Listening to My Life

When I was in high school, my mom gave me my own copy of Listening to Your Life, a compilation of daily meditations drawn from the works of writer and theologian Frederick Buechner. I was immediately smitten, and almost three decades later, every other page of that small volume is dog-eared. I’m surprised its spine is still holding together after accompanying me through so much life.

Not long after I became the owner of this volume, my beloved Aunt Carr died. She died in mid-October, and in the weeks that followed, the readings (selected by the great George Connor, Buechner’s friend and a career professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) focused on the theme of All Saints Day. In the throes of my first experience of loss and grief, these words rose from the page to meet me: “How they do live on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them.”*

In the spring of my junior year, my mom let me take a whole week off from school to join her at Kanuga Conference Center (my favorite place on earth, where I had grown up going to summer camp and youth conferences), where Frederick Buechner was the keynote speaker at the Bowen Conference. Needless to say, I was the youngest attendee by decades, but by then I had read all of Buechner’s autobiographical writing and had started in on his novels.

The conference mostly consisted of Buechner reading from his most recent memoir, The Longing for Home, as well as a series of unpublished prose poems about his ancestors. My mom recently sent me copies of the recordings of that Bowen Conference, which I had to listen to little by little when I was in the car, since that is the only place where I still have a functioning CD player. As I took in those words again, I realized that Frederick Buechner was my first teacher in the art of memoir, and the earliest evidence that one’s life does not have to include fame or notoriety to reflect the divine – in fact, the most ordinary moments are likely the most holy.

One afternoon, the conference had smaller breakout sessions, and I split off from my mom to join a group crowded into the Fireplace Lounge. At some point, another participant made a comment about having tried to share Buechner’s writings with her teenage son, who had no interest. This set off a string of supposedly good-natured but also rather pointedly ageist remarks about how the finer points of Buechner’s writing were totally lost on the young and required much more life experience to truly appreciate.

I sat for a few minutes brimming with adolescent ire, until I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I remember little of the transcript of my outburst, but I know I stood up and informed the group that as a 17-year-old, I was just as capable of appreciating good writing as anyone, and that they should think – and look around the room – before making such sweeping comments about an entire age group. For the rest of the conference, I had a steady stream of my fellow participants approaching me (and my mom) to commend me for sticking up for myself and my peers. 

Despite my minor celebrity, when Frederick Buechner had a book signing later in the week, I was too shy to say much of anything when it was my turn to approach the table with my copy of Listening to Your Life. Instead, as was my style, I drafted a long letter about my love of his writing and my experience at the conference, which I mailed when I got home, using the address list we had received for all participants.

A few weeks later his handwritten reply arrived:

       13 Aug ‘96
        
       Dear Rebecca,

  Please forgive me for not having answered sooner your long, good letter of July 9. Not only did my extraordinary birthday take place [his 70th] amidst a clamorous group of children, grandchildren and old friends, but I then found myself caught up in a six-week writing binge during which I completed a book that gave me more pleasure in the writing than anything I’ve ever done before.
 I’m surprised and appalled that your youth was held against you at Kanuga like the wrong color skirt or a police record, but the folly and insensitivity of the human race can never be overestimated. But I’m glad that all in all you had a good time anyway and met some nice people too.
  Thanks so much for writing, and for your kind words about my books.

       With all best wishes,
  Frederick Buechner

This note, written 26 years and 2 days ago, has remained tucked inside my book ever since. I keep it near the entry for October 31, where this passage is underlined and starred: “By the time I was sixteen, I knew as surely as I knew anything that the work I wanted to spend my life doing was the work of words. I did not yet know what I wanted to say with them. I did not yet know in what form I wanted to say it or to what purpose. But if a vocation is as much the work that chooses you as the work you choose, then I knew from that time on that my vocation was, for better or worse, to involve that searching for, and treasuring, and telling of secrets which is what the real business of words is all about.”**

Not everyone gets to meet the authors who have influenced them in their formative years, and I am extremely fortunate to have had that opportunity. It was nothing short of an incarnational experience, as the person behind the words that had impacted me so strongly became flesh – and not only that, but became someone who would take a break from speaking, teaching, and writing what was, by my calculation, his 30th published book, to respond to a teenage girl in Tennessee.

Aside from the actual content of the letter (I so often recall that casually imparted wisdom: “the folly and insensitivity of the human race can not be overestimated”), the mere existence of this piece of paper affirmed me in my earliest years of listening to my own life and writing down what I heard, of taking myself seriously even though the number of my years was barely into the double digits.

Frederick Buechner died today at the age of 96, more than a quarter century after that big birthday celebration of his. His influence was sweeping and, in my case, very specific. I will always remain grateful for his words and for his kindness.

*from The Sacred Journey, 21-22
**from The Sacred Journey, 73-74

Obituary for An Ear

Rebecca’s Right Ear died unexpectedly in the early hours of July 16, 2020, at age almost-42, of unknown causes. 

Born along with the rest of Rebecca on September 16, 1978, Rebecca’s Right Ear was healthy and intact for its entire life until this sudden illness, with the exception of a voluntary cosmetic piercing on its 13th birthday.

