vitalwholeness

We all cherry pick from the larger Christian canon of scriptures. We choose our favorites, usually the ones that confirm something we already believe. When done extensively, we form a smaller “canon within the canon,” a Bible within the Bible. Entire Christian movements rest on one portion of scripture or another, which makes debate about what is central to the faith so difficult; we appeal to different authority sources.

Of course, I do it, too. And in fact, it is necessary. We actually need to establish a hierarchy of truth within and among the scriptures because they often come into conflict. One highest authority must be identified to curate all the rest. For one it might be the justice teachings of the prophets. For another the teachings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Another may appeal to the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I know people, however, who define their entire theology with no more than three or four disparate scriptural verses.

What I would like to suggest today, in light of varied responses to COVID-19, is that the Religious Right actually read the apostle Paul. Of course, they narrowly quote him quite often, even as they ignore extensive sections of his letters that don’t settle well with what they already believe. It’s time for these Bible believing souls to stop avoiding the writing of their star apostle, Paul, and read all of him.

A good place to begin is with his first letter to the Corinthian community (which we discover is actually his second). This occasional letter is sent to a community ensconced in great conflict. They had divided into factions based on loyalties to particular leaders. Paul wisely counseled that they should seek a more excellent way and let go of their false alliances.

One of those factions was comprised of people who claimed a higher or superior spirituality. They claimed special knowledge or wisdom. And this position of spiritual superiority led to pride, which is always damaging to the community.

Temples to a pantheon of gods existed in this Roman outpost and a regular part of that worship included burnt animal sacrifices. This would have been taboo for Christians, of course, because it smacked of idolatry. The interesting thing is that they always burned just a portion of the animal, retaining the majority of it for the market. Call it a blue light special or a discount rack for meat already offered to idols. For some Christians eating this meat was tantamount to cavorting with false gods, a tainted meal that corrupted as much as it was corrupted.

But not for the superior knowledge people. They knew that those gods were figments of the imagination, a nothing among nothings. And so the meat offered to something unreal was not tainted at all. Their superior wisdom led them to a cavalier approach to eating this meat. But for their less enlightened brothers and sisters this represented something that threatened the foundations of their faith.

As far as theology goes, Paul was more aligned with the enlightened bunch. He didn’t believe in the real substance of those idols either. The meat offered to imaginary idols represented no ethical dilemma for him. But to his enlightened friends he offered some  shocking counsel.

Not everyone is where you are. For many of your brothers or sisters this is a deal-breaker. So hear this:

“Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” (I Cor 8:9) Your actions, based in your supposedly superior philosophy or spirituality, may actually do harm. “So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.” (I Cor 8:11) And if you are harming them you are violating Christ’s way of love.

And what is the prescription?

“Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.” (I Cor 8:13)

The transferable ethical principle is clear enough:  Even though the thing or practice represents no threat to me personally, I will, for the sake of love of brother and sister, voluntarily limit my freedom for the good of the many.

In the Christian way of love, my personal freedom is secondary to the law of love.

In the time of a pandemic a Christian soul should inquire after what is the most loving thing to do for the most people. One asks what behavior of mine might harm a brother or sister or cause them to stumble. One asks what personal freedoms should I voluntarily relinquish for the sake of the greater good. One asks how our behavior, though seemingly not a threat to us directly, might be a threat to others who are more vulnerable.

And that’s why the Christian Right should read all of Paul, especially I Corinthians 8.

The greatest Christian questions of our time do not revolve around the exercise of rights – whether my Christian college should be able to meet when social distancing is essential, whether I should limit my movement in social spaces, and even whether I should resist the very health practices that will restore our society and world to health because of personal hardship for me.

We all experience hardship and compassionate societies help those who are passing through those waters to make it through.

Rather, Christians should avoid exemplifying the worst of the “knowledge party” in the Corinthian community, the party that insisted that the exercise of their rights or freedom was more important than the well-being of the neighbor.

Christian young people should read I Corinthians 8 and conclude the obvious: “If my gathering in large groups on spring break or at the mega church or at the university or on the beach causes my neighbor to stumble, then I will not engage in that for their sake.”

