Friday, March 29, 2013

A Meditation for Good Friday: A Blank Page




I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I hate a blank page. I love having words to edit, lots and lots of words. I hate having to write a lot to begin to feel creative. I love when the river of prose is flowing. It hate that what I write never seems finished. I love it when I actually like something I've written. 

I have a love-hate relationship with gardening. I hate the fallow plot in early spring that so closely resembles a blank page. I love planting seeds and young plants and watching them grow. I hate weeds. I love mulch. I hate dead plants that didn't winter over like the label promised. I love to see the bushes and trees with buds bursting with renewed life and vigor. I hate killing frosts in late spring. I love cold hardy plants and perennials.  I hate that by mid July, with little time to tend it, my garden will have gotten away from me. I love the growers market where I can buy the things I wish I'd been able to grow.

I have a love-hate relationship with Good Friday. I love the liturgy for this day. I hate that so few people participate in it anymore. I love the drama and music that sweeps us up into the story and makes it real again, even though we've heard it a million times. I hate that is has the longest reading of the church year. I love that God was willing to go to such lengths to claim us as his own. I hate that once Jesus has died, for at least a time, we're left with a blank page.

Blank pages: empty, stark, white, wide-open pieces of paper that hold nothing, they reveal gardens not yet planted, plans unfulfilled, and make pronouncements of death - the ultimate blank page.  Blank pages stare back of us, and can, ever so briefly and in the oddest way, have power over us. They simultaneously hold both the promise of what could be, but is not yet, and the dread of our deepest fears.

Still, the blank pages of our life are gifts from God. They were given to be filled, read, torn, crumpled, retrieved from the garbage, filed, folded, sent, received, returned, buried or burned, read, pondered. They can be vessels of promise as much as devices of demise. The possibilities are endless. On this day, Jesus has left us with only a single blank page; and the possibilities for it are both ended and endless. His death reminds us of things that we do not wish to be reminded. And the absurdity of the events that drove him to the cross seem bizarre to us: Do they not? How bizarre that Jesus' acts of mercy and kindness, healing and restoration, his proclamations of truth and wisdom, could end in this way. Isaiah frames it this way: "By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living.... although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth."
We are vexed, stunned; bewildered by the speed at which injustice is dispensed. And yet, we, ourselves, by our inaction and muted voices, insure the proficiency of various machinery of injustice in every quadrant of the earth: child labor, human trafficking, modern slavery, torture, false imprisonment, bigotry, political corruption, environmental rape, preventable illness, hunger and thirst.  The silent role we play by our direct and indirect acts of co-mission, and more often, omission, is a blank page we dare not fill with the ink of truth, lest we be crucified.
At the time of the veneration of the cross, during the Good Friday service, the weight of our guilt and the depth of our dependence on God for redemption is blatantly apparent.  The Rev. Vicki Hesse observed the following regarding this ancient practice: “….the [veneration’s] physical and social awkwardness can sharpen one’s experience of spiritual gratitude and self-offering in a way that remaining seated [in] one’s pew cannot.” She recalls the first time she attended an Easter Vigil at an Episcopal church: “I had no idea what was going on. I found myself standing up and being swept along with the others toward the front of the church, where two acolytes were holding a wooden crucifix. I could see people ahead of me bobbing and kneeling in front of it. But then—to my horror—they kissed it too! I had never witnessed such behavior in the Evangelical churches of my childhood or adolescence and was not quite sure how I felt about this spectacle. But the prospect of stepping out of line was even more uncomfortable than that of going forward, so I stayed where I was and surreptitiously noted the number and style of bows, genuflections, and kisses of those ahead of me. [She concludes by saying] “[I]t is precisely this physical and social discomfort that conveys the painful reality of our inescapable spiritual ambivalence.”
In my experience, the blank page of the cross compels me to cross the line of liturgical perfection and enter the realm of unpredictable chaos. The only other time I have experienced this sensation was at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  As I stood facing the wall, my face inches from it, I could hear the weeping of many of the women around me, some had their hands against it, some or the sides of their faces pressed against the cold stones, some knelt in front of it with their foreheads leaning into it, some were pushing small white pieces of tightly folded paper into the rough edged crevices, many stood facing it bowing rhythmically, reverently, almost trance-like, while praying the scriptures aloud from an open book of Hebrew text. I was overwhelmed by presence of every soul who had stood where I was standing.  In my imagination their translucent residues passed through me and around me. Millions of souls were there.  Likewise, when I kneel before the cross on Good Friday I am no longer aware of myself as an object of others curiosity but am enveloped by the millions of faithful Christians who for centuries have knelt, or stood, or fallen or prostrated themselves at the foot of an empty cross.  I am humbled to acknowledge the way their eternal presence has filled the vacuum of history.
On this day, in this moment, from this place all we have is a fallen hero, a victory for the wicked, an empty cross, and an occupied tomb; a blank page. We must do with it what we can: love it, hate it, ponder it, wonder about it, use it to scheme, to justify, to get real, to get a new perspective, to be inspired, to start over or use it as a starting point, write upon it a letter or plot a garden, embellish it with lovely drawings or silly doodles, sit with it and hear what we had not heard before.  Dare to touch it and know the anguish of God.