Rebecca’s Right Ear – along with its partner, Rebecca’s Left Ear – learned to distinguish musical notes and rhythms in its early years, at “Musical Trolley” classes for preschoolers. At age 6, it took a leading role in the Suzuki method of learning music, which relies on daily listening to recordings of songs in the Suzuki repertoire. Vital information shared by the Ears with Rebecca’s Brain helped Rebecca’s Fingers learn to play songs such as “Mississippi Hot Dog” and “Claire de Lune.” After establishing a strong collaboration in these years of piano lessons, the ensemble later welcomed Rebecca’s Mouth in learning to play the flute, which led to nearly a decade of participation in school bands and orchestras, including a brief and taxing few months trying to play the oboe. These years of instrumental music, along with singing in school and church choirs, led Rebecca's Ears to collectively gain a reputation as being "a good ear" for distinguishing harmonies and improvising.

Both Ears were also pivotal in maintaining Rebecca’s status as an honors student in elementary school, secondary school, and college, and in going on to earn a master’s degree. They paid (mostly) good attention through countless classes, lectures and seminars, including language studies in Latin, Italian, French, Hebrew, and Greek.

The summer of 1999 was particularly adventurous for Rebecca’s Right Ear when it spent several weeks in Haiti, teaching music and conversing in basic French. Subsequent travels in Burma, Italy, Austria, Israel, and walking El Camino de Santiago in Spain presented auditory challenges in other languages. 

A decade of work in journalism on a college newspaper and then as editor of the alumni magazine of The McCallie School depended heavily on the Ears. They worked closely with Rebecca’s Brain and Rebecca’s Heart to identify and distill the essence and deeper meaning of what was shared by the subjects of feature stories. These listening skills proved crucial in later years working as a priest. In particular, one summer as a hospital chaplain was particularly challenging and insightful for Rebecca’s Ears and Rebecca’s Heart. 

Some of the sounds Rebecca’s Right Ear will miss most are ocean waves, cats purring, crickets on a summer evening, the scratch of a record player’s needle touching down, an orchestra warming up, rainfall, and the men’s vocal ensemble Cantus. Its least favorite sounds were car alarms, the multiple ice cream trucks in its neighborhood, snoring, and that bald white guy who is a commentator for basketball games on ESPN. 

Rebecca’s Right Ear is survived by its lifelong companion, Rebecca’s Left Ear, and all other original parts of her body. It is preceded in death by 15 trillion skin cells, a million hairs, countless nail clippings, a few questionable moles, one uterine polyp, and one ovarian cyst.

Grand Romance

photo: Christopher Gray Chase

[Warning: This piece contains a bit of salty sailor language!]

My fellow Vallejo residents who have recently ridden the ferry have probably noticed the lonely, dilapidated husk of an old paddle boat near where the Napa River meets the Bay. Though its paint is peeling, its balconies are sagging, its boarded-up windows are covered in graffiti, it still manages to flamboyantly proclaim its name: Grand Romance Riverboat. Curious about how such a stately vessel fell so hard from grace, and how it landed here in Vallejo, I embarked on some online research.

While one online article described the Grand Romance as a 19th-century Mississippi riverboat, it didn’t take much further digging to discover this to be an exaggeration of about a century. The boat was actually built in the early 1990s just up the road in Fort Bragg by Bill Barker, an electroencephalograph technician from Santa Rosa. His father Neal (a World War II Coast Guard veteran and former coin-sorting machine salesman whose hobbies included chicken ranching and running sportfishing expeditions) and the other Barker siblings and spouses all helped design and run the ship, which took three years to build.

The boat debuted in 1993 as the Petaluma Queen, offering dinner cruises along the river in downtown Petaluma. By all accounts, this was the boat’s golden era. The vessel featured Victorian ironwork, a calliope, and a ballroom with a marble floor and stamped tin ceilings and proclaimed itself “the grandest authentic riverboat to operate in California.” 

The Petaluma Argus-Courier, in a retrospective article a few years ago, said the Queen experienced “a number of reputation-diminishing problems” in the early years, including when a woman on a cruise for senior citizens stepped out a side door straight into the river, where she drowned. Overall, though, Petaluma residents seem full of fond memories of the boat’s elegance and fine dining, and a downtown mural depicting the history of the town features the Queen.

photo: Petaluma Argus-Courier
Facebook 1/16/15

In 1996, the Barkers acquired the first riverboat gambling license issued in California since the 1940s and added a few card tables for poker and blackjack. The Queen’s third floor was outfitted as a gambling parlor with armchairs upcycled from the Palace Hotel, and the Barkers hired a “cardroom consultant” named Dennis Luddy who predicted they were on the brink of a multimillion-dollar business. He boasted: "I'm going to have major tournaments here. We're going to have players fly in from Las Vegas and Reno. If we're a success, people are going to follow."

Success did not exactly ensue. By the next year, the Queen’s owners were in court on charges of running an illegal gambling operation. I haven’t been able to find any details online about the specific charges or the trial itself, but the Barkers lost the case and in the summer of 1998 jumped ship, so to speak. The boat was re-christened the Grand Romance, and the Barkers began offering cruises in Suisun City and then along the Napa River.