Christian virtue is not demonstrated by converging on cities closed for the public good and shouting about their rights to go buy lawn fertilizer at the hardware store. Buying lawn fertilizer is not more important that your grandmother’s health and possible death. Real Christian love doesn’t do that. Real Christian love limits personal freedoms for the sake of the vulnerable, like the Paul’s Corinthians who could refuse to eat meat offered to idols even if they knew it didn’t mean a thing. All for the sake of the other.

Imagine the Christian teaching and influence that could take place on the part of Christian college presidents, high profile pastors of evangelical churches, and supposedly pro-life movements, if they took this ethical principle embedded in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian community seriously.

The world might even look on and conclude that there actually is something to this Christian thing, that it is not just one more group using its power to get what it wants.

And now for the first installment of … Stories at Six Feet (stories shared and received at the minimum physical margin):

Today we walked the KATY trail amid soft sunshine and a gentle breeze, the river flowing like it didn’t have a problem in the world, which of course it doesn’t. We met friends on a similar walk and started swapping stories. His was much more interesting.

When he was a little boy he lived in England and was about six years old as the 2nd World War drew to a close. It was Christmas eve and the family was gathered in the living room making merry. They were surprised by a knock at the door. When they opened the door they looked out upon an American soldier who had just pulled up in a jeep. He was holding a gas can. The soldier asked if they knew where he could get some petrol. The young man’s father said that they could go down the way about two blocks because there was a station on the corner. “It’s closed now,” said his father, “but if you knock on the door the owner is a good man and he’ll open up and fill your can.”

Just before the soldier went back to the jeep he pointed to a German officer sitting in the jeep and asked, “Could you please watch over him while I get the gas? He’s in custody.”

The parents looked at each other for a moment and then his mother said, “Well, of course, he can stay with us while you are running your errand. Invite him in.” And he did come in. The German soldier looked on as the family decorated for Christmas, putting out presents and preparing the Christmas treats.

When it came time to light the candles on the tree they invited the German officer to help light them and he did.

“Mind you, I was just six years old, but I have this memory of lighting the candles on the tree and this German soldier in his full dress uniform bending down and lighting the bottom tier of candles, smiling as he did so.”

Pretty soon the GI returned with his jeep, mission accomplished, gas in the tank.

“When it was time for the German officer to leave,” my senior friend continued, “he opened the door, turned to face us, clicked his boot heels together, and tipped the bill of his hat in a quick bow. We watched him drive away into the snowy night and after shutting the door we sang Christmas carols.”

Memory is a funny thing. The farther you are away from the events the foggier the outlines of the story. On the other hand, some features and images become more vivid and distinct. That’s how it is for me as I traveled back to the memory I dreamed about last night.

It really was years ago, back when I was a young man with a young man’s life. For a time I lived and worked in a county seat town as the pastor of a medium sized church. I was the only minister, surrounded by a few part time support staff. And being the chief cook and bottle washer is a fine way to understand all the facets of a place and learn how it all works.

This little town had and has a wide variety of people occupying different stations in life. There are locals who’ve lived there forever. Infrastructure people like teachers who moved in to provide social services. Retirees move to this town and tourists show up during certain times of the year. The well-heeled ones build a second home there or buy a condo, keeping their first homes in the city. It’s all there, mashed up together. Which is another reason that it is a good place for a young man to test his wings.

One day I received a call – and this is the foggy part – from a daughter whose father was ready to be baptized. I didn’t know them from Adam. It was a cold call. But I agreed to come out to their house where Papa was spending his final days in his dying bed. If that phone call was foggy, the arrival at the single-wide trailer up the county road was not. Long before the time of GPS, I navigated by landmarks: just past the country church, on the left, before the Y in the road. After I pulled up and parked the car, I walked through dogs and rusting equipment to the wooden front steps.

The eldest daughter answered the door, and after some niceties she invited me in. It was a small, dark living room and a velvet picture of Elvis hung on the wall over the couch.

“You can come on back, Papa’s ready,” she said. And she led me through the narrow hallway to the back bedroom where Papa was. He smiled when I came in and patted the side of the bed for me to sit down. He was propped up against a few pillows. And after we we talked about life, the end of life, lasting things, eternal things, daughter brought in a basin of water with a towel.

