As the world around us seems to be hardening into "positions," "sides," "identities," "stances," and fighting, I am feeling called to soften. Not in mental rigor, not in courage, not in clarity, nor in willingness to take a stand or fight, but a softening of the heart in a way that takes in the voices--even the shrieks and cries of people in pain, whoever, wherever they are.
In our increasingly either-or warfare, whether actual war, culture war, or political war, we can discover our capacity to listen, become more sensitive and expansive, while at the same time holding strong convictions and measured judgments.
This kind of both-and possibility is an invitation to everyone, especially in times of fear (Yeshua taught: Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves). It requires a kind of trust in the promise that we can do it. We can. This is the call of the divine within us all. Do we recognize the divine within us all? Sadly, too often we do not.
The softening is not the softening of mushy thinking, relativism, tolerance of anything, or "can't we just get along?" It is the softening of love for all beings. It can be fierce, even ferocious. It will not tolerate abuse and disregard for others. Yet it also is able to have compassion even for those (including ourselves) caught up in flames of hate and blame without condoning all behaviors.
Belligerence is all the rage these days, at home and abroad. In this context we are invited to do our own work, foremost with ourselves, then together with others. To soften the shell around our hearts, so that the divine love may shine through is a gift. Yeshua said the Kingdom of Heaven is within you--meaning divine love with all its light and sweetness is already what we are. We all create shells of defense around our hearts and the love they naturally hold ("hiding it under a bushel"). That's why every moment (especially the hardest) is an opportunity to soften--for our own sakes and the sake of the world.
I am finding opportunities these days to soften in this way. When I feel myself hardening in defensiveness--to someone in front of me, to a situation, to a position someone is taking that I don't like--I am finding that I can soften, become gentle, soften my eyes, posture, and heart. What I can experience is a capacity for love I did not know was there. I feel strong in a different way. Not brittle or rigid, but fluid, self-less, and expansive. There is greater clarity and my feelings of being threatened dissolve. I feel more alive, and the world is more hopeful.
It's been too long! Time to start blogging again. My trash hauling gig ended a few years back with the advent of a new policy in St. Paul that put most of the small haulers out of business, including the one my friend Wes owned, and that I worked for. Yet, once a garbageman, always a garbageman.
I want to share some of the "Rev. Dr." part of Rev. Dr. Garbageman. This is a 20 minute clip from last Sunday's gathering at Zion, the small, beautiful church where I am pastor (half time) in the Midway of St. Paul. Here I deal with the problem of biblical literalism with regard to a fantastic (literally) story. I then propose a more useful way to approach ancient stories such as this that might just be helpful in the present day.
In this is a nutshell of my Ph.D dissertation in which I ask the question, "How are mythic stories true?"
I hope you will be intrigued with the question, and the proposal...
In the summer of 1984 I spent time in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There I learned a great deal that my rather sheltered upbringing in Minnesota had not taught me. I learned about political hate turned violent. I saw it, felt it, was endangered by it, began to understand it, and, most importantly, began to see a way through it.
I have several stories I could tell. I will pick one for its intensity and poignancy.
He went by "Packy." He became a soldier in the Ulster Volunteer Force when he was a teenager, because he thought at the time it was "a cause worth dying for." No one in Belfast was untouched by the politically motivated violence at the time. His father narrowly escaped death from an IRA-planted bomb when Packy was a child. Hate for Catholics and Republican Nationalists was the air he breathed.
Such attacks were still common when I was there in 1984. Where I lived there was a police raid on the house three doors down, an IRA meeting house, and a young woman was shot and killed. A bus was hijacked and set on fire at the end of our street. A man was knee-capped (shot through the back of the knee) on our street for disobeying an order by the paramilitary that claimed authority in the area. The streets were regularly patrolled by squads of police in full military gear. I learned quickly and dramatically that words like "nationalism" and "loyalism" were not mere political differences. They ran to the core of peoples' identity; in their blood and bones. It was conflated with religion--Protestant vs. Catholic. It was rooted in centuries of complex and troubling history, in family, in loss, death and hope.
Packy saw himself as a fighter in a just cause. Others saw him as a terrorist.
Eventually, Packy was arrested and sent to prison for bank robbery. Something strange happened there. He he met a Catholic. Not just a Catholic, but IRA. An enemy combatant. To that point Packy had never gotten to know a Catholic. Then he did.
When Packy was released from prison, he and this former IRA member began to speak together in schools throughout N. Ireland, to bear witness to the possibility of reconciliation, even between formerly sworn enemies. For this, Packy received death threats from the ranks of his former comrades in the UVF. He continued to speak out publicly for reconciliation, but he slept with a gun under his pillow.
Despite this, Packy still could not accept or understand that a Catholic could be properly called "Christian."
