Back to Life

I had a conversation recently with a woman who is a medical marvel. Several years ago, she collapsed and hovered on the edge of death for months, but she had a huge network of friends and colleagues who prayed her through one crisis after another. She believes all those prayers pulled her back from the grave.

Inspiring story, isn't it? Yet I have been wondering whether all those prayers really changed God's mind about the outcome of her illness - and if they did, why would we think that we know better than God about how the events of our lives should turn out?

For instance, I once read a story about someone who had been in a car accident and who had fervent prayer warriors pleading for his recovery. While the medics were working on him, he had an out-of-body experience that was exquisite. He was in heaven and felt complete peace, pure love and perfect joy. He never wanted it to end. Suddenly, he was wrenched from that state and returned to earth and all he could feel was a deep sense of loss. His friends excitedly told him later that he had died and the doctors had been able to get his heart started again. They were filled with thanksgiving that God had answered their prayers. From his perspective, it was a mixed blessing.

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Thy will be done," but we really don't believe that. We give God directions all the time, believing that we know what is best for us and our friends. That's scary. The God who lives outside of time, who can see our lives from their start to their finish with all their connections and consequences, will bend to the wishes of a united group of people who can't even see around the corner. That's quite a responsibility.

So, should we stop praying because we don't know what to pray for? I don't think that's the answer, but maybe we might be less specific in our desires. What we really want from God, I would imagine, is happiness and inner peace for ourselves and others. This may be the best prayer we could utter.

Perhaps what we are called to do is to surround a person with loving thoughts for their well being. If we flood our memories with positive regard for him or her and recruit the angels, the saints and our friends to do the same, the overflow of all that love must have a positive outcome because Love never fails. Our prayer then arises out of a selfless desire for another's good and not out of our own agenda.

Maybe God directs us to pray together because the unity that results from so many voices in loving agreement is so powerful that what is not loving cannot stand in its way for long. We wouldn't tolerate the social conditions that cause so much pain to so many and we wouldn't allow research into diseases to languish for lack of money. Our lives would certainly change for the better.

The world might look very different if we could all agree on how we want it to look.

The Right Place

Perhaps you’ve seen the same Forwarded email that I received recently about always being in the right place. It describes the reasons why a number of people never made it to the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. They are alive today because they had gotten a blister and needed a band aid or been stuck in traffic or missed the bus. Things that seemed irritating at the time, were, in fact, the events that saved their lives. Thus, the thought goes, we are always in the right place, it’s all good and it’s just our perspective about negative events that needs to change. God always makes sure we are in the right place.

All of this is true – to a point. It’s easy to say that God’s providence saved the diverted individuals, but this line of thinking would imply that God deliberately didn’t save others. Were they too in the “right place” even though they got swallowed up in an inferno? Their survivors probably don’t think so. I can’t believe that God willed some families to lose a father or mother or that any one life was more precious to God than another’s.

Partiality doesn’t sound like the loving God who would become human and subject himself to the worst our species had to offer.  I’m sure that research would uncover just as many church goers among the dead as among the living and just as many whose fateful choices led them to the World Trade Center as away from it. What we have or have not done can’t be the measure of why some people still grieve a loss and others are thankful to be alive.

So, the “right place” isn’t necessarily the place which avoids the suffering; maybe the “right place” is simply wherever we are because God’s outstretched hand is there, too. God is able to heal the wounds made by those whose free will causes our pain. It is people who are at the root of our hurt and frustrations and the degenerative nature of our bodies explains our sickness and unavoidable death. All God can do is reveal the responses and attitudes that will lead to our inner peace in the midst of it all.

To say “Alleluia” in the midst of emptiness, darkness and confusion is the ultimate statement of faith. It arises from the belief that love never fails, that the right place is in the arms of God and that the more love we cast into the world, the less chance there is for others to act badly.

The world will change because people decide to change it, not because we wait around for God to do it.