In another attempt to reinvent his business, Bill Barker moved the boat to Long Beach’s Rainbow Harbor a few years later. He had hired a Dixieland band to welcome the Grand Romance to her new home, but in a case of extraordinarily unlucky timing, the boat arrived on September 11, 2001. Before long, though, the boat had a busy schedule of dinner cruises, murder mystery shows, toga parties, weddings, and many a “booze cruise.” The boat even hosted a funeral cruise for one of its employees to scatter her ashes at sea.

An LA tourism website that still has an entry for the Grand Romance describes “a 100 seat murder mystery showroom where multiple murders take place every weekend.” The boat’s website, which still exists in a wormhole of cyberspace, promotes it as the ideal venue for a wedding or even a honeymoon: “When you have the profound urge to book a romantic cruise boat, you will not be disappointed with the outstanding service offered at Grand Romance Riverboat.”

Unfortunately the reviews from actual customers from this period are not nearly so glowing. One gem on their Facebook page reads: “The following is my review for Grand Romance Riverboat. THE BOAT BROKE.” Grand Romance still has a Yelp page with an overall rating of two stars and many hilariously cringeworthy reviews. Many customers complain that they are required to give at least one star, and there are recurring themes of cruises regularly leaving two hours later than advertised, toilets backing up, and less-than-fine dining. (A 2016 New Year’s Eve “Banging in the Bay” trip billed as an elegant dinner cruise with a champagne toast reportedly served only chicken nuggets and hot dogs – not a drop of bubbly.) 

Some highlights:

“You could smell the old oil all around.”

“Our waitress was drunk.”

“First off this boat should be taken out to the ocean and sunk to the bottom of the floor because it looks like it is about to go down at any second.”

“Food is like a nursing home.”

“This boat is super gross…The problems that lie just under the surface are about as deep as the ocean.”

“They should hire Chef Gordon Ramsay and turn this boat around or else this boat will sink.”

“DO NOT GET ON THIS BOAT!”

photo: Grand Romance Facebook 6/12/13

Before long, getting on the boat was no longer an option, even if one wanted to after reading the reviews. In April 2018, the Long Beach Marine Advisory Commission – despite testimonials from the directors of the Dinner Detective theater and Dirty Little Secrets Burlesque, which both operated shows on the boat – revoked the Grand Romance’s permit to operate in Rainbow Harbor, citing “numerous health and safety issues.” The eviction followed several weeks of tension between Captain Barker and the city – somewhere in there Barker sued the city for $5 million, claiming they had caused the boat’s toilet woes by failing to replace his sewer pump.

After the eviction from Long Beach, the Grand Romance and her owner seem to have become unmoored in more ways than one. By September 2019 the boat had made another ocean journey up the California coast to Vallejo – it is unclear where she had been docked since April 2018, though the Yelp page indicates that management may have continued to sell tickets even after their permit was revoked and made it nearly impossible for customers who had booked these imaginary cruises to get their money refunded. 

In January 2020, Grand Romance Riverboat opened an Instagram account that was primarily focused on building hype for the boat’s triumphant return to Long Beach…if a certain (never named) candidate was elected to city council. After three posts on its first day, the account cooled down until COVID lockdown went into effect. A post in April 2020 promoted a “Liberate Long Beach” protest to reopen local businesses. Another in May 2020 advertised an Electronic Dance Music Booze Cruise with the caption: “Bars and Nighclubs [sic] are closed but we can have parties once we leave the dock and are under USA control not California!...Fuck Quarentening,!” [sic]

It’s unclear whether this particular #boozecruise actually happened, but before long the Insta account had made an abrupt political shift. When a movement started in the summer of 2020 to recall Long Beach’s mayor – for allegedly condoning police brutality, taking campaign contributions from the police lobby, building a ginormous swimming pool for the affluent, and generally screwing over the city’s most vulnerable residents – Captain Barker jumped in with both feet. Still angry about the eviction from Rainbow Harbor and seeming to blame Mayor Robert Garcia personally for causing it, the Grand Romance Insta had 18 posts in June 2020 promoting the recall effort (at one point putting in a plug, while they were at it, for also recalling Gavin Newsome [sic]). One caption elegantly states: "Fuck Mayor Garcia."

And that is where the Grand Romance’s online journey ends. Perhaps this is because none of Captain Barker’s dreams were realized. The petition to recall Mayor Garcia did not garner enough signatures to get on the ballot. The boat did not sail back into Long Beach to redeem its sullied reputation, and by the time of that last post the boat had been docked in Vallejo for nearly a year, where she remains. 

That’s not to say these three years in Vallejo have been without excitement. The Long Beach Press-Telegram, in an article about the Grand Romance’s “next chapter,” reported an incident in which a couple “broke into the boat, put on the survival suit that was onboard as well as lifejackets, lashed a trash can and an assortment of empty liquor bottles to it and in a MacGyver-like fashion they floated away. Fortunately the suit had a water activated an [sic] Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), that alerted local Coast Guard authorities, indicating the vandals’ location.”

