38 Too Few Sparrows

Kate and Jessica start this entry with a story I had never heard before of Mao Zedong's "war on the nation's sparrows" because they believed they were eating up too much precious seed grain. So they employed all sorts of tactics that caused the little birds to begin to fall to the ground (page 215). 

"China was victorious in its war, and soon the numbers of live birds had reached extinction levels" (p 216). 

But within a few years, they noticed that the rice harvest had actually decreased without the birds ... because now, all manner of insects and locust plagues were feasting on the crops, making the current famine that much worse. The government actually ended up importing 250,000 birds to put things back in balance. 

Hominem unius libri timeo. "Beware the man of a single book." (p 215) 

Kate and Jessica write, "Perhaps there were too many sparrows. But a single solution was not a solution at all" (p 216). 

The Chinese government narrowed in on the one thing they thought would solve the famine crisis. And it only made things worse. If only they had thought a little longer about this and came up with a few other options. Or perhaps employed multiple tactics simultaneously (maybe ones that didn't include killing massive amounts of God's creatures). 

If only they had consulted more than one book. 

What is the downsized version of this that can be applied to our individual lives?  In what ways do we tend to be people "of a single book?" 

Well, do you tend to listen to news from the same media source all the time? (Do they always tell you what you want to hear or what you think is happening?) Do you only consult the same one friend when you're trying to make a difficult decision? (Do they always confirm what you were already thinking?) 

If you surround yourself with people who look like you and work like you and think like you and believe like you, then you become a person of "a single book." 

"If we are going to be the kind of people who build a more equitable world, work toward peace, and fight for justice, there must be room for anger and lament. But how will we know when we're on the right track? We can search for the signs - there will be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control" (a.k.a. the fruit of the Spirit!).

If we are going to be the kind of people God designed us to be, then change needs to happen, particularly an openness to that which is different from us. From people who are different from us. For solutions that maybe aren't the first ones that come to mind. To be people of "multiple books." 

There is always risk with change and with loving others, but there is a way to know if we're on the right track or not: does it produce the fruit of the Spirit - is it loving and joyful and kind and good and gentle and faithful and self-controlled? 

I suspect you will know sooner rather than later whether a particular change passes that litmus test or not. 

Our hearts are soft, our ears open. Speak, Lord, of the change You desire to write into our life stories as they unfold. For we are gently becoming aware that knowledge will not be the basis for our understanding of how life goes. Love will. (p 218) 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

How do you feel about the suggestion in "A Good Enough Step" on page 219? They talk about "weaponized piety." 

I'm not sure I understand exactly what they mean by that, by "weaponized piety." And I'm also not sure what the point is of asking the two suggested questions either." 

Perhaps I'm just tired, and my brain is out of gas for the day, but I honestly could use some help with this! 

P.S. Look at me asking for help! I've come a long way in the last 15 months! :-) 

37 The In-Between

Liminality is a delicious word. 

Liminality. It's delicious to say. I knew what liminality felt like, but I never knew the textbook definition until the last couple of years. 

According to all-knowing (wink) Wikipedia, liminality ... "In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold")^[1] is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition the status they will hold when the rite is complete.^[2]

Liminality is a person standing at their college graduation ceremony. Or a couple getting married on their wedding day. 

Or humanity living during a global pandemic. 

Kate and/or Jessica quote anthropologist Victor Turner who says that liminality is like being at a threshold - lifting your foot up to enter a room but before you put it down on the other side. "We are at a threshold - something still becoming - but we don't know yet what all the factors are, and how to frame them. We yearn for normalcy only to find that liminality has become our 'new normal'" (p 210). 

We can be in-between all kinds of things: 

• Relationships
• Seasons of independence and dependence 
• Jobs 
• Friends
• The diagnosis and the cure 
• Feeling courageous and feeling afraid 
• The life we have ... and the life we want 

When you're in a liminal space or time, you're unsettled. And a little lost. Feeling a little exposed and vulnerable as you wait for what's next. 

