The man behind the counter

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

The heart cannot be denied. Not today. Not here. Not his. Nor mine.

A pair of sparkling silver studs in each ear, he turns left and right, back and again, dozens of times, as the line at Jersey Mike’s weaves its way through the lunch rush. 

Short, solidly built, Latino, small tattoos on each arm, one bearing a set of initials, he reaches again and again into the cold case for ham, roast beef, salami, prosciutto, provolone, white cheddar, each time shaving thin slices and piling them on loaves of white or wheat or Italian, split with a long silver knife far sharper than anything in our kitchen.

Never a hesitation, no movement wasted, a flowing current of life from one order to the next, a constant stream of affability flows from his smile to each person in line, questions, comments, jokes, laughter as each gives their order.

Tears well in my eyes as I watch, enthralled, waiting my turn, loving him, wondering who he is and how his heart became this bountiful. Strangely thankful to be standing in line with a couple of dozen others, my impatience evaporated in the spectacle of grace and the camaraderie of strangers.

For a few minutes, the reigning social divides ceased to exist. There were no conservatives or liberals in the line, no progressives or reactionaries, no venomous vitriol over the assassination of Charlie Kirk, only human souls received with joy and showered with welcome as the line snaked by, the world redeemed by the man behind the counter.

You cannot fake this. The moment flowed from the abundance of a bountiful heart that knows joy and loves human faces.

The bounty of his heart stirred an answering love in my own, revealing again the old, much forgotten truth that caring for the health of our hearts is the most important thing we can do for the redemption of our time and place.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has exacerbated bitter social divisions and the rage simmering just below the surface in millions of hearts. A flood of hatred and mutual recrimination inundated social media, sweeping untold numbers of human hearts into the bitter tide of hatred and mistrust.

Only those who care for their hearts find escape and equanimity, returning again and again to the well of love and mercy, gentleness and care. An old friend wrote that the present troubles moved him to turn on Springsteen then listen to Brahms’ German Requiem, letting the music wash over him.

I see him there and understand. Lost in lyric and harmony, each song, each verse, each line a sacrament watering the tender growth of faith, hope and love within, washing away the soul-killing poison of fear, hate and division that overwhelm us when we are too much with the world.

Our first priority, especially these days, is to care for our hearts for our own spiritual health, to flee the fray and fly to places of refreshment, to the wells of grace that heal our souls and gentle our hearts.

I have no idea where that is for the man behind the counter. All I know is that I want a bountiful heart like his, free and full, flowing with the All-Embracing Love who graces my heart at lunch counters.

Enter the joy of your master

Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master. (Matthew 25:20-21)

Time and distance dissolve in the silence of meditation. You never know who or what might appear in the inner eye of the heart, where nothing is ever lost.

So, it is today. I imagine the servant in Jesus’ parable, eagerly showing his master what he’s done, and Kristi appears. I see her in the photo she sent me 30 years ago. Relaxed, a gentle smile warming her face, a little Dominican girl sits in her lap.

I don’t recall who she was working with at the time, the Peace Corps? Maybe, but I’m only guessing. She was young, early 20s, doing agricultural work in a place much poorer than the bottomland along the Republican River of her Nebraska home.

She sent me that photo tucked inside a letter, apparently wanting me, her confirmation pastor, to see her there and know what she was doing. I wish I still had her letter. Perhaps it will appear someday, stuck between the pages of an old book, as is my habit.

I’d like to think I had something to do (however small) with what carried her body and soul to the Dominican Republic to hold that child. Maybe something I said or our fall mission festivals, where hunger and human need had central place, planted a seed in the fertile soil of her heart.

But modesty admits that a multitude of faces and unsuspected moments give birth and growth to what each of us becomes. Parents, teachers, friends, professors, any and all of them can awaken unimagined possibilities that take us to wild and unexpected places, changing our direction in the blink of an eye.

I don’t know what ultimately transported Kristi to embrace that time and place in her generous heart. I know only that she wanted me to know, and that’s plenty enough to awaken tears, my heart daring to believe that seeds I sowed for Love’s holy sake might still be growing, not only in Kristi but in the lives she touched.

I have long thought that the Holy One has yet to receive a reasonable return from the many gifts and graces God has so abundantly showered on my life. Looking back, I am more aware of my mediocrity and narcissism, most of which flowed from my vanity and insecurity.

At a young age, it seemed Kristi was well on her way to being more like the servant in Jesus’ parable than I became, for which I’m thankful. Still, I think she or God or both were trying to tell me something in that photo.

Maybe, just maybe, they were telling me that, despite what I know of myself, my poor efforts mattered more than I ever suspected.

Maybe attempting to measure how much or how little we have done, how well or how poorly, is a fool’s errand. Maybe we haven’t a clue about what the Spirit of Love manages to do through us, in spite of ourselves.

And maybe the gentle tears of remembering Kristi in that photo is the voice of my gracious Lord, saying, Welcome to the joy of your Master.

Why I come here

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 103:15-17)

Too soon they will be gone. Wild daisies, four feet tall, cover the forest floor beneath the canopy of old oaks 70 feet tall and more.

Filtered light casts rays amid shadows on the forest floor, as the woodchip trail leads deeper into whatever mystery the woods hold for me this day.

Star-bright yellow blossoms celebrate in dappled light, seizing the day, as if they know cooling temperatures signal the end of their praise to the mystery of their Maker.

I come here to see them, already planning other hikes on other trails where I might take in their brethren, shimmering whites and blues across forest glens where my heart leads me less often than is good for my soul. Soon they, too, will pass away.

