Last Sunday, my husband and I visited the local Unitarian church that feeds us so well. Jim and I sat near the front. The day’s leader took her place, lit the candles, and led the prayers that are prayed each Sunday -prayers of peace, of thankfulness for the freedom we’ve been given.
I held Jim’s hand as I listened to a rare litany that captured my heart, that came across as a basic Jesus teaching. I sat forward not wanting to miss one word . . .
Litany of Restoration
If, recognizing the interdependence of all life, we strive to build community, the strength we gather will be our salvation . . .
If you are black and I am white,
It will not matter.
If you are female and I am male,
It will not matter
If you are older and I am younger,
It will not matter
If you are progressive and I am conservative,
It will not matter
If you are straight and I am gay,
It will not matter
If you are Christian and I am Jewish
It will not matter
If we join spirits as brothers and sisters, the pain of our aloneness will be lessened,
And that does matter. In this spirit, we build community and move toward restoration.
As we drove home, I reflected on the coming Thanksgiving feast, and what, after all, does really matter as we approach our table laden with all sorts of traditional nourishing fare.
In my many years I’ve attended numerous Thanksgiving repasts, felt all manner of Thanksgiving grace poured out, lost myself in endless chatter with my tablemates about mundane and not so mundane matters.
Would it be too much to ask that this spirit of Thanksgiving continue throughout the year? Rather than what I heard last weekend from the lips of my friend, a savvy and totally caring pastor.
This world’s becoming more dangerous, more & more evil. Even if he thought so, does such a statement help to change anything? I guess he didn’t realize it -we rarely do- but that sort of fear mongering conversation accomplishes exactly the opposite of this season’s ennobling goodwill.
This Thanksgiving, I pray for the goodness that matters, that we take a good close look at how goodness falls into our everyday life. This Thanksgiving I herald the gift of a fresh season from nature, of my neighbor’s kind deed of donating her bicycle to a homeless man, of my joy at finding a new friend at my toastmaster club. Of even of a recent spirited conversation with a friend of such (surprise!) different point of view. Yes, it all matters, every bit.
I give thanks for a gay neighbor who prepared a special meal for a club member recently hospitalized. I’m thankful for the cheery volunteers of Grace ‘n Grits with whom I meet each week to prepare a huge breakfast for the homeless of Sanford. I lift up in prayer my stalwart immigrant friend from Bolivia who teaches me about perseverance, refusing to give up after losing his engineering job of long standing, not losing faith during the following lonely weeks until he landed an even better paying position.
Dear friends, in this special season let’s renew our watchfulness over the airwaves’ prevailing currents of fear, to be receptive instead to God’s persistent goodness everywhere manifest. Let’s offer thanks for even those undesired economic mysteries we live with, if only as God’s topsy-turvy ways of teaching us things we evidently need to know and would otherwise shun. Let us honor both life’s highs and lows, including letting go of so much of what’s not good for us. Let us live with reckless trust in that constant gospel injunction crying out more than any other: Fear Not!
I’m happy that my husband and I were there last Sunday to hear that beautiful summation of what really matters, and of Thanksgiving blessings that only await our proclaiming them.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Feeding the World
It’s a Miracle!
Every story explodes more story. Take the example of how a few loaves and a few fishes once wildly burst into a feast of overflowing baskets. I love that story. I love the smile on Jesus’ face as the people are filled. It’s one of the few stories found in all four Gospels.
Thousands of people lounge on the hillside, hungry to hear Jesus’ words of wisdom. For hours, he offers simple, truthful guidance. Like us, the people are starved for authentic truth, for the deepest meaning of what religion has to say. Jesus has holy answers.
Exhausted, first thing Jesus does is sit down. He spends time looking over the crowd. He then shares some of his most insightful parables. When finished, he sees how his nourishment for their souls now calls for another kind of food. So he tells his disciples, “These people are starving. I am too! What’s for lunch?” Sitting in that crowd, I would have been starving as well.
Remember, we’re looking for a miracle here.
Holding up those five loaves and two fishes, Jesus utters the most beautiful of prayers: “Thank you, Father.” Then he blesses this sparse food, consecrates it, giving it power, rendering it so much more than just another hurried picnic.
Then Jesus delightfully doles out the morsels. More food is on the way; generosity begets generosity. He smiles. In fact he laughs with this insane, pure joy of giving. All the people laugh too. The wonder of it all.
Can we do something similar? Don’t we always have something for someone under our noses who can use an extra dollar, a meal, a helping hand at just the right time? When we happen to be the one on call, doesn’t it usually end in something like joy?
As if on cue, Jesus hears a child shout: “I’m full!” He toasts his disciples, then directs them: “Okay, collect the leftovers. We can send them over to the next town.” The men collect and continue to collect. Is there no end, they ask themselves? A tiny meal had become a banquet. A miracle!
Well, yes and no. Perhaps it’s better understood as the most ordinary of outcomes in God’s paired down economic order: give to get! And you multiply your giving.
