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[I am sitting in the sunshine, pale and sweet with autumn, in the public park in town. I am reading from my Bible and lost in thoughts private between me and my God. A woman comes suddenly to stand so close I see her feet first... and then the feet of her little children. "And if you bigots won't let me marry my partner, their other mother, the only family they have or know, what will happen to my children when I die?!" And she does not wait for a response. She is so angry. There is no time. There is no time because the effects of chemotherapy are obvious and universal. You come up behind me and only then do I realize I am standing. You saw and heard it all. You wrap your arms around me from behind. You whisper, "She doesn't know. She didn't see." But I look down at my Bible and I respond, "She saw enough." And I start to cry.]
I find the people I want around me are the ones who write a good press release. Better yet, the ones who can take a book, song, product, movie and boil it down into two sentences of why and if it's relevant.
Relevant. That means it means something. To us. Now. That means it reaches us, touches us, finds and discover us. And the "it" doesn't have to be inanimate. It can be he, she, them, even us.
Are we relevant?
I felt lost and alone. Oh, look. I'm unstable. I asked, "When you are struggling, when you're ill and hurting, is this... all of this... even relevant?"
You were silent for a long time. The distance between us clicked and hummed on the phone lines. I imagined I could count the beat of your pulse. "I'm sorry," you said, your voice low and smooth. "When did salvation become irrelevant?"
The partner you always wanted is right there.
And there. And there.
Have you ever done something, dreamed some dream (you know, a Dream), and thought it was big, it was wide, it would teach and preach and reach and touch, find and discover and no one, no one at all, would ever resistant it, ever close their hearts to it, because it was right (you know, Right)? Have you ever felt that feeling? Maybe even seen the proof in the pudding and in the reality of the reason for believing.
But you can't change a heart. You can cause a heart to open or close. You can coax or condemn a heart. But what it is, who it is, at its core, it will remain, now then forever. The scripture of the heart, wisemen like to say, is written in blood and muscle long before we are grown men. The scripture of the heart is what we have come to believe -- not the words we have memorized or the parts we have played -- but the truth behind it all. Arrogant, self-important, doomed, dreamer, useless, soldier -- the core truth is there, imprinted if not by the hand of God, than by the acts and reactions of our parents, our peers, our reality, our nonreality. The truth remains, lingering, whispering, carrying on into immortality, even after our bones (and heart) are less than dust.
I have witnessed and known -- blessed to know -- fighters who have risen from darkness and struggle and hopelessness. They are bright and they blaze trails for others to follow (or fall behind if they can't keep up). But even there, deep inside these burning hearts, there are whispers from the seed they grew from.
No. I am not saying "once poor, always poor." No. I am not saying we cannot change our station or that our lives are pre-written and we can't break away from cycles of abusive, of nature, of nurture. I am saying simply: The whispers will always be there.
So... I'll surround myself -- arm myself! -- with seeds who are:
Humble in speech
Proud by right
Relentless in desire
Driven by faith
Strong in community
Brazen in spirit
Unshaken by adversity
Deserving of respect
"No one *deserves* my respect," she told the group of teens. "They earn my respect." She looked at them each, slowly. It took time. Everyone waited their turn. "My parents. My teachers. My peers. Any and every authority. All of you. My loyalty is legendary. If you earn my respect." (Gee... think she grew up on the streets? What does her heart seed whisper?)
Earning respect. I would think, to do so, you'd have to be pretty dang relevant. You'd have to be active and push. Not passive and pull. You'd have to be a fighter. You have to read the signs.
"Push Communication is where the offer of information is initiated by the speaker. It is contrasted with Pull Communication, where the request of information is initiated by the listener."
They cannot read the signs. Because the trappings of comfortable religion (which have never fit the amorphous, limitless possibilities of faith) are just that, traps. The lightning is not Zeus. The rain is not tears. But neither is science the devil. Neither is desire the enemy.
They are lonely and lost. They are arrogant and meek. They stumble and ask questions that those who have trampled before us cannot answer. They are seeing in nature what is killed inside their churches. They are looking for truth before the faith in them dies.
"There is tranquility in ignorance, but servitude is its partner."
The New Hampshire license plate once read (still does?): Live Free or Die
Who am I serving? Who are you serving?
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." --Abraham Lincoln
The whispers in my heart are wild, untamed. They turn tables. They do not waver. If I drift from the path, they call me back. If I look to the sky, they bring me dawn.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." The ones you don't want anymore, the one who are beginning to want something and it isn't you, we will take them in. And we won't all get along. And we won't all look alike. And we won't all agree. But welcome is what happens when people listen. Welcome is what happens when people speak. Community is what happens when you earn each other's respect. Christ is just a natural consequence of all that truth.
Mark Twain said once, "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." Especially when the diet is hollow but convincing. Tasty and neat. No clean up afterwards. Drop your tithe in the plate and continue on. The country songs croon, "Here's a twenty for last night, and another for what I'll do tonight." Now ain't that American?
Rally forces and step in time. One person made a difference, you know His name, but now He asks us to repeat His cycle. He turned the tables, turned everything upside down. No more original sin. No more sacrifices. No more anything but a direct line to Him. Times have changed. They had changed then. The old ways fall away. They were crumbling then. To be a real Christian is not to hate. It is not to oppress. It is not to deny certain inalienable rights.
It is to bring change. It is to rise up and embrace thy neighbor.
Those of us who have broken free of denomination's pasture to find the Shepherd have one journey and one alone:
To keep Christianity relevant.
EJ
