Category: Suffering

When Christmas Is A Wilderness

Jesus asked what people were looking for when they came out to the wilderness to see John the Baptist (and, by implication, what they were looking for when they came out to see Jesus). Jesus said, “What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.” Jesus implied that they did not go out to see such things because the wilderness was not the place to find them. They came out to the wilderness to seek God’s reign. They sought the coming and power of God in their lives. They sought healing and new life in God—in the wilderness.

For many people, Christmas comes as a wilderness. At a time when families gather, when there are parties, “soft robes,” lights, and jubilation, there are those who experience most intensely the loss of loved ones or experience depression and anxiety. There are those who, when the parties are over, feel deep emptiness.

We all experience wilderness—times of trial or emptiness, sometimes most profoundly at Christmas. The God, who has come to us in Christ, comes to be where we are in the wilderness. Often, it is when the music stops and the party is over and we are alone in the wilderness and receptive, that Christ’s presence is most made known.

We need the wilderness. Prayer is often experienced as a wilderness. Our self-absorption is not interested in prayer. To our pride and arrogance, prayer appears as a wilderness. Prayer offers emptiness, the emptying of ourselves. Prayer calls us to let go of our lives to God, to trust.

When prayer feels like wilderness, we must enter into the wilderness, enter into the emptiness and silence, and then let the Spirit lead us in the wilderness as the Spirit did for Jesus. When prayer is experienced as wilderness, we simply need to go there. Enter the wilderness where the Spirit leads us to God who, through Christ Jesus, is present in all the circumstances and struggles of our lives.

Whatever the wilderness, this Christmas, the Spirit is present to prepare our hearts to receive Christ afresh. Thanks be to God.

Filed under: Faith, Prayer, Suffering

Light In The Darkness

I have previously written about “The Coming Collapse” and the sowing of injustice that operates like a parasite eating its host. It reaps the death it sows.

The words from Psalm 10 express this reality: “In arrogance, the wicked persecute the poor—let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.” They are caught in what they have devised! They reap what they sow and do not see it coming. But how much will evil destroy before there is nothing left to destroy? In the face of evil, love must act, doing the work of justice and mercy.

It does not matter how we think about what we are sowing, the seeds we sow will determine what is produced. We can put a religious facade over our actions and deceive ourselves about our oppressive ways, but the outcome will reveal what we have sown. We reap what we sow, and we know the activity of both love and evil by their fruits. The one will produce justice, mercy, and life, the other oppression and death.

The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures often proclaimed a “word of the Lord” directed to what is being sown—to the evil sown—and what is about to be reaped. The reaping is seen as God’s judgment, but that judgment is also inherent to human actions. If we act against our true selves, as beings created in the image of God, we experience God’s judgment as the judgment of our false selves, our phantom selves that are being wasted away by evil.

It is possible to think of human history in this way—and our present time. Frederick Douglass recognized the destruction that slavery brought not only to those enslaved but to slave owners. Abraham Lincoln viewed the Civil War, which brought a greater loss of life than all other American wars combined, as the judgment of God inherent to the evil of slavery.

In our own time, we see democracy—which our nation has made so much of, whatever its form—being eaten away from within. A growing number of people would prefer autocracy if it were their autocracy, their hold over government, in order to maintain or achieve their positions over others. Many are afraid of equality in a multi-cultural nation. They are afraid of the voices they have sought to silence. In their actions, they end up silencing love and justice. They sow oppression and reap destruction, theirs and their nation’s.

With evil sown comes much hurt and breakdown and injustice. What we hear over and over again in the Hebrew prophets, the Psalms, and the New Testament is that God is with the broken: the poor, the needy, the outcasts, the imprisoned, those who are oppressed. God is their comforter, protector, and deliverer. If we want to be where God is, be with those experiencing oppression. Sit with those who hurt (It makes no difference, their class, ethnicity, gender identity, political party or any other way they may identify themselves). Be with those our former president called “losers.”

And also call out those who are oppressing others so that they may be warned of the coming judgment (the reaping) and turn back to their true humanity made in the image of God. Call them back to the love of God so that they may receive mercy and be changed. And then each of us must keep turning to God so that, in the words of the old Shaker hymn, “by turning, turning we come ’round right.”

God calls forth those who will be light in a world of oppression, who will do justice, love mercy, and operate with compassion. Such people may or may not have a set of “religious beliefs” but they will have the experience of real compassion which literally means to “suffer with” and which always comes from the God who is Love—as does all that is expressive of our true humanity, all that is real. Those who act with compassion will be witnesses to a humanity made in the image of God and will be light in the darkness.

Filed under: Compassion, Evil, Humanity, Justice, Racism, Suffering, WitnessTagged with: , ,

Gifts In A Time of Pandemics: Pain

I have heard recovering addicts say, “When the pain got bad enough, I reached out for help.”

Pain is a gift. We are glad we have it when we have touched a hot stove and it has us quickly remove our hand. Pain has us seek help; it gets us to a doctor. Emotional pain alerts us to the effects of actions we have taken that are destructive to our well-being. It tells us it is time to make a change. Emotional pain also alerts us to the effects of others’ actions that are hurtful to our well-being. Such pain may have us make decisions to disengage from situations and people for the sake of our health or to engage in a manner that retains our humanity, sense of self, and purpose.

We are in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic that is causing pain. We also continue to experience a pandemic with a much longer history, spanning the existence of our nation: the pandemic of racism and white supremacy. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, African Americans, in great numbers, along with allies, are sharing their pain, not only of this one instance of racist action but the accumulated pain of layer upon layer of injustices. They have brought their pain into the streets and into white spaces. They have placed it before a nation. The sharing of their pain is a gift—especially to those of us who are white. We need to feel their pain or, if not, feel the pain of disruption, of no more business as usual. We may be pressed into making changes.

Gifts, of course, are meant to be received. But they first must be recognized as a gift. For addicts, pain is not readily recognized as a gift. It is often another reason to self-medicate, to cover up the pain—until it gets bad enough. Elsewhere in posts of this blog, I have referred to racism as an addiction. It fits the many aspects of addictive behavior. What does it take for those of us, who are white, to acknowledge our racism and to acknowledge the effects of that racism on the criminal justice system? What does it take to acknowledge the deep disparities in the way the system operates in relation to people of color over against those who receive “privileges” because of their white skin?

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the racial disparities in our nation. The protests in our streets are highlighting the systemic racism that is the foundation of these disparities. Both the coronavirus and the virus of racism bring pain. That pain will move out to every sector of our society. After all, in one way or another, we are all connected. There is no place to hide.

How great does the pain have to be for us to change? How long will we encounter the pain of others and turn away? How long will we support the disparities and injustices? What will it take before those of us who are white acknowledge that it is our racism that has built and maintained unjust policies and institutions and that it is racism that allows us to leave unaddressed the injustices? Racism and the history of white supremacy have built the unjust criminal justice system that we have today. We, who acknowledge this, have to be a part of dismantling it and rebuilding a just way of operating. And we will have to be vigilant to keep building toward justice.

Like all addictions, racism denies there is a problem or that the problem is that bad—until the denial is acknowledged to be a symptom of the addiction. The pain of our addiction and what our addiction produces calls for change. The Spirit is in that call for change. It is a call to repent.

Repentance is simply a turning from the direction we have been going so that we now walk in a way of healing and liberation and new life. It is a spiritual act because the Spirit of God is present to help us. The only true repentance, understood spiritually, is from death to life, from spiritual death (the loss of love) to the One who is Life Itself, to the Love that frees us.

Filed under: Racism, SufferingTagged with: , ,