Maybe the Grand Romance has ended up right where she needs to be. The boat is in good company here with many of Vallejo's buildings: a boarded-up reminder of better days, her former majesty peeking out from beneath the graffiti. But in the end, what makes a romance grand? Isn’t it less about how it ends and more about the adventures along the way? Every great love, if it lasts, has to move on from the honeymoon period, eventually running into realities like overflowing toilets and tepid nursing home food. Perhaps the real magic is in daring to gamble, to dream big, to fuck mayors and sue cities, to reinvent oneself over and over. By those standards, I’d say our gal is the grandest of the grand.

other articles consulted:

Suisun City Council to weigh in on tour boat option

Long Beach commissioners vote to kick riverboat out of its mooring

Targeted outrage: Activist Sims seizes the moment to push for mayor’s recall and build a movement

Rolling on the River / After being outlawed for decades, riverboat gambling is back in California, and the Petaluma Queen is the first to cash in on the renaissance

Neal Barker Obituary

Mother's Day 20/20

I wake up too early, and before I even stir I am choked by dread of how today will make me feel. I lie still and stare at the loquats outside my window. The giant tree is fruiting again, something it does every other year. Mother’s Day, on the other hand, is tormentingly annual. 

I imagine other women around the world eating poorly prepared breakfasts in bed. When I emerge from under the covers, I will feed myself something (if I’m honest, it will probably be a cookie), and then I will retreat from most of the things that normally connect me to others. Unwilling to scroll through all the perfect family photos, I will unplug and burrow deeper into my life that has not turned out how I planned. I will stare at fruit that is ripe but out of reach. 

I did not expect to be, at age 41, childless. In my life’s blueprint, my children would by now be practicing the piano and learning to ride bikes. They would be smart, musical, kind, named after beloved relatives. I expected motherhood to emerge naturally in my life (after I had all my degrees, of course) and assume its rightful place as part of my identity. I would be a cool, professional mom who impressed everyone by balancing it all.

The first time I saw these little orange orbs on the tree next door, I thought they were kumquats. I was knee deep in kumquat recipes before learning my mistake. In fact, loquats and kumquats are not even in the same plant genus: I was trying to cook with fruit that had a totally different shape, size, and taste. As my husband and I watched most of our friends become parents, the realities of infertility were gradually turning us into not-parents, a different species. Our marriage was not forged by nighttime infant care and sleep deprivation. When parents begin comparing milestones and commiserating over potty training, we can only contribute uncomfortable silence.

I have mostly learned over these years how to avoid these types of conversations – and, frankly, certain friends who can’t find anything else to talk about – to spare us all the awkwardness. More importantly, I have worked hard to embrace and accept my life for what it is...and what it is not. Despite all the soul searching, there are still moments that catch me. Not long ago, I found myself trapped in a conversation between friends who were trading notes about their recent experiences in local maternity wards. Paralyzed by an adolescent fear of drawing attention to myself, I tried to disappear into the corner of the couch, invisibly listening to their stories about which hospitals served the best food to mothers rocking newborn babies. I nodded, pinched the corners of my mouth, waited for it to be over.

These moments feel like swallowing glass, and today reawakens all the scars in my throat from nearly a decade of watching my friends walk into a world that never opened for me. All the times – announcements, baby showers, baptisms – when I stuffed down my own pain and jealousy so I could pretend to celebrate others’ joy. All the times not being a mother made me feel lonely with some of my oldest friends and closed off some of the ways I might have made new ones. I can’t rely on playground benches or PTA meetings to make connections, and there are not equivalent places where childless women naturally bump into each other or congregate in solidarity.

Two years ago when this tree was laden with fruit, we were still heavy with grief from losing our old and beloved cats in quick succession. It felt like the deepest unfairness of all that right as we were coming to terms with the reality that we would never have any human offspring, even our cat children had to be taken away. In a short period of time they were both gone, the only creatures who had ever experienced me as a mother.

We lived in sadness and fog for six months, and then things started to bloom again. The tree was full of fruit, and some of it dropped into our yard, so I made an upside-down cake. The next day we went to the humane society, and they handed us a box of their neediest foster kittens. It was all so easy: no one checked our credentials or our anatomy. Fruit fell to the ground. We just had to gather it up.

And then everything was upside-down for awhile in the best sort of way. These very tiny, very sick little creatures needed food and medicine every couple hours. We stumbled out of bed still swimming in sleep to respond to their hungry chirps. We mixed up their special food, cleaned up their messes, washed endless loads of laundry. We came to love them and refused to return them. We named them after fruits that matched their orange fur: Peach, Papaya, and – before I knew what kind of tree we were living with – Kumquat.

I was always tired, always worried, always joyful. I imagined this was similar to what it was like for parents of newborn humans, but I was too afraid to ask my friends, for fear they would unintentionally diminish and second-best my experience, that they would tell me this didn’t really count. Now we have all grown, and the tree is laden again. I am mourning - I will always be mourning at least a little bit - as I gaze up at all that fruit. Some of it is low enough to be picked, and some of it will fall of its own accord, but much of it will go to waste at the top of the tree, never grasped or enjoyed.