After I poured the water over his old, bald, wrinkly head, water mixed with words about Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he kept his eyes closed for the longest time. We said a prayer and before long I was walking back through the dogs and equipment to my car.

Perhaps a week later I received another call. It was the eldest daughter again. Papa had died. Would I do the funeral?

We met at the cemetery beside the country church I passed the first time I visited them. There was the mortuary tent over the grave and the row of folding chairs. I don’t even remember what I said because it was probably many of the same scriptures and prayers always used at such occasions, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But what I do remember happened afterwards.

After the ceremony itself, people started moving away from the grave, taking flowers, meeting in little groups and chatting. All except one, the eldest daughter who had called me the first time, and the second time, who welcomed me into the living room and brought the basin of water and towel to Papa in the bedroom. She remained, sitting quietly, looking at the casket, her shoulders lifting in perfect rhythm with her quiet sobs. The rest of the family seemed to know that she needed to be there, by herself.

In time, a young granddaughter, maybe six or seven years old, moved in front of her grandmother and just stood there, waiting to be noticed. In a moment, this oldest daughter of Papa looked up into the eyes of her granddaughter and embraced her. She wept as she clutched her small shoulders. This granddaughter did not recoil. She did not move. She made herself entirely, perfectly available to her grandmother weeping for loss of her father.

This eldest daughter of Papa held her granddaughter as though embracing her own soul. Perhaps she was doing exactly that.

As I headed out today for an extended ride on the trusty motorcycle (my favorite form of social distancing) I asked myself one question and it circled inside my brain through the entire trip: In light of this social liminality through which we are now passing, what’s going to change forever when we get to the other side?

The thing about liminality is that the former structure has disappeared or flattened or been suspended during the time of confusion, ambiguity and lack of coordinates. We’ve never been here before. The gift of the liminal period is the revealing of a future, or at least a glimmering of what a future could be. Interruptions provide enforced pause. And transitional pauses often hold the clues as to what’s next.

No one really knows, of course, unless we could travel to the future and back. But some prognosticators guess. If visionaries know human nature and discern large patterns well, the guesses are often on the mark, or at least close.

Back in 2006 Tom Friedman wrote a worldview busting book entitled The World is Flat. It was mostly about how the changes of globalization were sending everyone back to zero, leveling the playing field. In so many ways he was right. He discerned the big patterns and where they were heading.

The year is now 2020 and we are barely into this liminal period of the Coronavirus. People are just now getting over the shock of the changes imposed upon us. We are preoccupied with survival and dodging the bullet. But for those so inclined, it’s not too soon to wonder how we will become different as a result. Though I have no crystal ball, I do have some inklings. And inklings often become true.

It’s my guess, according to the way things have changed and revealed certain things about ourselves, that we will see some of these things in our future:

The continuing trend of urbanization and the rush to the cities may reverse, with people choosing to live in decentralized, smaller communities, towns and rural places. The presence of online communication and broadened transportation will allow many to work from home or partially from home and businesses will accommodate. Certain cities will still remain the center of commerce and the arts, for example, but not everyone needs to live there. More and more we will structure ourselves as networks of smaller living communities.

Education on all levels will diversify, including face-to-face interaction and growing online learning. The present crisis has forced adaptation and this forced change will be reflected in continuing use of those tools. In the future that will include projected holograms in real time virtual classrooms. We will be there and be together learning differently. The tools are already there. They will be extended and refined.

Our politics will become increasingly pragmatic, searching for solutions beyond the ideological. The more that the society moves away from ideological motives and toward the practical, leaders will be chosen for expertise in accomplishing ends and creating governance to serve the entire populous. Constitutional democracy will wage a battle for existence as pan-national movements of autocracies will attempt to remove them.

Meta-threats to planetary existence will move us toward international cooperation again. The recent pandemic reminds us that certain challenges transcend national solutions. Worldwide health challenges and addressing the environment are only the most conspicuous things that require international response. A new effort at collaboration will address multiple factors that affect all of the earth’s inhabitants, including food security, health, and education.

Access to health care will not be seen as optional but rather necessary for all citizens. What the pandemic revealed in stark relief was what happens to people in urgent times without health care or health insurance. For those whose health insurance was tied to employment and lost their jobs, they suddenly lost their health insurance as well. In the future, access to healthcare will be provided to all citizens through a variety of ways.