But I am here now and being here now is what most matters. I come to see and hear and feel and love the love awakened within, for which I praise the One who sings in forest flowers.

Strewn across the forest floor, the golden profusion accompanies my steps, stretching around the next bend and the next and the next, green and gilt melding together in a wash of impressionist delight.

Each blossom a saint of God, praising the Love who called them out of nothingness to light my way home into the Love for which I long.

White oaks and basswoods soar above like giants of holy faith. Spreading their arms, sheltering the life of all that flowers, fades and passes into yesterday, they strain toward the Mystery who has haunted my heart since I was a boy, wondering: what is this ache within me?

Out here, I know. It is not for the flowers and trees, but for the love they awaken that is not of my own making, but which is the other self I am, the self beyond ego and striving, the self who wants only to love, to know love, to be love, to be one with the utterly Nameless One who is Love.

The mystery of our lives is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory,’ St. Paul (or one of his followers) once wrote. Out here, I know this Christ not as someone to believe in but as the Love beyond myself who is pleased to inhabit my mortal flesh, moving me to want nothing but more of the same.

So, I continue on, my boots scuffing the woodchip trail, a blessed pilgrimage away from all that clicks and beeps and shouts and flickers from digital screens.

Each step is a sacrament, a taste of the Everlasting Love who sings to me in the flowers, shelters me under the oaks and unveils the divine face in the merciful compassion of Jesus, my brother, who bids me to come here and abide with him.

A cruel and radiant beauty

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14)

I should be grateful, but I’m not much good at being thankful for pain and worry. I could say circumstances produced the hollow chill in my heart that refuses remedy. But that’s not true.

The malady is deeper, elemental. Love.

You never know how much you love someone until something happens that threatens to upend their life, their future, their safety, their happiness. Then, you discover the cruel and radiant beauty smoldering in the inmost chamber of your heart.

In that holy burning, you feel what it is to be alive, filled with an undeniable love long seeded in the soil of your soul, now grown so great that you no longer possess it. It possesses you. You … or some significant part of you … has become love.

Why would we want it any other way? Who are we if not the loves we love, the loves that carry us beyond ourselves to ache and work and worry and give our hearts away, there to discover that this is life, the only kind of life worthy of the name.

I most admire those, like Jesus, who loved … and loved to their end, fully, completely, so that at the end there was no more left to give, or so it seemed. I’ve known more than my share of this, the truest of all beauties.

I pray to find my place among such souls, knowing that my weak heart has a long way to go, if ever to shine with the radiance of the love that embraces pain with gratitude for the beauty of loving.

But here I am, walking love’s stony path, like so many others in so many places, praying and feeling helpless to soothe the soul and grant safe harbor to another heart as precious to me as my own.

This is the way the school of love works—a hidden, excruciatingly slow process of microscopic movement out of slavery to self and into love’s radiant light. The moment we risk loving anyone we enter a curriculum laced with the lilt of laughter and the anxiety of hoping that all will be well, fully aware that there are no guarantees.

Except love, of course. For in the cruel and radiant beauty of loving, we abide in the Love who draws us from death to life, perhaps especially when the days are hard and the nights are long.

Light savers

We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:3-4)

The air has been heavy, threatening rain, every morning this week. Lush little branches with many-fingered leaves sprout in the sultry air on the locust limbs arching over the sidewalk. Feathery ferns, tender as baby-flesh, they coat the dark arms with the dewy fresh growth of Eden, creeping up to the fork where a dove repairs her nest after recent storms.

She flies across the street, picking twigs and wood chips from the neighbor’s mulch for her rehab project. Weaving them into her domicile, she flies off for more, repeating the process for as long as I care to watch from my perch on the balcony.

Watching is what I’m here for, whispers a silent voice within, stirring a thought: It’s what we are all here for.

We are here to watch and see and listen, to touch and testify to whatever light, life and beauty we see.

Only so, do we become truly human. Only this satisfies the Love who lives at our core, the Love who is our true self, children, as we all are, of the Love who first smiled on Eden.

Sharing what we have seen and heard breaks the ancient spell of selfishness that separates us from each other and hollows out the joy which God intends for us.

God is light, First John writes, the light in all that is light, which is to say the love in all that is love. The light and love whom God is … appears in every life, touches every heart, seeking to wake every sleeping soul to feel and know the Loving Mystery by which and for which we are created.

We are … or can be … light savers for each other, gathering up the moments, holding them to our hearts and sharing the light that touches our lives. For what we have seen and heard, what we have touched and hold dear, is our gift, no, God’s holy gift, to be shared with hearts close to us and perhaps strangers on our way, all of whom are no less needy that ourselves.

For the fulfillment of our humanity is not known in splendid isolation or the sweetness of morning reflection, holy as that is. Our soul’s delight is the joy that engulfs our hearts when the light who shines on our lives is shared.

All that is light draws us toward the Loving Mystery who is from the beginning and who shines most fully in the gracious face of Jesus, the Son of this Holy Mystery, whose unfailing love is the fullness of our joy.

Beyond the needles

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  (Matthew 11:28)

I didn’t feel the needle when the phlebotomist slipped it into my right arm. She likely knew exactly when to ask a question to distract me from watching too closely. Or maybe she is simply deft from long practice.

She filled two vials with my blood before I knew what was happening. What was happening, however, went far beyond the needles. In fact, it is still happening. I am haunted by her voice.

‘I’m terrible,’ she said at one point during our three minutes together. ‘I’ve got to get back to my Bible reading.’ She shook her head and repeated her judgment, ‘I’m terrible.’