This story reminds me of Leandra J. Carroll, mother of the current famous singer: Jewel. She writes in her book, The Architecture of All Abundance how her own money continues to multiply: "Though it varies from year to year, I challenge myself to disperse up to 60 percent of my income, after taxes, to benefit areas other than my own personal gain, primarily humanitarian endeavors. I am aware this constitutes a radical generosity, yet it seems my income expands exponentially as a result of my commitment.” Leandra smiles at her own miracle of giving, a personal loaves-&-fishes explosion that overflows, an experience too much to bear and must itself be shared in her prosperity book.
Finally, another loaves and fishes story I found yesterday as told by Paulo Coelho in the recent issue of Ode magazine: Abd Mubarak was on his way to Mecca when he dreamed that he was in heaven and heard two angels having a conversation.
“How many pilgrims came to the holy city this year?” one of them asked.
“Six hundred thousand,” said the other.
“And how many of them had their pilgrimage accepted?”
The answer: “None of them. However in Baghdad there’s a shoemaker called Ali Mufiq who didn’t make the pilgrimage, but did have his pilgrimage accepted, and his graces benefited the 600,000 pilgrims.”
When he woke up, Abd Mubarak went to Mufiqu’s shoe shop and told him his dream.
“At great cost and much sacrifice, I finally managed to get 350 coins together,” the shoemaker said in tears. “But when I was ready to go to Mecca, I discovered my neighbors were hungry, so I distributed the money among them and gave up my pilgrimage.”
And now, onto us! Consider our own filled hands, our soul’s capacity for a loaves-&-fishes miracle. Perhaps our coins could be feeding the needs of five thousand. Perhaps our hands could be feeding the world.
Every story explodes more story. Take the example of how a few loaves and a few fishes once wildly burst into a feast of overflowing baskets. I love that story. I love the smile on Jesus’ face as the people are filled. It’s one of the few stories found in all four Gospels.
Thousands of people lounge on the hillside, hungry to hear Jesus’ words of wisdom. For hours, he offers simple, truthful guidance. Like us, the people are starved for authentic truth, for the deepest meaning of what religion has to say. Jesus has holy answers.
Exhausted, first thing Jesus does is sit down. He spends time looking over the crowd. He then shares some of his most insightful parables. When finished, he sees how his nourishment for their souls now calls for another kind of food. So he tells his disciples, “These people are starving. I am too! What’s for lunch?” Sitting in that crowd, I would have been starving as well.
Remember, we’re looking for a miracle here.
Holding up those five loaves and two fishes, Jesus utters the most beautiful of prayers: “Thank you, Father.” Then he blesses this sparse food, consecrates it, giving it power, rendering it so much more than just another hurried picnic.
Then Jesus delightfully doles out the morsels. More food is on the way; generosity begets generosity. He smiles. In fact he laughs with this insane, pure joy of giving. All the people laugh too. The wonder of it all.
Can we do something similar? Don’t we always have something for someone under our noses who can use an extra dollar, a meal, a helping hand at just the right time? When we happen to be the one on call, doesn’t it usually end in something like joy?
As if on cue, Jesus hears a child shout: “I’m full!” He toasts his disciples, then directs them: “Okay, collect the leftovers. We can send them over to the next town.” The men collect and continue to collect. Is there no end, they ask themselves? A tiny meal had become a banquet. A miracle!
Well, yes and no. Perhaps it’s better understood as the most ordinary of outcomes in God’s paired down economic order: give to get! And you multiply your giving.
This story reminds me of Leandra J. Carroll, mother of the current famous singer: Jewel. She writes in her book, The Architecture of All Abundance how her own money continues to multiply: "Though it varies from year to year, I challenge myself to disperse up to 60 percent of my income, after taxes, to benefit areas other than my own personal gain, primarily humanitarian endeavors. I am aware this constitutes a radical generosity, yet it seems my income expands exponentially as a result of my commitment.” Leandra smiles at her own miracle of giving, a personal loaves-&-fishes explosion that overflows, an experience too much to bear and must itself be shared in her prosperity book.
Finally, another loaves and fishes story I found yesterday as told by Paulo Coelho in the recent issue of Ode magazine: Abd Mubarak was on his way to Mecca when he dreamed that he was in heaven and heard two angels having a conversation.
“How many pilgrims came to the holy city this year?” one of them asked.
“Six hundred thousand,” said the other.
“And how many of them had their pilgrimage accepted?”
The answer: “None of them. However in Baghdad there’s a shoemaker called Ali Mufiq who didn’t make the pilgrimage, but did have his pilgrimage accepted, and his graces benefited the 600,000 pilgrims.”
When he woke up, Abd Mubarak went to Mufiqu’s shoe shop and told him his dream.
“At great cost and much sacrifice, I finally managed to get 350 coins together,” the shoemaker said in tears. “But when I was ready to go to Mecca, I discovered my neighbors were hungry, so I distributed the money among them and gave up my pilgrimage.”
And now, onto us! Consider our own filled hands, our soul’s capacity for a loaves-&-fishes miracle. Perhaps our coins could be feeding the needs of five thousand. Perhaps our hands could be feeding the world.
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