The economy will balance out into a combination of free market/common good programs. We in the United States already have a hybrid economy. What the crisis revealed was that there is a place for muscular government to step in when needed and that some needs in our time for a country our size are best met in the free market and others are best met in programs for the common good.

People will rediscover the importance of government, its servants and expertise. A responsive, skilled, and robust government will partner with all levels of the society to pursue common ends: Federal, state, municipal government; not-for-profits; the private sector and corporations. All working together, each functioning where is is most effective and efficient.

Religion and Spirituality will continue to shift, change and express itself differently. This recent crisis only solidifies the process that has already been in motion. A diversity of faith and non-faith expressions will multiply outside of traditional communities, beliefs and practices. The information explosion as set loose a planetary, timeless, geographically boundless access to the expression of our deepest aspirations. Much will take place in cyberspace and in micro communities of common cause.

Commerce will expand its online ordering and shipping capacity. Face to face services will continue but in different forms. With ready acceptance of online reality – including the arts – the public will adapt to paying for what has been assumed to be free; fees or contributions for online concerts, lectures, services. This will multiply and grow.

We will develop enlarged and focused government instrumentalities to respond to pandemics and disasters. In the same way that the Department of Defense is prepared to fend off national military threats and Homeland security addresses security threats, so we will establish a more coordinated office and network of states to forecast chaos events, collaborate with other countries, activate response among the states, and establish and maintain stockpiles of needed equipment and reserve personnel for such emergencies.

Neighbors will rediscover neighbors in micro-communities and come to one another’s aid. One of the great learnings from disasters is that the best impulses of human community are often released during times of greatest threat. Caring for one’s neighbor in times of great threat is part of the herd’s natural inclination for survival. Moving into close care in smaller communities makes that more available. Combined with national responsiveness during overwhelming disaster, micro communities provide maximum coverage.

Because we had to slow down we discovered what slowing down will give us. If there is one thing that has contributed to American angst and depression and overwhelming stress that has led us toward un-health, it is the frenetic, driven, crazy pace of life. It is by slowing down that we will catch up. Doing less with more is therapeutic. Slow shops, slow church, slow family, slow urban markets, slow and unhurried education – will create more good than anything we could have chosen for ourselves. Ironically, through the worst, it was chosen for us.

There is a difference between information and wisdom. The information explosion has saturated us through infinite web pages and unending streams of social media. We have not become wiser by drinking through this fire hose. We have become overwhelmed. Our children do not know how to discern the difference between timeless truth and temporary opinion. And we have been entertained to death. We have become sensory junkies. The coming of the slow quiet reminds us of the “deep down things.” Slow down. Listen. Go deep. Love. Make justice in ways that matter. Don’t confuse the secondary with the primary. Embrace neighbor. Wonder at the spectacular beauty. Praise your God.

***

All good rides come to an end sometime and this one did as well. How beautiful it was. How free and fresh. What a world we temporarily pass through. Worry not about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry for itself. But rather seek the reign of the Spirit in and among you. And it shall appear.

My hard-working electrician dropped by today to work on an outside project. Mindful of our distance, we chatted each other up, especially as regards the pandemic and who we know that has been affected. He has family in the health care sector working directly with patients. They are lacking the most basic resources for handling the demands of the Coronavirus. At the moment, his family who are medical personnel are being rationed one protective mask a day. Respirators are far and few between. At the moment, tests are unavailable..

We have no idea what the political leanings of the other is and it didn’t seem to matter. Two guys in the driveway talked about the future and what we could learn from all this. He smiled and said,

“People are funny, they usually don’t change unless they have to. Well, now we have to.”

Nothing truer could have been said. And in the span of twenty minutes we talked about what seemed to be obvious. The summary is something like this:

Pandemics are threats that equal and probably exceed national military threats. The only way to deal with them in the future is preparedness. It’s not acceptable to wait for the worst to come and then scramble to pull together a response. If our military preparedness at home and abroad includes personnel, weaponry, bases, ships, planes, and the intelligence and command apparatus to coordinate it all, why in the world would we not have a standing system of equal power to address pandemics?