Whoever this person is—and whatever her name, since I didn’t catch it—she is a million miles from terrible, which, caught off guard, I assured her, fumbling over my words.

“You’re not terrible,” I said. ‘That’s only one way to commune with God. There’s prayer, being in nature, talking with friends.’ My voice trailed off, failing to find words to say what I felt but couldn’t get out.

‘Yes,’ she responded, cutting through my awkwardness. ‘I talk to him.’

Catching my eye, we nodded, and within seconds I was out of her chair as a dozen others waited for their turn.

Half way across the parking lot, when my brain finally kicked in (five minutes late, like always), the words for which I stumbled finally appeared in my heart. ‘You’re not terrible,’ I wanted to say. ‘You are beloved. There has never been a day of your life when God has not delighted in you.’

How I wish I had those words at the tip of my tongue, ready to speak in that moment. How different our lives would be if we were ready in all times and places to offer this, the heart of God’s love, amid our bitter, cynical times when the Holy Name of God is blasphemed to justify hatred, division and cruelty.

I cannot know how she would have responded. But I would have loved for her to have heard that one word, ‘beloved,’ hoping that it would fall like a seed in her heart and grow.

For your heart, O God, surely hungers for her to know you have cherished her since before the dawn of time. And I, Lord, want you to tell her that the other voice, the one that says,’ You’re terrible,’ is a damn liar. For your love is the core truth of our existence.

Maybe then, she can read her Bible not as a spiritual obligation to be performed (and to feel guilty about when she doesn’t do it), but as an opportunity to listen to the Voice of Love inviting her to come home and rest.

I need to go back to the clinic next month and have more blood drawn. I hope she is working that day. I’d like to hear how she’s doing. And there’s something I’d like to say.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  (Matthew 11:28)

I didn’t feel the needle when the phlebotomist slipped it into my right arm. She likely knew exactly when to ask a question to distract me from watching too closely. Or maybe she is simply deft from long practice.

She filled two vials with my blood before I knew what was happening. What was happening, however, went far beyond the needles. In fact, it is still happening. I am haunted by her voice.

‘I’m terrible,’ she said at one point during our three minutes together. ‘I’ve got to get back to my Bible reading.’ She shook her head and repeated her judgment, ‘I’m terrible.’

Whoever this person is—and whatever her name, since I didn’t catch it—she is a million miles from terrible, which, caught off guard, I assured her, fumbling over my words.

“You’re not terrible,” I said. ‘That’s only one way to commune with God. There’s prayer, being in nature, talking with friends.’ My voice trailed off, failing to find words to say what I felt but couldn’t get out.

‘Yes,’ she responded, cutting through my awkwardness. ‘I talk to him.’

Catching my eye, we nodded, and within seconds I was out of her chair as a dozen others waited for their turn.

Half way across the parking lot, when my brain finally kicked in (five minutes late, like always), the words for which I stumbled finally appeared in my heart. ‘You’re not terrible,’ I wanted to say. ‘You are beloved. There has never been a day of your life when God has not delighted in you.’

How I wish I had those words at the tip of my tongue, ready to speak in that moment. How different our lives would be if we were ready in all times and places to offer this, the heart of God’s love, amid our bitter, cynical times when the Holy Name of God is blasphemed to justify hatred, division and cruelty.

I cannot know how she would have responded. But I would have loved for her to have heard that one word, ‘beloved,’ hoping that it would fall like a seed in her heart and grow.

For your heart, O God, surely hungers for her to know you have cherished her since before the dawn of time. And I, Lord, want you to tell her that the other voice, the one that says,’ You’re terrible,’ is a damn liar. For your love is the core truth of our existence.

Maybe then, she can read her Bible not as a spiritual obligation to be performed (and to feel guilty about when she doesn’t do it), but as an opportunity to listen to the Voice of Love inviting her to come home and rest.

I need to go back to the clinic next month and have more blood drawn. I hope she is working that day. I’d like to hear how she’s doing. And there’s something I’d like to say.

I heard it from the finches

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. (Colossians 1:13)

Early mornings were cooler this week. It was still humid, but lower temps summoned me to the balcony on the east side of the house to sip coffee and listen to the birds.

I usually try to call the cardinals, imitating their whistle. Sometimes they reply, although I sense confusion in their response.

There is no confusion among the finches, however. Red-crested house finches flutter madly around their home in the big spruce that brushes the side of the house, protecting their domain.

Nearby, goldfinches pierce the morning air, furiously pumping their wings. They rise then stop, pump then stop, pump then stop, pump then glide, over and over again. Their flight scallops the air in repetitive arcs, gracefully up and down, up and down, whizzing by until one lights on a frail, bare branch pointing skyward atop the maple near the corner.

With nary a catch of breath, like kindergarteners released for recess, they burst from their perch, racing and chasing each other above the grass-green expanse. Feather-light, unburdened with no thought of the morrow, they preach a Sunday sermon, demonstrating the joy for which we are made.

I pray to be as free as they. I seldom am, but watching them … I think I see what God has in mind for us.

Surely, Jesus had such as these in mind when he told us to look at the birds and let go of our obsession with ourselves. Just watch, he seemed to say. The Love who loves you will have its way; just give it some time. But that’s most of our problem. We want things our way.

It’s hard to let go and let Love have its inscrutable way with us. And it’s even harder these days when the Love Who Is appears so powerless. ‘The power of darkness’ poisons our politics as masked men maraud our streets, hunting prey, mocking the mercy and decency I once thought was irrevocably encoded in the DNA of our nation.

