Merton's Response

Thomas Merton must have spent some time musing on hypothetical outcomes, too. I imagine that his response to my earlier questions about choosing between different possibilities might run something like this (from No Man Is An Island):

In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance and dignity of our own freedom. A man who fears to settle his future by a good act of his own free choice does not understand the love of God. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in order that he may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more perfectly in return.

Love is perfect in proportion to its freedom. It is free in proportion to its purity. We act most freely when we act purely in response to the love of God. But the purest love of God is not servile, not blind, not limited by fear. Pure charity is fully aware of the power of its own freedom. Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be acceptable to love.

At the same time pure love is prudent. It is enlightened with a clear-sighted discretion. Trained in freedom, it knows how to avoid the selfishness that frustrates its action. It sees obstacles and avoids or overcomes them. It is keenly sensitive to the smallest signs of God's will and good pleasure in the circumstances of its own life, and its freedom is conditioned by the knowledge of all these. Therefore, in choosing what will please God, it takes account of all the slightest indications of His will. Yet if we add all these indications together, they seldom suffice to give us absolute certitude that God wills one thing to the exclusion of every other. He Who loves us means by this to leave us room for our own freedom, so that we may dare to choose for ourselves, with no other certainty than that His love will be pleased by our intention to please Him.

Hypotheticals

This morning I've had a flurry of hypothetical questions on my mind. What if things were different? What if my plans included y instead of x? Would (or will) I regret choosing one set of options over another? What am I willing to relinquish? Other than my faith in Jesus Christ, what will I cling to at all cost? Could the call of God in my life be answered obediently in more than one way? Or maybe it's better asked this way: Is God's calling in my life something that is specific or general? (I think God calls some people to specific tasks and others to more general ones - which kind of calling is mine?) Can I live fully, faithfully, joyfully with a different set of circumstances than those I envision? Can I with the ones I'm choosing now?

Some of these questions we answer for ourselves. We get to learn to live into them, accepting the outcome as the end that we chose over other possible ends with the hope that God is somehow in the midst of that process - guiding us, journeying with us. Some questions are answered for us, for better or for worse, and we learn to live with those too. Other questions we can only answer alongside others. Here's where the questions of what we are willing to leave behind and what we will not release become the most complicated and the most urgent to answer.

Such hypothetical questions and the world of dim, hazy possibilities behind them are like planted seeds. They each seem to hold the potential for life that gives way to more life. Given the conditions of soil, water and temperature, some will germinate while others lie forever dormant. For now, the surface of the soil is still smooth - who can tell which fragile shoots will break through?

At the same worship service as mentioned in my previous post, I got to spend a brief moment talking with Ike Reeser. Ike is the children's minister at Northlake, and he's played a special role in my spiritual formation, well beyond my years in the children's ministry. Worship had been, as I've mentioned, refreshing and discouraging all at once. Ike enhanced the refreshment.

Ike asked me the "What's next?" question. Now, sometimes this question functions as a glorified "How are you?" - a sort of polite greeting/conversation starter. But not with Ike. I responded the way I usually do - with uncertainty - and he offered some words that were blessedly reorienting. It was something like, "We worry a lot about discerning God's will for our lives, but maybe it's better to seek God's will for the world and find a way to fit into that."

This is not a landmark statement, of course. I've heard it before, from more than one person. I've repeated it to myself and even heard myself say it to others. But isn't that the way good news is sometimes? You've heard it before, maybe all your life, but somehow repetition is not wearisome, but rather it spurs you on, reaping the fruit of seeds sown long ago. Through the gentle words of a friend, you again hear the summons of God. That is a beautiful thing.

It's as if God gently whispered in my ear, "I love you, child, but you're not at the center of my plans for the world. You can be a participant in my plans - partnership is the way I like to work! But if you want to seek my will, you're going to have to get over yourself." An invitation to stop obsessing over myself: what liberating, welcome news!

Incidentally, that leads me to think about making some "A Few Days After New Year's" Resolutions involving ascetical disciplines...

New Year's Eve - what better time for a reflection on planning for the future?

Going back to the church where I grew up means a bundle of mixed emotions to me. I love the Northlake Church of Christ - these folks modeled the way of Christ for me in such a compelling manner that I knew I wanted to throw myself into it too. Still, there's nothing like the distance of a 1,000 miles and seven and a half years to hamper our reunion. As graduation quickly (and yet slowly) approaches, there is a significant increase in the number of people who ask that question I don't know how to answer yet: "So, after you graduate, what's next?" I respond with a goofy grin and flashy, hope-the-parachute-works-cause- I'm-jumping-anyway eyes and say, "I don't know yet." Like most major life changes, this one fills me with excitement and dread all at the same time. Ever the optimist, I try to let the excitement triumph over the dread.

