befriending uncertainty: praying "I really don't know..."

NOTE: Reflection notes from Sunday, November 14 @ "Small is Holy."
While talking recently with a former colleague about the ever-changing challenge of "doing" church in the 21st century, the words "I really don't know..." kept popping up from both of us. When I went home to rake leaves that afternoon, I kept thinking that THIS has become the refrain for our moment in time: I really don’t know. It rings so true with so much of our reality!

+ You may be aware that more and more objective data is being gathered concerning the dramatic departure from all types of public worship that continues to take place 20 months into our COVID pandemic. The Barna Research Group has quantified that nearly 22% of adults who once regularly participated in the life of a faith community quit doing so in 2020. That means one in five among us has given up connecting with their spiritual community virtually, physically, or in a reopened worship context for one reason or another.

+ Something similar has been documented in the staggering social fragmentation that’s now normative in our nation. A recent report from the Pew Research Center shows that what once was a fluid middle ground in our politics – the union of the ambivalent Right, the stressed-out side liners, and the non-ideological Left who combined make up 37% of the electorate – is now so disillusioned that they no longer vote let alone search for common ground.

+ And I can’t help but hear the words, “I really don’t know” in the confusion we experience try-ing to navigate the still unchartered waters of COVID some 20+ months into this mess; in the grief-filled divisions exposed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow where young and old citizens clash in their commitments and the gulf between developing and developed nation states on our one shared home seems greater than ever.

Even Jesus seems to be saying: “Hmmmm… I really don’t know either!” in the appointed gospel text for today where some in the early Jesus movement are leaving the Temple. In what Bible scholars now call the last extended discourse before the Cross, Jesus tells his friends that the change and healing they’re hoping for is coming – it is built into God’s grace – but nobody, including himself, knows when it will occur. Chapter 13 of St. Mark’s gospel, known as the Little Apocalypse, proclaims: The exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven’s angels, nor even the Son. Only the Father. So, keep a sharp look-out, for we don’t know the timetable… and stay at your post and keep watching.

+ These days I want summarize this saying: I don’t really know. I don’t really know what’s taking place except wars and rumors of wars. I don’t really know when things will get sorted out. I have no idea how to fix the mess we’re in. And almost all the advice from the experts of our tradition is, at best, ambiguous. So, for the time being let’s say: I really don’t know.

+ Chapter 13 opens with this uncertainty, too: as Christ’s entourage departs the Temple, one of the disciples comments on the grand masonry work. “Master, LOOK at these stones – these buildings – aren’t they incredible?” To which Jesus replies: So now you’re impressed by grandiosity? There is not a stone in the whole works that is not going to end up in a heap of rubble.”

That puts an end to the conversation momentarily, but later Peter, James, and John pull Jesus aside while resting on the Mount of Olives and ask: Can you tell us when this collapse is going to take place? We want to know how and when it will happen so we can prepare? To which Jesus says: Watch out for doomsday deceivers who pretend to know God’s plan but are either confused or liars; it’s going to get worse here before it gets better. Eugene Peterson renders this verse in The Message as: Life will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, with everyone at your throat because you carry my name. So, remember that you’ve been placed here as sentinels to truth. But more than that? I really don’t know.

This lack of a coherent action plan is why I interpret the Messiah confessions as: I

really don’t know. And his apparent comfort with this paradox can be unsettling because most of us prefer clarity to ambiguity. Certainty and order rather than the messy darkness of a compost heap that mixes both death and life into the renewal of Mother Earth. But Christ’s confusion is a reminder to me that I’m not in charge – nor are any of us – and that’s what apocalyptic literature strives to let us know. It is NOT about end of the world prophesies as popular culture would have us believe. Not at all. The term apocalypse is a compound Greek word joining apo – meaning un – with kalepsis – to cover – creating a word about a disclosure or revelation of great import that requires careful discernment. In this case, it’s a revelation about the loving but paradoxical and hidden nature of God’s presence in our lives especially in times of tumult.