Card Philosophy

Mother's Day is almost here and the card stores are in overdrive making sure that we have just the right sentiments to share with the woman who gave us life. For a number of years, however, I've had trouble finding something that expresses what I want to say. I've noticed that the messages in most cards have switched focus from the receiver to the giver. The happy event is seen in the context of how it affects the sender, not the one being honored.

The most blatant example came in the mail the other day. It's a catalog of Mother's Day gifts and the headline epitomizes the perspective of the 21st century Me Generation. It says:

Mothers Day is not for celebrating moms. Mothers Day is for celebrating all they've given us. For all the moments they've offered up a sweet hug or some tough love. For the days when they had just the right thing to say-even if it meant saying nothing at all.

It goes on, but this is enough to illustrate the point: In Hallmark land, Mother's Day isn't about your mother - it's about the effect she had on you.

The birthday cards on display are much the same. We send good wishes to a friend or family member not because this person is witty or wise or kind or talented. Rather, the messages tell them they make us feel good in their presence; that we smile when we recall the times they went out of their way for us or recount what sweet memories we have of their love for us. The bottom line is that we congratulate them in the context of how wonderful we feel when we are around them. In other words, it's all about us.

This is dangerous territory.

When people think they exist just for the benefit of others, they lose the sense that they matter in and of themselves. It's an approach to life that ultimately leads to questions about the utility of caring for those who can't make a productive contribution anymore or the cost to society of those who are disabled. If people matter only because of what they can do for us, then it's only logical to doubt their worth when they can't continue to meet our needs.

Indeed, this is dangerous territory.

People matter because we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" and because God drew satisfaction from creating us and God takes delight in us. He created each of us uniquely and we are an astonishment of characteristics that take a lifetime to unearth. That I laugh at something and you don't is really an amazing occurrence: what goes on in each of our brains that a story amuses me, but not you? What incredible specimens we are in our individuality! Ultimately, we matter because each of us is a glimpse of the Divine that can never be completely parsed.

We have the opportunity each day to honor the strengths of others and to make them aware of the skill, talent and good we see operating in them. So many people are tongue tied when asked to talk about what they do well; all they can think of is their weaknesses and where they failed to meet the mark. It is up to us to keep the focus on the positive and give people the chance to revel in the feedback we give. We see what we are primed to see.

Others do not exist for our benefit. They exist to fulfill the potential within them and if, in the process of doing that, they make our lives richer, we can only be grateful for the overflow. Meanwhile, we can give thanks for them just as they are and take joy in what they become before our eyes.

The ad that advises, Make Mother's Day all about you ( at least they're honest) is offering one path for our culture to take. Perhaps there's another message that leads to a better place: love is not self centered. Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, reminds us that:

Two roads diverged in a wood.
And I, I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.

He Is Not here

He is not here, the angel said to the women who had come to anoint his body. He is risen from the dead.

Quite a surprise on an early Sunday morning. He is not here. The women could see that for themselves. They were the first witnesses to peer into the empty tomb. Later, the men would come, but the greatest revelation of all time was entrusted to women whose testimony, because of their gender, would not be accepted in a Jewish court of law. They were inconvenient witnesses for the gospel writers,who, if they were making up a story to tell generations of followers, most probably would have chosen more credible corroborators. The women remain today, however, as the bearers of a startling truth: He is not here.

Everyone else stayed home that Easter morning, lost in their grief and belief that their dreams had been crushed. It was the women who went to the tomb to perform the one service they still could, even while fretting about the size of the stone they would have to remove in order to reach Jesus. The dream may have died, but somehow, they were going to give it a decent burial.

I wonder how the story would have changed had the women not gone to the tomb and verified the truth of the angel's statement: He is not here. It was hard enough for Jesus to convince the disciples that it was he and not a ghost who was conversing with them. It has been hard enough over the centuries to convince people that the disciples did not concoct the story. The empty tomb, attested to by societal nobodies, remains its own proof: He is not here.

The women remind us that it is when we search, we find; that when we give, we receive.

Amen.