He told me a great deal of his story, especially the harrowing bits, as he gave me a tour of the famous Falls and Shankill roads one Saturday. He pointed out lookout posts, meeting places, targets and places where terrible things occurred.
And then it happened. Walking down the Shankill Road toward the YMCA where he worked, we were greeted by a Catholic Priest. We stopped. I could sense the tension in Packy's body. The Priest was genial and detected my American accent immediately. He asked the purpose of my visit. I told him that Packy and I were working with the YMCA in Belfast seeking relationship building and reconciliation among Protestant and Catholic youth.
It did not need to be said that Packy was former UVF. It was tatooed all over his massive arms. Packy was silent and uneasy under the Priest's inquiring eye. Then the Priest reached into his pocket and produced a twenty pound note (about $50 at the time). He handed it to Packy, not me, and said "God bless you, and your beautiful work." Then he strolled away.
I turned to look at Packy. Trembling, the tears were streaming down his cheeks as he held that note. Something released. Something way deep. Something at the core. Something perhaps he wasn't even aware of. Something he practically inherited and had become part of his identity. Something only a Catholic Priest could address. Because a priest was its symbol--everything he was NOT--that which he hated, demonized, swore oaths against, and risked his life to destroy. That one held the key to this deep chamber, and opened it with a blessing.
In that hiccuppy voice that comes through sobs, I heard Packy say, "I never dreamed... A Catholic Priest... would bless me..."
I shall never forget that moment. I saw grace. I felt a rebirth.
It lent new meaning to Jesus' words to Peter, "I give you the keys to the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
I have seen and lived in a far more violent and apparently hopeless political climate than our current one in the U.S, or in other parts of the world. Like the Priest, we have the "keys to the kingdom." It is not complicated, though it is hard. It is why I do not despair, and why I believe hate is the "temptation" we ask to be rescued from in the Lord's Prayer. "Only love has the power to overcome hate." said Martin Luther King, "Hate cannot overcome hate." I don't just believe it. I have seen it.
If we are old enough, we all remember just where we were and what we were doing on September 11th, 2001 when we got the news. The images are seared into our memories. These acts of mass murder were meant to terrorize us, and they did. We were changed. So was the world.
Twenty years later, we still grieve for the dead, the injured, and the bereaved; victims of the attacks. But we also have had time to reflect. A great deal of reflecting has been done around this 20th anniversary year, both about the attacks themselves and about the U.S. response: the massive "War on Terror."
We have not, as far as I know, done much reflecting on terror itself. One might think we would, given the way in which it has become such a central word in our domestic and foreign policies, and to our very consciousness. Talk of terror, terrorism, and terrorists is everywhere.
But what is it? What is terror?
A close friend of mine commented post-911, as we watched the unfolding of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, "The reason terrorism works is because we are terrified." Acts of terror are essentially acts of fear, whether they do them or we do them; whether that fear is desperation (9-11), or revenge (Shock and Awe). This gets to the root of things. Terror is the inner condition that breeds acts of terror. The acts do not create terror. They express and enflame it; spreading to more terroristic acts in response.
Think about that. The reason we are terrorized...is not because of terrorism, terrorists, or armed attacks. These could not terrorize us if we simply were not terrified. They are effective because they provoke the terror that is already in us. It would not work without that.
None of us likes all of what happens. No one lives with no fears at all. Fear, when it arises, is an invitation to something beyond fear: eternal life.
This is not acquiescence. It is rather to loose our grip on outcomes. It is to realize that our lives do not depend on any particular outcome or set of circumstances, however good and desirable they may be; or however horrible they may be. When Jesus says, "Are not your lives more than food or clothing? Why do you then worry?" he is not just talking about food and clothing, he is talking about worry itself. Worry ruins us. It disconnects us from our true selves, the present moment, and from others.
It is possible to live, love, struggle, resist, hope, pursue, fight and die--all without worry; without terror. But this only is possible when we loose our soul's attachment to "necessary" outcomes, and likewise our attachment to avoiding "unthinkable" outcomes. Though these attachments may seem quite reasonable to most people, they are the source and cause of suffering for ourselves and others. Another way is possible. I say another way is possible, not because I am a master (I am a learner). I say it because I have seen it.
I saw it in Martin Luther King Jr. In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King admitted that he would prefer to live a long life, but that he did not expect to do so. It is safe to say he had fears, but he was not terrified. Not afraid enough to waver from his message of equality and love of enemy. Not afraid enough to stop standing in truth.
I see it in the stories of Jesus. He had fears, no doubt, but he was not terrified to face his own untimely death, which became inevitable as long as he kept speaking the truth that was threatening to those in power.
We saw it in NYC fire fighters who climbed the stairways to what they knew would likely be their own death.
