Nefesh B'Nefesh Hanukkah Flash Mob

h/t to Padre Mickey who highlights that "Oy" is just "Yo" spelled backwards.

--the BB

Advent thoughts - Wednesday of Advent 1

First lines of second verse, Verbum supernum prodiens, Hymn # 63

Light for our darkness! Vision for our blindness! We cry for a sign, a marker, a clue--some means of finding our way out of the mess we make of things. How can we be delivered from our illusions, our deceits, the trivia with which we divert our attention and clutter our lives?

Psalm 12 concludes with that frightening truth.

Perhaps we can join Bartimaeus and cry out to Jesus that he might open our eyes. The song from my Baptist childhood just came to mind:

Open my eyes that I may see
glimpses of truth thou hast for me....
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine.

--Clara H. Scott, 1895
#454 in The United Methodist Hymnal

What a bouleversement [I'm grasping here, people, and the French word for overturning things just sounds right] there will be when the scales fall from our eyes. Imagine how Saul of Tarsus felt when he looked at the same world as before and saw it in a totally new way, his values suddenly reversed!

Some of us may be tax-collectors (traitors) and prostitutes (or at least sluts). We all carry inner shames and burdens of guilt, both real and false. Some of us are perhaps a bit too proud of being reprobates (mea culpa), troublemakers (we like to call it being prophetic), mockers and scoffers (we call it being sophisticated), and fools for Christ (when we are actually just acting like damned fools, period). But we always find someone else we can point to with "righteous" judgment, those whom we deem the true outcasts, the unwashed, the unworthy, the wicked, the unredeemable.

Kris Kristofferson sang "Jesus was a Capricorn," a song dear to me back in my first seminary days. Here is the chorus:

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Well, this is what Jesus had to say about where we stand:

“Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” (Matthew 21:31b-32)

The merciful message buried in this deliberately shocking admonition is that though "the wicked" will precede us "righteous" folk, their getting there "ahead of us" still implies that we will get there too. Late and shamefaced, perhaps, but once there it will not matter when or how we got there. And the gates of the New Jerusalem are never--I repeat--never shut.

--the BB

LET IN THE LIGHT!

Solar Flares

Yesterday I had the sad task of officiating at the memorial service for a fifteen-year-old boy who died by accident. The offsetting grace of such a tragedy was the outpouring of love that occurred amid the devastating loss.

It is difficult to offer solace without resorting to platitudes. And. I. Hate. Platitudes. They ring so false and only make things worse.

I was incredibly proud of the teenage boys who got up in front of a multitude and spoke. They were nervous, uncomfortable, fidgety, and very brave. They gave voice to their sorrow and to their friendship. They were a living testimonial to love--deep caring, deep loss--altogether not what they usually think about or talk about, not what one usually hears from lads their age. They were warriors and they were shattered children all at once. I am so glad they spoke because the rest of us needed to hear the truth of who he was for his friends.

All the stories were moving.

I was startled to find myself carried back to when I was seventeen. One of my classmates, a really nice guy, took his own life. Suddenly he was not in the desk in front of me. He did not show up and then we heard about the gun and the note. None of us knew why. In later life I have my guesses but his death remains a mystery, and with an ending like that his life remains a great mystery as well. None of us knew how to make it better--too young to know yet that we couldn't. But we thronged to his service because we had to do something to say we cared.

The kids yesterday were far closer to Frogger than I was to Frank. But I found myself choked up for both of them and for all youths whose lives are cut off, so soon, too soon. So I spoke of the truth I know, broken human hearts.

I urged those present not to rush to close over the cracks in their broken hearts. It is our defensive tendency to wish to be invulnerable but we aren't and we can't be. We try to ward off the hurt and prevent the pain. Hearts that are walled off, however, are cut off from community. It is precisely through the cracks that light, and life, and love can flow into and out of our hearts. The raw spots are where we can be real, can feel, can know the truth.

Well, I wasn't nearly that eloquent because I was speaking impromptu. It comes out more polished a day later at a keyboard. I just wanted those who were hurting to know that it was all right to hurt, to feel, and be vulnerable. I wanted the youths especially not to try to build up defensive walls. The world will lead them down that deadly path soon enough.

As for the Anglican Communion and my beloved Episcopal Church, that's pretty shattered at the moment too. I wish we could let our brokenness be a means for God's light, and life, and love to pour into us and through us and out of us. I do trust the Holy Spirit. And, in the long run, I trust the People of God. Clergy, especially bishops, and even more so primates--not so much. You might think funny collars just suddenly make us all stupid and headstrong. But, as Baptism is indissoluble, we clergy are still part of the People of God. So I will trust that God's purposes will be realized even through our brokenness. After all, that is how God has always operated and I don't think the Holy One is about to change methodologies all of a sudden.

Yes, we're cracked. Broken vessels. Cracked pots, indeed. May the Uncreated Light flow among our cracks with all manner of healing grace.

And to Frank and Frogger I say, may you and all souls rest in peace and rise with Christ in glory.
--the BB