Saint and Sinner

I couldn't resist a memoir that begins like this.


This book is by the one who thought he'd be farther along by now, but he's not.
It is by the inmate who promised the parole board he'd be good, but he wasn't. 
It is by the dim-eyed who showed the path to others but kept losing his way.
It is by the wet-brained who believed if a little wine is good for the stomach, 
then a lot is great.
It is by the liar, tramp, and thief; otherwise known as the priest, speaker, and author.
It is by the disciple whose cheese slid off his cracker so many times 
he said "to hell with cheese 'n crackers."
It is by the young at heart but old of bone who is led these days
in a way he'd rather not go.
But,
This book is also for the gentle ones who've lived among wolves.
It is for those who've broken free of collar
to romp in fields of love and marriage and divorce.
It is for those who mourn, who've been mourning most of their lives,
yet they hang on to shall be comforted.
It is for those who've dreamed of entertaining angels
but found instead a few friends of great price.
It is for the younger and elder prodigals
who've come to their senses
again, and again, and again, and again.
It is for those who strain at pious piffle
because they've been swallowed by Mercy itself.
This book is for myself and those who have been around
the block enough times that we dare to whisper
the ragamuffin's rumor--
all is grace.


Brennan Manning is now in his 70's and is saint and sinner.  Decades ago I began reading him (e.g. The Ragamuffin Gospel) and his authenticity, his vulnerability, and his reliance on grace have helped me to keep going.  

I was only a few lines into his preface above and was weeping.  I, too, often feel like a disappointment, a hypocrite.  There is often such a gap between who I really am and who I desire to be.  The shame that breeds can be paralyzing.  Brennan depends on grace and has always pointed the rest of us who are wounded and wounding, in need of healing yet healers, to that same grace.

In the intro is contained a poem by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. 


I was raised to believe that the cracks elicit the darkness of God's judgment.  It has been such a buoyant relief to know that the cracks draw the light of God's grace. 

Teach me, brother Manning, as I read further.






 

(Herman) Cain Wasn't Abel

Today, Herman Cain suspended  his campaign  in his pursuit of the Presidency of the U.S. claiming that the "false accusations" of four women and a fifth who claimed a 13 year sexual relationship with him served to be too much of a "distraction."  All of these allegedly lying women had hurt him and his wife to such a degree and the recent fallout sidetracked him from his mission, so he says, and therefore he is dropping out.   

He blamed the "spin" of the media and the "pundits" for their unfair and biased reporting.  Mr. Cain, it is that same media that catapulted you from obscurity to being known by millions. I'd be interested in seeing how you fare if you refuse the media any access from here on out, but, of course, you and I know that you won't do that.

I--none of us--knows whether Mr. Cain is being truthful in what he claims as to his innocence.  He claims he is "at peace with my God, at peace with my wife, and at peace with myself" --that's either a clear conscience or a seared one--and though I'd like to believe him something just looks and sounds suspicious as to his moral integrity.  My reasoning runs like this:  If  I am on a mission and a number of people trump up ludicrous and absolutely false charges as to my ethics and sexual morality I'm thinking that would motivate me even more to focus on the mission-at-hand rather than quit.  I'm thinking I have nothing to hide and these women have no dirt to dig up so I'll let them muck around in their mire and I, in the meantime, will be open and forthcoming--but focused on the mission.  Check my cellphone records, my email history, my texts--it's all there for your scrutiny.  While you're checking I'll be available for your questions but undeterred from my campaign.

In contrast, Mr. Cain, says these trumped allegations and the spin the media has put on all this has become "too distracting."  Again, I can't prove it, but I suspect that what has become ""too distracting" are poor choices he has made with a number of women, none of whom happen to be his wife and those choices have now bitten his beleaguered butt.

He now talks as though he is the victim.  These lying,  perpetrating women  went to the out-to-get-him  media and, consequently, all of this has brought upon him unwarranted hurt and distress.  In the Old Testament is the story of Cain killing his brother Abel.  In this scenario Cain was the perpetrator of the crime; Abel, the victim.

Mr. Cain, you don't appear to be Abel.