What is there to lose? It is deep and profound and real question. What do you fear to lose? And what do you lose when you cling to your fear of loss? "What does it profit a person to gain the whole cosmos (the Greek word for world) and to lose one's own soul?" "Whoever seeks to save one's life will lose it. But whoever loses (please read here: "looses") one's life will keep it for eternal life." (Mark 8)
Eternal life is not what happens after we die. Eternal life is eternal. No beginning and no end. Eternal life is life, period. It is the life that is truly life. It is the life to which Jesus came to bear witness; not a later life, but a now life. Here and now. A quality of life, not an after-life. What robs us of abundant life, is a mistaken case of identity. We think of ourselves in terms of many things: successes, achievements, relations, possessions, failures, mess-ups, status, reputation, and so on.
Our lives are not these things. These things pass away along with our bodies and the memories of us. Poof. So why do we cling so anxiously to what we cannot keep? There's an invitation to the spiritual life here. To learn to let go in our hearts of the things, even the really good things, that we will most certainly lose. So that we--ironically--can learn to enjoy them for what they are: gifts. It is an initiation to a life beyond the grip of fear and terror, to unassailable joy and love. No strings attached. No terror to fear.
We say, "God is Love." I wonder whether and how we believe it? Do we feel it? Is that what is really real? Perhaps this is eternal life?
Dan came to our (Zion Lutheran Church's) food give-away and free meal program last year. He taught me the term, "homeless survivor." Amazing how a small change in language can catch your attention and shift your thinking. At once I knew it was a better way to speak of people I have come to know. "Homeless" is a condition, not an identity. "Survivor" lends the dignity of personhood and achievement to those who are in that condition, AND to those who have been in it and survived. It also speaks to the long-term effects of surviving without the shelter of a stable home. Dan was kind enough to share some of his story as a homeless survivor.
Most unforgettable was that Dan looked me in the eye: "It could happen to you." I could feel that with every bit of power he had, he wanted me to understand this.
Dan is a few years older than me, in his sixties, well educated, well spoken, sober, and traumatized. He came for food.
A few years previously, Dan had what would seem to just about anyone a fine life. He had a wife and two grown children. He worked for a large corporation in I.T. and made a six-figure income. They owned a nice house and lived in a small town just outside the Twin Cities.
from Dan's LinkedIn page
He'd had stable employment his whole adult life, most recently over a decade with US Bank. A dispute with H.R. over a proposed change to the terms of his employment led to a three month severance package.
Dan was disappointed but not especially worried. He'd find something else and things would be ok. He pulled his resume together and began a professional job search.
Dan gradually discovered he was not marketable as a professional anymore. He was in his middle fifties. He had a computer programming degree from the 1970's. There was a question mark over his most recent employment.
In time his marriage unraveled. Dan decided his wife should have the house, and in a perhaps overly generous gesture, he used his money to pay off bills and the mortgage.
Yet he was still confident he could find some kind of job to make ends meet for himself. But he could not. He was too old and too old-school for the employment he was used to, and over-qualified for lesser roles. The odd jobs he took could not cover rent, car and living expenses. He had moved in with a friend. He felt increasingly uneasy about receiving his friend's hospitality. He left to live in his car; still working for small wages, still putting his resume out there.
The car was not a good home. And then it too was gone. It took a while for Dan to realize admit that he, in fact, was homeless.
Dan eventually (years later) found his way into a program through Catholic Charities where he is afforded a small apartment. It's a single room in the same complex as the "Wet House," a shelter that does not require sobriety. He does not like being there. There is no kitchen, just a dorm-room size fridge, hot plate and microwave.
He wants very much to be self-sufficient again. He tells me he's lost everything: career, family, house, home, health, and...most of all, his dignity. A market rate one bedroom apartment is beyond his reach. He refuses to become a permanent client of public housing. His eyes well up as he speaks.
"It could happen to you."
Dan taught me to look differently, and more closely. To identify, rather than dis-identify. To ask and begin to learn from the several other homeless survivors that grace our food give-away and free meal on Thursdays. To think of the growing "problem" of homelessness among us evidenced by "tents everywhere," not as an "issue," but as human beings. Being homeless is a condition. A condition belonging to all of us. Nearly half all those in MN currently surviving homelessness are children and youth 17 and under. 35% accompanied by an adult, and 16% on their own. Ask a teacher in our poorest schools.
It really could happen to anyone. To any of us. This, I believe, is where to start.
Disclaimer: Homeless survivors tend to be extraordinarily private people. The extent to which I share their stories, I am careful to not reveal their identities. In Dan's case I use his real name because he has already told his story publicly in a documentary called "Guttered," filmed by his friend (and mine, through Dan) Jerry Sedgwick.
I highly recommend watching "Guttered." Available on YouTube.
Least of all, those at whom it is directed.