Friday, March 8, 2013

A tribute Bill Cuneo in the Spirit of Psalm 23


Of the 150 psalms is the Bible, the 23rd psalm is the best known and most loved by far. Most adore it for the comfort it imparts.  On a deeper level it paints a picture of the intent of the covenant that has lain between us and God for some 5000 years, from the time in our common history when we moved from the worship of many gods, from idols and mythological supernatural beings that controlled the rain and the harvest, fertility and death, to a centralized belief in one God; the great I AM.  Psalm 23 is simple in its arrangement and yet complex in its implications.  It’s first words seem a benign sentiment of faithfulness but they are some of the most powerful words in the bible.  It is an oath of allegiance:  The Lord is my shepherd.   In speaking these words one pledges to trust solely in God for all things necessary to life. This is immediately followed by an expectation: I shall not be in want. This is not a hopeful expectation but the unwavering certainty of its fulfillment.  One of the great judges of Israel, Joshua, put it this way:  “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

Psalm 23 tells a story of a simple life of a faithful soul:
a soul willing to be guided through the winding path of a long and eventful life;
a soul trusting in God to be revived when it is weary,
a soul that neither fears evil nor the deeds that spring from it;
a soul that understands the whole of life in terms of the covenential bond between God and those whom God has created;
a soul that understands death not as a lone journey but as a passage from one world to the next undertaken in the companionship of Christ;
a soul trained to see abundance as a constant; the glass as perpetually half full and never half empty;
a soul who leans heavily into the letting go of things worldly in order to satisfy one's inner life with things other-worldly. 

To live this kind of life is not a complicated scheme. It requires little; there are no upfront costs, no terms of compliance. There are no prerequisite classes; no tests to qualify.  And we all begin at the same place with these simple words:  The Lord is my shepherd.

Bill understood this completely.  The Lord was his shepherd.  And throughout his life, the Lord led him to the green pastures and still waters of a simple and correct faith.  In circumstance similar to that of Joshua, the prophet Micah confronts the people of God and asks: And what does the Lord require but that you do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.  These are the requirements of being led by a shepherd instead of presuming to lead.  In Bill’s devotion and commitment to his family, his country, his employer, his community and his church, he consistently, quietly lent support of both secular and religious efforts to address injustice and human suffering.  He was an icon of uncommon kindness. And through his graciousness and profound gratitude for those who were privileged to know him, he provided a model of what it means to walk humbly with one's God.  

But for most of us, these things do not come easily.  When our efforts at justice fall short of the mark, we hope that God’s justice will somehow serve to bridge the gulf between right and wrong.  We have to practice how to be kind, reminding ourselves that it is a virtue – because its no longer a cultural expectation.   We pick up popular books by the Dali Lama instructing us on the ways and means of being kind.  And we find that a walk with God is no walk in the park – we are too much in the way of ourselves. Too often we understand humility as a weakness and not at all the first requirement of a strong and vibrant faith that it is. Bill was raised in a time in which the development of faith was as much a part of life as Doe Day after Thanksgiving.  He grew up in time in which the church was as much as institution of daily life as public school.  But for good or ill, or perhaps a bit of both, that is not the world we live in any longer.  And there are now thousands upon thousands of people who long to understand how to live a simpler life, who long to have faith in something that is bigger and more powerful than they are.  The church, overall, has really not been terribly helpful in my estimation, but there have been numerous attempts by secular voices to speak to these things.  One of the better attempts is a song from a Southern Rock band my youth, that is now pointing a whole new generation at least in the general direction of what it means to live the kind of life Bill lived, a life to which we would all be wise to aspire, a life marked by a simple pledge we give with all of our heart: The Lord is my shepherd. 

