I’m ambivalent about autumn. On the one hand, the cooler temperatures and multicolored leaves invigorate and inspire. Yet, such gifts hint of approaching starkness and death. Daylight diminishes as darkness lengthens. Cool will soon turn to cold as winter inexorably draws near.
Autumn’s ambivalence is now poignantly personal. As I participate in nature’s relentless cycle, autumn is my lived reality. I turn 85 soon. An aging body, diminishing capacities and narrowing engagements bear the signs of autumn. Intimations of loomng winter abound.
But there is more to autumn’s story! Priorities shift! Love thrives! Beauty flourishes! Life thrives! Hope intensifies! Nature regenerates!
Parker Palmer and I are about the same age. He expresses the realities of autumn much better than I; and his reflection is a profound gift, adding to my own gratitude for this season of life:
My artist daughter, Sheri, recently presented me with an invaluable gift. It’s a brilliant renderning of a breath-taking scene and profound experience from August 2020. The story behind the painting compounds its beauty and meaning.
It had been ten months since the death of my wife, Linda. She had lived with the ravaging losses of dementia for at least a decade. Still adjusting to the loss of her presence, I was spending time at our home at Lake Junaluska, a place filled with joyful memories.
All the stages of grief were still in play, with varying degrees of intensity. Those who have experienced the loss of a spouse know that the grieving doesn’t follow a clear linear path. It zigs and zags, dips and spikes, ebbs and flows, with shattering sadness always nearby.
On that August morning five years ago, sorrow jarred me awake before dawn. It was one of those anxiety dreams, the details of which dissipated as I awoke. After drinking my morning coffee, I headed for a predawn walk around beautiful Lake Junaluska. As I walked westward peering into the fading darkness, the first glimmers of the new day began to peek from behind the hills behind me.
I turned toward the emerging light that began dispelling the night’s darkness.Gradually, bursts of brilliant radiance pushed through the fluffy clouds and greeted the mists gathering over the serene water’s gentle waves. The lingering shadows of night receded and the emerging light and beauty pointed toward the promise of a new day.
Awe snapped my grieving soul to attention. The haunting grief from a lost yesterday was wrapped in a new garment of pervasive beauty, relentless love, and renewed hope. Though loss and grief lingered, I felt part of something much bigger than personal loss. I was reminded that I am a participant in creation’s rhythmic dance of darkness and light, holding on and letting go, death and resurrection.
Wanting to capture the experience, I snapped a photo with my phone camera. The picture became the background for subequent blog posts. However, something was missing from the photo. It couldn’t capture the LOVE and belonging that accompanied the experience.
But the LOVE absent from the photo permeates the painting done by one birthed and nurtured by Linda. Sheri and her sister, Sandra, embodied that LOVE as they accompanied Linda and me on the “long goodbye;” and they continue to generously share that LOVE with me and others.
The painting has become a constant reminder of the LOVE, BEAUTY, and HOPE to which creation itself testifies.
This election season challenges me to clarify the qualities of leadership that most closely reflect the core values of my faith, whether those being chosen are for government, the church, or institutions/agencies. Here are some qualities I look for. What’s on your list?
1. Personal Character and Temperament: truthfulness and reflections of “Fruits of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Leaders greatly influence the culture of the entity they lead. Power divorced from honesty, moral character, and mature temperament becomes manipulative, coercive, self-serving, and destructive, thereby thwarting the common good and inflicting suffering on others.
2. Demonstrated Commitment to Justice as Equity, Fairness, and Enabling the Least and Most Vulnerable to Flourish as God’s Beloved Children. Developing and implementing policies that protect and enable the powerless to have access to God’s table of abundance strengthens the whole society. Merely protecting and advancing the privileges of the privileged fails the justice test and results in exploitation, inequity, abuse, and even death.
3. Proven Recognition of and Respect for the Inherent Worth, Dignity, and Wellbeing of Every Person. Leaders set the tone for how those they influence treat others. Using a biblical image, leaders are shepherds who know, defend, nurture, preserve, and guide others. On the other hand, “hirelings” fleece, exploit, abandon, deplete, and may even slaughter the sheep. The shepherd recovers and restores the weak; the hireling scatters and disregards the vulnerable.
