A Song for the Day

"We believe that this world not only passes but has to pass in order to let the new world be born.  We believe that there will never be a moment in our lives in which we can rest in the supposition that there is nothing left to do..."

-Nouwen, pg 72

One of my favorite songs we sang in chapel at YDS is called "God Has Work for Us to Do."  Today's passage from Nouwen put this text in mind - it's by Carl Daw and the music by Mark Miller.

Till all the jails are empty

and all the bellies filled;

till no one hurts or steals or lies,

and no more blood is spilled;

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

Till age and race and gender

no longer separate;

till pulpit, press, and politics

are free of greed and hate;

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

In tenement and mansion,

in factory, farm, and mill,

in boardroom and in billiard-hall,

in wards where time stands still,

in classroom, church, and office,

in shops or on the street;

in ev'ry place where people thrive

or starve or hide or meet;

God has work for us to do.

By sitting at a bedside

to hold pale trembling hands,

by speaking for the powerless

against unjust demands,

by praying through our doing

and singing though we fear,

by trusting that the seed we sow

will bring God's harvest near:

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

Here's a link to a YouTube video of a high school choir singing the song and being directed by Mark A. Miller, the guy who wrote the music and was also the gospel choir director at YDS.  I think they tweaked the text a tad since this video was recorded, but you'll get the idea.  

Happy Friday!

Keeping Score

One of sad and troubling trends in our modern world of competition is the frantic scramble among our high school students to add as many accolades, as many accomplishments, as many unusual interests to their college applications as is humanly possible.  They struggle to be the best in as many sports as they can.  They take SAT classes so as to ace the tests.  They join school clubs so as to have more activities listed on their applications.  They go to the Soup Kitchen because social service is impressive to college admissions offices.  They may head off to Uganda for a summer because it is unusual and interesting and will surely catch the eye of anyone who reads their applications. Too often the rigid and competitive application process drives the kids away from what they really love, to what those colleges want them to be.

God knows the competition for college admission is fierce. God knows competition for any position in the world is fierce.  Try finding a good job these days! We all want to put our best foot forward, of course, and we should do that.  But when it becomes obsessive, when it makes us worried and frantic and sick, something is terribly wrong.

Nouen says that a life without a quiet place, some solitude, can easily become destructive.  We need the time just to "be" - to give ourselves a break, and to look at who are are, not at what the world expects of us, or demands of us.  What do we do well simply because we love doing it?  Maybe gardening is our passion, not the desire to be a nuclear scientist.  Maybe gardening is what we are meant to do, and to do with gusto and passion!

So listen to your heart, and to what God may be whispering to you.  Put away the worldly shoulds and oughts and rest in the knowledge of God's love for the person you are, not the person the world may be shouting for you to be.

Audrey

Henri Nouwen's rich passage for today creates a little map for us...a map with two destinations in mind.

The first is the  knowing of God through God's choice to come to us as a servant, that is seeing God in Jesus' role as a servant. The second destination on the map is that of knowing God through acting as our own most compassionate selves. That is, embracing personal and generous compassion as a "joyful way of life in which our eyes are openend to the vision of a true God who chose the way of servanthood himself."

We often think of servanthood as a burden, one we accept by our desire to help the needful and perhaps change the world, or as a burden we accept because we "should."

Here Nouwen invites us into a Lenten perspective that is fresh and exciting. Here we are reminded that " the poor are not blessed because poverty is good, but beacuse theirs is the kingdom of heaven; the mourners are called blessed not because mourning is good, but beacuse they shall be comforted."

"Here we are touching the profound spiritual truth that service is an expression of the search for God and not just the desire bring about individual or social change."

As we face the St. Alban's Compassion Cross and make our Lenten choices for servanthood...let's take Henri's map in hand looking for God in all our choices.

blessings, and thanks,
 Tim+

Clearing Out the Weeds

Ah, humility.  Another "Lenten" word that does not fall easily on the ears of us Moderns.  As Nouen asks, "who wants to be humble?" But if we are to come to some kind of understanding of the nature of the God we worship we need to look pretty carefully at just what it mean to be humble, to live the life of a servant, to seek not to be first, but to be last, to become like a little child.  None of these holds a great deal of allure at first glance, that's for sure.

Nouen writes of the "downward pull" of Jesus - his coming to live among us through the Incarnation, his humbling himself, his suffering, his dying a humiliating and painful death on the cross.  This is the way Jesus fully discloses the sacrificial love of God - the way of humility, of servanthood, of suffering, leading to joy and to resurrection.

How odd this seems to us mere mortals.  And how difficult, indeed impossible, it seems to us.  But as Christians it is a way, a path, that we are called to be on.  The descending way, the way of discovering what is really important, what brings us in closer relationship with our fellow human beings, what brings us in closer relationship with God.  It is the way that calls us not to be at the top of the heap, but to walk with love and compassion alongside our fellow travelers on the journey.

To be humble is not to be a cowering, servile, obsequious character like Dickens' infamous Uriah Heep, a toad- like man we love to loathe. A humble person, a person who recognizes his or her true dependence on God, who values her fellow human beings, who puts puts the other guy ahead ahead of himself, who seeks to make the world a better, more compassionate, loving and forgiving place - now there is a person of real stature.  There is a force to be reckoned with.  There is someone who shows us that the downward path - the path away from self absorption and self promotion is a path, oddly enough, of great strength.

But it is not a path easily undertaken.  As Nouen points out, there are a lot of weeds to clear out.  All those weeds that choke the path, that trip us up:  those weeds of power-seeking, the weeds of needing to "prove" ourselves, to be the best, the prettiest, the smartest, the cleverest, the most popular, the most likely to succeed.  To choose this weed-strewn path is a courageous and difficult choice, and as Nouen points out, we will each have our different ways of seeking out this "descending way of love." This Lent we can think about how that way will be for us.

We can start by sharpening up our weed-whackers!

Audrey

I'm very struck by the discussion of competition in our reading for today and the relationship between competition and compassion.  Competition is definitely a theme that I hear coming from our young people at various youth events.  They talk about competition for spots in college, competition for opportunities to play in the game rather than ride the bench, competition on test scores and grades.  And then I think about how it is that we adults model that competitive spirit for our young people...best car, best house, newest gadgets, most perfect life.  And then I think of the competitive nature of our wider society and particularly our politics today, where the goal no longer seems to be about winning for the sake of pride in a job well done, but rather winning for the sake of ensuring the other side loses.

I love this notion of "imaginary distinctions as sources of identity" that Nouwen mentions on page 54.  So many of the distinctions we make between ourselves are, when you get down to it, imaginary.  I think this is one of those hardest lessons to learn when we're growing up, that the difference between having a flip phone and an iPhone or a Bean fleece vs a North Face or an A vs an A- is, in the grand scheme of things, an imaginary one.  What does it matter as long as you can make a call or stay warm in the snow or did your best on the test?  I think it has to do with our notions of the world as a place of abundance or a place of scarcity. 

If we think there's a limited amount of "the best" then we must compete for it.  If there's only one way to be the best or one thing to have that's the best, then there's not really any other choice.  But if we think of the world as an abundant place, then it frees everyone and everything up to be their own unique kind of best...an infinite number of "bests" that we can  be.

And that mindset of abundance is at the heart of compassion.  We don't need to hoard all of those best and most generous parts of ourselves if we believe there's plentiful "best" to go around.  This is part of what we're trying to show our young people here at St. Alban's...there are an infinite number of ways for you to be the best version of yourself, and your best is no better or worse than anyone else's.