Something More

Our culture seems to be looking for something more lately.  No matter what we have it’s never enough. 

The last two Sundays the sermon has been about Jesus feeding the 5,000.  That’s unusual—for a scripture to be repeated two Sundays in a row.  And this scripture is also unusual in that it’s one of the few stories that shows up in each one of the four gospels.  Clearly God wants us to hear this story.

So, what is God telling us here? What are we to learn from a story where there are a lot of people, limited resources and a need to satisfy a lot of people with limited resources? 

I’ve been going through the essays I’ve written on my blog through the years and found one I wrote about a trip I took to Waco in August of 2006 with the kids from my church.  We went to help out with a ministry that is still operating today.  It’s fairly famous.  In fact, the day we were there People magazine took photos for an article about them and I can honestly say my photo has now been in People magazine.  It was the back of my head and you can’t really tell it was me.  But if you can pick out the back of Darby Fields’ head, I’m sitting on her right.  If you want more info about Church Under the Bridge they have a website:  : http://www.churchunderthebridge.org/)

We took about 17 teenagers who shopped, cooked and served a meal for about 150 homeless folks. I learned some things about cooking for homeless people… like making sure we offered something they could take with them to eat later in the day, something that didn’t have to be refrigerated, and offering something healthy and sweet like fruit. We took what looked like a massive amount of hot food to the church, which is, quite literally, under the high bridge formed by Interstate 35 as it connects with south 4th and 5th streets. The bridge makes a perfect canopy, a kind of cathedral, although a different kind of cathedral.

When we arrived the kids opened up what they had cooked and started dishing it out: breakfast burritos kept so warm that steam rose when people opened the aluminum foil, hot beans, sandwiches, cookies and fruit. We had quite a spread and I was feeling pretty good. But then the line formed and people started putting the food on plates. Two burritos, a sandwich, a spoon of beans, a brownie and a banana filled most of the plates I began to worry that we would run out. Each time I looked out at the line of people it didn’t seem to get any shorter. But I also noticed that there was still a layer of food in our coolers. As fast as the food disappeared, it seemed to me that it magically reappeared. Finally, the line ended and there was still food. We encouraged everyone to come back for seconds and there was still food. The food was multiplying right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see it actually growing but the accountant in me was counting people, subtracting burritos on plates and counting burritos left in the cooler and none of it added up. Somehow the limited amount of food we prepared was holding out. At the end, when the last people had come through for seconds, when folks had gone to sit down and prepare for worship, there was still food left. I couldn’t believe it.

But then I remembered that Jesus had fed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and two fish. Actually, there were over 5,000 people but they didn’t count the women and children back in those days. I never paid much attention to that tiny detail. If you estimate the number of women and children the number increases dramatically. Check it out in Matthew 14.

I always marveled at this feat. Then one year I was assigned to tell the story to the children of the church. I thought I would be cute and use real bread and real fish. The five loaves of bread would be easy but the fish stumped me for a while. I had a hard time figuring out where to get fish that we could eat without starting a little campfire right there in the chancel of the sanctuary. I finally hit on sardines. I spent the rest of the day patting myself on the back for being so brilliant. No refrigeration was needed for this small and snacky type of real fish. I forgot kids don’t like sardines.

They were horrified by this slimy, smelly bit of fish I had presented them. As we passed the sardines and bread around I watched the first couple of kids take miniscule bits of the sardines. As the plate was passed around some who took a tiny piece tasted it and put it back on the plate. After watching the others, the rest simply refused any of the fish at all. I was so startled by this that I forgot for a second where I was and blurted out “So, that’s how he did it!”

How else could Jesus feed so many people with so few resources unless he multiplied the food? Maybe…. could it be? What if ….maybe there was another way?…what if Jesus didn’t multiply the food? What if he satisfied their hunger?

It doesn’t really change the story. The point of the story is not how Jesus did it but the idea that he did the impossible; he accomplished a huge job with limited resources. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t think Jesus could have multiplied the food into any number he wished. I still believe Jesus could have made it rain purple poodles if he took a notion. But if he satisfied their hunger, it would have the same result, wouldn’t it?