So here are words of that song written in part by Ronnie Van Zant:
Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son and listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this it'll help you some sunny day.
Oh, take your time... Don't live too fast, troubles will come and they will pass.
You'll find a woman, you'll find love,
And don't forget son, there is someone up above.
Forget your lust, for the rich man's gold, all that you need, is in your soul,
And you can do this, if you try.
All that I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.
Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow your heart, Lord, and nothing else.
And be a simple, kind of man.
Oh be something, you love and understand.
Baby be a simple, kind of man.
Oh, won't you do this for me son, if you can? 



Friday, March 1, 2013

Food and God: Eating our way back to wellness

Food is a very personal issue. We tend not to like being told what to eat or what not to eat.  We like to believe that our food choices are personal, and the benefit or damage from those choices is limited only to ourselves.  But we do not live in a vacuum. The food that is produced for our consumption comes with a very high price with far-reaching and devastating long-term consequences for all of us. But there is a flip-side according to John Robbins who writes, “Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being, and at the same time the creation of a healthier habitat. Your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth are rarely so much in your own hands as when you sit down to eat.”  So what we believe about food, and the ways in which we act upon those beliefs is both, and at the same time, highly personal and undeniably communal.  

With this understanding there are any number of ways in which we could talk about our personal food choices and the communal consequences of those choices. With one billion people starving and one billion people who are obese, worldwide, we could talk about food as an issue of social and economic disparity. As the rest of the developing world adopts the standard American diet as well as it’s correlating high rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity, we could discuss food in terms of what the World Health Organization identifies as a world-wide health epidemic. From a political angle we could discuss how farm subsidies have outlived their original, intended purpose, and are now an integral part of as a very dysfunctional food management system.  In light of the damage being done to air, land, and water to meet the high demand for beef, chicken and pork we could look at the industrialized farming in terms of the environmental crisis that it is. Given that Americans eat more meat than any other country on earth and our compliance in the widespread inhumane treatment of animals we could rightly discuss factory farming on moral and ethical grounds. With the vast majority of our food coming to us in one form or another from genetically modified soy, corn and wheat, we could discuss the ethical as well as judicial issues regarding the loss of control we now have over our food supply.  As for the effect of agribusiness on small family farms and the near extinction of sound and sustainable farming practices, we could discuss food as an economic issue, an ethical issue, as well as a stewardship issue.  These are but a few of the ways we could discuss the way we all share in the problems of our society just by what we chose to put on our plates. Each of these is valid avenues of discussion.  But I don’t know a whole lot about any one of those areas.  It could be said that I know just enough about each one of them to be dangerous.  But I do know a bit more about spiritual matters. So here are a few thoughts about food – and the wellness a healthy reconnection to food can bring.

Truth #1:  We are meant to have dirty hands. We were meant to stay close to the earth, to work the soil, to nurture seedlings and tend our crops, and in due time to harvest what we have sown. The soil itself is a living organism home to an endless variety of microbial, botanical, insect and animal life. All human life is wholly dependent upon it for survival.  I believe that there is a connection, a spiritual connection between us and soil.  Our subjugation of others to labor in the sun and soil at great personal costs so that we might consume cheap, mass produced food without getting our own hands dirty is a witness to the distance we've traveled from mere separation to the wholesale rejection of God's holy nurture of us through the soil.  I am never as thoughtful, or prayerful, or forgiving, or open-minded, curious, or as well, as I am when covered in dirt, dirt stuck to my sweat, dirt ground into my jeans, dirt under my nails, dirt in my hair. Kneeling in the dirt of my garden I can feel the groundedness of God.  I can smell the earthiness of God.  I can see the wonders of creation and the small role I am privileged to play in it.  After winter's healing work, there is unequaled joy in seeing the first bold green leaves emerge from their refreshed brown, grainy nests, leaning skyward to be warmed by the sun.  We are co-creators with God and that requires getting our hands dirty.