Examples of official cruelty and jingoism are too obvious to mention. More troubling are the millions who cheer it, willfully blind to the humanity of those crushed in the juggernaut of federally-sanctioned hatred.

Cheer it or condemn it, we all wake into the same world each morning, or do we?

So many appear to wake into a world where might makes right, a zero-sum world where one must always be on the defensive, where the most important value is power, being greater, better, stronger and able to enforce your will. In this callous world, the lives and struggles of others don’t much matter, especially if they are ‘different.’

This reality is all-too-much with us, but out here, looking at the birds, I feel the presence of quite another reality. Their sermon transports me into a world where the light of beauty and mercy has shattered the power of darkness, a world where I can breathe the featherlight sweetness of morning, drawing in the grace of an Immortal Love who dances and plays and charms my heart.

Out here, I know: I don’t live under the power of darkness. Transferred into the kingdom of the Beloved, I dwell in a world of beauty and mercy where every life is precious and holy.

And I … am personally invited … to come out and play.

The shining

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

There is no shortage of witnesses. Thousands testify to the shining. I come across their voices almost every week. Just yesterday, I found this:

‘Some people make you feel better about living. Some people you meet and you feel this little life in your heart, this Ah, because there’s something in them that’s brighter or lighter, something beautiful or better than you, and here’s the magic; instead of feeling worse, instead of feeling why am I so ordinary?, … you feel glad. In a weird way you feel better because before this you hadn’t realized or you’d forgotten human beings could shine so.’ (History of the Rain, Niall Williams, 128)

A smile rose from an uncontrollable something within as I read these words. Faces appeared, too, including a few I had met but once or twice. Remembrance also released a question. Where have I heard this before?

Was it Thomas Merton? Standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky, he was suddenly overwhelmed with love as he watched the people around him going about their business. They have no idea, he wrote. ‘They are all walking around shining like the sun.’

But maybe Merton was borrowing from St. Irenaeus. ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive,’ he wrote, 1800 years ago. I wonder, who was he thinking about when he wrote that? Somebody shiny, I suspect.

But this vision of glory is not reserved for saints and mystics. It also comes to those of no import, like me, as I watch the faces of people returning to their seats, after receiving Holy Communion.

They pass by me in the aisle, one after another, making no particular impression, when for no apparent reason, in the alchemy of the Spirit, a single face stuns me: A young girl, hands folded in front of her, a white scrunchy around her head, pulling together a long fall of black hair, a river of waves cascading nearly to her waist. Smiling, her face alight, this is a loved child who knows she belongs.

 

And with this, Irenaeus and Merton are sitting there beside me, wearing smug, ‘I told you so’ expressions, insufferably pleased with themselves, but not nearly as pleased as I am to witness one more face in a lifetime of faces that make me glad to be alive in a place where faith and love and beauty can strike you when you least expect. They can even make you forgive and infinitely forgettable sermon that doesn’t matter a whit, now that you’ve seen the shining.

‘The glory you have given me, I have given them,’ Jesus prayed, speaking of his disciples as he prepared to leave them. His giving didn’t end with them, as all who have seen the shining can attest.

Glory may not always shimmer, but it breaks out and sheds its light in lives of grace and truth that make you glad to be alive, wherever and whenever you are awake enough to see them.

For me, this gratitude quickly gives way to longing and prayer. ‘Might I shine, too, my Friend, just a little? knowing that Jesus doesn’t have all that much to work with when it comes to me.

But the prayer has already been answered. For in his light, we see light and become the light we see.

Eat this bread

 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15)

My Jesus, how shall I hear your words? ‘Feed my lambs,’ you say. Is this an invitation, a command, a demand? And what is the tone and timbre of your voice? Gentle and quiet? Firm and full of resolve? Do I hear beseeching, hoping or an authoritative insistence that this must be done?

I suppose how we hear those words or any words you speak says a great deal about how we see you … or how we want and need you to be for us.

So, forgive me, if I am merely projecting my need, but I don’t think that I am. For, how can anyone hear your words and not know that you ache for the ache within us, hungry for our hunger to feed on bread that satisfies?

Maybe that’s why there are so many stories about you eating and drinking in the Bible. There was nothing more typical of you than sitting around a table with friends and disciples and even opponents, talking, teaching and sharing food.

Whatever was on the table was almost incidental to the bread you offered, which was you, yourself, what was in your heart, the loving intimacy between you and the Mystery you called the Father, radiating from your presence.

People felt it when they were near you, which is why they came to you with their wounds and hurts and fears, and why they followed you.

You were their bread … and mine. I listen and hear your heart in these three little words, ‘feed my lambs.’ You want all our hungry hearts to feel and know what is in you.

Knowing the Love who abides in you stirs your Spirit in the secret room of our hearts, who rises and flows out, emanating from within to fill the heart and still the ancient ache which longs for the bread of life, you are.

At this time of life, I am less clear about how I can feed your sheep with the bread of your life, which so long has been my food and drink. My role is less clear, and the world roundabout has convinced itself it can satisfy the soul’s ancient hunger … or avoid it … by staying busy with one distraction or another. But our societies’ underlying angers and anxieties tell us what we fear to admit.

Beset by my own angers and anxieties, I look into your eyes Jesus and listen to the tenderness of your question to Peter … and to me. I have an answer. Yes, I do love you. I think I always have, from my youngest days, only I didn’t know how much I needed you then.

That didn’t matter. You found ways to feed me as you do now. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. Help me along, if you would, and I’ll try to share what you have so generously given.