Apocalypse asks us to make peace with paradox so that we can chill-out while saying: I really don’t know. It encourages us to slow down to watch, wait, and listen, cultivating a little more tenderness – and a little less judgment – towards ourselves and others. Try some more silence instead of sound it slyly whispers. Perhaps that’s why this poem by Andrea Potos felt like an epiphany.

When beginning the poem may there be a listening rather than a making
curiosity over expectation, lightness and ease,
no straining toward some glut of air.
May you step aside like a watcher at the meadow’s edge
as the doe finds her way to the center.

When I started to craft today’s reflection, it quickly became overly academic, wordy, and ponderous. I knew it was a limp biscuit right away but didn’t know how to fix it – and that’s when I stumbled upon her poem. It invited me to watch, wait, and trust that the doe shall find her way to the center of the meadow because the timing is hers and totally beyond my comprehension. Through the lens of this poem, I started to hear that Christ’s uncertainty was not just a mystery, but also an invitation to live each day with more curiosity than expectation. In this, the words, I really don’t know, become a mantra, a prayer, and even a spiritual practice because If Jesus didn’t know… well, that’s good enough for me.

Some of you know that I volunteer as part of the community of L’Arche Ottawa: a gathering of women and men with and without intellectual and physical disabilities. If these past 20+ months of COVID have been hard for you and me – and they have – imagine what the various lock-downs, social distancing, and medical costumes like masking, hospital gowns, and all the rest have meant to the core members – those with various disabilities – or the young people who have been locked down in community 24/7 as assistants. Sometimes it’s been agonizing. Exhausting and depressing, too. And while we gather virtually every Friday to pray and sing and tell stories, Zoom and Skype are NOT the same as physical presence and intimacy. I am grateful for the technology – and love seeing my friends – but two weeks ago when I was finally able to spend a week in Ottawa now that the border has been opened my heart was full to overflowing in ways that have been buried during this ordeal.

On the five plus hour journey northward, I wondered what I might do while in community again. I wanted to help and be useful. But you know what the core members wanted more than anything else from me? They wanted me to visit with them in person, with no specific agenda except to share a simple meal, sing a few songs live and up close and personal, and laugh together. Nothing grandiose. Nothing dramatic. Just the simple gift of being together. And I was able to make that happen in four of the six homes where we sang – and laughed – and prayed – and even wept a little bit as well. Being present without a plan spontaneously became holy ground and I felt the presence of Jesus within and among us. He showed up in small and hidden ways, but real nonetheless.

Terry, who is normally gregarious by nature, has long been frustrated by having to stay at home in various modes of solitude for nearly two years, so he reveled in the chance to do his Johnny Cash impressions with me and play some air guitar. Cecile danced and sang with delight when we sang “Felice Navidad.” Mark kept a killer backbeat with both hands and feet when I played Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” And silent Eric smiled serenely and encouraged me to play a few of his favorite gentle songs. It was holy ground – I left each home feeling fortified and blessed – mostly because I waited and listened and trusted my heart that said: I don’t really know what to do right now so just show up. On the way home it was clear that my visits didn’t bring the pandemic to an end. It didn’t heal any of our political divides nor ease the mess in the environment. It was, in fact, a very small blessing – but a blessing nonetheless– that gave us all a little more strength to do it one more time, one day at a time.

When I got home from Ottawa a FB memory reminded me that last Christmas Eve I shared a homily on Zoom with the community while we were still struggling to get our heads around sheltering in place and what the solitude it enforced might mean for us. I said in part:

As I join you all in praying, wishing, hoping, social distancing, masking,
and hand-washing that this dark time of disease will be over soon, I am aware that in ways that are mysterious and far greater than my understanding, the contagion is showing me just how much we are like the vul-nerable Christ Child born this night in the city of David as our Savior. What I mean is that God came into the world for us as a baby – a small, helpless child born into a cold night to humble parents who were trying to make sense of life in a nation occupied by a cruel and demanding invading army – and this wasn’t an accident. For this infant to thrive, it was essential that some-one held and caressed him, loved and clothed him, changed his messy diapers, sang to him, fed and nurtured him because he couldn’t do it himself. The smallness of the one we call Messiah was not an accident…

