Forty Days of Community

The always insightful Frederick Buechner writes:
"Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”
As our church begins the Forty Days of Community series by Rick Warren and Saddleback Church, I can't help but believe that Buechner is right. That there is no real inner peace, no sense of true satisfaction unless there is peace for the people around us.
Christ said to "love your neighbor," a simple truth the Church has failed to live up to. We've evangelized the world. Come to Christ or burn in hell. We've pushed our social agenda. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. But we haven't done a fine job of loving our neigbhor. If you are hungry, we'll feed you. If you are tired, we'll give you rest. If you are hurting, we'll cry with you. If you doubt, we'll question with you.
The existence of Rick Warren's book, as necessary as it seems, indicates a collosal failure on our part.

"The Face in the Sky"

I am participating in a small group where we are discussing Frederick Buechner's book The Hungering Dark. Our first session covered the chapter, "The Face in the Sky." It has been so long since I've posted on My Reality, that I thought it might be time to start up again.
One of the first points that our group discussed comes on page 13:
I think that is much of what the Christian faith is. It is for a moment, just for a little while, seeing the face and being still, that is all. There is so much about the whole religious enterprise that seems superannuated and irrelevant and as out of place in our age as an antique statue is out of place in the sky.
Buechner is referring to a scene from the movie La Dolce Vita when a statue of Christ sails beneath a helicopter. As the camera focuses in on the face of the statue, Buechner describes the theater as falling silent.
Our discussion began with the thought that Buechner may be off in his belief about Christianity. That, if the Christian faith is only about some striking moment, then why bother with the long held belief that Christ is present all of the time and in every moment.
But later, Buechner writes:
If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.
And just like that, Buechner brings us to the heart of this chapter. We must learn to recognize that Face, whether it is in the sky, dancing in the night, or whether it happens across us in the foul mouthed beggar in need of so much more than the dime we can spare.
We are never safe, Buechner warns, from this God we choose to believe in, or have trouble believing in; because if God will make himself earthbound in such a silly place as that barn must have been, there is no moment "that holiness" cannot also be present.

And so, what if we took this to heart, you and I? What if we began to recognize that Face in the hundreds of faces we stare through on our way through our own life? And what if in recognizing that Face, and the incongruity of the world around us, we also suffered terrible doubt about the veracity of it all? That maybe it isn't true after all?
I wonder how that might change the way people view us--you know, if we were honest once in awhile about our own experiences with the people we wish to bring to Christ. Buechner writes, "But what of those who both believe and do not believe, cannot believe--which is some men all of the time and all men some of the time?" Would such honesty make us more human, more real to the world around us? That Face in the sky or in the crowd is the same Face for us all to see. The difference is only in what we actually do with it.

Godric: Of Falkes de Granvill

I feared myself, writes Godric. I noted in the margin that I never go away. I have feared the dark, but each morning light would come. I have feared the unknown, but every day I find something to know.
I fear myself, but tomorrow I will still be here. If only I had paid better attention in Pscyhology, I might know how to better put this. But, the self that is me, my past, my present, and even my future will never not be there. No matter that I want some of it to go away, or not happen, it inevitably must remain.
As I prepare to be a father, I find myself fearing me more than I've feared anything prior. What if I...? Or if I...? So much to think about. I am now responsible for guiding a new part of me. Will I be better?

Godric: Of a band of pilgrims and a parting in a wood

The ear takes comfort from the sounds of home, says Godric. There are moments, if you are like me, when I awake in the night to a familiar sound, a creaking or bed spring in need of oil. There are days when in the height of my excitement, I sound just like my father. At times the rain falls off the roof just like it did when I was young.
The sounds of home are comforting. For me, home will always be that cottage turned regular dwelling where Teddy barked at a slug sneazing, the steps that led upstairs clunking and clacking as I sprinted up them two at a time.
The hiss of old copper pipes. The pounding rhythm of West Side Story or Rent blaring from my sister's room. The walls creaking as she danced her way to escape. The shuttering of the shower as it awoke from a night's sleep to jolt me from my slumber. There is the distant clap of thunder over the western hills as late August storms dispell the thick humid afternoons. There is the buzz of outboard motors and splashing waves on the shore. There is the eerie splintering of solid ice, freezing us in our skates for fear of falling in. I cannot forget the crunching of iced over snow, nor the whir of a small electric heater. Aah, the thumping rattle of the old cast iron radiators. In my memories, my father will always snore and my sister always sing; the dog will always bark and the house will always moan.
No, those sounds will never leave me, Godric; they will always bring comfort to my home-sick heart.