4. A Disciplined, Tough Mind and a Compassionate, Empathetic Heart. This is what Jesus described as being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Leaders must exhibit both intellectual and social intelligence. Intellect without empathy humiliates and demeans; empathy without intellect risks enabling destructive behavior and being co-opted for nefarious purposes.
5.Compelling Vision for the Common Good and Sensible Strategy for Moving Toward the Vision. For me, the vision is defined in the biblical images of “the kingdom of God” and “the New Creation;” and it is embodied in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Components include these:
▪ the dignity and worth of ALL persons are respected, preserved and nurtured.
▪ the interrelatedness, interdependence, and mutual flourishing of creation is respected.
▪ the oneness and unity of the human family is reflected in actions and policies.
▪ service ranks above profits, restoration surpasses retribution, and hope defeats despair.
I realize that no one fully embodies these qualities, and they may seem idealistic and unattainable. Admittedly, they are more aspirational than concretely visible in our polarized, fragmented, and violent world.
Yet, we need leaders at all levels whose aspirations transcend mere self-interest, acquiescence to things as they are, and cynical scorning of such ideals as freedom, compassion, respect, and justice for ALL.
I’ve spent much time in recent years remembering and reflecting on events, relationships, and stories that have shaped who I am. It says a lot about my station in life. I’m poignantly aware of having exceeded by more than a decade my biblically allotted “three score years and ten.”
A few colleagues and several family members, including grandchildren, urged me to share stories from my life and more than sixty years of ordained ministry. It has been a daunting, emotional, frustrating, and yet healing process.
Reliving past struggles, mistakes, failures, hurts, griefs, disappointments, and losses resurfaces unresolved guilt and regrets. The grace I have proclaimed for six decades has been put to a test as a lived reality. Accepting forgiveness for myself is sometimes harder than extending it to others.
But the process of remembering, reflecting, and writing has been predominantly a source of healing, thanksgiving, and hope. I am in awe of the ineffable mystery and resilience of life. Each person’s finite story is mysteriously interwoven into an Infinite Story with limitless connections and possibilities.
Seemingly inconsequential events, encounters, or decisions in retrospect were life-transforming. “What ifs” are part of remembering: What if I had not gone to that conference? What if I had said “no” to a particular invitation? What if I had not enrolled in that school, or taken a different class, or entered an alternative vocation?
Life is a mysterious combination of choices made and conditions prescribed, situations over which we have control and circumstances beyond our control, the “givens” of nature and the influence of nurture.
Life is simply too complex, too interrelated, and mysterious to be fully described. Memory never records the totality of any incident and recall always reflects current contexts as much as the event itself.
Therefore, writing a memoir requires a stance of vulnerability and humility in remembering and interpreting the circumstances, experiences, events, perceptions, and relationships that constitute one’s life. The process is risky and fraught with temptations for distortion and misrepresentation.
The book, Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging is my attempt to make sense of my own life. It began with simply putting memories on paper, starting with my earliest recalled experiences and moving through seven decades. Reviewing journals and accumulated files of correspondence and other documents resurfaced forgotten events, transitional experiences, and relationships. The result was almost six hundred pages!
With the help of a skilled editor (who happens to be my daughter), identifying themes, and creating a coherent and readable manuscript followed. Reducing the manuscript by two-thirds became symbolic of my reality. Life’s experiences are narrowing. The circle of engagement and involvement is diminishing. Physical energy is declining. Cognitive functioning remains but with less quickness and retention. The end is far closer than the beginning!
After all this remembering and reflecting, I have concluded that perhaps the goal isn’t to make sense of life. Rather, it is to participate in its unfolding mystery with love, perseverance, and hope.
Whatever the stage, there are opportunities to give and receive love. There are challenges to confront with determination and courage. There is hope that our stories ultimately fold into God’s Story of Endless Love and Resurrection Life.
Jesus asked the piercing question of the disciple-turned-conspirator: “Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?” (Luke 22:48)
Why a kiss? Would not a slap or pointed finger or clinched fist be more appropriate means of betraying Jesus into the hands of his opponents? But, no! Judas betrayed with a sign of affection!
Upon closer reflection, however, Jesus’ question is appropriate for all who claim allegiance to him. We rarely, if ever, hear expressed outright hatred or denunciation of Jesus. Yet, we all betray!