God is telling us a surprising truth about the blessings and responsibilities of being real. You see, the Christ Child makes clear that God is found in what is small, what is weak, what is hidden. Fr. Henri Nouwen, who spent his last years in community at L’Arche Daybreak in Toronto used to say that most of us look for the Lord in big, impressive, and loud happenings that document power. We expect God to show up in “spectacles, power plays, significant and extraordinary events” that will change the course of history in their grandiosity. We, ourselves, are often taken-in by wealth, prestige, and sparkling things that glitter and shine. We can be so easily distracted. Perhaps that is why God chose to come to us as a small child of Palestinian peasants in an insignificant stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. This way we see that God’s kingdom is humble, simple, small, and very vulnerable. One of the gifts and surprises from Jesus is that he shows up for us in the most unlikely little places – and if we refuse to look for holy in what is small, Fr. Nouwen adds, we will likely give-in to despair.

Almost a year later it dawned on me that even back then I was hearing something of Christ’s blessing in the uncertainty of our confusion and anxiety. “I really don’t know” can be a liberating prayer – and here’s why. Do you recall what Jesus asked of his friends whenever he was confronted with uncertainty? Consistently he told them: abide with me. Stay close to me in prayer, stay connected to one another in tenderness, and trust that God is in charge so you don’t have to be. This became one of the Jesus movement’s charism after the Cross when one calamity that could not be changed followed another. Abide in me. Rest and trust in my love. Nothing grandiose. Just a humble call to hold one another in the moment and do so with love.

That’s what Jesus asked of his friends as he headed towards the Cross. That’s what St. John of Patmos wrote in the final book of the Bible that promises a new heaven and a new earth as we abide. That’s what Mary Magdalene taught the disciples in her extra-canonical gospel. And it is what I have heard from pastors in Syria during the bombing, from those who resisted the Nazis in WWII, the liberation theology Christians communities facing persecution and danger throughout Latin America, indigenous men and women confronting the genocide of our founders, coal miners and farm workers fighting to build a union, suffragettes struggling to win the vote, civil rights activists helping us all live into a more perfect union, peace-makers the world over, as well as my friends at L’Arche Ottawa: hold on to one another. Show up. Sing. Pray. Feast. Weep. Celebrate. And dance in THIS moment. Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount: Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Stay grounded in today – and that’s enough.

That’s all we can really do anyhow, right? Especially when uncertainty prevails. Jesus asks us to abide in him and hold one another in love.. St. Mary Oliver condensed Christ’s teaching like this:

you must be able to do three things to live in this world:
to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

I’m thinking that one way we could hold on and abide as we enter Advent together would be to use a study guide based on the Advent texts and some of St. Mary Oliver’s poems? Last year, we did a Celtic series, and I would love to do another with you. Let me know if you like that idea. Send me a note because there is so much to love – and so much to relinquish, too. As I was finally finishing up these words yesterday, I saw that a rabbi colleague and friend wrapped up her Sabbath reflection like this:

I wonder whether we will look back on these years as the end of something, or the end of many things. The end of when we could have stopped the global warming juggernaut, the end of the myth that "red" and "blue" America actually understand each other – or even want to try. I think about climate grief and rising authoritarianism and mistrust. And I'm so ready for Shabbat, for 25 hours of setting worries aside. All I can do is trust that when I make Havdalah – (the ritual that closes Shabbat and marks the end of our intentional separation from work and worry) – I'll be ready to pick up the work again – and that the fallen leaves in these hills will sustain growth I can't yet know.

Right now I want to trust this spirituality of uncertainty, saying simply: “I really don’t know” as a prayer. It feels real and honest. Clearly, there will always be wars and rumors of war. There’s still work to be done so that our home on Mother Earth can be healed and respected, too. And God knows chaos and darkness continues to swirl within and among us. So, as the rabbi, the earth, our hearts, the autumn leaves, and Jesus tell us: it’s time to abide – to trust that for this day and this day alone – it is sufficient.

So, take off your thirsty boots and stay for a while
Your feet are hot and wary from a dusty mile
And maybe I can make you laugh, maybe I can try
I’m just lookin’ for the evening, the morning, in your eyes.