Someone must have praying for me. Good praying, I mean, not the sanctimonious prayer of some, where the person tells God what the prayee NEEDS (in their opinion). No, this one was coming from someone who knew me enough to want me to have God present to me during my pilgrimage-on-the-California-highways instead of my pilgrimage in Ireland, where I wasn't because I have no discipline and cannot save money. I didn't even have the money to be doing this camping trip which was really a pilgrimage of the .... you get the picture.
Doogie and I (Doogie is my Westie and soul mate) set out one early morning in May for San Diego, and planned to camp there two nights before heading up the coast to Oceano Dunes, stay there for two nights, and then get up to San Francisco. Then over to Tahoe or Utah, and down to the north rim of the Grand Canyon or through Flagstaff. I was going to be flexible and open, because I don't get to do that in my work as a parish priest enough (you know how those people can be; they are more interested in schedules and actually following the schedules than they are about being spontaneous in the spirit!).
Except that someone whispered doubt into my ear just before I left... and so I abandoned the trip midway, and it could have been a complete failure.
But somebody must have been praying for me.
After two good nights and a full day of dog beaches and dog friendly shops and cooking over a gas stove in San Diego in between, we hit the road for Oceano Dunes. I was prepared to ditch this portion and find a plan B. Oceano Dunes -- I had read and they didn't exaggerate -- was one huge camping and ATV beach. I envisioned 20 -some people on quads zipping all over the beach, up and down the dunes, and the possibility that there wouldn't much privacy. I was going to listen to my gut (Ms Holy Spirit herself) to see if it felt safe there. I shot up I-5 from the campsite because it was close by, and decided I would just bear down and get through Los Angeles as quickly as possible using sheer stupidity. As with every big city, there were many detractors telling me how many hours it would take me to get through the traffic.
It wasn't that bad, really. Except that bearing down and ramming through is one of the best ways to miss the scenery, which I KNOW wouldn't have happened if I had gone on the Ireland pilgrimage with Gil Stafford and his group. One of the stated principles of his group "Peregrini," which, from what I vaguely remember from seminary, has something to do with traveling, is that you should NOT miss the scenery.
Fortunately, I came to myself like the son in the story of the generous father (also known as the prodigal son), and got off I-5 a little after lunchtime to take the 101 toward the ocean. The 101, I found out later, has a worse repurtation than LA for its notorious traffic snarl-ups. Or "parking lots" more accurately.
I finally got off at a sign that said "Beach Traffic" or something similar, and parked it in a shopping center with interesting shops. After letting Doogie pee and smell a couple of unhealthy-looking trees in the parking lot, I took him to Starbucks and parked him with a scruffy looking guy that looked like he would throw down his life if someone tried to take Doogie from him so I could pee and smell the coffee in my own parking island of caffeine. (okay, that's over the top...)
Doogie and I sat grateful not to be moving and grateful not to be in the sweltering Arizona heat, and we people watched. Within sight of the shopping center was a middle class neighborhood; hell, I might have even been able to afford a house there if it wasn't California or Arizona. I got out my Atlas and tried to figure out where we were. We had been driving five hours by then, and I realized how silly I had been originally to think I might be able to get to San Francisco in one day. I was even beginning to wonder if we would get to Oceano before it got dark, but had re-discovered daylight saving time there in California. We don't do DST in Arizona; there is no need to inflict MORE daylight when the hottest temperatures soar even higher on our time off when our employers are not paying the AC bill.
I had missed the signs saying where we were. I have full-blown ADHD, but that usually doesn'y apply to traveling. I'm more like
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Preparing for the Upside Down Kingdom
Sermon – Sept. 23, 2012
One of my favorite pictures is of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama hamming it up at the camera, both with big smiles on their faces. They look almost impish in their grinning, as if they are up to something mischievous.
It is my favorite image of two of the holiest people of our time, and I guess for me, laughter is an essential ingredient of holiness.
I once heard that laughter is the shortest distance between two people, so if God is love, then God must laugh a lot.
So Jesus must have laughed a lot as well. At lunch the other day with the Llanases and Betty Marquand, we got talking about just that: Jesus laughing, and I told of a painting that I had seen of The Laughing Christ. Well, it turns out that there are several paintings of Jesus laughing, but I downloaded the one I liked best. Here it is.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is trying to instill in his disciples the kind of humility it takes to be a servant leader, an upside down version of what the world sees as leadership. Instead of a warrior king who would be Messiah by bringing political power to the Jews, Jesus tries to help them see that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Then he takes a child, puts it on his lap and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and welcomes the one who sent me.”
The only other time Jesus mentions children is in the Gospel of Matthew, when he says ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
It’s important to acknowledge that Jesus was probably talking about becoming child-LIKE and not being child-ISH. The disciples are being child-ISH when they are arguing about who is going to sit on Jesus right and left hands.
Instead, he is probably talking about holy qualities of an innocent, natural child. that would best prepare us for the upside down world of the kingdom, where servants are valued over the powerful of the world, where the last in line get to be first, where the meek inherit the earth, and where those who are willing to die to their egos are given true life.
What qualities will it take to prepare us for such a kingdom?