Finally I roll over, and here are my boys. They have noticed that I am awake and they have arrived to interrupt my sadness. They are here because it is another morning and they want me to cradle them and coo and rub their soft little chins. They are here because I am their mama, and that is what mothers do.

"You've Got A Friend In Me"

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan's Alexandria (April 10, 2011) Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45

"O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem."

This week I finally broke down and watched the movie Toy Story 3. By now I'm guessing those of you out there who are either children or the parents of young children have seen this movie dozens of times. But I had heard from several friends that Toy Story 3 would leave me in tears at the end, and I just don't need that in a cartoon, so I avoided it. But there it was sitting in my Netflix instant queue, taunting me, and eventually curiosity won out. Maybe because I had been prepared for a more somber animation experience, I didn't completely lose it. In fact, as the final credits rolled I was smiling through those tears, because the movie is a powerful tale of new life.

The delightful cast of toys faces a new frontier in their third movie. They have been gathering dust in the toy box for quite a few years now as their kid, Andy, has gotten older. They reminisce about their golden age as toys, when their days were full of play and they were Andy's first choice of entertainment. But now their kid is grown up and getting ready to leave for college, and the looming question is what will happen to his old playmates.

If the toys could have their way, everything would go back to the way it was when Andy was 8 years old, and it would go on that way forever without changing. Even in the world of Disney, though, that isn't possible, so the toys prepare to go into "attic mode." To them it is more appealing to live out their days in a musty, dark corner somewhere than to imagine life any other way. They're trying to stay as close as they can to those good old days, even though it really means they are giving up life altogether.

Last time I preached, I spoke about considering the lilies and not making life more complicated for ourselves by trying to be more than we are. And while we are often tempted to foster anxiety, we can be equally tempted to avoid those situations that would call us to new life, because they might shake up the way things have always been for us. Crawling into a cardboard box in the attic just to stay near what is familiar starts to sound pretty appealing.

Today's gospel reading is all about new life. It may seem at first that Jesus simply restores life to Lazarus, and he goes forward like nothing ever happened. We don't necessarily know anything to the contrary, because we don't hear much about Lazarus after this story. In the next chapter he attends a dinner party with Jesus, and soon afterward the Jewish authorities plot to kill Lazarus, because his return to life has caused many Jews to believe in Jesus. But what Lazarus received from Jesus was new life – it was something much more than what he had known before.

We have been reading from the Gospel of John on Sundays throughout Lent, so it is important to touch briefly on the differences between this gospel and the others. Some of you already know this, so you can just sit there looking smug for a minute. The other three gospels – Mark, Matthew, and Luke – are closely related to each other. Matthew and Luke incorporate large sections of Mark, and they seem to have shared some other sources as well, though we no longer have any manuscripts or records of what those were. But John is not part of all that. Though the author of John was aware of the same Christian traditions as the other gospel writers, and he may have even seen some of their writings, he is in a league of his own.

I tell you this for two reasons. First of all, you have to understand that everything in John's gospel – every single word – has a theological focus, and the primary message is that Jesus came from God and will return to God, that he is a channel of the divine. John was not really trying at all to write an accurate historic account of Jesus' life. He was writing a theological document. All of the details he shares about Jesus' life point toward Jesus' divinity – there is no nativity story in John, but instead the beautiful prologue that speaks of Jesus' origin with God – "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

You also need to know that the story we read this morning, of the raising of Lazarus, only appears in the Gospel of John, which means it was something that was important to John in particular and his theological message. This story has a crucial place in the plotline of this gospel. In the other gospels, the event that pushes the Jewish authorities over the edge and makes them start plotting to arrest Jesus is his "cleansing of the Temple," when he pitches a fit and turns over the tables of the moneychangers and merchants. But in John, that story appears in the really early chapters, and instead it is Jesus' raising of Lazarus that serves as the final straw for the Jewish authorities. So what happens in this story changes the whole trajectory of the gospel. What happens in this story is remarkably powerful.

Some of the details of the event reinforce its miraculous nature, like the specification that Lazarus had been dead for four days by the time Jesus arrived. There was a Jewish belief at the time that someone's spirit hovered around their body for a couple of days after they died, so if Lazarus had been in the tomb for a shorter amount of time, folks could have assumed that his spirit just slipped back into his physical body. The story also tells us about the odor around the tomb – all these details make it clear that Lazarus was dead as a doornail, and his return to life can't be attributed to anything other than the power of God working through Jesus Christ. These details show that Jesus didn't just revive Lazarus' old life by sticking in a new pair of batteries. He gave him a new life and a new beginning.

Last week we read the story of Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth. That event also generated skepticism rather than joy. Afterward, the Pharisees interrogated the blind man and his parents, and they drove the man away. It is hard for anyone, then or now, to argue that instantly being able to see after a lifetime of living in darkness could be called anything short of new life. But again, the idea of something so powerful was frightening to those witnessing it, because if Jesus could bring such power and such change to the blind man, he might try to shake things up in their lives as well, and they liked things they way they were.