Truth #2:   There is a finite amount of water on the earth.  Rain is simply recycled water, it is not new water.  The earth does not have the capacity to create water, so whatever is destroyed by pollution or waste does not get replaced. Water is not a renewable resource.  From a spiritual point of view, water is a gift from God. It figures in our biblical story repeatedly; with the grandest of Godly drama's taking place at wells and wadies, and in rivers and on riverbanks, gushing from rocks, and being parted by rod, carried in jars and mingled with wine. All life on this planet is dependent on water. Water in some parts of the world is more valuable than gold and for good reason. It is imperative that we use the water we have wisely.  It always seems that there is too much water in some places and not nearly enough in others - all depending on geography or extreme weather events - both out of our control.  But much of the water given into our care is well within human control.  Yet we waste far too much of it in the present systems of food production, mainly for livestock but also for industrial produce farms for whom water waste is simply part of the cost of doing business. Millions of gallons of water are lost through irresponsible agricultural and farming practices each day. Nobody owns water; rights to water yes, but the water itself is part of the natural world and belongs to all who inhabit this planet. We have a common claim on it, because it is the most powerful element on the planet. Where it is plentiful there is life, where it is lacking there is death.  The votes we cast with our food dollars speak louder than any organized lobby.  Cast a vote for companies who are careful with the precious water we have left.

Truth #3:  We eat too much.  Every fast food meal can be super-sized.  Serving sizes in most chain restaurants have reached grotesque proportions as they compete for what food companies refer to as stomach-share. We consumers want the most we can get for our dollar – and food is at the top of the list.  We in the U.S. spent less on our food than any other nation.  With the advent of industrialized mass production food is cheaper than ever. And we have gotten exactly what we’ve paid for. Ironically, the incidences of gout, a disease generally associated with gluttony in years past, is now commonplace.  In years past, it was only the very wealthy who could each enough high fat animal proteins to warrant such a diagnosis. But now even the very poor can easily eat various forms of highly processed, fat-laden meats and dairy products at every meal. Sadly, now only those with higher incomes can afford the nutrient dense foods that are absolutely necessary to sustain wellness in healthy human bodies:  fresh, brightly-colored, organic, non-genetically modified, minimally processed foods with no added colors, artificial flavors, additives or preservatives.  And so we eat and we eat, and we are left starving.

Truth #4: We don’t have to be sick or fat, or a victim of bad genetics, or powerless over the aging process.   The human body is one of the most amazing creations of all God’s efforts. From the moment we are born our body has but one purpose: to maintain wellness. The human body works to heal and renew itself continually and with no direction from us.  Despite the damage we do to it, knowingly and unknowingly, our bodies work at maintaining wellness without ceasing.  It’s nothing short of miraculous actually.  It’s a witness to the ongoing work of God’s created world: to think that every seven years we are literally recreated at a cellular level.  And so the question we must ask is: what foods are the most helpful to the body to help it maintain wellness and to heal itself when necessary?  What foods hamper the body’s ability to prevent illness?  Our body cannot do what God intended if we repeatedly disregard its basic need for real food that is nutrient dense, preferably in its whole form.  How ironic it seems to me that it was Hippocrates who wisely said:  “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Truth #5:  We waste far too much food. A recent study concluded that 40% of all the food produced in the U.S. for human consumption ends up in landfills.  40%.  When I was a child my mother used to shame me into cleaning my plate by saying: "Just think of all those starving children in China."  I remembering thinking that I would like to say, "Well, they can have this."  Waste is not just an ecological and environmental issue but as much a spiritual issue.  According to Michael Schut, editor of the book Food and Faith, “If we are to live and eat compassionately, with care, then the most fundamental shift we must make is a spiritual one.  The essence of that shift is to live as if the Earth ‘is the Lord’s,’ not a treasure chest for human plunder. Put differently, we must remember and act as if our home is a sacred place, and that God is not only transcendent but also immanent, very near.”  To plunder and to waste tend to go hand in hand.  We only waste that which we give little consideration; cheap food from boxes and cans or what comes through the drive thru window, food from which are divorced of any relationship, food that promises much and delivers little.  But for anyone who has grown their own food, or baked their own bread, or has spent hours canning vegetables or making jam from hand-picked berries in the early morning hours – there is no thought of waste. The precious raw materials of soil, water, sunlight and time yield simple fare for people who are happy with simplicity, people such as you and I who want for nothing but to know the fullness of God through the seasonal tides of planting and harvesting; waiting and watching, fully tied to the moodiness of late frosts and dry days on end. The work of the garden is holy work that produces sacred food, and those who are enmeshed in the process of its development are deeply assured of the immanence of God.