Random Reflections about Life Back Home

We returned from rural, poverty-stricken Honduras two weeks ago.  A culture shock to say the least.  Here's some of my impressions and observations, most of which are not "pretty."

**We're becoming a bunch of fat slobs.  I'm not suggesting that there are no fat slobs in Honduras.  Neither am I implying that all people who are overweight are slobs, i.e. lazy couch occupiers whose only calorie burn is the effort it takes to wipe the cake off their face.    I know there are genetic and medical and organic (e.g. thyroid) factors for a number of people.  But, really?

Maybe it's the diet of the poor in Honduras--typically rice and beans.  Maybe it's the small proportions of food available at any given time.  Maybe when you eat to live rather than live to eat you tend to have little excess weight.  

**I notice the extreme sensory stimulation with which we are bombarded here at home.  Non-stop traffic movement. Unending traffic sounds.  The decibel level of human voices in most restaurants makes it nearly impossible to have a quiet conversation because you have to talk more loudly than the surrounding clamor so that the person  sitting three feet across from you can hear you. Visual overload everywhere.  Technological incoming messages abound.  Advertising screaming for my attention, whether via billboards, commercials, internet.  It's exhausting.  When are we ever still?  Quiet.  Silent.  And how?

**I left basically gracious and thankful people only to return to basically in-your-face entitled people.  Thank God there are exceptions but that black-hearted woman who pepper-sprayed competing shoppers on Black Friday may be more of a mirror than an anomaly. 


The pace here is nerve-wracking. We are in fifth gear, pedal to the metal, and continually.   We sprint to a point of exhaustion.  In Honduras they know it's not the 100 meter dash--it's a marathon--and they pace themselves accordingly.  I'll be honest--their pace drives me nuts, not because their pace is deficient but because I'm wound up tight and it's difficult to downshift once I'm there.  Now that I'm back, I'm noticing the intensity with which most of us sprint.  I think it's a recipe for burn-out.

 **I am neither glamorizing or idealizing the poor but this is my experience of them.  Generally, they are thankful for what have and do not speak much about what they lack.  They have very little and somehow find joy in the scarcity.  We, on the other hand, are driven by consuming and acquiring and do not seem to be grateful for the abundance, but, instead, complain about  that which we do not yet have.

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**I go on these trips to serve and help the poor.  The great white missionary goes to impart all he knows and he builds these wonderful houses and he thinks he is such a blessing to them.  Invariably,  these people who are so poor materially bless the great white missionary who is spiritually bankrupt.  

I go with the purpose of giving; I return with the outcome of receiving.  

Heaven Invades Hell in Honduras

She is less than five feet tall but larger than life.  Her name is Maria Isabella, mother of eight children.  She is the quiet matriarch.  There is no patriarch. Her husband, who apparently regarded himself as a mere sperm donor, left after their eighth child was born.  She has been sole provider, comforter, teacher, protector for years.  She has raised them alone.  She works 60 hours a week in a little bakery.  The three adult daughters who live with her lament about growing up alone and left to themselves while their mom was making a living in order to provide for them.  There are tears as they look back on those early years.
Two of the three each have two little ones of their own. These eight and several other family members have shared existence in this hellhole of a shack for ten years.  It's dark, damp, and depressing inside.  They burn wood or anything they can find that is combustible in order to cook and heat.  The smoke permeates the shack.  The upper walls and ceiling are coal black.  And their lungs?
There is no room, no space, no privacy.  They can't afford dressers or containers, so everything is piled or stacked.  A fish-net hammock is hung inside; I look closer.  A little baby is lying in it.  No room for a bed, even if they could afford one.