And maybe instead of rushing ahead to "what's next," maybe it's better to linger in the liminality for just a little bit longer. 

"Instead of trying to escape it, let us settle there for the moment. Knowing and trusting we aren't alone. We're in this strange middle place ... together" (p 211). 

Kate and Jessica point out that liminality is all a part of losing our life for Jesus's sake:  “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:37-39) 

Blessed are we, somewhere unnameable, fully present to our reality. Tracking it, with all its subtle gradations and colors and contrasts, the sweetness and the struggle, the stuck and not-quite fitting. (p 212) 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

Liminality is uncomfortable, to be sure. But Kate and Jessica advocate recognizing it when it happens and lingering there for just a bit. 

In their "A Good Enough Step" on page 213, they write, "For one hour, consent to the in-between. Nestle right in there, not knowing anything for sure. Crazy, isn't it? That's not where we are comfortable. But try it for one solid hour. No strainging for answers. Not pushing to land on an idea. Or solve a problem. See if a poem or song fits. ... (They suggest trying Psalm 131.) 

"And if you do happen to get a nudge where something becomes clear, a just-noticeable difference - sometimes the shift comes sideways, the truth that something has changed - receive it. And if not, just read awhile in the unknowing. Because someday we will see things as they really are. You can count on it" (pp 213-214). 

 

36 2:00 A.M. / 2:00 P.M.

"There is no small talk at two o'clock in the morning," writes Kate and/or Jessica in this entry from their book, Good Enough.

Have you ever noticed that? 

Have you ever noticed how you (or others) suddenly say things in the middle of the darkness of night that you would never say during the light of day? And you don't even decide to do it -- it just comes spilling out. 

There are many conversations I wish could happen at 2:00 a.m. that instead happen at 2:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. when we are not our truest selves but instead are wearing the masks we always wear in the light of day - trying to be smart enough, successful enough, likable enough. 

I think there is more truth spoken (for better or for worse) at 2:00 a.m. than at any other time. And pain probably feels more acute at 2:00 a.m. than at any other time too. 

The realization of the difference between the 2:00 p.m. self and the 2:00 a.m. self crystallized for Kate on her middle-of-the-night plane rides for cancer treatments. She began to notice the "hard truth of living, that for many people, carrying on, for days and weeks, and months will feel like an existential struggle to simply keep living. For them, it's always 2:00 a.m."

Especially the woman pretending to wait for a flight but who lives, with her two children, in the airport. 

"Once we know pain, it is like the dark side of the moon. Hidden from view, but every bit as real. The world is full of 2:00 a.m. people. It is me. It is you. So we reach out to hold hands in the dark" (p 207).  

I love that last bit: "So we reach out to hold hands in the dark." Because we're not alone. Even if there's not something sitting next to us, we're not really alone. 

I'm reminded of Frederick Buechner's words (which I used in my sermon from Sunday): “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."[i] 

Blessed are you who see it all now. The terrible, beautiful truth that our world, our lives seem irreparably broken. And you can't unsee it. ... 

May you experience deeper capacity and glimpses of hope, as you continue to see the world as it is. Terrible. Beautiful. Fragile. 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

Check out the "A Good Enough Step" on page 209. 

They call it "dislocated exegesis" - get out of your normal place of reading and see what happens, how the Spirit speaks in a different way. 

Read Isaiah 40:1-26 outside after the sun has sunk over the horizon. 

(Here's a link to 2 versions of the passage, including my favorite, "The Message!") 

Read it once quietly. Then again out loud, slowly. 

What do you notice about the passage? How do your surroundings inform what it means to you? 

---

[i]  https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/9/9/grace

35 When Words Fail

What better entry for us to be reading right now than one that ponders what you do when words fail?

Because, frankly, I struggled mightily with the words for the sermon I'm going to preach later today following the recent spate of shootings, especially the one at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. 

In my weekly email to the church, I confessed that it feels like we're living in a Good Friday world. We're experiencing something akin to what the disciples must have been feeling when they watched Jesus' cold, dead body being laid in the tomb. And again, as they watched him ascend into heaven "to sit at the right hand of God." (Tomorrow is Ascension Sunday.) 

