Just Life
Praying for Syria
I was driving to work this morning, to the sounds of my radio and the BBC World News, no bombs, no gunshots, no screams. The program was about Syria and the experience of everyday folks still trying to make a life in the war-torn city of Aleppo.
My soul is heavy and burdened for the thousands killed in that conflict, a death toll estimated to have almost reached half a million people as of February. The number of refugees has been placed at 4.5 million. Let this quote sink in for a moment: “More than 85 percent of the country is living in poverty, with close to 7 in 10 Syrians stuck in extreme poverty — unable to afford essentials like food or water. At the start of the war in 2011, joblessness stood at 14.9 percent. By the end of last year, it surged to 52.9 percent.” from the Syrian Center for Policy Research.
These victims of a brutal war are women, men and children, our neighbors. Love them. Each and every one of them is a human being made in God’s image, carrying the value and worth that God has placed within each of us. They are God’s beloved. They have died and they are hurting, and so I pray with them, today.
Pray with me for peace to break lose in Syria. Pray for the fighters and the rebels, the soldiers and the leaders. Pray for the mothers and fathers, the children and the entire nation to know peace. Pray for the souls of the dead and the tomorrows of the living. Stop and desire in your heart the best for them and the richest of choice blessings. Sit with me and we will bend our wills to love them deeply.
I learned an East African proverb from our mentors at seminary years ago, “When the elephants fight it’s the grass which suffers.” Pray that the love of war, the pride of hate and the tendency to violence may be overcome. Pray that the winds and ravages of war may end and that the Syrian people can again stand straight and tall in the warmth of God’s sun.
Believe that our prayers are heard, and given any chance speak for peace! Speak for the blessing of the Syrian people. Speak for the refugees. Believe that our prayers are heard, and given any chance act for peace! Find an agency that is helping the people of Aleppo, and give. Find a group that is serving the refugees, and donate. In this way we show our faith that God hears us and we offer ourselves to be part of the answer.
All things to God’s glory and the blessing of God’s world.
AMDG, Todd
Jump Starting a Friday
For me, this has meant…
listening to my EDM playlist including Exostomp by Flux Pavillion,
eating an asiago cheese bagel at Starbucks,
stretching to do some toe touches and rotating my neck,
reading some good words in the book of Sirach chapter 4,
and praying for the energy and joy to better love, learn and serve.
Happy Friday, beloveds!
AMDG, Todd
Making Amends, Changing the Future
272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?
“In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the country’s top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. Now comes the task of making amends.”
16, 2016
This is an important story for the Catholic Church, for Georgetown University and for our whole nation. Our deep historical sin of human trafficking, and the need to make amends for that sin, are not simply political or financial issues, they are the stories of fellow human beings with names and families that need to be told and owned by everyone in America, today. Even if you are not descended from human beings sold and exchanged as property, it is not so difficult to empathize and imagine the generational pain and impact of these kinds of wrongs in our history.
Today and tomorrow we need to be so much more aware of every person’s dignity, and also for yesterday, we need to be aware of a debt owed to those who carried more than their share of the cost at arriving where we are today as a nation. If first responders and soldiers are heroes for serving our country, and I believe that they are, then so also are the named and unnamed, remembered and forgotten slaves who toiled and served the economic engines at the birth of our nation. They may have not chosen their fate, but we can still honor their existence, repent the sins which enslaved them, and give them and their descendants their due. Honor them. Never forget them. Making amends is not about changing history, because that is something we cannot do. Making amends to them and to their families is about changing our now, and changing our future. That is something we can and must do.
This is an important story.
AMDG, Todd
Hard to Wake Up But Worth It
Oh my, it’s Thursday. Thursday can be a special torture… so close to the end of another week and a herald of the weekend, and yet so far away from that coveted rest. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me today, on this glorious sunny Thursday, but I can’t wake up. It’s several cups of coffee, a hot shower, two pop tarts and my drive into work later, and I could still close my eyes and drop right back to sleep where I sit at a nearby Starbucks.
But it’s worth waking up! This day is mine, given by God’s grace and pregnant with meaning and opportunity. It’s nothing special in and of itself, just another Thursday. But when I stop and imagine the prayerful love, the intention learning, and the healing service to which I can give this day… it makes me sit a bit straighter, take another sip of coffee and pray sincerely, “Wake me to love, wake me to learn, wake me to serve.” I repeat it. I chant it. I write it. I even take a moment to put it in a nice graphic for my blog.