This was a somewhat more difficult to pull off this morning because I was feeling a little discouraged. Our service was centered around the communion table. In so many ways it was refreshing. The seats were arranged so that you could see most people in the room. We read the whole book of Ruth in lieu of a sermon, highlighting the way that the Lord provided abundantly for Naomi and showed steadfast love through Ruth and Boaz. The repeated references to grain and Bethlehem made the connection with the Lord's Supper natural. We participated together in our Great Story of God's faithfulness in Jesus Christ. I'm still thinking about it... and yet, it was discouraging too.

Like every other worship service at Northlake, this one was led exclusively by men. (And Northlake has always been a moderately progressive congregation.) A few years ago, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. This time it stood out like a brightly festooned, strutting peacock in the middle of a multi-laned highway. It strikes me, nearly every time I'm in church, that the most important criterion in whether a person can play an active role in the worship service is not age, spiritual maturity, competence, or thoughtful preparation. It's gender. Maleness is the common denominator. What seems to me to be the most arbitrary consideration of them all is the deciding factor.

The table is a crucial moment in worship, one which is, among other things, an expression of our unity in Jesus Christ. And yet, we do not approach the table as equals. Well, we do in theory, but our practice suggests otherwise. In Matthew, Jesus says, "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." Usually we proof-text this passage when we're discussing holy speech. But it further suggests that our concrete actions correlate to the inner reality. Jesus' teaching conflates mind, body, and soul over against the faulty distinctions we make between them. What we do outwardly matters as a tangible expression of who we really are, what we really believe. Regardless of what we might say we believe about gender equality, our practice at the Lord's Supper, indeed at anytime in worship, reveals that as a corporate body we believe that men are inherently spiritually superior.

Anyway, this renewed realization gave me pause as my graduation date approaches. "What's next?" they ask with genuine interest. Giving my normal response aloud, I silently wonder to myself, "What indeed?" Maybe the best answer is to rely on the same loving-kindness that the Lord showed to Naomi (without renaming myself "bitter" in the meantime!). Thus, a single worship service delivers discouragement while also giving significant impetus to press on with hope and trust. I'd like to hold to the latter without being smothered by the former, but for that task, my anamcharas, I will need you!

You know what I hate? It seems like every time I start to write something about my future plans, it ends up being a complaint about my battle with the suffocatingly low glass ceiling. I'm sure my friends and family are as weary of this topic as I am. This isn't the post I thought I was sitting down to write. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow. After all, if there's any day for reflecting on future plans, it's New Year's Day, right?

More Bonhoeffer

Insights on humility, again from Life Together:

“Only he who lives by the forgiveness of his sin in Jesus Christ will rightly think little of himself. He will know that his own wisdom reached the end of its tether when Jesus forgave him. He remembers the ambition of the first man who wanted to know what is good and evil and perished in his wisdom. The first man who was born on this earth was Cain, the fratricide. His crime is the fruit of man’s wisdom. Because the Christian can no longer fancy that he is wise he will also have no high opinion of his own schemes and plans. He will know that it is good for his own will to be broken in the encounter with his neighbor. He will be ready to consider his neighbor’s will more important and urgent than his own. What does it matter if our own plans are frustrated? Is it not better to serve our neighbor than to have our own way?”

Wow - these words are good news to me today. I tend to have a pretty high opinion about my own schemes and plans. I hate to admit it, but I generally want the Lord to do it my way. That's crazy, really. I know how fickle my plans are: they change according to my whims on a pretty regular basis. My pride and self-importance is sin on two levels: it denies Jesus his place as Lord in my life and it assumes that I know better than everyone else who might will something different. So, it's rebellion toward God and maybe an attempt at tyranny over humankind.

Another thing attracts me to Bonhoeffer's words. Humility is not passive, it's active. It doesn't imply willing nothing - as if being the constant doormat of the world were a virtue. (Lack of will - this seems to be cowardice more than anything else.) No, it's the willing sacrifice of my will, however good it seems to me, for the sake of my brother or sister. And humility is sacramental. Here the passion of Jesus, his great acting out of "not my will but Yours" merges into the gritty reality of my life. Who knew that disappointment of my own dreams and desires might actually be participation with Jesus Christ in a very real sense? It's hard to believe in our "may your dreams come true" world. But to meet Jesus in the dark corners of life where all other hope is extinguished by a broken will and discarded dreams - this is good news.