Happy Endings

The headline is potentially deceptive: this blog post is about having reread a favorite novel. No endings to report, happy or otherwise, in my life at the moment. 

Recently I picked up, for the sixth or seventh time, The Nun's Story, by Katherine Hulme, published in 1956. Stop reading here, please, if you do not want to know how the story ends.

The protagonist is a young Belgian woman, the daughter of a respected physician. Set in the 1930s, it begins as she dresses in the clothing of a postulant, about to begin life in the convent.She is educated as a nurse and serves in what is then the Belgian Congo. Ultimately, she finds that she cannot love the German soldiers and finds herself lying and deceiving to protect patients from them. She resigns her vocation, aiming to join the resistance in Belgium. 

Each time that I've read it, it makes me a little wistful that she had to choose, that she had to resign so that she could resist. This time, it didn't make me feel that way. It seemed instead a natural progression of Sister Luke's development as a woman religious. 

The bishop of the ELCA's North Carolina Synod shared this about a month ago:
Remember your vows 

Maybe it was the confluence of this powerful reminder from the bishop of the vows that I made through the church and congregation that called me - and the novel of the nun that I've read before. But this story has touched me differently this time.

When you, when I, when all of us, live with hearts open to the divine breath of the Holy Spirit - what happens in our relationships to one another? Which is always the point.

And Then What Happened?

The book went onto my list of "I want to read that" as soon as I heard about it. The title is Proof of Heaven. I have read several books that are described as true narratives about, or by, people who have been clinically dead and yet survived, including Heaven is for Real. For the most part, I wasn't in the market for another account.

For the most part, I maintain what I like to describe as a skeptical open mind: I believe that while we live, we mirror Christ imperfectly, but that after this part of our journey is over, we experience God in all of God's personae completely. I also believe that a great deal of what goes on neurologically helps us understand what happens when a person is in the act of dying. It's something I have seen more often, perhaps, than some people have.

Proof of Heaven caught my attention because the author, Eben Alexander, is a medical doctor, specifically a neurosurgeon. Now I was very interested. The book was published in 2012, longer ago than I had thought. Recently, an acquaintance lent me a copy, and I am now about halfway through.

First, Dr. Alexander is from my neck of the woods, and names places with which I am well familiar, something I hadn't known. Second, he is an academic neurosurgeon, meaning he teaches as well as practicing. He's good at describing what's going on and what he experienced during his time in a seemingly fatal coma.

I saw the earth as a pale blue dot in the immense blackness of physical space.... Small particles of evil were scattered throughout the universe, but the sum total of all that evil was as a grain of sand on a vast beach compared to the goodness, abundance, hope, and unconditional love in which the universe was literally awash.*

At the same time, I'm re-reading some Carl Sagan books, including Pale Blue Dot, the title of which came from the Pioneer space expedition in which he was involved integrally. Dr. Alexander, along with his engaging description of what was happening medically, is describing his dis-engagement and then re-engagement with spiritual belief. He is insisting on a teaching that "science and religion must agree."**

What happens with my belief in God when science and religion, Sagan and St. Paul, are swirled together? When "for small creatures such as we, the vastness[of the cosmos] is bearable only through love"?***

I neither need nor want scientific evidence of an afterlife. But what happens when I open my mind and my heart and my experiences to the possibilities? My whole world becomes infinitely more vast.

*Proof of Heaven. Eben Alexander, MD. Page 129, Thorndike Press edition.
**"Science and religion must agree" is a fundamental principle of the Baha'i faith.
***Contact. Carl Sagan. Page 385, Gallery Reprint edition.

Where love abides

At what point does the definition of "home" change for the first time? It's a good icebreaker question, if one loaded with privilege. My trajectory, like that of many other people in my generation, was that I completed high school and went to college. I still called it "going home" when I returned to the house in which I'd been brought up. 

It wasn't until after I graduated and got my first newspaper job that paid (at least in theory) that I began to call "home" the crappy little garage apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. 

So how does the definition of "home" change when the household in which you abide is fluid? When the answer to "How long will you stay here?" is "As long as we can."* That's what I mean about privilege in the question.

And how does the definition of "home" change farther along the path of our lives? How does the definition of "home" change when, as my parents do, one lives in the house of 42 years' dwelling and one lives in a nearby facility for assisted living? Where is home then?

Recently, at the request of our fair city, I took a survey about housing accessibility and affordability. It reminded me again how privileged my own household is. 

In my adult life, since graduating undergraduate school, I've had twelve places I called home. Early in our marriage, I listed so many recent residences that the woman on the phone asked if I were in the military. But they were all voluntary moves, most of them job-related. And for the last 25 1/2 years, "home" has been wherever my husband and children are.

Now one of them is living elsewhere, and the definition of "home" has changed for my parents as well. Bottom line, I believe, is that home is where love abides. I'm sure I didn't originate that descriptive, but every one of the several places that I feel at home is a place where I love and am loved. 