Anyone who has ever been in a twelve-step program or who understands the concept knows that the issue is hunger of some sort. It doesn’t matter if it’s an AA group, or Overeaters Anonymous, or Sex Addicts or gambling or shopping, most addictions are basically an overpowering hunger for something. And the programs working with these addictions all know that it takes something even more powerful to overcome the addiction. It takes faith in a higher power, a power greater than the addiction.

When I was in Guatemala during the summer of 2006 studying Mayan Spirituality under Antonio Otzoy, he said that his greatest teacher was his grandfather. His grandfather taught him many things. He taught Antonio the arrangement of the stars so well he could navigate his way home no matter where he was. One of the stories Antonio told us started out with the observation that the Mayan people do not generally eat much in the morning.

Food has always been scarce for the Mayan people so they have learned to temper their hunger. They take their time upon waking and never hurry. When it finally came time for Antonio’s grandfather to eat his first meal of the day, he would only have a cup of hot water. I could imagine the care and ceremony it took as Antonio described the making of this cup of hot water. Then, before drinking, he said his grandfather would pray over the cup. Antonio said that in the prayer something astonishing happened: the hot water became something more. And they could go for hours strengthened by that water.

The water became something more through prayer. The loaves and fish became something more. Maybe our burritos became something more.

Grace

Going through some old posts to the Jane's Journey blog and I found this one from years ago.
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I once explained Grace to a high school Sunday school class by handing each kid in the class a five dollar bill. Then I sat down and waited for questions.

What’s this for?

Why did you give it to me?

I can’t keep this.

I didn’t earn it.

As I answered each question: that I gave it to them simply because I love them… You have to keep it… You can’t give it back. … You didn’t have to do anything to earn it…

They came to understand I was talking about Grace.

Then we came to the response to Grace part. I told them they could do whatever they wanted with it. I knew some of the kids in the class had more money than the others and some would value five dollars differently. Some would be more grateful than others. The responses would all be different. I wondered later if any of the bills showed up in the collection plate that day. But it was out of my hands, quite literally.

I understand grace in my own life by having a sister with many major medical and mental problems that included alcohol and drug addictions and schizophrenia, none of which she asked for, not to mention being a lesbian, which she certainly didn’t ask for either. She was miserable for most of her short life.

We were raised in the same house and by the same parents. We shared a bathroom and a bedroom for many years. We watched the same movies and read the same books. How did I emerge from the same gene pool with only having a big butt as my biggest complaint? How did I luck out with none of her problems? Grace is the only answer I have ever been able to come up with.

When Elizabeth was a freshman in college she had a checking account. She had run an errand for me one day and I owed her seven dollars. I didn’t have any cash on me so I wrote her a check. As I was writing it, Emily acted outraged. She wanted one.

What for? You didn’t do anything.

How about just for being cute?

We joke around that way in our family. There’s a lot of give and take. And Emily relies heavily on her talent for being cute. We bantered about until Emily eventually ended up with a check for seven dollars. On the memo line I wrote simply “for being cute.”

I was reminded of these examples of grace the other day listening to a friend tell how her daughter had gotten a huge and quite unexpected bonus at work. The daughter invited her parents over for dinner. She stood in her living room and proceeded to tell them about the huge sum of money she had come into. It was like winning the lottery, though I think serendipity describes it better. Serendipity isn’t nearly as tense as winning the lottery.

She told them what a great feeling it was to come into money she hadn’t planned on and didn’t really need the way you need a paycheck. As she described the luxury of deciding what to do with the money, she told them she realized she wouldn’t have the great job she had with the accompanying standard of living and this serendipitous gift if her parents hadn’t spend their own money to send her to college. She wanted to repay them for her college expenses. Then she handed them a check. A huge check.

My friend was taken back. This was grace. It wasn’t really so much a repayment for college as it was a response to grace. The parents had never expected to see the college money back. Most of us don’t. We figure it’s part of the job. It comes with having kids. You buy school supplies every fall, starting with crayons and work your way up to computers. You go to Girl Scout campouts and football games. You pay for orthodontia. If you can afford it, you pony up for college. It’s part of being a parent. You never expect to get any money back.

