2020 Was Not Only Pandemic

On New Year’s Eve as we reflect back on 2020 we have faced many challenges besides covid-19. Early in the year several incidents of racial tension prompted broad, fresh efforts toward racial justice and reconciliation (with predictable pushback). We had the most bitter presidential election of my lifetime with a post-election fiasco that is still ongoing. An unprecedented number of storms of unprecedented strength brought suffering around the world. We could continue with this disheartening inventory. Each of us and our families has faced our own individual challenges. I begin this way, not to wallow in despair but to encourage us to reflect broadly on 2020.

In doing so, I propose a healthy activity for observing New Year’s Eve 2020 would be to create an appreciation and thanks inventory. Our family has had a four-generation mutual support embracing Wisconsin, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Our family has four educators and three students who have not only kept teaching and learning, but have been growing in new ways. Milwaukee Mennonite Church has used technology and creativity to nourish and expand how we live together as a community of those who trust and follow Jesus. I have had completely unexpected opportunities to write for the Guideposts periodical publication Strength and Grace: Devotionals for Caregivers, which I believe has helped sharpen my caregiving for Candy and her Dad. I hope I have primed the pump enough to stimulate you to generate your own healthy 2020 retrospective inventory.

Looking Forward to a New Year

The annual celebration of New Year’s Day (or perhaps more tellingly Eve) is typically a mix of giving thanks and relinquishing regrets for the past year with a hopeful anticipation and embrace of the new year. With all of the challenges of 2020, this mood seems especially heightened this year. To be sure, welcoming new opportunities and fresh starts is healthy all along our human journey. Nevertheless, we will continue to deal with the challenges of 2020 in 2021.

I have long puzzled over how January 1 was adopted to mark the new year. It doesn’t commemorate any historic event or person, nor is it correlated with any astronomical or agricultural occurrence or season. The Julian calendar of ancient Rome celebrated January in honor of the two-faced god Janus, who looked both forward and backward as gatekeeper of the future. That got carried into the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1582. My tongue-in-cheek sense is that January 1 only has real significance to accountants (though plenty of businesses start their fiscal years at different times) and revelers looking for an excuse for excessive partying.

I started my Psalm prayers this morning with Psalm 30:5,11 and found these lines particularly appropriate as we move from 2020 to 2021.

 Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

 

The Radical Alternative Reality of Contemplative Living

This morning's meditation by Richard Rohr expresses clearly and powerfully why and how a contemplative life is dramatically different from the power driven agendas so typical in politics, business, and even religion, and that those who live contemplatively shape and influence the world much more (and more effectively) than all of the flailing around of the power brokers.

I was reminded of the book by Mark Link SJ that I read years ago and can't remember the exact title, but it presented Jesus as the fixed point in a swirling world. This also called to mind John 1:5 "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." I think the KJV gets at something significant in rendering it "the darkness comprehended it not" Indeed, the reason the power brokers are powerless against authentic contemplatives is that they do not understand (comprehend) living outside of their power swamp.

Just a bit of historical aside, when the early Church confessed "Jesus is Lord," they knew this was a direct repudiation of the Empire's demanded allegiance of "Caesar is Lord," and thus treasonous. For all of its power, wealth, and violence, the Empire was frustrated at its inability to control these people whose hope rested on confidence in Jesus' resurrection, so no torture or even death could get them to comply. They lived in a reality beyond the comprehension and power of the Empire.

Genuine contemplative thinking leads completely away from the dichotomies of liberal-conservative, progressive-traditional in politics and even religion. Neither is contemplative living finding some balance point on a continuum between the poles. It accesses a completely different reality that defies classification in such limited terms.

Well, I only intended a brief intro to get people to read Richard Rohr's meditation and obviously got carried away. Nevertheless, here it is and I hope at least some of you will read it, even if you skip over my discourse.

https://cac.org/standing-still-moving-the-world-2020-12-29/

God's Path Toward Restoration

 The distresses that have converged on 2020, some of them of long standing, have prompted fervent yearning for restoration. Isaiah 58:6-8, 10-12 lays out a path on which the people of God can lead the way by heeding these words from God.

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

This is the greatness Jesus set forth in Matthew 23.11: The greatest among you shall be your servant.

If this evokes responses to politics or government policy, then my question is: have we/I let the world squeeze us/me into its mold (Romans 12:1 Phillips) as defined by the Republicans and Democrats; or are our/my minds being transformed and renewed toward congruence with Moses, the Hebrew Prophets, and Jesus? I am challenged to lead by a personal and communal life of love, justice, peace, compassion, and mercy for those who are weak, poor, orphans, widows, foreigners, strangers, oppressed, excluded, powerless, broken, suffering. As important as practicing those things are to me, I recognize my wife and I (and our family) live very comfortably. No guilt trip here, only acknowledgement of continuing growth on the journey.

Uncomfortable Psalms on the 19th of the Month

I am sure I am not alone in deriving considerable comfort from Psalms 19 and 139. Even their invitations to examen seems gentle and welcoming.

 “Who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. … Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (19:12,14)

 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (139:23-24)

 When I come to these on the 19^th of each month, I tend to linger there and move past Psalms 49, 79, and 109 more quickly, telling myself I have covered them without engaging with them. Today my Psalm prayers were delayed until after taking my father-in-law to the hospital for a CT scan in preparation for (hopefully easy) skin cancer surgery in December. Perhaps by being nudged out of my routine, or perhaps because all of 2020 has jolted all of us out of our comfortable routines, these less comfortable lines evoked prayers of probing deeper into the heart of God than I am accustomed to. I didn’t receive an incisive prophetic word to proclaim. Rather, I offer them as windows that invite us to look past the conventional into the realm in which the Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

 I encourage you to take some time with the totality of each of these Psalms, perhaps enticed by these unsettling lines.

 “Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches?” (49:5-6)

 “Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.” (79:8)

 “For I am poor and needy, and my heart is pierced within me. I am gone like a shadow at evening. … May my accusers be clothed with dishonor; may they be wrapped in their own shame as in a mantle.” (109:22-23, 29)

 

 

Something wicked this way comes

For many years I have used the Lord’s Prayer (The Our Father) to prompt my morning prayers. This morning when I came to “deliver us from evil” (which can legitimately be rendered “the evil one” legitimately referring to either the devil or an evil human person), I sensed echoes of these lines from Macbeth Act IV Scene I.

 

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

            Open locks,

            Whoever knocks!

 

Then Macbeth enters.

 

I am not going to attach any particular meaning to this other than the odd workings of my mind.

Time to Curl Up on God's Lap

In light of the conjunction of so much uncertainty and confusion these days, I found these lines from the first and last of my Psalm prayers this morning helpful prompts for my chat with God.

Q: If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

A: The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven.

(11:3-4) The implication is not that the Lord's temple and throne are distant but are accessible. God is engaged with our human anxieties.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

(131:1-2) When troubling thoughts churn in my mind, I know I have raised my sight too high and need the humility to curl up on God's lap as a child with a nurturing mother. I know Van Gogh did not do this drawing (Sien With Child on Her Lap) with that in mind, but I often use it for a focus icon for my centering prayer when I need the peace of God's lap. I will be there later today, as I often am on the 11th of each month.