grateful for what is...

A meme from the incomparable Carrie Newcomer gets it all so right: "A dog is grateful for what is, which I am finding to be the soundest kind of wisdom and very good theology."

As I posted yesterday, confessing this wisdom and embracing it in real life are, however, two different matters. And the gap between the two is, it seems to me, the place of spiritual practice and discipline. The locus of embodied faith. Our journey into joining the holy in the transformation of sacred words into human flesh. 

The late Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms - birthplace of Habitat for Humanity - once put it like this in his Cotton Patch Gospels (a translation of the Biblical Greek into the colloquial phrases of the Deep South.) "Faith is the turning of our dreams into deeds." Note that this come from Hebrews 11:1 - "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen" - in an active voice instead of lofty theological abstractions. Authentic Christian faith is a verb that guides every stage of our living - even our dying from one life into the next. (NOTE: Di's vertigo is profoundly better today so I am back into my contemplative writing groove!)

For me this means cultivating and practicing a willingness to let go of control and authority. Some speak of it as surrender. Or training in dying before death. Others describe it as an embodied downward mobility, a spiritual descent into trusting a love greater than ourselves that helps us relinquish every distraction from grace. My ups and downs suggest it is a membership in the life-long learning school of the Cross. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are lost, but to us who are being made whole it is the power of God." (I Corinthians 1)

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Some demand physical proof, others ask for intellectual insights, even as we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others. But to those who have been called regardless of race, tradition or status in life, Christ becomes both the power and wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

This morning Richard Rohr's reflection on the spirituality of the 12 Steps of AA put it like this:

We each have our inner program for happiness, our plans by which we can be secure, esteemed, and in control, and we are blissfully unaware that these cannot work for us for the long haul—without becoming more and more controlling ourselves. Something has to break our primary addiction, which is to our own power and unworkable programs for happiness and security. When Jesus taught, “If anyone wants to follow me, let them renounce themselves!” (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), I am pretty sure that Jesus meant exactly what Bill W. means in Step Three: a radical surrendering of our will to Another whom we trust more than ourselves.

There are three truly radical and beautiful things about AA spirituality: 1) It is built upon grace not shame; 2) It refuses to punish our "weakness and failures"; and 3) It strips religion of every vestige of elitism. "The absolute genius of the Twelve Steps is that it refuses to bless and reward what looks like any moral worthiness game, and it refuses to punish weakness and failure." 

With Gospel brilliance and insight, AA says that the starting point and, in fact, the continuing point, is not any kind of worthiness at all but in fact unworthiness! (“I am an alcoholic!”) Suddenly religion loses all capacity for elitism. This is what Jesus affirmed in prostitutes and tax collectors and what Paul praised when he said, “It is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When the churches forget their own Gospel message, the Holy Spirit sneaks in through the ducts and the air vents, which is what it has done in the Twelve-Step Program and other therapies. (For more see the current series on 12 Step Spirituality @ 
https://cac.org/a-radical-surrendering-2019-12-11/)

It is a way to incarnate faith from the bottom up. Or a nuts and bolts spirituality guided by God's tenderness. Henri Nouwen used to speak of the way of Jesus as the "hidden and mysterious" path of the Lord: "It is hard to believe that God would reveal (God's) divine presence to us in the self-emptying, humble way of the man from Nazareth. So much in me seeks influence, power, success, and popularity."

But the way of Jesus is the way of hiddenness, powerlessness, and littleness. It does not seem a very appealing way. Yet when I enter into true, deep communion with Jesus, I will find that it is this small way that leads to real peace and joy... Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless. How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power? I increasingly believe that our faithfulness will depend on our willingness to go where there is brokenness, loneliness, and human need... I realize that the only way for us to stay well in the midst of the many “worlds” is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being. (For more, go to https://henrinouwen.org)

Isn't that precisely IT? "The only way to stay well in the midst of the many "worlds" - distractions, addictions, fears, anxieties, competing kingdoms and all the rest - "is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being." I remember weeping in gratitude the first time I stumbled upon Psalm 131 after decades of reading the Psalter:

O LORD, I am not proud;  I have no haughty looks.

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,

like a child upon its mother's breast; 

my soul is quieted within me.

O Israel, wait upon the LORD, 

from this time forth for evermore.

This seems to be the way my brokenness and blessing manifest themselves in real time: I come home to resting in the small, hidden comfort of God's grace and then gradually wander away, trusting myself again until that runs out of gas and I crash back into the holy embrace "like a child upon its mother's breast." Would that I stayed in repose longer! It feels something like this poem from Rio Cortez, child of Salt Lake City who now resides in Harlem:

Everything is a ring. I am working on a belief that starts like that: everything
is a ring, not symmetrical, it has
the illusion of progress

*
I woke up sad so all day long I tried
to make the world sad around me

*
I heard in a movie once that hurt people
hurt people. Now I always say that
when I comforting sad friends.
I curve the ring so not even I can see it
how it winds right back to itself, loops
right around me when I think
it must be going

I say to myself: look at this sad fool

*
I am always explaining to my lover
I say to him: there are two kinds
of knowing. Some knowing is as close
as my own palm, I don’t even know
I know it. I love my mother & my mother
loves me. Other knowing gets pushed
beneath

*
Beauty always strikes me when I consider it’s going & am hurt by it
how now light enters through the curtains at dusk & I find it beautiful
because it is about to change

*
One layer of that knowing I mentioned, is of the self.
Isn’t it like that for everyone. Sometimes
the ring comes round & I feel I don’t deserve a thing.
Then I do the work of knowing. I see myself
reflected in the bathroom mirror, it’s been a long
day & I am alone, my hair pulled into a tight chignon
& I know better by looking at me next to nothing, compared
to nothing & I say thanks to someone out there

At this late stage in the game, I mostly trust and revel in the small, hidden, and tender way of Jesus: it refuses to punish my weaknesses and failures and steadfastly searches for gratitude for what is. And I need that safe return because I am not so good at living into this. I trust it with my heart and still cry out: believe, I believe, Lord help my disbelief!

credits:
+ https://www.michellepaine.com/contemporary-icons/
+ http://melizabethchapman.blogspot.com/2010/11/faith-contemporary-abstract-painting.html
+ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394205773603766107/
+ https://culture.pl/en/work/the-black-madonna-of-c