I asked what they were planning to do with the money. Because Grace is a two-part contract.  There is always a response of some sort.  There is always a "Thank You" to Grace.  She told me they had a dream vacation they had wanted to take for years but didn’t quite have the funds. But now they could take the whole family: the generous daughter and also the brother and all the grandkids.  The check was going to make that dream trip come true.

Grace abounds.

Holy Ground

Where I sit is holy
Holy is the ground
Forest, mountain, river,
Listen to the sound
Great spirit circles all around me

Who I am is holy
Holy all are we
Body, thought and motion
Connecting you and me
Great spirit circles all around me

What I do is holy
Holy is my way
Work and play together
Celebrate the day
Great spirit circles all around me

One of my favorite songs is Shaina Noll singing this.  I'm not sure where it came from, whether it's new or an ancient Native American chant.  The music team used it at the women's retreat last year when the theme was nature and I enjoyed hearing those gals sing it as much as Shaina's version.  The music has an earthy feel.

Around ten years ago I spent an entire day getting peaceful and ended up writing this piece.  I seem to remember my attitude was something like, "I'm going to get peaceful if it kills me, dammit." I found myself with a day alone and good weather to be outside and nothing on the calendar.  Beaven left right after breakfast to go to Dallas and wouldn’t be back until the next afternoon. I had over 24 hours all to myself.

I was going to get peaceful if it killed me.

I realize what a gift, an absolute luxury, I have out here. I seldom have to do anything I don’t want to anymore. I wake when I want and go to bed when I want. We eat when we’re hungry and we never have to worry where we will get our next meal. Beaven and I are both incredibly happy, healthy, and comfortable with who we are. But I wondered about this being holy thing.

First, I bought the song from iTunes for 99 cents. Good start. Then I paired it with about three other Holy Spirit type songs and listened to it in a loop for most of my morning while I cleaned house and did laundry.

I still didn’t feel quite as holy as I thought I should feel. When the mail came and brought me the latest copy of the Rural Farm news I noticed they spent half of the front page describing how toxic the soil has gotten from this drought. They used lots of words I didn’t realize farmers knew like “Nitrate uptake” and “prussic acid.” This didn’t sound like Holy Ground.

So I decided to take a walk around the place to soak up a little holiness.

I started with a walk around the pond.

I found cow tracks, which are unusual on our land. Then I saw the cow’s calling cards all around our pond. We are fenced except for one tiny break by the neighbor’s pasture, the neighbor who is notorious for letting his cows get out. This cow had found a way out of her pasture and into mine while my guard dogs snored at the foot of my bed.

About halfway around the pond I met Harold-- pretty much where he is every afternoon at this time, laying half in and half out of the water. The minute I spotted our first snake after buying this place I named him Harold because it just seemed like it would help if we treated any snake we see as though it was always the same snake, kind of like a pet, as opposed to a whole herd of snakes that only come out one at a time while the rest wait in the bushes.  (Remember: This was over 10 years ago. This was back before we had chickens and before a rat snack had killed about nine baby chicks and eaten a bunch of eggs.  Before I developed a knack for shooting snakes at the drop of a hat.  In some ways I was a lot more peaceful back then) Harold is either a water moccasin, which is poisonous, or just a plain water snake, which is not. Beaven and I spent the last three or four days doing a little research on our new friend without coming to a definite conclusion. We lean toward saying he’s just a plain old water snake.

I stood for a long time and watched him. If I got too close he would slide back in the water and swim a little farther down the shoreline. I started out trying yet again to decide what kind of snake he is but eventually I forgot to worry about that and began to notice how graceful he is, as he straightened his coil and curled himself through the water in an elaborate "S" and then straighten completely to match the shape of the water's edge. Eventually I became too bold and he disappeared into the water completely and I lost him. As I stood watching for him I began to notice the water bugs skating on top the water. A few tiny young frogs would hop into the water as I approached where they were sitting. I could never spot them until they had already gone ‘plop’.