As Jessica and/or Kate write, "There is hope for someday, but someday is not now" (p 200). 

Words often fail - at least, words that are spoken thoughtlessly or carelessly. 

"Perhaps it is here where we might need to learn a new way to pray" (p 200). 

They explain, "It's a way of paying attention that author Marilyn McEntyre calls 'the subtle difference between listening for and listening to.' It's an attitude of readiness without an agenda, an openness to what might come. Of breathing into a possibility of hearing and receiving something new" (p 201). 

Have you ever experienced that kind of prayer, when you listen to God speaking in an unexpected way? 

For me, it's often when I read (listen to) poetry that I hear God speaking. Especially when I listen to Padraig O Tuama's podcast, Poetry Unbound, where he reads and explores a poem that has caught his attention. The number of times what he says speaks to what's on my heart is uncanny. And providential. It's a wonderful gift to receive these kinds of words. 

When my words fail, I turn to the words of others. Especially poets. Especially the psalms. 

Sometimes that takes me out of myself and drops me in another place, kind of like the "forest bathing" Kate and Jessica talk about in "A Good Enough Step" on page 204. It seems so much easier to listen when you're surrounded by something so much more beautiful than anything humans could create. 

"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer."  
-Mother Teresa

Blessed are you in your radical honesty. In the way you speak of your grief (or listen to others speak of their grief) - the long sleepless nights in an empty bed. Of the physical pain you feel - the joints that don't work like they used to, your brain fog or chronic migraines. Blessed are you who speak of your loneliness, the empty home or nest or womb. Who have the audacity to ask for the miracles you need. The healing or a new friend or a redeemed family.

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

I am grateful to Shawnee Mental Health here in Portsmouth for their post on Friday, May 17 because sometimes our words fail because they're not the right words. Here, they offer some alternatives:  

They suggest these alternatives to the question, "How are you doing?" which can be awkward and empty if asked thoughtlessly. 

Why not try ... 

1️⃣ How are you today?

2️⃣ How are you holding up?

3️⃣ I’ve been thinking about you lately. How are you doing?

4️⃣ What’s been on your mind recently?

5️⃣ Is there any type of support you need right now?

6️⃣ Are you anxious about anything? Are you feeling down at all?

A more specific question may garner a more caring interaction. 

34 The Reality-Show Gospel

What exactly is "The Reality-Show Gospel?" 

Kate and Jessica define it as the thing people say when things don't work out the way they expected or hoped, and don't know what else to say. 

And conclude that this negative thing "must bring about something better" (p 195). 

Until it doesn't.  

Until the devastating diagnosis is delivered. Until the divorce papers arrive. Until a friend is killed in a senseless accident (p 195). 

Everything happens for a reason ... until it doesn't. 

When we run out of reasons, they write, we need something else; we need each other. 

"It's so tempting to skip past the difficulty and pain and rush to find a rationale. But in the long pause, there is wisdom. Sometimes a reason isn't readily apparent, or perhaps it's not ours to assign. Job's friends got it right when they offered him the gift of their presence, but not the weight of their reasons" (p 197). 

It's OK to want more than empty cliches when you are hurting. And it's OK to give more than empty cliches to someone when they are hurting. 

Instead, give the gift of presence. (Or receive that gift, as the case may be.) It's part of the "cost of caring" (which we talked about yesterday). 

Blessed are you when you realize you are way out of your depth and you have no idea what to say. Blessed are you, confronted with suffering you can't imagine, but you don't say it. You do not say you can't imagine their pain, because you do want to imagine. YOu want to be there with them, in your heart and mind, imagining what they are feeling and what they might need. (p 198) 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

I love the practice they suggest on page 199 about "What Not to Say to a Friend in Need" and how to practice NOT saying those things for real. 

Empathy and actions - that's what you need to have on hand to give in these situations. Not empty cliches that ring hollow and may even make things worse.