It Is All Good

One of the cards that I sent out last week had this phrase on the cover: Easter is God's Way of Saying that It's All Good.

Good Friday is the perfect day to remember that, in the hands of God, all that we endure can have a loving outcome. Our task is to be open to the change that this might involve within ourselves and to trust that God sees around all the corners in our lives. God knows what is needed in order to prepare for the good that lies ahead.

It is tempting to remain fixated on the sufferings that Jesus experienced. It is hard to resist focusing on the lacks in our own lives and our dashed expectations. The glory of the life of Jesus, however, is Easter, not Good Friday. The "good news" is that  Death steals our bodies, but only for a time. The gospel promise is that there is life after death and that Jesus came that we might have life in the now, as well. The Spirit that we have been given is able to transform all that we undergo and bring good out of it.

The rub, of course, is Holy Saturday, the day of silence. Even Jesus had to wait to see the Easter of his life.

So must we all. This is where each of us can make a difference: Trust in the Good on the other end of the dark times of our lives is a three day experience and it's best done hand in hand. It helps when someone else can remind us Sunday is just around the corner.

See you the day after tomorrow.

Slight Detour

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the ... Now here's where the funny part is supposed to start, except that this isn't a comedy routine and I am not the best jokester. Last Friday, my body wound up in the hospital while my mind was making other plans. About the best laugh that anyone could come up with was that now I know what it's like to sleep in surroundings that cost a $1000 a night and come with an adjustable bed and a staff catering to my every need.

Fortunately, I am home and well and it all seems like some bizarre tale told by a bard seeking to wile away the hours. Life is full of unexpected detours from the script we've written for ourselves. Even when we think we've put it all in God's hands, an experience such as I had causes an abrupt rethinking of priorities, activities and plans. The recurring comment that I have received from my friends is "perhaps it's about time to slow down?" Frankly, my thought is more along the lines of "I guess it's time to speed up!"

None of us know the amount of time we have on this earth, but the one thing we all know is that it is not limitless and that our bodies deteriorate with age. When looked at from this perspective, we all ought to be making every minute count.

Count for what? That's where the priorities come in.

How are we spending today? Are we so caught up in yesterday that it overshadows everything we experience? Are we so afraid of or longing for tomorrow that we are blind to the possibilities of the now? When the past haunts us or the future makes us uneasy, we give time a power it doesn't have to have.

Time is a human invention. We parse it because we can and because it's a neat way of organizing life. Yet, time is complex. In the 21st century, we can see the past and its future at the same time. We take a video of our kids when they are small and watch it with them as they turn 18. We know how it all turns out because today is the future we wondered about when we shot the footage.

Today is also the past that we will think of tomorrow. It can have its influence while we are living it or it can come to life in our memories. We can do something about what occurs as it occurs or clean up the mess afterwards. The future will be the result of the decisions we make or don't make because it is not a package waiting to happen to us. The only one who knows the outcome of the way we choose to live today is the One who doesn't live in time. Trying to figure it out is way above our pay grade.

So, we have the chance to make the future by doing something today. How are we going to spend the time?

Butterfly Tulip

Last Fall, a friend decided to plant some tulip bulbs in a large flower pot on our deck. The flowers that came up in the Spring would be in memory of my mother-in-law who passed away in July. The outcome has been spectacular.

The tulips are a very unusual variety and in the process of opening, one, and only one, displayed the butterfly form you see in the picture. It is a very apt reminder that Eleanor is living a new life after the chrysalis of her death.

For many of us, our lives seem to be spent in a chrysalis, as well. Life is hard and each day is a battle to survive. That's when we need a reminder that flowers are beautiful, that small miracles occur where we least expect them and that decisions made on a sunny day in October can bring a smile on a cloudy day in April.

People who live in hope plant flowers. These bulbs and seeds will lift their spirits - or someone else's - on some unknown day in the future. Today, let's take a look at the trees that are leafing out and the gardens that are springing to life and give thanks for the people of the past who took the time to brighten the lives of the people of today.