Certainly, the ability to laugh easily, but not AT others’ foibles, but at our OWN sense of importance. The person who can laugh at himself when he feels slighted, and say ironically “Obviously you don’t know how important I am” is someone who will feel at home in the kingdom of God.
The next qualities come right out of the prayer that we say just after a child is baptized, when we pray that he or she will be given “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.”
An inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.
All of these qualities embrace the gifts God has given us, and embrace the world as if life is an adventure, and there is trust that God will be there all along the way. And there’s JOY, without which life can get pretty dusty, pretty bitter. A Christian without joy is a contradiction of all Jesus taught, and if God is truly at the center of our lives and our being, joy should always be close at hand.
Finally, Jesus valued everyone equally, regardless of status or wealth. It is a very childlike quality to say to someone, “I’m coming to your house for dinner!” as Jesus did more than once. There is a trust in the goodness in other people’s hearts, because your own heart is pure.
Okay, so most of us don’t have pure hearts. But we can at least act a little more trusting, a little more joyful, wondering in the discoveries we might find.
The 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi tells the following story about a young man seeking advice asks to speak to someone wise. The villagers point to a man playing stick-horse with children. “He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child’s play.” During their conversation the young man asks the wise man why he hides his intelligence. The man answers, “The people here want to put me in charge. They want me to be judge, magistrate, and interpreter of all the texts. The knowing I have doesn’t want that. It wants to enjoy itself. I am a plantation of sugarcane, and at the same time I’m eating the sweetness.” The following words are from the middle of the poem.
Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It’s a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul. Robust and energetic before a responsive crowd, it slumps when no one is there.
Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish. Your face will turn rosy with illumination like the redbud flowers. -Rumi 1207-1273 translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne The Essential Rumi
If that doesn’t speak to you, maybe this thought will. I recently read a poster that said, “If you haven’t grown up by age 50, then you don’t have to.”
Now, let’s go and have some fun at a picnic!
One of my favorite pictures is of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama hamming it up at the camera, both with big smiles on their faces. They look almost impish in their grinning, as if they are up to something mischievous.
It is my favorite image of two of the holiest people of our time, and I guess for me, laughter is an essential ingredient of holiness.
I once heard that laughter is the shortest distance between two people, so if God is love, then God must laugh a lot.
So Jesus must have laughed a lot as well. At lunch the other day with the Llanases and Betty Marquand, we got talking about just that: Jesus laughing, and I told of a painting that I had seen of The Laughing Christ. Well, it turns out that there are several paintings of Jesus laughing, but I downloaded the one I liked best. Here it is.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is trying to instill in his disciples the kind of humility it takes to be a servant leader, an upside down version of what the world sees as leadership. Instead of a warrior king who would be Messiah by bringing political power to the Jews, Jesus tries to help them see that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Then he takes a child, puts it on his lap and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and welcomes the one who sent me.”
The only other time Jesus mentions children is in the Gospel of Matthew, when he says ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
It’s important to acknowledge that Jesus was probably talking about becoming child-LIKE and not being child-ISH. The disciples are being child-ISH when they are arguing about who is going to sit on Jesus right and left hands.
Instead, he is probably talking about holy qualities of an innocent, natural child. that would best prepare us for the upside down world of the kingdom, where servants are valued over the powerful of the world, where the last in line get to be first, where the meek inherit the earth, and where those who are willing to die to their egos are given true life.
What qualities will it take to prepare us for such a kingdom?
Certainly, the ability to laugh easily, but not AT others’ foibles, but at our OWN sense of importance. The person who can laugh at himself when he feels slighted, and say ironically “Obviously you don’t know how important I am” is someone who will feel at home in the kingdom of God.
The next qualities come right out of the prayer that we say just after a child is baptized, when we pray that he or she will be given “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.”
An inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.
All of these qualities embrace the gifts God has given us, and embrace the world as if life is an adventure, and there is trust that God will be there all along the way. And there’s JOY, without which life can get pretty dusty, pretty bitter. A Christian without joy is a contradiction of all Jesus taught, and if God is truly at the center of our lives and our being, joy should always be close at hand.
Finally, Jesus valued everyone equally, regardless of status or wealth. It is a very childlike quality to say to someone, “I’m coming to your house for dinner!” as Jesus did more than once. There is a trust in the goodness in other people’s hearts, because your own heart is pure.
Okay, so most of us don’t have pure hearts. But we can at least act a little more trusting, a little more joyful, wondering in the discoveries we might find.
The 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi tells the following story about a young man seeking advice asks to speak to someone wise. The villagers point to a man playing stick-horse with children. “He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child’s play.” During their conversation the young man asks the wise man why he hides his intelligence. The man answers, “The people here want to put me in charge. They want me to be judge, magistrate, and interpreter of all the texts. The knowing I have doesn’t want that. It wants to enjoy itself. I am a plantation of sugarcane, and at the same time I’m eating the sweetness.” The following words are from the middle of the poem.
Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It’s a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul. Robust and energetic before a responsive crowd, it slumps when no one is there.
Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish. Your face will turn rosy with illumination like the redbud flowers. -Rumi 1207-1273 translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne The Essential Rumi
If that doesn’t speak to you, maybe this thought will. I recently read a poster that said, “If you haven’t grown up by age 50, then you don’t have to.”
Now, let’s go and have some fun at a picnic!
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