Godric: Of Rome, a maiden, and a bear

In one of Buechner's other books he penned a prayer that reads: catch us off guard today. Surprise us with some moment of beauty or pain so that for at least a moment we may be startled into seeing that you are with us here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidded, beneath, beyond, within this life we breath.

The pastor who performed my wedding read this prayer at my request. It speaks to those moments when we are truly caught by surprise by laughter or tears--when we aren't quite sure why it is our heart sinks or flutters.
Godric recalls his visit to Rome, his viewing of where Christians were once slain. Why did we weep? I asked myself. We wept for all that grandeur gone. We wept for martyrs cruelly slain. We wept for Christ, who suffered death upon a tree and suffers still to see our suffering. But more than anything, I think, we wept for us, and so it ever is with tears. Whatever be their outward cause, within the chancel of the heart it's we ourselves for whom they finally fall.
Ultimately it is our own life that we are living. When we get right down to it, all of our compassion or missed opportunity is what defines us. And when we sadden at the story of families torn apart, or our eyes well with sorrow for the grief of those whose children die in war, we are hurting for ourselves because we know, I think, that somewhere in the lives of others, our life, our suffering, has intermingled with theirs.
Sure, it is our life, but Donne told us that no man is an island, and we'd be foolish to disagree. We Christians have much to learn from the Buhddists who teach compassion, who understand suffering as a universal connection. So when your eyes well up, or a lump grows in your throat, pay attention not only to the outward cause, but the inward chancel as well.

How the water rose, and Godric spoke of time, and the road to Rome.

Where did the time go?, I have muttered on more than one lazy afternoon. One moment we are waking from our dreams, the next we are dropping heavily onto our beds returning to our dreams.
Of the many abstractions of life, time baffles me the most. In my daydreams, I have stopped time for all but me. Pictures of men and women frozen in whatever position when I spoke the magic words. And off I'd go to do my business, roaming the streets to see what all the world is doing in that very moment that is mine to keep.
I have begged with God for just a few more hours in a day, and pleaded with him the next to simply speed up the hours. Time is the here and now as much as it is the past then or the future then. Time is troubled. Time is magical.
The Abbot Ailred speaks of time, saying, "Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and leap their bounds like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes before your eyes...But beyond time's storm and clouds there's timelessness. Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view's most dark, he's there above us fair and golden as the sun....God's never gone....It's only men go blind."
True, isn't it? Just like we often wonder at the end of those lazy days where the time has gone, even as we watched it away, we sometimes wonder where God has gone, even as we watched him away.

How Godric journeyed home again and Aedwen's dream

"She [Burcewen] did not speak her plea, for like our prayers to God, the deepest prayers we humans ask of one another speak but silence for their tongue."
One of the sub-plots that weaves throughout the tale is one of family, of love and loss. Burcewen is the one whom Godric loves most; she is his sister. Family relationships tend to be difficult, convuluted if only because of the sheer amount of time we spend with each other. And yet it is often our family that knows us least because we almost expect them to hear the words we cannot say. "I love you," we think to ourselves, but the words don't quite make it off our lips. "I miss you," our hearts cry, but the words get choked by the lump in our throats.
It is no wonder, then, why our relationship with God also tends to be difficult, muddled because of the sheer amount of time we spend together--and I don't mean the time spent in church. If the scripture is true, then God surrounds us whether we make the trip to him or not. He is there, our ever present help in time of need and all of that. There he is in the stars. Walking the side of the road with a sign that reads "Homeless--anything helps." Crying at the funeral of an aunt, or a friend. There he is under the tree, crowds of children playing at his feet and bigger crowds still listening to him teach.
Buechner says, "Listen to your life, hear it for the unfathomable mystery it is." I say, pay attention to your life, see the commonplace for the moment of grace that it is. Recognize the thousands of prayers prayed in the glances of lonely strangers; see the heart of those around you in the smile of your friend. Every moment is a prayer, whether intentional or not, because we are all, at one time or another, pleading with the world to see us for who we really are; and that, in all of its simplicity, is the heart of prayer. A wanting to be known, to be heard.