*Blue Willow (1976). By Doris Gates. Puffin Books.

Between the Lines

Sunday morning about 6:15. I had run to the Harris Teeter to pick something up and was returning to the car. I'd been able to park near the door but not to pull through, because in this part of the lot, on one side the parking slots are straight and their opposite-number parking slots are angled. It takes a tiny bit of finesse to pull in a straight-on slot and through to an angled slot. 

Normally, I can do that without much trouble. But it happened that this was the second or third time in recent weeks I'd found myself doing a quick Sunday-morning one-item shopping trip, and the second or third time I'd observed a large white pickup truck parked sloppily in a space. This morning, it meant that if I wanted to pull through, I'd have to park a few spaces farther from the door. 

Clucking with irritation, I just parked - without pulling through - and observed to myself (as I had on previous visits) that I wished that people who drove those big pickup trucks were more meticulous about parking. The responsibility was on these drivers to be good stewards of parking slots... wasn't it? Just the other day, maybe even yesterday, I'd been having a conversation with a dear one about the reflexive tendency toward judgment, and how Jesus advises us against it because our judgment redounds on us, yet Saint Paul admits, "The very things I wish to do, I do not do." (Doo-be-doo-be-doo ... Frank Sinatra.)

And also yesterday, because I'd signed up for it, I had read an email from someone who writes on leadership and faith, pointing out that as reflexively as any of us judges (the writer including himself), the way of Jesus points toward restorative justice rather than retributive justice - validating a homiletical position for me.

So... what happened in the parking lot? I vaguely noticed a woman in a work uniform using the self-checkout to buy and bag groceries, a couple of plastic bags' worth. I judged again - not the customer, this time, but my recurring irritation at supermarket chains for using self-checkout as an excuse for convenience that takes away jobs. 

The woman and I left the store about the same time. She was the one getting into the sloppily parked truck. She was moving tiredly ... like someone who had just finished a shift at a physical job, one of manual labor. Something in me reminded me, as I got into my car and prepared (sigh) to back out (because I didn't pull through when I parked, remember?), that here was Christ standing before me in the person of a weary and worn worker about my age.

I pulled back in to the parking space, got out, and approached. She was on her guard, as who wouldn't be, seeing someone start to leave, then park and go up to someone?

Palms out, friendly, I asked if she needed help. Her body relaxed and a tired smile appeared. Sure enough, she was just getting off work, and everything was stiff and ready to go home, but she needed to do the shopping before going to bed. The bed of the truck held work-related stuff.

I sympathized and wished her a good night. She said, automatically, "You too," before correcting it to, "Have a good day." Then we got into our cars/trucks and went our separate ways.

Maybe I was alert to seeing Christ in others because that's my vocation. Maybe I've had lots of training and practice on watching my reflexive judgments. Some of it, I can tell you, is because of an intentional discipline, which has been defined as "a long obedience in the same direction."** But I think a lot of it was because I'd just read that email and had that reflective conversation.
*See Matthew 7:1, also Romans 7:15-20.

 **In searching for the provenance of the term "a long obedience in the same direction," the title of a book by Dr. Eugene Peterson, creator of The Message paraphrase of the Bible, I found Adam Setser's blog post. Read the entry on Nietzsche and Peterson here.

Good Samaritan Laws

I've stopped to offer assistance as a clergyperson. And done so with no expectation of reward, as our state's Good Samaritan law says. The last time was at the end of May. Does that make me a good Samaritan? (Dislike of this nickname on the face of it aside.)

It's so reflexive when we hear the familiar parable to place ourselves in the role of the man who, more than the priest or the Levite, helps someone in need because the person needs help. How does the man left for dead feel about all of this stuff?

It's striking to me -- preparing a sermon on that very parable -- that the laws are colloquially referred to as Good Samaritan laws. That's how woven into our sociocultural fabric is this parable. Parable, from para-, a Greek prefix meaning "alongside," and -balo, tossing a ball, from ballein, meaning "to toss." A parable is a throwing alongside. "Is it true?" thus becomes really difficult to determine.

"What is truth?" Pontius Pilate would challenge Jesus. It is possible that Pilate did not comprehend the question he asked of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

It seems that it is less important whether this parable is something that happened, although - as Dr. Mark Allan Powell would say: "Not everything in the Bible happened, but everything in the Bible is true."* What the throwing-alongside has been showing me of late is both my dislike for the common Scriptural heading, "The Good Samaritan," and Jesus' plea to the lawyer wanting to test him. Do this and live. What does and live mean? Does it not mean to live in the kin-dom, not Kingdom (with its worldly structures and patriarchal connotations), of God right here and right now?**

That might mean that heaven is a completion of the kin-dom of God, rather than a geographic destination. Which brings us back to the unfortunate section heading. These section headings, such as, "The Parable of the Good Samaritan," are something that compilers and editors placed long after the decision-makers chose and ordered the canon of the Bible (the Protestant Bible, with or without the Apocrypha; the Roman Catholic Bible; et cetera). And they long have shaped how we understand and interpret the texts that follow.

