Unlikely Love

God has given us so many incredible examples of unlikely love. Take for example Ruth and Naomi. Ruth came from a different religious background than Naomi, her mother-in-law. After their shared affection dies (Ruth’s husband, Naomi’s son) Naomi graciously offers Ruth the gift of freedom. She invites her to return home to her family of origin. This would enable Ruth to find another husband, maybe even one who lived near her family.

Naomi faces an uncertain future but Ruth refuses to bail on her. Ruth says this -

“Do not press me to leave you and to turn back from your company, for wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.

Ruth 1:16

But this is highly speculative - Ruth is a “foreigner” in a land that does not like immigrants - especially as marriage material. Going home for Naomi, now without sons, in no means guarantees a warm reception and provision for care. In the end all is well.

But Ruth does not know that when she chooses to be a good friend to Naomi.

Good friends make decisions that are often NOT in their best interest in deference to the higher call of love. I for one have been blessed with friends who have shown me that kind of love; I try to be that kind of friend back. But there is no guarantee that I can and will be a good friend. They love me anyway.

Good friends take the right kind of risks - they risk personal comfort in favor of brotherly love. They risk awkward moments of disagreement in favor of loss of connection. They risk conflict in favor of abandonment.

These are not easy times and yet we must remember this: it has never been easy to be a good friend. I wonder if we might pray for all of us to be better friends now that we have so many stark reminders of the potential for loss as a result of disease and intolerance.

Certainty is a Security Blanket...

Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.

Cheryl Strayed

I often ask people I Zoom with about what they want - from me, for their life, to change. It’s a serious question. Here are some of the answers I have heard this past month:

I want to get my kids back from social services.

I want to lose weight so that I can feel good about myself.

I want to save my marriage.

I want to escape my marriage.

I want to travel again.

I want to find my one true love.

I want a job so that I can move out of my parents’ house.

I want to express my passion through a job that fulfills me.

I want to take a nap or sleep through the night again.

I want my brother to talk to me.

I want my mother to not be dead so that she can see me grow up.

Sometimes I feel like the best thing I can do for others is to scavenge through their memory banks and haul out moments of joy to remind them that life is not always about what is missing. Sometimes I feel like the hardest thing I do for others is to hold up a mirror while yelling (in my head), “Do you see this? This here? Are you paying attention? You are not going to get your kids back if you keep smoking crack. Is really and truly the most important thing about you how much you WEIGH for god’s sake?” On and on my questions go. Questions I ask myself on days when how much I weigh does indeed feel like the measure of my worth. Questions I ask myself about why my baby brother and I no longer speak. Questions I ask about so many of the people I have cared about who are no longer with their loved ones - lost to life in ways that feel….preventable, unnecessary, a mistake.

It is good to dig for joy; it is also important to dig deep and confront ourselves about our notions of truth, reality, and certainty. I’m told by people who study such things that certainty is not a sign of wisdom or even maturity. It’s more like a security blanket we use to protect ourselves from hard truths and painful feelings. Let’s crawl out from under the oppression of our certainty and see what God might be willing to do for us.

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

American proverb of unknown origin

Give Up...

Never give in.

Winston Churchill

Would it be possible for 2021 to be more confusing, chaotic and terrifying than 2020? I dunno. But just in case 2021 does not prove to be magically delicious and delightedly different?

Never give in.

Never give in to your certainty.

Never give in to your baser instincts.

Never give in to your tendency to trust and follow only people who think like you, feel like you, do what you do - or wish you could do.

Never give in.

This is not the same thing as giving up. I encourage you to give up on things that no longer serve you - like your habitual ways of self-soothing, or the tendency to forget yourself in favor of catering to the needs and wants of others who you hope will love you.

Give up on your certainty - it is not serving you or the world well.

Give up on living only by your instincts. If God wanted us to live only by instinct, he could have eliminated the prefrontal cortex from his schematic drawings of the human brain.

Give up on finding that one person who completes you. Or that ONE expert who knows all the answers to your pressing problems. This is how we accidentally end up in a cult.

It turns out that it is perhaps true that maturity and wisdom have eluded us not because we did not desire to be both mature and wise but because we do not understand what they look like or the paths that lead to both.

Let’s talk about that in the days ahead. And pray. Let’s pray:

God, I offer my life into your loving care. I turn my will over to you.

I pray that you will guide me and keep me clear, clean, sober in thought word and deed.

I pray that your loving light will guide and sustain every breath I take.

Amen

A Breath Prayer of Faith

I do not believe everything I pray. This is one way I practice faith. Mine is not a faith of certainty but one of commitment (sometimes barely that). Especially on days when I am struggling to have any faith in myself, others or God, I turn to these verses. I read them and pause. Breathe. Read and pause. Breathing my way through each translation, trusting that God will accept my humble prayer of self-doubt as I commit to allowing the psalmist to speak for me while I breathe.

PSALM 139:14

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

NIV

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God - you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made!

The Message

I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart. Your works are wonderful - I know that very well.

CEB

I will give thanks and praise to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.

AMP

Shifting Values

Core values compete and vie for our attention. The values we “bring up” and “highlight” will impact the way we think about our current situation. This is a good thing; we need this kind of flexibility, wisdom and discernment.

Early on in the pandemic Scott and I worked on the core value of safety/respite/calm. We chose topics to foster this attitude in most meetings whose content we had responsibility for. That was, count them, almost SEVEN months ago. We thought we would be in lockdown for a month. Maybe two. It didn’t turn out that way, did it?

Back then, safety and respite for all the anxiety and uncertainty seemed like a top priority. Folks were wondering how they could BEAR two weeks of staying at home, not getting a haircut, their nails done or eating at their favorite bar and grill. Others worried about keeping their home, not getting paid, figuring out how they were going to feed their kids or find childcare so they could work their essential jobs. I suspect that 7 months in, most of us have some of the same concerns.

If safety was our initial value, what values might we want to highlight after 7 months? Every person will need to decide this for themselves. Scott and I are still organizationally very concerned about safety, but we are also concerned about support. How do we shift our mindset from - hey, everybody hunker down and use your tools to survive a few weeks of weird living to - oh boy - what are we going to do to continue our recovery work as a community?

At first, we encouraged folks to not worry about productivity - survive! We said. Be kind to yourselves, maybe eat pizza and ice cream and read a good crime novel. Seven months in, our value needs to shift and priorities need to change. We know this because we observe and listen to the stories folks tell us. Things like how crazy it feels to see Facebook posts from people you thought you knew but realize their viewpoint is not only contradictory to yours, it is offensive. Or the hurt feelings that arise when various family members choose different positions on what constitutes responsible living in the age of covid-19. Or my goodness, the election.

So here goes, the seven month values shift. What if we refocus our attention on a slightly different value? We do not have to give up on our core value of safety (for self and others), but maybe we can add on to it? Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how to do that. For today, as often as you can, try to think of what you can do to please God. Something small. Something manageable. Something that involves glitter and glue - on paper, not in your cousin’s hair or Meme’s favorite sweats.