We need a national command center vested with pandemic vigilance. This command center would not only be connected to a network of response centers across the nation, but also with international partners. Viruses are no respecters of national borders. An effective response must be an international one – with monitoring and collaboration. The US could lead the way by forming a kind of NATO for pandemics in our own time.

It needs to be enacted and funded by Congress so that it can’t be neglected, ignored or disbanded by any future administration.

It needs to be lodged in a reasonable organizational home. The Pentagon comes to mind. In relation to national health services. Related to national homeland security and intelligence services.

In the same way that the National Guard is on standby, distributed through all our states, ready to activate and deploy when needed, so a Pandemic Guard or Reserve must be ready, equipped and empowered to respond in a moment’s notice. We need relevant and current stockpiles of needed supplies throughout the country. They can deploy military-type portable hospitals when necessary.

There is no reason that a country of our capacity cannot do this. And though one never defeats a pandemic virus like a conventional enemy, we can protect ourselves in meaningful and quick ways, minimizing the damage and returning to ongoing life in reasonably quick ways.

This is one of those legitimate and necessary functions of a government. We can do it and in a bi-partisan way. And strangely enough, an initiative like this might be the kind of unifying thing that pulls nations together in common cause, a mutually beneficial international thrust that is more worthy of our time, personnel and resources than wasting those same things making war on one another.

At least, that’s what my electrician and I think.

It’s not easy to make the best guacamole dip in the universe. Even if you have the perfect avocado and limes. Because there’s stiff competition out there. Just remember those transcendent moments when the chef brought the fixings right to table-side and smashed up all the perfect ingredients right before your eyes. You could barely restrain yourself from snatching the mixing bowl right out of his hands. Now that’s competition.

So maybe the guacamole I made from scratch recently was not the best in the universe. But it was good enough. When the time came to plunge in I opened the chip bag and peered inside, searching for a volunteer. Which one would step forward and say, “Private Dorito, Sir!”

I had my eye on one, thickly cut, perfectly curved chip. This chip was just bred for durability. I reached in and retrieved the one to the exclusion of all others. It felt good in the hand. Like the feel of a perfectly shaped pencil or baseball or flute, the touch revealing as much as anything. I knew in a micro-second that the chip was made for plumbing the depths of guacamole splendor. As the edge of the chip broke the semi-slimy surface all was proceeding as expected. But then, upon extraction, when reverse tension exerted itself on the chip, it buckled and broke in two. And fragments were left drowning in the green swamp, left to fend for themselves.

What began in such a promising way ended in Dorito shame. Of course, there was no point in cursing the gods for this moment of dashed hopes. The gods had not ordained the outcome of the chip disaster because, well, they have other more important things that preoccupy them. What did determine its outcome was a slender and hidden fault-line beneath the surface of the chip. This is the Achilles heel of chipdom; little hairline fractures undetectable to the naked eye.

Appearances can be deceiving and they do deceive with some regularity. What seems to be strong is actually weak. A popular preference for shape and size proves to be disappointing. One cannot always trust one’s eyes because what is false is often presented as trustworthy. The first round draft chip may not survive the day.

People, groups and even nations are that way. Invisible fractures break when they are placed under just the right pressure. Appearances fool us because we can’t see the end of a story sleeping beneath its surface in the present. Political candidates and elected leaders buckle, sometimes under their own tension. And like the camel, something as light as a straw may finally, one day, break the hidden fault-line.

Part of our problem is that we expect a world that is always firm, always sturdy, like a fortress never failing. But except for the mighty fortress of the eternal, most of that expectation is misplaced; there’s not one thing that isn’t about to move from chip to crumbs.

So the next time you choose your first-string chips, don’t expect them to be perfect. Make sure you have a deep bench. And don’t neglect the rather ordinary fellow in the back of the bag, the one that isn’t the biggest or doesn’t appear the strongest. This free agent may end up being the star. Because in the divine economy of the universe, the most humble and ordinary chip may actually be the greatest and the one that seems to the greatest is really the most flawed and destined to crumble. Regardless of whether the guacamole is or is not the best in the universe.