Samaritans still worship on Mount Gerazim. They are descended from Assyrians who invaded and conquered Israel, around 586 years before the birth of Jesus. When Jesus answers a question with a question (in the encounter that begins, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?"),*** as he does throughout his conversation with the lawyer that leads to the parable of the man left to die in a ditch, how often do we who craft sermons focus on the offense of the subheading? Maybe the man in the ditch wanted nothing to do with the Samaritan.

Tensions between Samaritans and between people who observe Judaism were high in the time of Jesus, and tensions remain. Not only, "Why do you call me good," perhaps, but also, "Why do you call me a good Samaritan?"

With gratitude to my local clergy colleagues the Revs. John Weinbach, Bernie Hess, and Chris Johnson, particularly Pastor Weinbach, for his insights about section headings.

*Dr. Mark Allan Powell, "How Lutherans Interpret the Bible," a DVD series of six episodes.
**I am unclear where I first heard the term. Most of what I have learned about its provenance is from colleagues who remember where they first heard it.
***Luke 18:18-19, also in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.

The Value of Jade

Where the first plant came from, I have no idea. I know only that I had a sturdy little jade plant in a red-painted pot. I'm reasonably good with plants. 

The plant thrived. It survived even the year that I was doing fieldwork my second year in divinity school, ten hours a week at a local church, and the plant developed some sort of weird white stuff I had to keep brushing off the leaves. It thrived so much that somewhere along the way, I divided it, twice, until I had three big sturdy jade plants on the windowsill of the screened porch of the home where we now live. 

Then I waited a little too late to bring the plants in for the winter. They were done. Even the jade. 

For several years, I've been looking for a jade plant, so I can start again. A week or so ago, a colleague was mentioning that she needed to thin or re-pot ... her jade plant. She graciously let me take home a cutting. I've rooted it in soil, which I've been keeping nicely damp. Approximately every day, I check it. Has it started putting down roots? Who knows. 

For probably three years, I've been searching for a jade plant. Every time I went to a plant nursery, a grocery store with plants for sale, even the drugstores where you can buy those little bamboo plants. Why did I see the jade plant in my colleague's office and get to bring home a cutting?

This colleague has invited me to share with her each workday one of the devotions with which I begin the day. The Moravian Church of North America publishes daily texts, both online and in a book. I live and work deep among the Moravians and thought it would add an ecumenical dimension to my readings; and I do find myself being brought deeper and closer in walking with those texts. 

It was while sharing the text for the day that I spotted the jade plant. The little cutting is in a bright pot on the screened porch because I've begun sharing the daily text with a colleague - a daily text that is easy to share because of how it's structured. Some of the other devotionals that feed my spirit are less so. They drill deep into my soul, but in a different way. 

For the church to survive, to thrive, to spread up and out like a jade plant, how much more nourishing is it when we allow ourselves to be fed by nearby growth from beliefs and ways that are rooted in the same soil?

Showers in the Dark

The reason for taking my morning shower with the light off was that our bathroom is part of an addition to the house. Our home was built in 1957, a basic brick ranch house, with an addition from 1990 that includes a living room, screened porch, and master bedroom with a small bathroom.

The roof on the addition is flat, and it does not include an expansion of the attic. That means no ceiling fan in the bedroom and also nothing drawing the steam of the bathroom up and out. As a result, I sometimes open the bathroom window, which looks over our back yard.

So this morning, stepping into the shower about 5:30, I opened the window, and in an excess of caution, made sure the light was off. You'd have to work at it to see my silhouette in our bathroom, but still. 

Our house faces east; the bathroom, in the back, thus faces west. With the light off, the bathroom was still pretty dark. The shower was uneventful. Afterward, fully covered, I slid the window shut, and in doing so cut off the birdsong that we get routinely in our back yard. 

All of which got me reflecting on functioning in the dark and in the light. Barbara Brown Taylor, writing in her new book, Holy Envy, speaks of the encounter Nicodemus has with Jesus, by night, in the Gospel of John. She suggests that Jesus wants not to enlighten Nicodemus but to "endarken him."*

I use language of darkness and light, of fumbling around compared with moving easily and freely, frequently. Preached on it and probably will again. What happened when I engaged in a routine and intimate act - bathing - in the dark, with the window open, to birdsong?

I would not recommend the act to anyone with issues of balance and mobility. Don't try this at home, everyone. But as a small spiritual discipline, what happens if, on occasion, we take some routine act, from a morning cup of coffee or tea or water to brushing teeth, from hanging clothes in the closet to bagging up garbage ... without turning on the lights? Might we approach the "endarkenment" that Jesus seeks for a fellow teacher?

*Holy Envy, by Barbara Brown Taylor. 2019. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
The encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus is found in the Gospel of John, chapter 3.