I decided to build a fire to burn some of the wood we cleared over the winter. This was the perfect time since Beaven was gone and I have a reputation with the local fire department he, well; let’s just say he doesn’t like it when I build fires. After the fire died down I got a lawn chair and sat to watch the coals. I was in a little pocket clearing where the woods were thick around me on three sides with the pond and the sun setting behind my back.

If you’ve sat by enough campfires you eventually learn to tell the wood you are burning by the smell of the smoke. This fire was oak and elm. No pine or cedar. Cedar pops and generally tries to take over. Oak fires are very calm.

Night fell slowly. The birds were the first to call out the night.  I could hear them settle in the trees and call out to each other.  The cicadas began their night songs.The fire had taken on a very innocent assortment of flames that might have been what the scriptures had in mind on Pentecost. Certainly if tongues of fire were going to hover over my head I would want quiet tame ones. 

The bullfrogs started croaking in the water and the tree frogs answered them from the woods. The coyotes sent out a series of howls to announce they were hunting tonight. The wild dogs answered them.  The domesticated dogs barked back from their front porches to announce that they were on guard duty. Day turned to dusk and dusk became night. The Chuck Wills Widow, my favorite bird , called out to announce that all was well and the night became a symphony of sounds. I put more logs on the coals. I realized that except for a few conversations with the dogs, I hadn’t used my voice since I visited the produce stand around lunchtime and I was enjoying the quiet.

I walked out to the clearing across the field and impressed myself at being able to navigate easily in the dark. I know this ground well. I went to check on the sliver of moon I had seen through the trees. There I spotted three stars and remembered something I read that said the Sabbath arrived when three stars became visible at night. Even though it was Tuesday I felt like it was a Sabbath. I returned to the fire and noticed how good the warmth felt on my legs.

I realized that where I was sitting was holy.

Thin Places

This post was originally published March of 2015 and a few thing have happened since then. Debbie has sold her house in the Hill Country, sad to say.  But our group still gets together about once a year.  And I  visited Miriam Leon in Guatemala just last January. I still haven't mastered the ability to feel the energy in a tree but I still keep trying and I have now met other people who can do it. And I have my tent ready for the fall.  

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The first big trip I took to Guatemala we ended our week at the Mayan ruins in Tikal.  They have a huge pyramid then a couple of smaller ones.  The week had been an overwhelming one and I was tired.  While the rest of the group tromped around on the big pyramid I broke off and chose to sit by myself on the steps of one of the smaller ones.  At first, our group worried that I was sick.  Charles Tubbs came to talk to me; the first time I had ever received a house call from a doctor.  Charlie knew this was not in my personality.  

My personality was about to change ever so slightly.

Once I was alone again I lay flat on my back and did nothing. I felt something inside me tell me to just wait.  And I did. And something happened.  There was no miraculous message from above. The only thing even slightly noticeable was a butterfly that flitted around me, landing first on my knee, then my stomach, then my hand. An indescribable feeling of being close to God settled upon me.  There are no more words to describe it and I can only tell you that it happened.

I was in a Thin Place.

I have come to understand that these places, these moments, are when the wall between the physical realm and the Spiritual one is so thin that you can almost reach the other side.

I have had many other moments like that—where I was dead certain that God was with me.  Sometimes in these moments God speaks to me.  Sometimes I can just feel God's presence without a message.

I can’t call upon God to speak to me like a trained dog. I have placed myself in ancient Celtic ruins expecting my Scottish genes to receive a message yet nothing happened.  Twice now, in our separate countries, I watched Miriam Leon wrap her arms around a tree and tell me she could feel its energy.  When I tried the same thing on the same tree nothing happened.

So I can’t claim a buddy-buddy relationship with God.  But I do know that my chances are better when I slow down and listen.

So it was last weekend when some of my soul sisters gathered at Debbie’s new house in the Hill Country.  This group started out years ago with a gathering of four women who love to share music with each other.  The church calls them the Angel Band and they are really good.  I started “booking” them in various churches and they started referring to me as their manager and offered to let me tag along.  Then Linda started dulcimer lessons and she was included in the retreats.