Last week we told a version of Jesus' healing the blind man in Godly Play as well. The story the children heard ended this way: "When Jesus came close to people, they changed. They could see things they could never see before. They could do things they could never do before." After that, each of the children was invited to choose another object from the room that would help to show more of the story of the blind man. One child went straight for Noah's Ark, and with both arms full of that big heavy boat he explained why he chose it: "Because it's full of life," he said, "and Jesus loves things that are full of life."

You probably don't need more sermon than that. I've been upstaged. Jesus loves things that are full of life. The question is whether we do too. Because the life that Jesus gives requires change. The life that Jesus gives asks us to do things we never thought we could do before. And to be full of life, we sometimes have to give up part of what is old and familiar, even what is beloved.

Noah and his family sailed away on a boat full of new life, but first they had to watch everything they knew disappear underwater. Andy's cherished toys found new life in the arms of another child, but first he had to unselfishly give them away so they could all begin the next chapters of their lives. Jesus gave new life to his dear friend Lazarus, but first he had to say goodbye to him and weep beside his tomb. In a few weeks I will embark on a new life in ordained ministry, but first I will have to leave this place. And you – you all have your own stories of the loss that new life requires, as you have started new schools, changed jobs, welcomed children into your families.

"I AM the resurrection and the life," Jesus says. "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." Jesus not only gives away new life; Jesus is that life. The Gospel of John asks us to embrace this as the reality of our lives, to give up the old ways that limit us to make room for the mystery and power of what God can work in us. As we walk through this last leg of Lent together, I invite you to prayerfully examine what in your life needs resurrection and life. Do you want to go into "attic mode"? Or are you ready to be raised into new life with Christ?

Consider the Lilies

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s Alexandria (February 27, 2011)
Eighth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A: Isaiah 49:8-16a, Psalm 131, 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 6:24-34

"I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet."

Today's Gospel lesson is a classic, a perennial favorite for Christians. It is straightforward and poetic, the kind of thing that should be printed up on motivational posters as a reminder to slow down and simplify when life gets frantic. "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Maybe this passage speaks to us because it doesn't take much imagination to bring to mind the things in our life that are worrying us. You may have been spending some quality time with your worries at 3 a.m. last night: that big project coming up at work, a falling out with a friend, knowing someone who is battling serious illness, perhaps you are graduating from seminary in three months and have no idea where you will live or work after that (just hypothetically). Jesus' recommendation to not worry about our lives sounds pretty impossible most of the time. Can this advice possibly hold up when the rubber meets the road?

Besides which, is worrying all bad? Doesn't worrying show that we care, that we want to do our best? If we stopped worrying altogether and said we were putting every ounce of our faith in God, couldn't that quickly lead to laziness, to not doing our part? And as Christians, we celebrate God's incarnation in human form through Jesus Christ, but now we hear that our physical life is not important? What exactly are the terms and conditions of Jesus' advice?

This discourse about considering the lilies comes up in two gospels: Matthew and Luke. In Matthew's gospel, which we read today, it is part of the Sermon on the Mount, a marathon teaching session where Jesus lists the Beatitudes ("Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," etc.), imparts the Lord's Prayer, and interprets Jewish law in new ways. This passage comes at the end of a series of idealistic teachings about how we generally orient our lives to God.

Both Matthew and Luke place the "consider the lilies" passage somewhere near the advice about storing up treasures in heaven instead of treasures on earth, setting this lesson within a framework of the dichotomy between how we calculate worth and how God calculates worth. Matthew goes further, adding the verse that begins our reading today: "No one can serve two masters; you cannot serve God and wealth." So Matthew's advice about not worrying about our earthly needs is prefaced and framed by this warning about choosing which God we glorify.

This evening I imagine many of us in this room will tune our TVs to the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. We all know that the Oscars are sort of about movies and mostly about celebrities and their latest designer gowns, and it is difficult to conceive of an event that is a greater antithesis of our Gospel reading. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these." The idea of King Solomon in all his glory making an appearance on tonight's red carpet or seeing a wild lily on the cover of People magazine's "Best Dressed" issue is just comical. The Oscars are a parade of a very different ideal, the lifestyle that is possible with money and fame. Our culture is pretty clear about which god it glorifies, which master it serves.

But how is the red carpet related to the worries that keep us awake in the middle of the night? Most of us are not tossing and turning at 3 a.m. because another celebrity couple is splitting up. It's related because of those ideals Jesus sets out in the Sermon on the Mount, about the big overall orientation of our lives. If a People magazine lifestyle is what we strive for, if it is our measuring rod of success, we will always be unfulfilled, always striving for something we will never be, always anxious. I don't think most of us are actively striving to be a celebrity, but I think most of us spend more time than we realize striving to be something other than what God created us to be.

When I was in high school, someone gave my family a kit for growing an amaryllis bulb. It came with everything you needed: a pot, a little plastic sack of soil, instructions about light and watering, and of course the bulb itself. The kit promised that within two weeks you would have a vibrant pink and white blossom right there on your kitchen table in the dead of winter. For some reason the whole process absolutely fascinated me. I had seen plants grow before, but this somehow seemed more dramatic, more magical. Every day after school I rushed to check on the amaryllis and its progress. An amaryllis, by the way, is a kind of lily, and its name comes from the Greek word 'amarusso,' to sparkle. Sure enough, two weeks later we had a full-grown, sparkling beauty, and I had considered that lily half to death.