When I say that I’m going to talk about reading a book I have to full stop and remember to define:

A book is the thing developed throughout the cultural process as oral story become translated into physical symbols, scratched on a parchment or velum with ink or a clay tablet with a stylus so that it could be passed from one person to another, one generation to another. People have been etching their stories into rocks and cave walls for as long as their brains were big enough for it to matter.

Soon enough the parchments were bound into codexes and books with spines. After the printing press came around the process got much easier and faster. Today, electronic transference of files sends manuscripts to printers thousands of miles away and whips out copies that are shipped anywhere.

People still hold these odd compilations of paper with writing on them in their hands. Even though our minds are being twisted to think in electronic, chopped up fragments and characters, many people still enjoy the experience of reading books. Not just a newspaper or magazine. Entire books. Against all odds, people want to open a cover and start a story, read the poetry, discover the history, explore their faith, fly with the fantasy that one or more people thought should be confined to several hundred pages. Something with a beginning and an end. People still do it.

After children’s books, I remember the first novel I read as a young adult. The first one. At the time it seemed like I was hiking around an unknown lake through the mist. But then I finished it. And started the next one. That, I suppose, was the beginning of an addiction and the reason a pile of to-be-read books always stares at me from my side table. And what I discovered later is that you cannot write a word unless you’ve read a word, lots of words.

So, on to reading a book. After you’ve passed the several hundred mark of books you’ve read you realize that you approach a book like a curious detective. No matter if the book is fiction, non-fiction, poetry, an anthology of several authors, you want to know what this thing is. You want to know the author or authors. If it’s historical you want to know just where that history is set. If it’s fiction you want to know what realm you are investigating.

Because you’ve done it before, you have an idea how long it will take, but not always, because books can fool you. Some are ponderous and you spend hours musing on imponderables. And then again there are the breeze-right-through books that take you on a wild ride and they are done before you started, leaving you wanting for more.

Some books will wait for you. By that I mean you can impolitely walk away, take a break, return and pick it up and start in where you left off with hardly any effort. Other books require your soul and they become resentful when you put them down. They are jealous of your time. They demand you make a choice; it’s either them or nothing. Like temperamental lovers, they are often the best ones.

Don’t become too impatient too fast. Really good storytellers warm you up at the beginning. No rush. Lay it out one piece at a time. Don’t hurry the punch line. And just when you think you might lose interest and wonder where it’s going the strings tie together and you are in the clutches of the spider who wrapped you in her web. Just wait.

Of course you have to be willing to enter the mind of the author, the character, the reader that is you in that world. It’s a form of surrender to story time. And when someone looks at you reading and suggests that you might do something really important, that’s when you should refrain from killing them on the spot. That’s an impulse that should be controlled.

Some books live with you forever as a separate thing. They have a life of their own. You can quote them, invite a character or two to dinner. Other books are just layered into the collage of book world, added to the thousands of other insights and questions you already have. Some books can’t be understood or understood well when you are too young. Some books require that you suffer a little before they spill their guts to you. And some books require that you read other books first, crawling before you walk.

Books become your friends, enemies, lovers, wise crones, disturbers, revealers, guides and healers. And back behind the page are worlds of thought, imagination and passion that wait like predators to snag unsuspecting victims off of life’s ordinary path. Sometimes you can read too much, too many things at once, pick up the next book too quickly before you’ve fully digested the last one. Some books require space and time to ponder them before the next one demands your attention.

The reason some books become classics and are not found in the bargain book box at Sams is because they are universal in their staying power. They are written well and not all books are. They address the human themes that matter not only for us but for many generations. No matter the strange use of language, the plot rings true, the characters appear as real, and the insights transcendent. Defining what is a classic is often the product of culture or who has the power to do so. But like cream, they often rise to the top. In the Milky Way of books their brightness stands out.

Some things you know only because you do it a lot. And then, like reading a book, that becomes an art. A way of knowing, I suppose. I remember a time when I proudly proclaimed that I wanted to live life not just read about life. How stupid that was. Living life does not preclude also entering a larger world of reading alongside that living. And when we do, when we take up the next title with a sense of adventure and expectation, it is as though we sit in front of a crackling fire, introduce ourselves, and ask, “Now, what do you have to tell me?”