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Month: September 2005

the malice that lies hidden within us …

the malice that lies hidden within us …

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From The Christian Century magazine:

THE MIND OF THE BEHOLDER: Racist intent is often hard to prove, but what else explains why two similar photos distributed by the Associated Press (August 30) received very different captions? One photo shows a black male wading through chest-deep floodwater in New Orleans; the caption says he has just finished “looting a grocery store.” A similar photo of a white man and woman has a caption that says they were wading in water after “finding” food at a grocery store.

words with(out) meaning

words with(out) meaning

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So much of language is just “fill” … words to fill empty space, words to comply with the rules and expectations of social interaction, words to avoid an awkward silence, words to avoid a more threatening eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul contact. We have to use so many words just to get through a day, words not well thought out, revealing nothing particularly profound, revealing nothing much of what is “really real” about ourselves.

And yet, even these “throwaway” words carry meaning. Even these “lightweight” words make a real and valued and valuable connection to another human being. The words we may “toss off” may well be received as a true gift and a blessing.

The same is true of the language of prayer. So much of my praying to God may be “going through the motions,” words to comply with the rules and expectations of a viable faith, praying so as to be able to say I have prayed. Not well thought out, not particularly focussed, not fully engaged.

And yet … To have prayed, however we have prayed, is to have made a real connection to the living God, a connection I dare say that brings delight to God and untold blessing to us.

So pray! Don’t wait for the right time or the right words or the right mood. Just talk to God. And when you do, those startling moments of profound self-revelation and unexpected intimacy that happen from time to time in your human conversations will happen too in your conversation with God.

So much of language is “fill” …… but not all of it!

genuine faith

genuine faith

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Genuine faith can be such an elusive thing …

So much of what we believe derives from childhood experiences, from our parents’ faith or lack of it. We “inherit” our faith just as we inherit so much of what we think and feel and believe. Or we learn when we are young to despise or distrust the protestations of faith that seem so disingenuous. We want to be like mom or like dad, or we want to be anything but like mom or like dad.

Faith can be a hedge against fear or doubt, a way to avoid staring into the emptiness … of a vast and incomprehensible universe, or of a dark and incomprehensible soul. Faith can be a security blanket, a means of cobbling a sense of order onto the chaos of our lives. Faith can be a tool of denial, a means of avoiding questions and bypassing uncertainty.

Faith can be a wall, a wall to stand between us and our shame, a wall to stand between us and those parts of ourselves that baffle us and frighten us and resist our control.

Faith can derive from so many different roots and thrive for so many different reasons. Which makes it all the more amazing, truly amazing, that genuine faith does exist among us! Faith that is unselfish, that is humble, that seeks above all else simply to honor God and follow where God leads. Faith that knows itself, that knows its weaknesses and fragility and acknowledges them. Faith that is teachable and agile and always enlarging. Faith that does not have to have all the answers because the presence of God is answer enough. Faith that does not have to maintain control, because it knows enough to know that it can’t. Faith that is gentle. faith that listens … to God and to other human beings. Faith that is full of joy, not because all is well or all is in order, but simply because God is. Simply because God is …

Genuine faith is such an elusive thing. But it does exist … and it is a beautiful thing indeed!

just enough

just enough

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Is it sinful to spend money on yourself? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to spend money only on yourself? Yes, I do think so …

Is it sinful to want more than you have? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to be ungrateful for what you do have? Yes, I do think so …

The gospel is about grace, about freedom, about freely enjoying the blessings of this world and sharing freely them, about living day to day without anxiety and with generosity. Things, money, wealth may come and go; let them! We cannot serve both God and wealth. We make an idol of wealth both by having to have it and by having not to have it! If we are preoccupied with accumulating wealth or preoccupied with guilt about having “too much,” in either case, we are preoccupied with things and not occupied with serving God.

Paul knew the secret, the secret of always having “just enough.” The secret is Christ. Having Christ is enough.

    I know what it is to be in need and what it is to have more than enough. I have learned this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.
unexpected pleasures

unexpected pleasures

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No life is entirely planned. Some of us are well-displined and well-organized, living structured and carefully measured lives. Others of us are impulsive or indecisive, living rather chaotic lives. But to all of us — disciplined or not, well-organized or not — unexpected things happen. And it is often the unexpected pleasures that are the sweetest.

The grace of God is an unexpected pleasure …

a “natural” disaster?

a “natural” disaster?

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Among the letters read on air today during NPR’s Morning Edition program was a letter from an Arizona correspondent objecting to an NPR story that cited the disproportional effects of hurricane Katrina on people of color and people of low income. He wrote: New Orleans is a sandcastle built at low tide … The storm did not discriminate on the basis of race or class.

Absolutely right. The storm did not discriminate. People discriminate! And discrimination did lead directly to greater suffering in the aftermath of the storm among people of color and people of low income. Poverty means you live in homes less ready to withstand the damaging effects of wind and in places less protected from the damaging effects of water. Poverty means when they say Get out, you don’t have the means to get out or a place to get out to. Poverty means when disaster does strike you have fewer resources with which to mitigate its effects, fewer resources with which to rebuild your life. You don’t have health insurance, homeowner’s insurance, savings accounts.

Poverty means when help is mobilized, you aren’t high on the priority list. A classmate of mine who works for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta noted that Charity Hospital, a large New Orleans hospital serving the low income community, was not evacuated until two days after their generators ran out of gas. He writes:

    The flood forced them to retreat vertically, crowding the patients into the upper floors. After the generators ran out of gas, around day 3, the mechanical ventilators and dialysis machines also quit. They tried to ventilate the patients who needed it by hand squeezing rubber bags attached to their trache tubes by hand; a number of the patients died. Patients who needed dialysis also died; there is no way to do that without electricity. The staff faced a new and awful problem – what to do with the growing number of corpses. The morgue was out of commission, the hospital wards were overflowing. They decided they had no other option than to float the dead out into the flood waters. It hurt like hell, but they saw no other choice … They had to focus on saving the living as best they could. I do not blame them. I still cannot fathom what delayed the rescue effort for 5 days, but I think we as a nation have to find out, if we want to salvage our membership in the civilized world.

Meanwhile, high priced Ochsner Clinic Hospital was evacuated almost immediately …

It is our shame that we ignore the devastating effects of poverty among our own neighbors until something like Katrina “lifts the covers” for a moment and forces us to look. It is our shame that we support programs and elect leaders that protect our own interests rather than the common interest. It is our shame that our hearts are moved by the specter of a great natural disaster, but unmoved by the great unnatural disaster that plagues our nation every day.