Most often our betrayal takes the form of declared affection for Jesus. Here are a few ways we betray Jesus with a kiss:
Singing “O How I Love Jesus” while hating those who are different
Declaring “Jesus Is Lord” while prioritizing partisan politics above the common good
Claiming Jesus’ forgiveness but holding grudges and seeking vengeance
Affirming love for God while despising neighbors near and far
Singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World” while failing to provide all children with access to education, medical care, safety and love
Proclaiming “God is Love” with anger in our voices and hate in our actions
Assert that Jesus is ‘the way, truth, and life’ and refuse to obey his command to love one another as he loves us
Saying “Lord, Lord” and failing to do what he says, go where he goes, and welcome those whom he loves
Judas resides in all of us! We, too, betray with a kiss!
But Judas wasn’t the only disloyal disciple present in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Luke tells us, “One of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear”(22:50).
Jesus responded resolutely, “No more of this!”
The kiss and the sword have much in common as forms of betrayal. History is replete with efforts to violently defend Jesus.
The Crusades were fought in name of loyalty to Jesus. Scientists were burned at the stake under the guise of protecting religious doctrine. Preachers used the Bible to promote slavery! Klansmen terrorized and murdered with burning crosses and prayers of devotion to Jesus. The Bible has been used as a sword of discrimination against women.
Defending Jesus with physical, verbal, and emotional swords is a pervasive means of betrayal. Could these be subtle contemporary examples of betrayal with swords?
Using Scripture as a weapon for exclusion, hatred, and discrimination
Promoting hatred of Muslims, immigrants, gays, and others in the name of defending the Christian faith
Applauding the Sermon on the Mount while defending possession of assault weapons as a “God-given right”
Proclaiming God’s preferential presence in “the least of these” while advocating public policies that damage the poor, vulnerable, and powerless
Increasing spending for weapons of war while decreasing support for education, healthcare, housing, and food for the under resourced
But the final word in the Christian gospel isn’t betrayal! It’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.
In Matthew’s account of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus calls him “friend.” Judas’ kiss may have been betrayal, but Jesus’ response was one of steadfast love.
After admonishing the disciples against violence, Jesus healed the victim. The final word was/is healing, not violence.
From the cross, Jesus spoke the ultimate response to all forms of betrayal: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
Whether betrayed with a kiss or a sword, Jesus forgives, reconciles, transforms.
During a Christmas visit with grandchildren almost twenty years ago, our preschool granddaughters were role playing the nativity. Megan and Emily took turns playing Mary, and I was enlisted to be Joseph. The pretend baby Jesus was a plastic doll that mechanically made baby sounds.
Megan pushed the sound button, and the baby began to cry. She gently cradled Jesus in her arms and tenderly said, “It’s all right, Baby Jesus. Don’t cry.”
Emily responded emphatically, “Megan, baby Jesus didn’t cry!” A profound theological discussion between cousins ensued.
“Yes, he did cry. All babies cry,” Megan said confidently.
“But Jesus was different. He wasn’t like all babies,” thoughtfully countered Emily.
“I know he was different, but he still cried,” protested Megan.
They then glared toward the pretend Joseph to settle the dispute. Little did they realize they were engaging in a vexing centuries-long theological quandary: the mystery of the Incarnation, the eternal God becoming flesh in a vulnerable little baby.
Emily was right! Jesus is truly different! He is the Son of God, the Logos/Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us!
Megan was also correct! Jesus was truly human. Baby Jesus did cry! He nursed at Mary’s breast, had his diaper changed, suffered, and died!
Emily’s declaration that baby Jesus didn’t cry likely came from the Christmas carol, “Away in a Manger.” It’s understandably popular, especially among children. The second verse contains these words, “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes….”
It’s a lovely carol, but it falls short of expressing the meaning of the Incarnation by denying the full humanity of Jesus. In fact, such an interpretation was declared a heresy and runs counter to the New Testament witness.
Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died (John 11:35). He wept over the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). I suspect that he wept often throughout his life as he experienced the inevitable pain, disappointment, loss, disappointment inherent in being human. Furthermore, as the Christ, his weeping continues for a world filled with grieving people and wayward cities.
Why is it important to note that baby Jesus cried? It is tempting to deny the humanity of Jesus and thereby remove him from the real world of human beings with all our struggles. It is far easier to sentimentalize the baby Jesus than it is to humbly enter the profound mystery of God coming among us as a vulnerable, helpless, whimpering baby.