Looking back, I think what fascinated me about that amaryllis was the singularity and simplicity of its mission. While I had spent my day doing math problems and practice essays for the SAT, that lily was devoting all of her energy to just growing, to becoming a lily. Lilies are never trying to be more, or less, than what they are. They are just doing what lilies do – drinking water, reaching for the sun, growing roots – and, in the process, they seem to sparkle.

When Jesus tells us not to worry about our lives, the word Matthew uses for "worry" is the Greek "merimnao." On several occasions in the New Testament, this word describes worry that the Greek dictionary defined as "that which is existentially important, that which monopolizes the heart's concerns." Of course we will and should worry about our basic needs at times – that is only natural – but the problem arises when those worries monopolize our hearts' concerns, when they shift our overall orientation from the God who made us and who made the lilies.

Certainly it is much easier for a lily to devote itself singularly to God and God's creative vision for its life, to believe that God will take care of everything extra: lilies don't have to hold down a job or take care of baby lilies or file tax returns. We humans will always have things in our lives that cause us worry, but the question is whether we carry those burdens all by ourselves or recognize that God is the author of our story, worries and all.

Earlier we prayed these words together: "Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

So often our worries are faithless fears – they are void of everything we have learned to be true in our lives. I recently ran across a quote from Flannery O'Connor that has been a life raft for me during this time of uncertainty. She said: "Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not." I'll say it again, because it's so good: "Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not."

Faith is not mindless absence of worry. Faith is not allowing that worry to monopolize everything else we have known to be true. It is actively stepping into what we were created to be. It is inviting God back into the story with us. It is orienting our lives toward the singular and central vision of God's promise of new life.

When I'm able to step back from today's worries and articulate the overall orientation of my life, I know that my attempts to radically control my own future and anticipate everything that will happen have always been futile, and I do actually believe that God will point me in the right direction if I am able to let go of my own expectations. But then I forget again, and I lie awake at 3 a.m. wondering how I am going to steer this big ship all by my lonesome. It's a lesson I learn the hard way, every time. In other words, sometimes I'm not very good at believing, and living into, what I know to be true.

A lily doesn't ever try to steer the whole ship. A lily doesn't try to be anything more or less than a lily – she just follows the things she already knows will help her in the work of growing, one day at a time. And so a lily lives a life that is faithful because it simply follows what is true, and in this way a lily serves and glorifies God.

It really is a life worthy of consideration.

The Advent Conspiracy

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s Alexandria (December 12)
Third Sunday in Advent, Year A: Isaiah 35:1-10, Canticle 15, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11

"The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name." Amen.

A couple weeks ago I was introduced to a phenomenon called the Advent Conspiracy. It's a movement, mostly promoted online, that was founded a few years ago by an ecumenical group of ministers whose goal is to re-claim this season from consumerist frenzy. Their web site proclaims: "What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want Christmas to look like?"

The Advent Conspirators' main question is this: What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? They offer a challenge to buy less stuff and give more of yourself, to live more simply (which is a noble goal, especially at this time of year). But they also present a bigger challenge: to redirect some of what we usually spend at this time of year toward creating a better world. They provide some pretty startling statistics. The U.N. reports that 5,000 children die every day from diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. The estimated cost of ending this injustice and creating clean water sources around the world is about $11 billion a year. I invite you to guess how much Americans are expected to spend this year on Christmas presents? [Congregation guesses.] Answer: $450 billion.

For those of you who are feeling an overwhelming desire to "google" right now, I have already done so – because I didn't want to believe these numbers myself. Unfortunately, a number of sources, including reports from the World Water Fund and the Wall Street Journal, confirm these stats – it's not just crazy church propaganda. This message from the Advent Conspiracy is true, and it is uncomfortable.

Speaking of uncomfortable messages, let's turn now to today's Gospel reading. This selection from Matthew doesn't sound much like the Advent we know and love – Isaiah's promises of peace and comfort, or Mary and Elizabeth rejoicing over the children they are expecting. This sounds very different, with John the Baptist sending messengers to ask whether Jesus is really the coming one, to which he receives a reply that seems to raise more questions than it answers. Why would we read about these doubts during this season when we're supposed to be awaiting a world-changing event: Christ's coming? John's questions are puzzling, because early in Matthew's Gospel, in the portion we heard last week, John very confidently proclaims the coming of the Messiah: "One who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals! He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!" So what has happened since then to shake John's confidence?

For one thing, John now finds himself in prison, and in his day prison was not a final destination – it was a way station where you went to await your fate, which usually wasn't good. So John is having a very close encounter with his own impending death. He is in a place of darkness, and it is understandably difficult for him to see light and hope, and to trust that he has given his life for a worthy cause. But the other thing that's been happening in Matthew's narrative, between John's predictions and these questions, is that Jesus has been healing the blind and the sick, casting out demons, and even restoring to life a little girl who was believed to be dead.