A step too far … and not far enough

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything …. (Matthew 5:13)

Arresting farm hands harvesting strawberries was apparently a step too far in the current crackdown on undocumented workers.

Cabinet members lobbied President Trump on behalf of agricultural states, pointing out that the administration’s current policy could leave fruit and vegetables rotting unharvested in the field, as undocumented workers were being rounded up or not coming to work to avoid ICE raids.

One could cheer this development as a partial return to sanity, if not decency, curbing the despicable passions of those who would deport willing workers who, in many cases, have done arduous farm labor in this country for decades, raising their families and paying their taxes while bringing food to our tables.

But neither wisdom nor decency are evident in the casual cruelty of federal policies that daily inflict the nation’s conscience with images of children placed in zip ties by masked, gun-toting agents arresting their mothers and fathers, carting them off to an ICE gulag.

Their lives and families crushed by forces that neither see nor care about the inhumanity they inflict, one wonders at the fear fired in the fragile hearts of those children … and whether it will harden into hatred of what this country is doing to them.

Malignant seeds are sown into the soil of society with every one of these ICE raids; some, no doubt, will yield a bitter crop of alienation, resentment and perhaps, violence, in years to come.

And curse it all, too many of those who bear the name of my Savior, Jesus, the Christ, stand silently or cheer as if this display, rising from the cynical circles of hell, were not utterly contrary to Jesus’ call to love their neighbor.

One hopes that the president’s order to refrain from rounding up undocumented farm laborers, as well as hotel and hospitality workers, restricts ICE’s reach and destruction of the lives, families and communities wounded by recent sweeps.

We can also hope rational voices will prevail and further restrictions will be placed on arrests of others—like short order cooks and street vendors, or the mechanic in the shop down the street or the guys who show up every Friday to landscape around the townhouse where I live.

It's a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

As one who names Jesus as Lord, I can’t help but notice the reason given for the president’s recent directive, to hold off on some arrests, reflects a very pragmatic, utilitarian ethic. Don’t round them up because we need them. They are valuable to us. The ag economy might take a dive without them. Food prices would spike. Meat won’t get packed. Hotels and the hospitality industry won’t have enough workers.

This rationale sounds reasonable, but it falls far short of recognizing and respecting the humanity of each person, whether documented or not. It depersonalizes and devalues human beings to the status of economic units, of value only if they produce something society needs or wants.

And if they don’t, well, perhaps chasing the unwanted across strawberry fields and zip-tying their children becomes justifiable.

The moral and spiritual degradation into which our society threatens to sink is all-too-clear in the daily assaults on human bodies and souls that cross our television screens, offenses that deny the God-given sanctity of human life and the dignity of every human being—values which Christians insist upon, as long as they remain committed to Christ.

‘You are the salt of the earth,’ Jesus tells his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. At no time in my life has this nation more needed Christ followers to be exactly that—salt, working to preserve respect for the dignity of every human being. Christian witness in these times requires no less.

Mary in white chiffon

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed. (Luke 1:46-48)

Their images merge before my eyes, the mother of life and a child on my television screen.

On one hand, Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, raises her eyes to the gentle heavens and speaks in startled gratitude of the grace given to a humble spirit like herself. ‘You have looked upon me … me!’

I see no pride in her face, no defiant self-assertion. She wears the sincere, innocent joy and astonished gratitude of those who have tasted the utter gratuity of God. For she, who is small, seeming of no account, carries the beauty of eternity, the world’s true light, in the dark warmth of her womb.

On the other hand, there is this girl, a tiny slip of a child not yet in double figures, on my television screen. Garbed in a cascade of white chiffon, she positions herself on a bench and tilts a harp to her shoulder, preparing to play in the finals of a national competition. Her harp is smaller than the rest, for she is by far the youngest. Her fingers barely reach the low strings.

But she doesn’t begin her performance, not yet. Something essential must be done first. She repositions the harp, setting it upright. Folding her small brown hands, she lays them in the cloud of white chiffon in her lap, bows her head and prays.

She does not do this once, but before each composition she performs, playing her heart out.

And I wonder, what is she praying? Does she ask for help to do her best? Does she seek a breath of peace to calm her nerves? Does she ask for the Holy One to bless her and her performance? Does she give thanks for being graced with the skill and desire to make music? Does she express gratitude for just being there, for making it to the finals?

The innocence of this child in prayer—asking, seeking, giving thanks or whatever else was pulsing through her—merged with the image of Mary. She was Mary, and Mary was her.

Both of them humble and full of grace, they both bear the wonder of divine beauty within them. Each, in their own way and moment, birthed that beauty into the light of day … that we might see … and hear … and feel our hearts melt in the warmth of that which is most true and loving.

‘All generations will call me blessed,’ Mary sang, praising God that she should bear Christ, the heart of God, into the world.

I suppose I’ll never know what the girl in white was feeling and praying. But I hope, like Mary, she knows how blessed she is. She bears the treasure of God’s own life in the innocent beauty of her heart … and most certainly in the grace of those little hands.

The measure of all things

‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ (John 18:37)

With the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the cross of his Passion has become the measure of all things, the light that reveals the truth of our lives and the meaning of our times. It exposes human callousness and cruelty for what it is, the sadistic denial of justice, the resolute defiance toward the sanctity of human life and dignity, created in God’s image.

But it does much more than expose the ugliness of human beings and nations.  It holds the image of Jesus before our hearts as he is handed over—surrendering himself in love to the will of the One who is Love, refusing to hate, forgiving his enemies, caring for his mother, blessing a dying man at his side with the promise of paradise.