The fly in the ointment, so to speak, is that we are of the age to retire and that has left us split up in different cities. Out of the six, only two still go to the same church.  So these retreats get more precious and the locations more exotic.  I'm in East Texas, Shirley in the southern part of Dallas, Linda lives off the grid in Oklahoma and Debbie just bought a house in the Texas Hill Country.

So we gathered at Deb's house.

The plan was, according to Kat: "To play 'til my fingers hurt and my voice is hoarse." My own plan was to listen.  Not just listen to the angels singing.  I wanted to get still enough that God could whisper to me and I could hear it.

And we did something a lot of women cannot achieve when they gather together.  We got quiet. We spoke softer.  We moved slower.  We let silence come to the party without a need to explain. We took long walks outside and tread lightly on generations of dry live oak leaves. While I sat reading for a time Nancy showed me the book she is reading.

In the living room, Shirley might strum her guitar with a random note or two.  Then Linda would show Nancy something on the dulcimer.  There would be a slow plunk of strings: one note then the next, carefully and deliberately for several times through. Then the song would come to life in a more confident playing.  As Nancy played, Shirley would pick up her rhythm and gently escort it through the song.  Debbie would pick up the autoharp while Kat joined in on her guitar and Linda beamed with pride.

 I had another thing I wanted to do while we were in the neighborhood. One of my wishes for our time was to sit on Ann’s bench. 

Ann Tubbs was a friend to us all.  There isn’t enough room in this blog to fully describe how important she was to each of us.  When she died last year there was standing room only at her funeral.  In their retirement, she and Charlie moved to the hill country and they both became Master Naturalists and avid bird watchers.  The other Master Naturalists loved her as much as the rest of us did and donated a bench in her memory at the trail head of a bird sanctuary.  The minute I heard about it I knew I wouldn't rest until I had sat on that bench.

So when the angels gathered we took a short field trip, met up with Charlie and checked out the bench.  The angels wanted to sing her a song. And the birds Ann loved to listen to joined in with them.

The song they chose to dedicate the bench was one that Nancy had written years ago.

At the very end of the song, you can hear Charlie's chuckle of approval choking back a half-sob. Then he offered a bird hike. I asked to stay behind. I wanted to know if God had something to say to me. 

I sat down. And waited.  I lay down.  And waited.  The sun moved and shone in my eyes.  I turned my head aside and waited.

Not much happened other than a quiet time relaxing.  That really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that I made myself available for God to speak if She wanted to.

I have a labyrinth in our field.  I’ve tried to walk it every day during Lent, but it's been a challenge since we had about two weeks of a constant rain. But I've come to know this walk as a time that God might share something with me. Sometimes. But not always.  And that doesn’t matter.  What matters is only that I make myself available.

We’re entering Holy Week.  The moon is waxing towards its fullness. The full moon will mark Passover, the venue for the last supper Christ celebrated on earth. Easter will follow to celebrate the resurrection. We wait for His return.  We make ourselves ready to receive what Christ offers.

I started sleeping in the tent last night.  It’s one of my favorite thin places.  In truth, the fabric walls are thin. The barrier between myself and the night air is almost imperceptible.  I wait.  I make myself available for God to speak.  I lay still and listen. There is a magic in the night. Something is there.

I wait for it.

"The angels keep their ancient places," wrote Francis Thompson. "Turn but a stone, and start a wing."

Abide With Me

It was the first time I had ever seen a standing ovation for a  confessed killer.  It was also the first time I had seen a standing ovation after the first keynote address to these high schoolers.  They usually reserve their judgement until  the end of the week.  Their admiration isn’t easily won.

It was also the first time I had a feeling that I was in the presence of greatness.  Rev. Princeton Abararoha may not be another Nelson Mandela but he’s probably the closest I’ll ever come to in my lifetime.  With a mellow voice holding onto a soft African accent he sometimes spoke as soft and gentle as a mother’s touch.  Then he could switch to make his case for the power of God’s love with the vibrant energy of a drum major.

I already knew Princeton’s son from other youth retreats.  That week I understood where Daniel got his character from. 