I’m not always so sure what my human mind and human body are doing. I’m not totally sure why it can be so difficult to wake up on a Thursday like today… maybe I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I did, or I have some stresses I need to face and relieve, or the barometric pressure is different and my body is sluggish while it adapts? But I do know that on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and even tomorrow on Friday and then on Saturday, my prayer remains and moves me: love, learn, serve.
From the joy of a sincere and happy greeting to the healing of honored dignity and worth, this is a day of love, learning and service. This is not a prayer to win anything, outdo anyone at something, or prove a single thing. This is a prayer that strips away the false and selfish hopes which wear me out day after day, the wanting and the buying and the hoarding. It’s an embrace the joyful servant of Christ, the Jesus of washing dirty feet, touching outcasts, eating with the unpopular and refusing to condemn even the blatantly guilty.
When I most need that boost into a day, a reason to stretch and make myself get up and get moving, there’s a daily prayer for just that thing: Let me love. Let me learn. Let me serve. It’s worth waking up to give a day to the increase of love. It worth waking up to embrace a day with eyes and ears wide open to the truths and insights all around me. It’s worth waking up to offer a hand or heart of service to my friends, my family and the most needful of my neighbors.
I’m waking up, because it’s worth it.
AMDG, Todd
Love Defeating Hate
3 Reasons Jesus Resonates With Me
I love Jesus Christ, and I have some pretty definite reasons why I love him, as a person, as a religious figure, as a image of God relating to humanity. Yes, I was raised as a Christian, but that’s not the reason I’m a Christian, today. I’m a follower of Jesus Christ because he:
1) doesn’t feel the need to judge me before loving and living life with me,
2) isn’t afraid to challenge me and move me forcibly from my apathy, and
3) invites me to live my life in a Way that has proven rich and worthy of my time and effort.
This is not a post about why my religion is betters than yours, why my faith is deeper than yours, or why you should consider being more like me in any way at all. I just had a deep need this week to talk about how much I love and respect the man, Jesus Christ. And I’m going to explain these three reasons by sharing some stories from his life and teachings.
He doesn’t feel the need to judge me before loving me! Man, that’s just how Jesus liked to roll when walking the dusty roads of earth! He didn’t need to start with condemnation. Has that been your experience in churches? Have preachers needed to condemn you and then try to change you? Sometimes we approach sharing Good News in a burn it down and rebuild it mindset toward people, but that’s not the Way of Jesus. I’m sorry if you’ve had that kind of experience in church, we just don’t always get things right as human beings. Check out Jesus silencing an angry crowd in John 8:1-11. He didn’t need to condemn someone caught in the act! Jesus in John 4:1-42 doesn’t need to condemn a person who has messed up marriages and even worships in a different religion than his. What? Yup. Now wrap all that up with some sermonizing from Jesus in Matthew 7:1-5. Judging: we don’t. We shouldn’t. And if we are, we’re doing our Christianity wrong. Jesus has a special way of drawing me to himself and to Christianity because he doesn’t need to start by condemning everyone else and shaming their experience and effort, or mine.
Yet, he isn’t afraid to challenge me! Not needing to judge me doesn’t mean that Jesus won’t transform me. Just like with the woman in John 8, Jesus tells me to get my act together and do better. Jesus did sometimes have some pretty scathing words for people, but have you noticed that they tended to be for the religious professionals, as in Matthew 23:1-36? That’s right, when Jesus did take people task, it was the religious leaders. Jesus does not like religion that depends on fakery, form over substance or that neglects the essential core of religion: justice, mercy and faith. As a pastor and a life-long theology student, I need to take this heart. Being non-judgmental does not mean being less concerned about doctrine and life or having fewer personal convictions. Jesus challenges and provokes and moves us with a message of intrinsic value and worth, belief in ourselves and what we can actually be in this world. We are made to be light and flavor for the world around us! He said that in Matthew 5:13-16, and he modeled it in his daily life and ministry. Flavoring the world and lighting the path for our neighbor is our purpose, and he isn’t shy about pointing out what a tragic loss it is for us to lose that sense of purpose.
