Do No Harm

On a recent road-trip to Kentucky my son, Nate, and I visited a Civil War site, the Mill Springs Battlefield, where Nate’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Hendricks, fought with the 10th Indiana Infantry. Some of what went on there involved hand-to-hand fighting. One story that came from that battlefield was told by a Union private who remembered long after the battle that as his company pursued their retreating enemy with bayonets fixed, he came across a Rebel soldier hiding behind a tree. He clubbed the man down with the butt of his rifle. His enemy looked at him and begged, “Don’t kill me.” The Union soldier told this enemy, “It is too late for talk.”


The story struck home. In many ways our public speech, societal and international relations are embattled, fearful and disturbed. We may feel pressured and anxious to get control over this. It’s common to say, for example, of our politics today that we “take no prisoners”. The problem with that is that it ends discussion and the prospect of reconciliation or agreement while it is actually not too late to achieve them. A Christian is called to something different from anxious provocation; a Christian is at least called to refrain from making things worse. John Wesley’s first simple rule is, “Do no harm…Avoid evil…” And Jesus counsels, “Love your enemies…Pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44).


Harming others can certainly tempt us. As Henri Nouwen wrote, “When we have been deeply hurt by another person, it is nearly impossible not to have hostile thoughts, feelings of anger or hatred, and even a desire to take revenge.... Still, whenever we move beyond our wounded selves and claim our God-given selves, we give life not just to ourselves but also to the ones who have offended us.”


There is time for talk—and for mercy; it is never too late. What if we practiced Wesley’s rule, and Jesus’ sacred directives, to set aside the metaphorical bayonets of hostility in our stressful conflicts? A brief pause in the brutality of the Crusades occurred in August 1219, when St. Francis of Assisi called directly on Al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, and spent several days in discussion with him, attempting to restore peace. I understand he also appealed to the Pope to do the same. As far as I know, neither of these discussions reduced the hostilities of that Crusade, but I don’t think that matters as much as his decision to keep praying for his enemy and to keep seeking paths of reconciliation. Francis showed us a Christian’s way, even in conflicted situations, when he prayed, Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace…

It's Large Out There

One son has returned from seven months in Australia. He doesn't always talk a lot about things. So far, I have learned from him that Australia is a large place.

Don't Tread on Me

At least since our War in Iraq began, the pre-emptive strike seems to have become an important form of social communication, our new modus operandi. Every day, I drive past a home in my community that displays a flag with the old message: "Don't tread on me." I think to myself, Well, who was planning to do that?

I heard this week that a large 2nd Amendment Rally is planned in D.C. They will shout and make great noises: Don't tread on me. Well, again, Who has been talking lately about taking guns from gun-owners? Still, these folks will gather, shake their fists, show their guns, and try to intimidate someone for some reason.

It is odd. We fear something now, the imposition of another's "tread". But there isn't really much treading going on by the people the pre-emptive types fear. God knows, we have been tread upon, but it wasn't by Big Government, or tax and spend Liberals, nor even as much by terrorist lunatics, as by our own unexamined and unchallenged greed, expressed on Wall Street. The unlimited and relatively unregulated pursuit of private wealth came closer to destroying our country than anything else ever has. No war, storm, earthquake or civil unrest ever threatened us more than our own hunger to be more and more financially secure.

Where is a Scriptural word for this fearful, raging society, about declining one's rights in favor of the neighbors' good? Sharing one's goods? Seeking harmony? I distrust the new interest in pre-emptive threats, and irrational accusations that go with it. It inspires nothing but dread in me.

Kindness, respectful address, and some degree of trust do not rule in the media, nor in public discourse, and this could some day mean that they do not rule in our towns and neighborhoods.

The Sound of God

It's about 4 a.m. My wife and I have been spending two or three days in some friends' place on Lake Superior near Lutsen. Half-awake, and half-asleep, I listen to the Shhhhh...Shhhhh...Shhhh...of gentle waves breaking on the shoreline. For some reason, I turn to my wife and say, "That is the sound of God." Then I return to sleep.

A few hours later, I remember just enough of this dreaming moment to wonder what I meant. I think it comes to this, God's presence is in some ways like "white noise" that we barely notice most of the time. Yet that voice is calming, reassuring, beautiful, continually present and comforting. What some people experience as the absence of God may instead be the quiet sound of divine Presence. We do not recognize God's voice because we do not listen in silence to silence.

Breakfast

As I went walking a country highway this morning, I found a group of eight or ten robins breakfasting in grass just exposed by melting snow. I watched these birds for a little while, but they did not invite me to join them. I have no ill feeling toward them over this. I do trust in God that my morning meal will also be provided--at another table.

Matthew 6:26: Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Some Days Just Hurt

Some days just hurt.

We come to tears.

Why do we try to escape this? We always want to have "happy" days, happy smiles and Happy Meals. We are so offended if this does not work out for us today. We are distraught over how things went, how we were treated, what people must think of us.

Why?