Bearing every ugliness the world can inflict upon him, the beauty of God, who is Love Unbounded, shines from him on Calvary’s dark mountain. Risen in glory, still bearing the wounds of love glorified, our Lord holds his wounded hands our eyes, speaking the one word that bears the power to heal us, ‘Peace.’

He is measure of love … for there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s enemies.

He is the measure of beauty … for there is no greater beauty than a heart fully surrendered to love the world in all its imperfection.

He is the measure of purity … for he willed but one thing … the blessed Kingdom of God in which the power of love overwhelms the love of power.

He is measure of truth … for the infinite love of God flowing from his wounded side is the beginning and end of all that is, all we are and all that will be.

He is the measure of joy … for his heart is the home for which our hearts long.

He is the measure of power … for he tramples the power of sin, death and hell underfoot and bears their captives to life.

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

Let no tongue on earth be silent. Let every heart sing with tears of holy joy. Christ is risen. Life reigns. The banquet of eternity is set forth. Come, take and eat.

Poured out

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ (Matthew 26:6-9)

She has no name, at least as Matthew tells the story. Perhaps that is the best way to tell this story, for then she becomes a stand-in, a representative of the many millions whose names disappear in the deep silence of history, as I am sure my name will.

But that doesn’t matter, as long as one has loved much and well. For the love poured into small moments lives long into the future, where we cannot go.

So it is with this unnamed woman at Jesus feet. Twenty centuries gone, her soul elevated into the halls of eternity, her story is told, just as we tell stories of our sweet saints, the mothers and fathers and friends and grandparents and neighbors and coaches and teachers and Lord-knows-who-else.

A simple gaze into one’s past produces a gallery of faces whose smiles we craved because their kind indulgence provided a circle of safety in a wounding world, an oasis of care where we could be our needy selves without apology.  

She is them, this unnamed woman at Jesus feet, and they are her, for one reason alone. Like them, she gave freely. She poured out the beauty that was in her.

Entering the house where Jesus was eating, she knelt beside him and anointed his head with expensive oil. She says nothing. We never hear her voice, nor does Matthew suggest her motivation.

But anyone with a minimally working heart understands that this is about love. An immense, uncontainable love bursts the seams of her exquisitely beautiful heart. It floods her being, refusing to be denied or controlled, pouring from the depth of her truly liberated soul, propriety and reason be damned. They don’t matter, only love.

Without further explanation, we can only wonder what she saw or felt or heard from Jesus that awakened such love. Something. And love creates its own necessity. Just so, she did what love required of her, silently anointing Jesus, preparing him for his ugly death soon to come.

Wherever the gospel is proclaimed what she has done will be told, Jesus tells those who criticized her extravagance.

Her name is unknown, but her love reaches across centuries of time, awakening my heart not only to love her, but to give thanks for so many souls like her whom I have met in my journeys, people who did the hard things others feared, many who poured out their hearts in obscure places where few, if any, paid them much attention … or understood why they cared so much and so deeply. They felt love’s holy necessity.

A parade of faces, a great cloud of witnesses passes before my eyes some days. Few of them are known beyond the time and place of their habitation, and even there they are quickly forgotten in the wash of time. Few, if any, would be considered great or important as our society measures such things. But they are.

I owe my faith, my joy, my hope and the meaning of my life to such as these, many of whom now rest in the eternal arms of the Love who captured and filled them.

In wildly divergent ways, they bore the beauty of Christ, who poured himself out in love for the world, awakening their hearts. I can only pray that maybe, somewhere along the line, I have or still could bless the world so well as they blessed me.

But I suppose one need not worry about such things. It is far better to give oneself to each moment, no matter how small or insignificant, pouring such love as I have into this finite cup of time … knowing … I am held in the Love that courses through the centuries to every place and time.

Come home

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28-29)

Lord, I have been lost lately. And I want to come home.

Consumed by the constant conflict of a nation at odds over what it is becoming, a cloud of anger, fear and sadness has descended on my heart, shrouding the place where you, dear Friend, abide.

And I need you. I need your friendship, the palpable sense of your love within, or I am not myself, let alone a pale shadow of the heart you seemed to have had in mind when you created me.

From earliest days, you fashioned my tenderness, I believe, as a partial expression of your unspeakable beauty. But in these days, I have lost the gentleness I long craved and wanted evermore to become.

The rancor of these times sours my heart. And I have offered little resistance, allowing myself to be carried away in bitter tides of cynicism and negativity that barb my words into weapons.

This is my Lenten confession, accept it, dear Friend, as the heartfelt desire of a prodigal soul eager to come home … where I can look in the mirror and see something of you in the weariness staring back at me.

The words of hearts deeper and truer than my own lift me these days. They tell me that I am not alone. Others have walked harder roads without losing themselves in the tumult of their times.

‘There is a deep well inside me,’ wrote Dutch mystic, Etty Hillesum, in the days before the Holocaust swept her away. ‘And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then he must be dug out again.’

That’s what I am doing, digging, trusting—no, knowing—that beneath the detritus that consumes my consciousness, there is a place, a room, a quiet corner in the darkness where you, dear Friend, abide, beckoning me to come home that you might enfold me in the Love you are, restoring me to myself and the loving joy you intend for all of us.

You do not leave us to fight alone through the clamor to the place of Love’s abiding. You breathe through every gracious smile of our beloved, in every word of forgiveness and in every moment of beauty that awakens our senses as Spring’s hope dawns fresh.

And what they only whisper, you sing aloud from the cross of your Passion, ‘Come to me, you weary, and I will give you rest.’

