Patience

Consider the story of Jesus' healing of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar who called out from the roadside.  You can find it in Mark 10.  In the story the disciples are impatient and dismiss the man.  But Jesus calls him over and utters one of his signature healing pronouncements, "Your faith has made you well."

If we were in the crowd of disciples, trying to follow Jesus that day, we would either have been the ones who tried to shut Bartimaeus up or the ones who didn't say anything while that exclusion was happening.

In our own lives, who are we impatient with?  We are impatient with people:

· for being tiresome

· for not being logical

· for trying to sneak in the side instead of waiting in line

· for asking yet again for what they've asked for before

· for not changing their tune after all these years

· for not waiting quietly

· for being indiscreet

· for having a problem that can't be solved

· for refusing to be overlooked

· for not doing "what any normal person would do"

· for not showing up on time

· for not dressing correctly

· for not filling out the right forms

· for having done something in the past that means they can't get a job now

· for having done or said something in the past that was offensive to us

· for forgetting something

· for not hearing us the first time

· for it being their own fault       

What would you add to the list?  Go ahead.  It is easy to come up with reasons to be impatient with someone who is driving in front of you, driving up behind you, or sitting on the seat next to you.  It is easy to make the list, right?

Okay, so we know that we are impatient sometimes, but surely that's not a great big deal.  I mean, we attend to those in need as we can, right?  And those annoying people are annoying, right?  We are, many of us, busy and tightly scheduled, right?  It's not really got anything to do with religion, with Jesus, or with spirituality, right?

I find it significant that Jesus in this part of the Gospel of Mark, is on his last journey.  The next chapter begins the great drama of Jesus' final week with what we call Palm Sunday.  Because the end is near, it should sharpen our attention to what is important enough to still be included in the story and how this is God still speaking to us. 

I suggest that there is a lesson Jesus' behavior imparts in this story that matters to your life this very day.  Jesus demonstrates patience instead of impatience.  This alternative has two important purposes to offer you. 

The first is that the practice of showing others, however annoying, the face of kindness and attention makes the world more like the kingdom that Jesus is always teaching us to live in.  This story calls you to follow Jesus' lead in being kind and focused on those who we and the world tend to push aside.  How will that change your next encounter with your neighbors?

The second purpose is that the practice of turning toward those who are irritating and problematic is frequently the path to spiritual growth, to unexpected experience, and to emotional maturity.   What Jesus chooses to do is to drive home the message that there is something deep, something profound in our interactions with each other.  Jesus chose to demonstrate and repeat how our salvation, the path to your salvation in this world, leads straight to those people with whom you are most impatient.  That is the place where your growth is stunted now and your growth will flourish if you stop sending them to the back of the line.

It's tough medicine for you to take, I know.  Jesus invites you to give it a chance anyway.  Try to notice the next time you are impatient.  In that moment, practice finding a way to move to patience.  Draw your focus more directly to the object of your impatience and try to see him or her as deserving of your attention.  Breathe.  This is an opportunity for you to bring the kingdom of God a little more into being, today, this very day.  Keep trying too, because you'll get better at it.  I promise.

Spirituality 101

I don't frequently look up definitions, do you?  I seem to hold the belief that the last time I needed to look at a dictionary was in school, that whatever I think a word means is good enough. 

Perhaps you recognize the reference to Humpty Dumpty's pronouncement in Alice In Wonderland?  "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less.'"  Of course, the author, Lewis Carroll, wants to show that Humpty Dumpty is an arrogant egg.  With good British wit, however, Carroll's H.D. is also speaking the truth.  For even though we acknowledge that words have meanings, the layers of meanings in what we say modify generally accepted meanings thoroughly.  

Consider the word "green.'" 

Or how about the word "Christian?" 

From our conversations about "spirituality," we've discovered a variety of meanings and an uncertainty, for some of us, about any meaning.  Perhaps some definitions will help.

-- Spirituality: having to do with the human spirit.  That's a good start, although it kind of postpones an answer. 

-- Spirituality: having to do with the soul, incorporeal, not pertaining to material things but to intangibles.  That helps a little more, I think.  We are in the domain of the 'intangible.'  For those of us who like concrete information, this suggests, we're likely to be unsatisfied.  Spirituality is not something concrete, not something you can touch. 

-- Spirituality: to be distinguished from our physical experience, our material body.  This is helpful.  It is a very old idea, embedded in much of the Bible, that the material body and the spirit, or spirituality, are separate domains.  Do you agree?  Separating spirituality or spirit from the physical experience of being a human is helpful, up to a point.  It helps us to see clearly.  However, it also makes a false distinction between mind and body.  For we are mind and body – one entity.  There is no mind separate from the physical and chemical activity of heart, lungs, brain, etc. 

-- Spirituality: belief in an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality.  Do you believe that there is a reality beyond what we can perceive?  Do you assert that there is  "more?" 

-- Spirituality: an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being.  That's an interesting one, isn't it?  Now the definition is leading us to consider not so much how the cosmos is arranged or the nature of reality but how we experience and use this thing we name spirituality.  

I think we can stop there for this posting.

Would you consider these aspects of spirituality and let me know your thoughts?  I'm not asking you to go find more definitions, although you certainly may do so.  Rather, I invite you to consider the questions posed so far in this survey of meaning.  Spirituality's intangibleness, the idea of a separation between you as a physical body that is alive and you as something spiritual, the idea that there is something, some reality that is "more" than our concrete experience of reality, and especially, that there is an inner path which, by taking it, you can discover the essence of your being.

And pray with me too.  

Dear God, Dearest God, reveal to us sufficient insight into the mystery of  ourselves and our relationship to this wonderful creation.  We attribute our creation and all creation to you and so we give you our attention, our love, our praise, and all the glory.  Amen.

Despair

Despair.

There is a lot of despair in the Bible, in the history of our faith, in the way churches often fail to grow healthier, in the lives of those who find their way to church as well as the lives of those who don't.  It is here, in this space of despair that the church and our faith has the greatest potential.  It is in the context of despair that so much of our worship and our sacred texts can speak so clearly and usefully.

The core assertion of our faith is that we are not alone, that God is with us.  

We gather as a congregation because when we sit shoulder to shoulder and face to face we restore ourselves to the family of God.  It is here, being church, that we restore ourselves in the face of despair.  That's why our gathering together is so essential to the possibilities of life.  Together, we can face that which causes despair and that which is unknown.  Bound together as a congregation, we can find the faith and the courage that we're going to need when we leave and head out to tackle the issues of our lives and our world.

God is with us, beloved!  God has always been with us!  You and I, we can draw strength from God through the process of drawing strength from each other.  Consider these words, written by Shirley Erena Murray, sung so recently by all of us together:

Find the room for hope to enter,

Find the place where we are freed:

Clear the chaos and the clutter,

Clear our eyes, that we can see

All the things that really matter, ...

Peace and Blessing,

Brad