around to show them a picture of Jesus on his back.

Then I saw the young woman get up and walk on her bare feet toward the guy. She reached out and gave him the five that I had given her. Then she motioned for him to wait a moment. She counted out some change, and gave it to him. He then moved on to the next car.

She got off at Times Square, as we did. As we were going up the stairs, I looked back and saw her glance up at me.

Jacquie said to me, “She is mentally ill.” Stating the obvious.

New York City actually has some pretty good ways to help people like that. The police and the MTA will respond if you call. I didn’t call. She wasn’t my responsibility.

But, I can’t escape hearing words like:

“Give to everyone who asks”

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good portion—packed down, firmly shaken, and overflowing—will fall into your lap. The portion you give will determine the portion you receive in return.”

I keep thinking about a story about a widow who put two pennies in the offering plate. The same guy said her gift was more than the ten-dollar bills thrown in by rich people.

I remember other crazy stuff about God feeding the birds and clothing the flowers. So, God will take care of you, too.

Nobody but crazy people believe that enough to actually live it. To live in our world, you have to take care of yourself. You need to hang on to your money. Never be a sucker.

Yet, I can’t get this poem out of my mind:

When Jesus Came to Birmingham

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,

They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;

They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,

For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

 

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.

They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;

For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,

They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

 

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do, ‘

And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;

The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,

And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

– G. A. Studdert-Kennedy