Handed over … a word of hope

 When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ (Matthew 26:1-2)

Holy Week can’t come soon enough. I long to see beauty, and I hunger for the ugliness of our times to be exposed for what it is … because I’m angry … and disgusted … and sad.

I ache for love’s splendor to release a cascade of tears and wash the squalor of our times … and of our present government … from my heart, for it overwhelms my senses.

There appears to be no low beneath which our current administration will not go. Virtually anything can be justified in the MAGA hive-mind, blatant injustice, callous cruelty, sadistic posturing. It’s the daily diet of the evening news.

It should shock the conscience of all people of good will—and especially of Christians, as we contemplate the image of Jesus being handed over to those who conspire to callously kill him. The resonance between Jesus’ last days … and our days … seems too obvious to miss, although, sadly, many will.

The evening news exposes the spectacle of masked agents swarming from unmarked vans to surround international students and hard-working immigrants and God-knows who else. Refusing to show credentials or warrants, they seize their phones, identification documents and sweep them away to detention centers a thousand miles distant, to be stripped of their clothing and dignity, denied access to families, counsel, hearings or trials.

The sadistic depravity of our present administration descended to a new and absurdist depth when the meticulously-coifed Secretary of Homeland Security, wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch, stood in front of dozens of prisoners, stacked in a multi-tiered Salvadoran prison, talking tough about what happens to the undocumented who commit crimes on American streets.

She used human beings as a prop for her get-tough posturing, quite against the Geneva Convention, but what does that matter to an administration where the value of human dignity is as expendable as the people rounded up just for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Nor does it matter when ICE agents get the wrong person, a citizen or someone with protected status, and hands them over to that brutal Salvadoran prison. They, too are expendable, denounced as criminals by an administration with a deplorable disregard for facts.

Even when an ‘administrative error’ is acknowledged, the President’s press secretary, who sometimes stands before the White House briefing room wearing a cross around her neck, justifies the imprisonment of an innocent man and indicates the administration will make no effort, not even a phone call to Salvadoran authorities, to seek his release and return him to his family.

His innocence doesn’t matter. He’s been handed over and needs to stay that way for the good of the country, which was exactly the logic of the authorities who rounded Jesus up and pinned him to a cross.

The cross of Christ is the measure of all things, the light that reveals and clarifies the truth of our lives and the meaning of our times. It exposes human callousness and cruelty for what it is, the sadistic denial of justice, a resolute defiance toward the sanctity of human life and dignity, created in God’s image.

But it does so much more than expose the ugliness of human beings and nations. It also holds the image of Jesus before our hearts as he is handed over—surrendering himself in love to the will of the One who is Love, refusing to hate, forgiving his enemies, caring for his mother, blessing a dying man at his side with the promise of paradise.

Bearing every ugliness the world can inflict upon him, the beauty of God, who is Love Unbounded, shines from him on Calvary’s dark mountain to raise from death the love he is within us.

Look there. Behold his beauty. The darkness of our times will not overtake you.

To see as we are seen

 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)

A magnificent nothing happened the other day. Only one other person noticed as far as I could tell, and I don’t know what he thought of it. We never spoke.

I first saw him as he hobbled to a chair across the aisle of the coffee shop, dropped his cane and plopped down, his thin white hair combed across the pink of his scalp. A faded blue shirt tucked loosely into his jeans, he settled in and read from his phone.

Returning to my book, I furtively glanced up from time to time, wanting to watch him for no reason I recognized. Once, our eyes met, and we quickly looked away, settling into our respective solitude.

But then something happened for which I have no reasonable explanation, only the intuition that faith provides. A flood of emotion surprised me. It came out of nowhere, a deep measure of love and respect for this stranger who for some reason wasn’t a stranger at all.

There was not an ounce of sympathy or compassion in the warm affection flooding my heart, and certainly no pity. I didn’t feel sorry for him. But an overwhelming warmth rose undeniably from the unsearchable depths of my soul. A love far beyond my own surged and filled my being with loving respect for the soul sitting across from me. It came of its own accord, unbidden by any desire, prayer or wish on my part.

For a moment, I saw the way we are seen, knowing as God knows us, my heart silently embracing and treasuring the mystery of the stranger for who he is, where he’d been, the life he’d lived, the struggles he’d suffered, the journey that brought him to this place on a cloudy March day to order a cup of coffee.

But maybe I make too much of the moment. Maybe it was just two 70-something men exchanging a glance, silently recognizing the decades of wear reflected in our faces. Maybe it is explainable as a simple acknowledgment of our shared humanity.

But even this is a grace, one too little found amid these days of malignant distrust and bitter politics when human souls are considered expendable.

I cannot dismiss what flooded through me or explain it away as the emotional quirk of my eccentric soul. There was … and is … something more.

For a moment, no, for more than a moment, I saw and felt him embraced by the Love who embraces both of us … and everything else, the Mystery who for some sweet reason chooses to dwell in the unsearchable depths of our being, ready to surprise us when we aren’t looking.

My coffee companion didn’t stay long. Picking up his coffee cup, keys and phone, he leaned on his cane and shuffled toward the door, dragging his bum right leg.

I looked up from my book and smiled. We exchanged a nod. His was clear, firm and respectful, a moment of mutual care, knowing ... we'd been seen.

Melting the ICE

Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ (John 12:31-32)

Two visions collided in my heart this week. One was the image of ICE agents herding supposed criminals onto planes, ferrying them away to brutal foreign prisons without the benefit of hearings or trials or anything but the unsubstantiated claims of self-interested politicians.

