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Thursday, December 31, 2009
Listen To Your Life
The beginning of a new year naturally provokes some degree of introspection. We review the past twelve months' worth of thoughts, feelings, and actions, regretting some (few?) and rejoicing in others (many?). And we resolve to mend our ways, at least here and there, now and then, so we might more closely live up to our own ideals, let alone anyone else's.
It's not uncommon for people to get discouraged about this process, to grow weary of trying and finally dismiss the whole resolutions thing as a futile exercise in failure. But I'm convinced it's a crucial part of our human nature to stop, look, and listen to our lives. To take stock of where we've come so far, to set our sights on where the road could and should lead from here.
A quarter of a century ago, my hero Frederick Buechner wrote a memoir, Now and Then,* in which he reflected on his life and work as a Presbyterian minister, teacher, and author. In his fifties at the time, he lived quietly in a small Vermont town with his wife and three daughters.
One key outcome of his literary self-examination was the following profound observation about not only his own life, but yours and mine as well...
I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly.... If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Happy, blessed New Year!
* Published by Harper & Row, 1983
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:06 PM
Monday, December 28, 2009
Where Jesus Learned His Wisdom
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Luke 2:41-52
Anne Lamott's son Sam was 13 years old, edging into adolescence, and she was several paces into menopause herself. One day she confessed their escalating struggles to her friend Father Tom, who gave her this sage theological advice: "In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the front row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained."
That not so pastoral word somehow settled her nerves and strengthened her for the travails of parenting an adolescent. In the midst of one heart and soul wrenching episode with upstart Sam, Annie reflected on what life must have been like for Mary and Jesus when he was about Sam's age.
We see [Jesus]... speaking to the elders in the Temple. He's great with the elders, just as Sam is always fabulous with other grown-ups. They can't believe he's such an easygoing kid, with such good manners. In the Temple, Jesus says things so profound that the elders are amazed. "Who's this kid's teacher?" they wonder. They don't know that Jesus' teacher was the Spirit.
But at the same time he's blowing the elders away, how is Jesus treating his parents? I'll tell you: He's making them crazy. He's ditched them. They can't find him for three days. Some of you know what it's like not to find your kid for three hours. You die. Mary and Joseph have looked everywhere, in the market, at the video arcade. Finally they find him, in the last place they thought to look -- the Temple. And immediately, he mouths off: "Oh, sorry, sorry, I was busy doing all this other stuff, my Father's work. Like, Joseph, you're not my real father -- you're not the boss of me. I don't even have to listen to you."
And what is Mary doing this whole time?
Mary's got a rock in her hand.
(In Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, pages 98-99)
On the Sunday after Christmas, I preached on that story of Jesus in the Temple at the age of 12. It was Passover time, and this was sort of his Bar Mitzvah. Actually, it was just after the end of Passover. His family had left for home with a caravan of pilgrims, and only after a day's journey did they realize Jesus wasn't in the group. Desperate, hearts in their throats, they beat a path back to Jerusalem to try and find him. Finally, at the Temple, there he was, as described above.
I have to say, my treatment of the situation was somewhat kinder and gentler than Anne Lamott's.
For example, I asked myself and the congregation to imagine ourselves twelve again, if possible. To think and feel and hope and worry about being not quite a child anymore but certainly not a grown-up. Occupying some kind of DMZ between the two, not at all sure where to put your weight down but more and more intrigued with all the changes happening inside and all around you.
Why not do that little exercise yourself? See what bubbles up to the surface out of your heart and mind and gut. Follow where it wants to lead you right here and now.
To help you along, just...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:45 AM
Monday, December 07, 2009
How To Get Ready For Christmas
 Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79
"But didn't we just carve pumpkins?" So asks the guy to his wife when she says it's time to go shopping for Christmas, in a commercial that aired the day after Halloween. The one that rediscovers the virtues of lay-away purchasing as a shopper's escape hatch in these trying economic times.
[Wizened voice] Why, Sonny, I can remember when Christmas ads and store decorations popped into view only after Thanksgiving, the day Santa rode into town atop the last and most important float in the big parade. Next thing you know they'll be smuggling in the cards and wrapping paper, the tinsel and colored lights, somewhere between Labor Day and the autumn equinox. You just wait and see!
Well, it's one thing to get all curmudgeonly about the ways we've commercialized almost to death what started out as a religious holiday (holy day). It's also pretty much a lost cause.
Much better, I'd say, to honor the power of silver bells, candy canes, douglas firs, presents and all to lift our spirits even as they deflate our wallets. And to give that nod to sentimental materialism while focusing our eyes on the Advent Wreath, and tuning our ears to the Advent Scriptures that prepare our hearts to celebrate Christmas in the spirit of Christ.
The Advent season spans the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's an ages-old time for re-enacting the world's long, dark, cold wait for the coming of Christ the Light of the World. Candles figure big, the four purple ones that ring an evergreen wreath, and the tall white one that symbolizes Christ himself. And the selected Bible readings take a long view, looking back to Hebrew prophecies and looking ahead to the second coming, locating the birth of Jesus right at the heart of the biblical timeline.
Though there's a real tension here between secular and sacred, the two don't necessarily contradict each other. Some wise person has pointed out that all truth is God's Truth. Someone else has asked, "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" I say let's celebrate Christmas every which way we can -- with happy songs and bright lights and cups of cheer, all pleasant corollaries of the Bible's themes of love and joy and grace and peace. All of that wrapped up in the sweet story of a newborn baby boy out there in a remote outpost of the mighty Roman Empire.
On Sunday I had more to say on the subject. To check it out for yourself...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:09 PM
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