They have been on the waiting list of families for whom Mercy International would build a house.  It's been two years.  Day after week after month--"Maybe today?"  Finally, their wait is over.
We arrived at their little father-forsaken but Father-favored shack last Sunday and we began digging trenches to serve as a foundation for the house of their dreams in an open, barren area in front of their shack.  20x24--or as a friend described it--"a garage and a half."  To them, though, a mansion.  Saturday, we left and in those 7 days we built them a house that will last them for generations.  I wish you could have seen the light in their eyes.  Their smiles. Their hugs of gratitude.  One of the daughters joyfully confessed, “I don't have words." Another, “I wish I could have a big party for all of you."  Maria Isabella thanked God and us.
I gathered several from the team and asked the family if we could pray for them.  They welcomed our prayers.  I asked them what they would like us to pray for.  A daughter quietly said, "Food."  I was speechless.  I'm sixty-two years old and there has never been a single day of my life when I have ever prayed that I would have food.  I was humbled by her earnest request.  I asked if there was anything else she would like us to pray for.  Work so they have income.  Peace in their family.
This family now has shelter.  Concrete block, concrete floor and metal roof never looked so extravagant.
I visited a family for whom we had built a house this past Spring.  Momma looked good and her 16 year old daughter, Kenya, was full of smiles as she held her two year old, Melbie, in her arms and a growing child in her belly.  I was surprised at her pregnancy, though she is not the exception, and saddened.  We hugged and re-connected.  Just a day passed and I was talking with Momma and she was particularly distressed.  I inquired and she told me that in the last 24 hours someone had "deceived Kenya" with a the promise of a job and this stranger convinced her to leave her mother and Melbie and travel with her to the capital city, Tegucigalpa, and work there.  Tegucigalpa is a city of 1.7 million people, and a 5-6 hour drive away.  Momma doesn't own a cell phone and has no idea what is happening to her daughter.  What depths of lies or persuasion--coercion?-- could convince Kenya to leave her little boy and mother on a moment's notice?  What will become of Melbie?  How does a little boy deal with mom abruptly leaving him?  Life was hard enough with her family intact; what worry must  now consume Momma each day as she wonders if she will ever see her daughter again and if she does will Kenya be dead or alive?  Life had been weighing on her enough and now she has sole responsibility for Melbie, also.  It's hell.

Yet, I would not be providing an accurate picture if I left it at that.  There are moments of heaven as team members hug all these kids who are often discarded.  Glimpses of heaven as the kids laugh and frolic with the team.  The team gives their undivided attention and unconditional love and for some moments these kids do not have a care in the world. It's heaven.

Today, I ask you to thank God for what you have. 
And ask God to provide for them what they don't have.

Did You Think The Titanic Sank?

I didn't name it The Titanic Swim Team just to be cute.  I've been in a slump for some time,  some days feeling as though I'm barely keeping the ship afloat.  Other days the water may be up to my neck but I'm "Footloose" on deck.  I apologize for the drought.  If you're still on board I invite you to resume the sail with me.

This will be brief.  In one hour my wife and I leave for Honduras, to lead another team from our church to serve the poor.  Our goal is to build a house for a family living in and on the dirt.  We have 7 days to do it.  Over the course of a mere week of work we have the chance to make a difference that will last for generations in the life of this family.  Exciting!

Upon our return I will fill you in.  

Thanks for your patience and I hope to continue blogging with consistency.


p.s. sorry--no time for a photo

Open Heart, Open Hands : Counterintuitive in a World of Pain

“A glowing sun-orb fills an August sky the day this story begins, the day I am born, the day I begin to live.

And I fill my mother’s tearing ring of fire with my body emerging, vergin lungs searing with air of this earth and I enter the world like every person born enters the world:  with clenched fists.

From the diameter of her fullness, I empty her out—and she bleeds.  Vernix-creased and squalling.  I am held to the light.

Then they name me.

Could a name be any shorter?  Three letters without even the flourish of an “e.”  Ann, a trio of curves and lines.

It means “full of grace.”

I haven’t been.

What does it mean to live full of grace?  To live fully alive?

They wash my pasty skin and I breathe and I flail.. I flail.

For decades, a life, I continue to flail and strive and come up so seemingly. . . empty.  I haven’t lived up to my christening.

Maybe in those first few years my life slowly opened, curled like cupped hands, a receptacle open to the gifts God gives.  But of those years I have no memory.  They say memory jolts awake with trauma’s electricity.  That would be the year I turned four.  The year when blood pooled and my sister died and I, all of us, snapped shut to grace.

Standing at the side porch window, watching my parents’ stunned bending, I wonder if my mother had held me in those natal moments of naming like she held my sister in death.