Benedictine monks are counseled in the Rule of Benedict: "Daily in one's prayers, with tears and sighs....confess one's past sins to God, and....amend them for the future."

Maybe it would be better if we knew this about every day. This will be, or must be, true every day whether we quite know it or not. We suffer or cause suffering. We come to tears of woundedness or confession. We pray to forgive or to be forgiven. We heal. Maybe we smile again.

Some days just hurt.

Don't let this surprise you very much. Even welcome it.

While we see through the immediate glistening light of salty tears, the hurting heart just begins to begin again. By grace, we are made to hurt and also to heal.

Amen.

So You Want to Be a District Superintendent!

Half-awake in the night, it occurred to me that probably there are a lot of young people out there aspiring to become a United Methodist district superintendent (D.S.). The Lutherans call the same people "bishops"; for this reason alone, I sometimes wish I'd been born a Lutheran.

Sure, a few kids want to be cowboys or cowgirls, doctors, lawyers and teachers, but the great bulk of young adults want to be superintendents. And rock musicians. There is just no getting around this. So it seems helpful to fill such folks in on the best and worst aspects of superintending.

Best parts
Bringing order to chaos
Asking the right question
Generous and hospitable Christian community
Strengthening the pastoral leadership in every church
Watching a pastor and congregation get really excited about ministry
Attending worship that is authentic, imaginative and Spirited
Doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God
Glorifying God in every place

Worst parts
Bringing chaos to disorder
Providing the wrong answer
Carrying the unhappiness or dysfunction of a church around in your guts
Nagging some pastors to get reports in ("the dog ate my Table 2 report!!")
Driving a whole lot of miles in the leased car
Having no real home-church during your tenure
Attending worship that is lackluster, exhausted and "obligatory"
(blah, blah, we sing in unending, merciless verses...)
Hoping to God that God is being glorified somewhere!


And now, youngster, let me show you how to rock out on that steel guitar!

"Your Own Personal...Denomination"

In 1989, Martin Gore wrote "Personal Jesus". People hear that song in different ways. The way I heard it sung first by a gravel-voiced local guy was as an ironic challenge: everybody makes Jesus over into a personal servant of their own needs and narcissisms, personally answerable to them, and them alone--"on-call 24/7."

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

The recent heartaches and splintering in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, largely residing here in Minnesota, over whether some congregations could or should ordain and hire gay or lesbian/homosexual pastors, tastes of the same dark irony. The fights have put me in the mood to start "my own personal denomination," just as a lot of others seem to think they should. Let us all indulge in spiritual Balkanization.

Anyone who wanted to join my own personal denomination would agree--with me. Whatever I think will be the way it should be. Whatever I ask for shall be granted. I will happily commingle my preferences with divine inspiration. Like the "Sheila-ism" first reported by sociologists of a couple of decades ago, where "Sheila" just picked and chose from a variety of belief systems whatever she wanted for her own "personal faith", our own personal denominations could do the same thing, allowing either a conservative, progressive or "other" God-and-Jesus to authorize it. We could excommunicate anyone who didn't agree with me/we. It would all be so much more convenient than needing to pray with, reason with, relate to, and differ from, real sisters and brothers.

Snorkel Worship

Snorkel Worship

Let all things their Creator bless…

For years now, our congregations have been sorting out whether they should worship God in traditional worship and music (which once was innovative and controversial), in contemporary styles (which will soon enough be “traditional” or discarded), and so forth. Whatever the merits of those disputes, I count myself among those blessed by the varied expressions of praise of God. I love the morning worship with the monks at St. John’s Abbey, organs and United Methodist liturgies, and all the drums, guitars, saxophones, cellos, keyboards and harmonicas out there. I just don’t care so much what the sound is, so long as it is joyously made and is offered to bless God’s holy name!

Now (too late have I loved Thee), I’ve also been introduced to the bubbling, near silence of what I’d call “Snorkel Worship”. While vacationing on a sailboat near Tortolla Island in the Caribbean, I had my first exposure to snorkeling on coral reefs. It was like entering a new world of beauty that was glorifying God! This worship service has been going on for millennia, for ages! Here were communities of yellow-striped, blue, green, and silvery fish, playing the instruments of their God-donated natures! Here were octopi, dolphins, sea turtles, wispy jellyfish, rays, groupers, more and more! All played their instruments and sang their hymns with wonderful un-selfconscious freedom. They were their praise; their praise was their being! None doubted the worth or the beauty of what all offered, each in their own way.

My guide on my first snorkeling adventure was a woman, Ann (the Holy Spirit?), who swam near my wife, Mary Lynn, and our companions, and every so often, Ann would simply and silently point at some new beauty until we could actually see and recognize it in the reef. It was all lovely and stirring. Glory, glory, glory from creature to Creator.

Experiencing this, I wondered how we could ever think that “worship” could be contained in a 55-minute hour? Or how be better composed by Isaac Watts than by the silvery flashes of an endless stream of little fish? How could there be better or lesser praises?

Apparently, when you participate in Snorkel Worship, you just show up and glorify and bless by being.