As a child in Nigeria,  Princeton lived inside a world torn asunder by a civil war that began in 1967.  When he was 12 years old he was kidnapped by the notorious Boko Haram and turned into a child soldier.  This isn’t a new technique and unfortunately they still are doing it.  

Princeton told us that they were drugged and taught to kill, then sent out to villages to kill innocent people.  He doesn’t think too much of Russia because most of their equipment was manufactured in Russia.  He didn’t give us more details than that and I’m sure it was a time of his life he would like to forget.  What ended his time as a soldier was the day a hand grenade blew up in his hand and burned most of his body.

The doctors usually amputated the hand as a quick and expedient way to get the kid out of the hospital.  There was not enough time or resources to save a badly mangled hand.  Princeton’s uncle found out and took him home to get proper medical care.  He told us how many surgeries he had but there wasn’t room for that statistic in my brain—I was too busy taking in the horror of it all. He needed skin grafts on his hand but that was impossible because most of his skin had been so badly burned he didn’t have enough healthy tissue.  So they grafted skin from someone else.  He showed us pictures of the hand in between photos of the child soldiers and starving children. 

The whole thing would have been overwhelming if not for his comforting words and the idea that the story had as happy an end as possible in the midst of such evil.

After the hospital he went to a school run by Christian missionaries. And there he found Jesus and, as Princeton says, he hasn't stopped talking about Him yet.

He ask them “Who is  this Jesus?  Is it possible Princeton could be forgiven after all he had done? Explain to me this idea of Grace.”  Then he realized he had to go to the families of the people he had killed.  Friends, naturally cautioned him against this move.  "They will kill you," he was told.  I can't imagine what courage it took to do this.  But he went and begged their forgiveness and he didn't get killed.

Princeton ended up in Oklahoma as fate would have it.  He entered a Baptist seminary in Chickasaw, Oklahoma.  Then, as my people would joke, he “saw the light” and became Presbyterian.  

The theme of our retreat was, of course:  Grace.  I’ve come to realize all sermons are ultimately and simply, about Grace.  I tell the Confirmation Class that when they are examined by the elders and asked a question they can’t answer they can  simply say, “I’m not sure but I know it has something to do with grace.”

In fact, a lot of our retreat themes are about Grace.  We name about a third of the Presbyterian churches Grace Presbyterian. We sing songs about it.  We try to live into it and in this we spend most of our lives trying to understand the concept.

But there was another word Princeton wanted us to understand:  “abide.”  And in one keynote session he spent some time explaining that the goal is to abide in Christ so that He is so seamlessly imbedded in you that folks can’t tell where you end and Christ begins.  A lofty goal.  An almost impossible one, you could say.  But the first step is to understand the word “abide.”

He spoke of grafting trees.  You can’t get an apple from an orange tree.  Unless you graft the host tree with a guest bud.  My friend James has an apricot tree that gives him peaches.  Could my simple life produce fruit as fantastic as Christ’s?

Well, one night at our evening devotional our small group leader asked him to come visit our group and answer questions from the kids.  By this time the kids were so impressed by his story they might have been a little starstruck because nobody would talk or ask any questions of Princeton.  And we sat there letting a peaceful silence waft through our circle.

Finally I asked—shyly, because I, too, was starstruck.  I asked him if I could see his hand and feel it.

The skin graft was clear to see.  The new skin was much darker in color than the surrounding tissue.  Whether it was from someone with darker skin (which I rated impossible since Princeton is very dark) or from a different body part than the palm of a hand—I didn’t ask for details.  What I wanted was to feel the margins of the graft.  And I couldn’t feel them.  The skin had by now become his own skin.  There were no bumps where stitches had been made, only a slight dip where the new skin was thinner than the original. The “new” skin had become part of Princeton.  It was abiding in him.  I couldn’t tell the old Princeton skin from the new.

This is our goal:  That Christ could be grafted into our souls in such a way that you can’t tell which is Christ and which is your old self.

Jesus introduces the idea of Abiding in Him in John 15.  He talks about some other stuff in there, too.  In fact, Jesus is quite busy in John 15 as far as quotability goes.  Read the whole chapter.  And you could hum a song while you do it.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.  

Amen