In November light, I see my mother and father sitting on the back porch step rocking her swaddled body in their arms.  I press my face to the kitchen window, the cold glass, and watch them, watch their lips move, not with sleep prayers, but with pleas for waking, whole and miraculous.  It does not come.  The police do.  They fill out reports.  Blood seeps through that blanket bound.  I see that, too, even now.

. . .At the grave’s precipice, our feet scuff dirt, and chunks of the firmament fall away.  A clod of dirt hits the casket, shatters.  Shatters over my little sister with the white-blonde hair, the little sister who teased me and laughed, her milk-white cheeks dimpled right through with happiness. . . They lay her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name.  Aimee.  It means “loved one.”  How she was.

We had loved her.  And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives.

Closed to any notion of grace.”                 (excerpt from One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp)

A few of us might be spared tragedy.  Some may never be utterly betrayed or violated.  Shattered dreams may not visit everyone’s waking hours.  But, as Marcus Borg states,  “None of us gets out of this alive.”  If pain, unspeakable ache, has not yet seared your soul, it likely will.

Such bewildering unfairness raises many “why” questions, and the answers escape us.  Of even greater importance than resolving the “why” questions is this:  How will I respond?

When tragedy strikes, will I respond with clenched fists –or—open hands?  When betrayal lacerates my heart, will that broken heart “snap shut to grace,” or in brokenness remain open to God and goodness? 

I have done both.  Regrettably, I have spent years with closed fists, angry at God, at life, for gut-goring tragedy in one season of my life, for a broken relationship that nearly buried me  in another season.

It seems my life has been a  painstakingly slow plodding toward opening my heart, my hands to receive grace, to express gratitude.

My closed heart and clenched fists were how I coped.  But it was no way to live.  To live a life of the closed fist is to always be looking back, rather than living in the present.  It’s a life of reaction; I want to live a life of response.  I’m tired of the backward look at the unfairness, the abuse, the tragedy, the plethora of grievances and spending the present moment reacting to it all.  I’m not suggesting there is no value in looking back; in fact, I think it’s an essential component of grieving and healing.  I need to visit the past, not live in it. If I’m always looking back at the past, I will miss living in the moment.

And there is grace and goodness now that I earnestly desire to savor.

May God give you and Amy Voskamp and me open hearts and hands to, in time, receive healing and wonder and joy.

Life: A Bipolar Experience

It's Labor Day and  the sun is shining. After temps endlessly in the 90's it is a mellow and mild 70.  The cicada sing to the waltz of the gentle breeze.   God is great and life is good.  


All it takes is one phone call to send us careening into chaos.  "Mr. Harris, this is the Peoria County Sheriff.  There has been a terrible car accident. . ."    "Steve?  This is Dr. Wahlberg's office.  We received the results of your tests.  Doctor wants to see you as soon as possible."  

 All it takes is one poor decision to plummet us to  the depths.  "Dad, I'm allowed one phone call.  I'm calling from jail. . . "   

 Life is filled with laughter so deep it hurts; life is replete with hurt so deep one doubts she'll ever laugh again.  It's still a mystery to me how to navigate such unpredictable waters.  One season I can be sailing carefree and not a care in the cosmos; the next season I'm  stranded in the middle of the ocean with no land or craft in sight, desperately clinging to a piece of shattered lumber, hoping to stay afloat.  


 The song of life can be so good that I lift my open hands in thanks and praise, and I have no sooner sung the chorus and a dirge begins and I'm shaking my angry fists at God.  


I know I am not alone.  Even the great saints and prophets of God have reported a similar experience.  Hear the heart of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah as he bursts into spontaneous joy.  "Sing to the Lord!  Give praise to God!  He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked."  And without skipping a beat he agonizes in lament, "Cursed be the day I was born!  May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!  Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad,saying, 'A child is born to you. . . !'"  (Jeremiah 20:13, 14)  

This unpredictability of life teaches me  to savor the joyful, the wonder, the beauty without demanding it or allowing those moments to define me.  Neither can I allow the hellish and horrific to dictate and determine my state of mind,my outlook.  There is One who transcends both the delightful and the decimating; there is One who is above and not circumscribed by the awe-full and the awful.  


I need eyes to see and ears to hear the One when there is so much vying for my attention, clamoring so loudly that often all I notice is the immediate, rather than the Ultimate.