Only a baby Jesus who cries and an adult Jesus who weeps can be the Savior of a broken, suffering, sorrowful, sinful, and weeping humanity. Only a Jesus who cries can understand and redeem our tears.
What an interesting coincidence that the violent attempt to overturn the presidential election of 2020 occurred on the day Christians celebrate Epiphany! On the first anniversary of that ugly day and as another Epiphany arrives, it seems appropriate to reflect on the relationship between them.
Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning “appearance,” “manifestation,” or “revelation” and is commonly linked with the visit of the Magi to the Christ child (Matthew 2:1-12). The Magi, from the region of what we know as Iraq and Iran, were foreigners who studied the stars for signs of divine presence and revelation.
An implication of Matthew’s story is that the God made known in Jesus the Christ reveals God’s self in multiple ways and to ALL people. God’s saving presence is not limited to our religion, our race, our nation, our culture, our political party. God is sovereign over ALL!
Matthew portrays Jesus’ birth as a threat to prevailing political power. He specifically declares that the babe of Bethlehem is “king”! That’s an obvious threat to King Herod, who ruled the known world with brutality, violence, and cruelty.
Maintaining power was Herod’s priority and he would go to any length to hold onto that power, including killing members of his own family and innocent children. He was deceptive by pretending that he was only wanting to pay homage to the newborn king. His methods were calculated, brutal, and catastrophic.
Herod’s actions were motivated by fear of losing power and he considered instilling fear in others a necessary means of control. He was enabled by throngs of supporters who, too, were afraid and who had bought into the lie that Herod ruled by divine authority.
Matthew’s story of the nativity and Herod’s response is as contemporary as today’s news! It is about more than Jesus, the magi, and Herod. It is about the human condition and the exercise of power and control, especially political power.
Power is addictive! Fear fuels the addiction, the fear of losing control. It’s present in all of us to varying degrees. However, when maintaining power and control results in deception, coercion, bullying, and violence, the results are pervasive and lethal for individuals, communities, and nations.
The storming of the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was a blatant attempt to hold onto power and control. It was fueled by fear and a “big lie,” and it was enabled by some members of Congress, political advisors, and even some religious folk who believed that the former president was divinely anointed.
Jesus and Herod represent two “kingdoms” and two expressions of power. Herod represented the power of the Roman empire with its political and military clout. Jesus embodied “the kingdom of God,” the reign of love, justice, generosity, and peace/shalom. Herod was committed to the love of power. Jesus was committed to the power of love!
The insurrection in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, was an epiphany, a manifestation or revelation that Herod’s fears, methods, and abusive exercise of power remain with us.
Epiphany Day in the church year, however, reveals another kingdom at work in our world. It represents an alternative to the deception, coercion, bullying, and violence rooted in the fear of lost power and control.
That alternative is the way of compassion, justice, honesty, and service on behalf of the common good. It is the way shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth, about whom the Apostle Paul wrote: “. . . though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—-even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
May our celebration of Epiphany and the remembrance of the Insurrection of January 6, 2021, include renewed commitment to follow the One who transforms the world through the power of self-emptying love.
It’s no idle question reserved for abstract thinking by academic theologians or reflective pastors. Was the vulnerable, helpless baby Jesus the Savior of the world or only the potential, future Savior?
Much of Christendom limits Jesus’s saving acts to the three years of his public ministry, with the decisive actions taking place the last week or even his three hours on the cross.
Only Matthew and Luke make direct reference to Jesus’s birth, though John describes the Incarnation in philosophical language (John 1:1-14). Other New Testament writers place the emphasis on his teachings, death, and resurrection as indicators of his identity as “Savior.”
Does that mean Jesus became Savior at his baptism and not at his birth?
Some in the early church believed that Jesus was “adopted” as the Son of God at his baptism, or crucifixion, or resurrection. His birth and early life were mere prelude or preparation for becoming the Savior.
“Adoptionism,” however, was declared a heresy by the Synod of Antioch and the first Council of Nicea in 325 AD. But the notion of Jesus’s birth and obscure years as being inconsequential to his role as Savior remains prominent in today’s understanding and practice of Incarnation.
At the core of the meaning of Incarnation, however, is that the sovereign, infinite God of all Creation became flesh in a helpless baby, born among the homeless of an unmarried teenage peasant girl in a faraway corner of the earth. He spent the first two years of his life as an immigrant. He grew up in a working-class family in a backwoods town, without any notoriety, doing nothing newsworthy or particularly noticeable.