I don't share too many sermons, and I am well aware that many do not want to be sermoned-to. But in this one, I am trying to personally relate, from my own experience, what it feels like to feel racism. It's personal, hopefully not judgmental. The Gospel is only good news if it is for people. Not just for "souls" to the neglect of bodies. The Gospel, if good news, is for life; physical, practical, this-worldly life. We are in this together. Together.
Sincerely,
The Rev. Dr. GarbageMan https://youtu.be/7-VqMEcQiio
It is the season of Lent, after all. A time traditionally acknowledging the reality of inevitable social distancing, separation, and death--especially our own. A time of simplifying. A time of retreat. The whole point of which is to find a deeper joy, a source of life that does not depend on the impermanence of toilet paper, or money, or a job, or status, or even food.
I do not trivialize. These are all important. But "life is more than what we will eat and what we will wear. So be anxious for nothing." (Matthew 6). These, I think, are the most ignored words of Jesus in Christian history.
I went on a walk yesterday. It was a fine and pleasant walk. Strange too. No traffic on W. 7th. Families out walking--together!
I came down Michigan Street toward Cooper's SuperValu, I was met by the gorgeous tones of a lone saxophone.
I was not in any hurry, so I approached and listened. Filled with appreciation, I opened my wallet and had nothing but a $10 in there, with which I happily parted. He paused and we introduced ourselves from a distance.
Bob Neighbors told me his main instrument is harmonica, but today he felt like people needed saxophone. "Nothing connects people like music," he said, "especially when we make it together; but also when we just listen." His momma down South where he grew up used to tell him, "Don't hide your gift under a bushel basket." Share it with the world. The world needs your God-given gift. "My gift is not great," he said. "Like I said, I'm a harmonica player. I just play sax well enough not to get tomatoes thrown at me. Furthermore, I'm an introvert. It's my inclination to hold back. But today, at this time, people need connection! So I showed up. Here I am. Putting a vibration out that comes from love. It's a spiritual thing. Music can change the world. I believe that. Every musical vibration is eternal, so we gotta make it our best."
I listened. I felt what he was telling me, and the power of his simple music. I thought about how true it is that music perfectly captures both our connection and our distance from each other. It's vibration. I thought about how whatever vibration we put out into the world, for better or for worse, has infinite repercussions. I am convinced, however, that in the end all is swallowed up in love, and that what we put out in love is eternal life.
Just then, a neighbor I already knew came out of the grocery store. I introduced Jim to Bob, and we chatted a bit. Jim had a problem, though. While in the store, he decided to buy more than fewer groceries so that he would not have to go back for more for a while during the pandemic. He had four heavy bags and about 1/2 mile to walk. He asked for help to carry them, and I was more than glad to do so. We bid goodbye to Bob and set out.
During the walk, Jim Sazevich, an amazing freelance local historian, began to muse on the cholera outbreak of 1854 in St. Paul. You know, like historians do. Inspired obviously by the present Covid-19 outbreak, his mind went to 1854 and a subject close to home for him.
You see, his home, a little brick house on Smith Ave. built in 1854, was never finished by the original builder, one Mr. Adams, who had just moved to St. Paul in that year with his new bride. Young Mr. Adams was a shirt-tail relative of John Quincy Adams, former President of the US.
The small brick structure was finished in 1854, though not the intended wooden additions. That year cholera invaded St. Paul, and it killed an unrecorded number of people, "but certainly dozens," Jim told me. One life claimed happened to be Minnesota Territory's most famous citizen, Mr. Charles Fillmore; brother of then-President Millard Fillmore. Fillmore's house was in Irvine Park, just next door to Alexander Ramsey's house. It was mere blocks from The Adam's house. And Mrs. Adams was pregnant.
Death must have seemed everywhere in that little settlement. The funeral for Fillmore processed by horse-drawn hearse down Fort Street, now W. 7th St., toward the new Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul's first cemetery.
But as black crows gathered and cawed in the trees lining the street (I embellish, sorry Jim), the hearse caught a rut in the dirt road. The coffin slid off the back of the hearse-wagon and crashed on the ground, spilling the body of Minnesota's most famous citizen out onto the dirt.
We don't know, but it is hard to imagine the pregnant Mrs. Adams and her husband were not present for this spectacle that occurred only a block or two from their residence.
Thereafter, the Adams family walked away from their house and St. Paul. They just walked away--70 miles they walked, she pregnant--to Steele County MN, where their son was born: the first white child born in that county.
And now Jim lives in their house. He has learned their story, and even has a wedding photo of Mr. and Mrs. Adams in his (their) house. He is in touch with their descendants. "We need to preserve the artifacts," Jim tells me with genuine passion. "They are gone, but the artifacts remain, and keep them with us, keep us with them. And they still have much to tell us."
I am moved by the people who put good vibrations out into the world, who follow the calling of Love. This was quite a day. Thank you Bob and Jim, for being great neighbors, and doing good and healing work, during this contemporary "Time of Cholera."