The other vision melted my heart, feeding a soul-deep hope that will not die.

It happened on Sunday morning. My pre-service prayer complete, I opened my eyes and immediately knew prayer was not done with me. Look and see, said the voice of the Spirit within me.

The crucifix hanging high above the altar first captured my attention as the congregation gathered. Two Filipino mothers crowded in beside me with five children, black and brown. An elderly Chinese woman kneeled ahead of me.

An African American family sat three rows further up. Across the room, a batik-clad woman and her children looked like they’d just arrived from some west African country. And dozens of Hispanics from several southern nations scattered among folk who are as white as me.

I didn’t see a suit and tie in the place, except for the cantor and organist. More obvious were jeans, tennis shoes, the weathered faces of people who work outdoors, and others, with softer hands, who labor in classrooms and offices and over keyboards like the one beneath my fingers.

Looking at the crucifix above our gathering, it all felt right. Jesus’ words rang truer than ever. ‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.’

For there we were, drawn together by the transcendent love of the One who makes the many … into one. That’s what love does, but it is better to say that is what Love does. The God who is Love, whose all-embracing compassion bears the face of Jesus in his suffering, seeks ever more to draw the human family and all creation into one loving union.

This vision held me through the service. I couldn’t stop looking around. What I saw was profoundly hopeful, promising a gracious world of welcome infused with the love of Jesus, whose heart is known in every welcome and act of hospitality whether his name is spoken or not.

But as hopeful as it was to kneel at Divine Savior Church and see what the Savior is doing among us, I was equally engulfed by a profound sadness over the daily reports of ICE raids. However necessary and important their function in society, too often human souls are being indiscriminately swept up and treated like trash—the documented and undocumented, the guilty and the innocent, the citizen, the green card holder and people who look like my brown-skinned grandsons and son-in-law, for whom I worry.

The vision of a world-made-one is a true and deeply Christian vision of God’s desire for the nations, including our own. The vision of ‘one out of many’ is also deeply encoded in the history and DNA of our nation. But it is daily attacked and shattered by the present administration as it stokes anger and fear of those who look like they ‘don’t belong here.’

Tragically, many Christians also have lost sight and faith in the vision of their Lord, who draws the many into one, ironically unaware that such hatred and rejection stands judged by the cross of Christ and the entire Judeo-Christian tradition.

But the vision of a world made new, born of God’s Spirit, does not die. It lives in human hearts and appears in flesh and blood gatherings, like Sunday morning, as we gathered beneath the cross of Christ where the hope of the world was clear to see.

All we needed to do was look around … and see what Love does.

‘I feel good when I fire someone’ … our spiritual crisis

All those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to [Jesus]; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them. Demons also came out of many, shouting, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah. (Luke 4:40-41)

I could never produce a convincing reason why Jesus told the demons to shut up when they shouted his identity. But the times we live in suggest an answer. More on that in a minute. First, a dinner party.

Nearly 20 years ago, Dixie and I sat in a suburban living room with several other church members, sharing a glass of wine before dinner. When conversation turned to work, one of our evening companions said he had to fire someone that day.

So sorry about that, another said. The response was immediate, ‘Don’t’ be. I feel good when I fire someone.’  

Two women in the room gasped and objected when he said it, including his wife, but he doubled down. ‘It makes my business more successful.’

That night had not occurred to me for years until the evening news assaulted my consciousness with the sight of Elon Musk prancing across a stage wielding a chain saw.

Gleefully delighting in dismantling government programs, he celebrated throwing talented, dedicated people on the street, all while a roomful of well-heeled sycophants cheered him on, utterly oblivious or willfully blind to the pain of those they’d repeatedly slandered.

Nor did they see, or have the spiritual capacity to see millions of people, in this country and beyond, who are served by the programs being trashed, people like my friend’s son who needs exorbitantly expensive medication to work and stay alive, or veterans who struggle to get health benefits, or special ed kids whose programs are disappearing, not to mention hundreds of thousands … who will die … because of the death of USAID.

But let’s go back to the dinner party. It is a relatively small step from what I heard years ago in that suburban living room to what hits us in the gut every day on the evening news. The only real difference is one of scale.

What is happening in our country has everything to do with the lack of empathy so evident in my dinner companion. Even with further conversation, he evinced no willingness or ability to see or consider the impact of his actions, even if they were necessary, on the mind, heart and well-being of another human soul.

He understood power and how to use it, sometimes employing it to bring people to heel, bending them to his will, a trait evident and celebrated in the MAGA movement in which being dominant is the most important value, trumping all others.

And this may be the great spiritual crisis of our day, the valorization of power, the ability to make others bend the knee, to get your way, to gain advantage or take revenge, to make America great.

And if others are injured or destroyed, killed or just waste away (and make no mistake, they are and will), well, that’s just the cost of doing business. Most of them are just parasites anyway. After all, empathy is a bug in the system of greatness. It just gets in the way.

But power without empathy, power untutored by faith and human values, is blind, deaf and dumb. It makes no friends, builds no relationships and cures no ills as it splinters societies. It sees, hears and attends to its whims and wishes, as utterly oblivious as those cheering Elon Musk’s chainsaw dance.

And this brings me back to Jesus and the demons, who always seemed to recognize who he was when others did not. Jesus wouldn’t let them spill the beans, and now I get it.

They only knew his power. That they recognized, but they didn’t see him and therefore didn’t really know him. For knowing him requires seeing, feeling and knowing his compassionate willingness to suffer in order to free the hearts and lives of those the great ones … would have us ignore.