So, in answer to John about whether he is the coming one, Jesus does not offer a simple 'yes' or 'no.' He offers instead a recap of remarkable events: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor hear good news. To Jesus' listeners, this list was a resounding echo of the words we heard today from the prophet Isaiah. But it probably also confused them, because in general their picture of the messiah, the coming one, would have been a king or military hero, who would come among us in great might, who would restore Israel and reign over it with authority and power. Their vision of the messiah didn't include the gentle healer standing before them. Jesus recognizes that he doesn't fit their expectations.

Then Jesus further challenges his followers. He asks them three times: What did you go out into the wilderness to see? Was it a reed shaken by the wind, or someone dressed in soft robes? It helps decode this language to know that King Herod reportedly built at least one palace beside the Dead Sea in the wilderness, and some of his royal coins depicted a reed from the Jordan Valley, so Jesus is probably saying, "Did you go out to see the rich and powerful living decadent lives? Did you go into the wilderness to see the Real Housewives of the Dead Sea?" No, he says, you came to the wilderness to see a prophet who is not glamorous at all, John the Baptist dressed in his camel's hair, eating locusts and honey, with his message that the coming of God's kingdom is about repentance, it's about re-orienting our lives, it's about sacrifice, not splendor.

Something I read about this passage said: "John and Jesus share one crucial characteristic: they are both willing to risk entering the public arena against well-prepared opponents, even when it means speaking truth to those in power, a very dangerous occupation that can land the prophet in prison or on a cross. All of this speaks about how the old age continues to operate. Those in power stay in power. The powerful exploit the powerless. It is a vicious cycle that only an advent can change. Both John and Jesus are part of that advent as it struggles to come to life."

Yes, today's gospel reading would be a lot more palatable if Jesus could answer with simplicity and assurance, "Yes, I am the coming one. Don't worry, John, everything will turn out fine." But Jesus knows that to truly usher in the new kingdom and the lasting peace of God, all of our expectations about how the world works have to be turned upside down first. And that is going to require a great deal of sacrifice. He's reminding his cousin John what exactly he put his life on the line for, and he is reminding the disciples that what they came to the wilderness to see is probably not what they were expecting. Before they can truly see the savior, they have to go through the wilderness.

Almost exactly one month ago, the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released (again) from house arrest. In the 1980s, Suu Kyi started the National League for Democracy, which led to widespread civilian protests and a surge of hope in a country that has been ruled by a military junta for almost 50 years now. She was actually elected to be the country's leader in 1990 but was prevented from taking office, and she has lived under house arrest almost constantly since then. She has been released twice before, then imprisoned again when she attracted too many followers. She has had almost no contact with her family, not even to be with her husband when he was dying. When Suu Kyi was released before, she could have fled the country to live a normal life near her family, but she chose to stay in Myanmar, because a third of her country's people live on less than a dollar a day, disease is rampant, health care is nearly non-existent. Myanmar is a place that needs an advent in a bad way.

When I was there two years ago, I became swept up in the Burmese people's love for their gentle hero. When Suu Kyi started making headlines again, I picked up a book of her beautiful letters, Voices from Burma. In an introduction to that volume, Fergal Keane describes trying to find out why so many Burmese people risk their own lives to rally around Suu Kyi. He stood with the crowds gathered outside her house and asked them, "What did you come here to see?" He writes: "Perhaps the most eloquent answer to my question came from an old man, standing drenched to the skin outside Aung San Suu Kyi's house on the day after her release. 'We come here because we know that we are the most important thing in the world to her. She cares about us.' To a people who suffer continually the brutality of one of the world's most odious regimes, the notion that a leader might actually care about them, and risk her own freedom to fight for theirs, is indeed unusual."

The common message that the Advent Conspiracy and Aung San Suu Kyi and John the Baptist and Jesus proclaim to us is that unless all of us are free, none of us is free; unless all of us are healthy and safe and warm, none of us is healthy and safe and warm. It's the message that saints down through the centuries have put their lives on the line for, because they truly believe that this world can be turned upside down, that the lowly can be lifted up and the hungry filled with good things, that the vicious cycles of our world can be redeemed.

Before I go back to my seat, I want to be clear about something: I'm not saying that if you buy Christmas presents you're a bad Christian. After all, you're here this morning, which leads me to believe that you have come here to see something more, something more to this season than consumerist frenzy.

But I also want to be clear that the Advent message isn't entirely tidings of comfort and joy – it's also a message of challenge:
a challenge to be re-born with Christ, a challenge to help our world be reborn, a challenge to upset the age-old cycle of the powerless and the powerful, a challenge to give up some of our own comfort so others can come to the table.

To the one who is coming, each of us is the most important thing in the world, and we are called to love one another in the same generous way.

On some great and glorious day, Jesus will usher in a new kingdom where this love will prevail. And every year – every day – we are invited to prepare his way, to help bring about the advent of a new world.

So I invite you to become part of this great conspiracy of Advent, to ponder in your heart that basic question: What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? What if?

[Watch the Advent conspiracy video!]