Speaking of purpose, the Way of Jesus is my constant guide and meaning. I’m so glad to have the formation of Jesus in my life, to teach me my true worth and the worth of others, and then to send me into a life of action and support for this world, God’s beloved world. That’s Gospel; it’s the Good News. Jesus came into our lives to remind us of something. He’s reminding us that God has not left, finished the work in and with us, or ever given up hope that we would rise above self-destruction and change the world. Think for a moment on one of the ways that Jesus announced his work, “The kingdom of God is near,” as in Mark 1:9-15. A simple statement that says so much: 1) God is near, 2) the sovereignty of God is active, 3) we are invited to citizenship in God’s kingdom, and 4) hope is not limited to the reach and efficacy of human kingdoms. We have a calling, an identify, and a hope. Think about the way that Jesus famously summarized the Law and Prophets, or put religion in a nutshell in the famous passage of Matthew 22:34-40: “Love God, and love others as you love yourself.” Encapsulated in this brief summary is the love of God, the love people and the love of self. I have been guilty of often paraphrasing this teaching as two loves, love God and love others, but it’s really three. I am free, invited and needed to love myself as basis for empathically loving and caring for others. We are connected, bound up and whole in the love of God. The love of God is the foundation upon which we build life, and that love as the mortar between every stone and person. This is the Way of Jesus.
This morning, finishing up this blog post and trying to start my day with a big bottle of water (I tend not to hydrate enough), I’m recommitting myself to opportunities to live my daily prayer: let me love, let me learn, let me serve. All that I’ve learned of Jesus over the years can be expressed in these three values: love, growth and service. May the world be enriched for our time within it, and may God be made glad as we give ourselves to the Way of Jesus. May my actions and words support my own value, yours, and the worth of God’s beautiful world.
AMDG, Todd
Mutual Love, February’s Intention
As we enter into February and the Lenten Season, let’s pray for a mutual love to deepen and expand among us, against all odds. Each week we’ll dig into a single biblical author’s thoughts or account of mutual love and we’ll re-affirm our own commitment to the love that should be growing between us.
It’s going to be my personal prayer this month that I will be able to grow in deeper love for the people who are least like me and think least like me. I believe I have more often been taught to try to change those people, or at least to avoid them. If I wasn’t taught to do so, then I have certainly learned through experience that this is usually the easiest course.
Perhaps with some prayerful creativity and reflection I can discover ways to listen to them better; I may even find some ways to more fully offer them the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, I will imagine some new ways for us to maintain our unique experiences and perspectives, but still coexist in harmony and shared love. It seems that when Paul was speaking to the church in Rome he fully expected them to be a diverse people, but never released from that debt of shared love.
Let’s just go ahead and accept it: we won’t awake tomorrow to find that everyone thinks and believes like we do, even in our own families or congregations. So, what’s next? Without a universal agreement on all doctrine and faith issues, may we still maintain a sense of mutual love and shared harmony? Without our complete similarity of conviction, may we nonetheless value and support one another’s spiritual journeys and affirm the mutual love and things we do share in common? It may go “against the grain” by some human sense, but that may just be the signal that we’re moving into a truly transformative practice. Lord, teach us to pray.
AMDG, Todd
An Unfinished Sketch
I rarely show anything I’m doodling until it’s completely done, but I realized this morning that I haven’t opened my sketch book in a week! This is a piece I started a couple of weeks ago that I need to finish.
I recently made another move in my job with Apple, from retail sales back into the tech support group. It’s a step on my journey into a new role with Apple as I go full-time. I’m one our store’s newest Creative, joining the team that leads workshops and does training sessions. Until I finish my own training for my new position, I’m doing a lot of tech support for mobile devices again, and that can be a stressful job. We work with people in stressful situations. From the failure of a device to incidents of accidental damage, we are helping folks get through some anxiety filled time as they feel the withdrawal pains of being momentarily unplugged from our tech-connected lives.
One thing I do to prepare for each day at work is practice my work mantra on my drive to the store. It goes something like this:
I love my customers.
I am so glad I can serve them.
I love my customers.
I’m going to do my best for them, today.
This mantra helps me get in the mindset of service. It helps me center on the truth that our customers are coming to us with real needs, and my response must focus on those needs. It would be too easy to just become defensive or upset, to reflect back their anxieties and stress. No, I have to let their anxieties and frustrations be authentic and real, spoken and experienced, and let those anxieties and frustrations pass through me and past me without landing in my own spirit. Then, I’m ready to get down to business with helping them determine the best solution for their situation.