Jesus was no less the Son of God as he nursed at Mary’s breast than when he was hanging on a cross. He was the Savior while having his diaper changed AND while feeding the multitudes and healing the sick. He was Emmanuel, God with us, while learning the Torah in the Nazareth synagogue as when he was teaching the disciples on the hillside. He was the Word-made-flesh as he worked with his hands in the carpenter’s shop as surely as when his hands were nailed to a tree on Golgotha.
The Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth is more than a story of how God came in human flesh two thousand years ago. It is a description of how God comes NOW. God continues to come in vulnerability, powerlessness, poverty, dependency, and obscurity. And it is through vulnerability, weakness, powerlessness, and obscurity that Christ SAVES us.
Another name for the God who became human is LOVE, and love is a relationship of giving and receiving. Another way to describe it is as a dance. Dancing involves both leading and following. Sometimes love requires that we lead, even lift the other; at other times, we follow, and are lifted off by the other.
In the last years of my wife Linda’s life, she was totally dependent on my care and that of others. Her vulnerability, weakness, and powerlessness called forth our acts of love and devotion. Through her vulnerability, the “fruits of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23) grew in those of us who loved her: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Jesus the Christ still saves us through the vulnerable, weak, powerless, and dependent. Our most transformative celebration of Christmas is to meet him in those he called “the least of these”–the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the imprisoned, the sick, the grieving (Matthew 25:31-46).
Brennan Hurley, a pastor in Taylorville, Illinois, invited me to join him in a conversation about dementia and the church. Brennan does interviews each week with a persons representing different experiences and topics and the conversations are shared with his congregation. I appreciate the opportunity to share my journey with Linda and lessons I have learned,
You may access the 45-minute interview below. Your feedback is welcome.
October 3 marked two years since I, along with daughters Sheri and Sandra and sons-in-law John and Kyle, stood in muted reverence beside Linda’s bed holding her hands as she serenely slipped into that mysterious realm we call “death.”
Though the moment had been anticipated for months, even years, as the losses had been inexorable over a decade, the finality of this moment was emotionally jarring. It set in motion a life-altering process with new challenges and adjustments.
Grief, though universal and unavoidable, defies all our attempts to fully explain or completely control. We confront our losses out of our own reservoir of experiences, values, traits, and relationships. Therefore, I offer no prescriptions for how others should grieve. I can only describe my own journey and hope others might find their own resources.
C.S. Lewis’s image of grief as a bomber flying overhead continues to speak to me. Two years ago, in the aftermath of Linda’s death, the disorienting bombs were dropping relentlessly, shattering every aspect of my being with waves of deep sadness. I didn’t know if I could endure the bombardment of such painful feelings of loss, disorientation, regret, guilt, anger, and loneliness.
Now, two years later, the bomber hovers further in the distance. The bombs fall with less frequency and intensity. Recovery and reorientation come more quickly. The pervasive and penetrating sadness has abated. Preoccupation with the images of disease, decline, suffering, and death are receding as joyful memories of decades of shared love and happiness move to the forefront. Gratitude is overshadowing regrets. Forgiveness is at least softening the pangs of guilt.
I’m learning anew that grief can only be lived through. Attempts to deny it or escape will only delay and exacerbate the consequences. We can get through it and move toward the future with hope. Indeed, love endures!
Marilynne Robinson in her acclaimed novel Gilead writes:
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave — that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful.
This prevenient courage comes to me in. . .
the encouragement and support of family and friends
tasks to be accomplished
memories mingled with gratitude
the beauty of an approaching autumn
works of art or melodies and words of music
prayers of lament and thanksgiving
sharing the suffering and grief of others
nurturing old friendships and entering new ones
the birth of a great grandchild bearing Linda’s middle name
Anne Lamotte writes, “You lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly–that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
I never could dance, as Linda often reminded me. But I do walk a lot! The limp you may sometimes detect is prevenient courage enabling me to move toward the future with hope.
The wise and compassionate Don Saliers summed it up in a thoughtful and much appreciated message to me: “This deep rhythm of loss, consolations of grace, and then gratitude for the joy of shared life, it is a great mystery, isn’t it?”
Yes! Mysterium Tremendum! Tremendous Mystery! I call it GOD!
Shifting Margins 