My mantra is an action of intentionally deciding what will be planted within me so that I can choose what I’ll be producing from the soil of my heart and mind. This is not just a service industry principle, but a life principle. I must choose the seeds of peace, compassion, empathy and love as what I cultivate within myself if I want to have those things to share with others. This is a daily effort, forever unfinished and being finished. I guess it’s ok to share a doodle before it’s done, as its unfinished state can meaningfully reflect the on-going becoming of life.
AMDG, Todd
Finishing a Month on Civility
I realized today that with the drama of Snowzilla last Sunday, I forgot to make a Weekly Grace! I mean, wow. I haven’t missed one in a few years. So, I wanted to make sure we finished and finished well this month of intention based around civility.
It’s an election cycle year, and it’s a pretty heated race for all concerned. That’s one reason I wanted to start the year on civility. Another reason is that sometimes it’s so hard to keep my words flowing from love. It’s so easy to let something else step in and drive my speech.
In our focal passage written to the church in Corinth, Paul says that nothing is as important as love. Nothing should be allowed to take it’s place. There’s no miraculous spiritual gift, no self-denial, not even any great knowledge or correctness that surpasses love. This is not a message that religious people like to hear. We are very enamored of our personal gifts and, oh my… our correctness? We often like to stake our very salvation on it or deny another person theirs.
1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Paul says that his ability to understand every question and mystery is nothing if he does not have love for others. The capacity to love matters more than the capacity to be right. I won’t belabor this point too long, but come on! I think it’s one of the clearest passages that teach us that we should let our love help us understand more often than letting our understanding teach us to love.
Our civility will grow as we move more fully toward letting love take it’s place of preeminence in our lives. Our words will grow to reflect that we have matured past the idea that our own perceived correctness gives us license to fight, humiliate, defame or condemn. We will listen better, with more desire to understand one another. We’ll ask good questions, meant to free and not to trap. We’ll grow together as we share and understand one another better. This could be a good year, even with a presidential election.
AMDG, Todd
I Feel No Need to Destroy You
I don’t like what you said. I think your ideas and conclusions are flawed. But, I don’t need to hate you. I don’t need to silence you or destroy you. My ideas are not right by how wrong I make you sound, or by how much I manage to embarrass you. I will simply state with conviction my ideas and beliefs, and I’ll let you do the same.
I’m going to pull up a little reminder from my Civility exercise circa late 2012… for us to think differently, believe differently, and even fundamentally be different people, does not necessitate that you be “destroyed.” You don’t need to be labeled stupid, less, evil or a hypocrite, just because we are dissimilar.
Back in 2012 I said it this way, “An opportunity of civility: One who disagrees with you is not necessarily evil or an enemy.”
Here are a few screenshots of what I’m talking about…
Dang, everyone is being destroyed. Can you guess what verses from scripture this makes me want to quote? Yep…
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
Galatians 5:13-15, NRSV
It’s a thing these days in social media for someone to be destroying someone else, but doesn’t mean we have to participate. I see it online everyday, and I see the term “destroy” used in religious debates, social debates and political debates. It doesn’t seem to be enough for a person to hold an opinion or a conviction, but there must also be some destruction going on.
When we do away with the need to be destroying someone, we open that door of opportunity. Stop and spend a few moments of time imagining ways to be a person of conviction without needing to be a person of competitiveness. Imagine conviction without condemnation (Need an image of conviction without condemnation? Try the story in John 8:1-11.) Imagine your cherished ideas being valuable in their own right, without needing to demean another person’s thoughts or ideas.
The fact is, if I destroy everyone who thinks differently than I do, I become less wise for the effort. I will grow less. I will face fewer challenges, which means I will spend less time reflecting and deepening my cherished ideas. I am simply lessened by destroying (I suppose this really means silencing) people who think differently than I do.
Now, I’m not trying to destroy people who have shared an article lately in which someone was destroyed. I’m asking if we can stop a minute and distance ourselves a bit from the sensationalist wording and headlines? May we also stop and reflect on the need to be so competitive and demeaning in our disagreements? State your convictions. Elaborate on them. Support them. But if you can’t do that without attacking someone else and demeaning them, please consider your ideas and how you formed them. Are they factually based and relevant, or are they simply more of the divisive fighting between “us and them” that we get so much of every day? Are we simply playing a game of who insults and demeans the other the best? I’ll leave that discernment to you.
AMDG, Todd
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