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The Problem With Protecting Ourselves

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One of the greatest temptations faced by American Christians today comes in the form of voices demanding that we, first and foremost, protect ourselves. In response to the very real dangers present in the world, these voices encourage, no, demand, that we withdraw, face inward, and put the well-being of ourselves and our families first. The voices promise a way to safety.

We have already, during the last few decades, successfully used the suburbs to separate ourselves from the poor. We have built highways that allow us to avoid the wretched cities, and we relocate refugees deep into those tangled streets, maintaining the illusion that we are all the same, that nothing has changed. We employ the police to sweep away the homeless from our neighborhoods and parks. We look away. We close our eyes. We sigh with relief.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

Jesus found that place in the scroll and proclaimed it to those who were listening. What are we proclaiming? What are we believing for? Safety? Security? A final and permanent separation from anyone or anything that might cause us harm?

At what cost?

* * * * *

The safe isolation we crave is not the way of Christ.

To make compassion the bottom line of life, to be open and vulnerable to others, to make community life the focus, and to let prayer be the breath of your life…that requires a willingness to tear down the countless walls that we have erected between ourselves and others in order to maintain our safe isolation.

Henri Nouwen

In our country we elevate anything that illustrates toughness and self-sufficiency. The sports we worship in the new cathedrals we call stadiums squash the weak and the small and celebrate strength and domination. We have left little room for compassion, especially a compassion that seems impractical or dangerous.

Yet we are being called back to compassion, the kind of compassion shown by the Good Samaritan to the man dying on the side of the road. The kind of compassion shown by Christ’s disciples, men and women willing to follow his leading into dangerous, dark places. The kind of compassion shown by Christ who chose not to retaliate, not to protect himself, not to escape, but to spread wide his arms and take us all in.

When our first thoughts are for the safety of ourselves and our families, our last thoughts are of Christ.

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She Convinced Us She Would Live Forever

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When the first flowers finally
dry into brittle reminders, and the nurses
know the names of the family members who spend
every night sleeping on the tile floor, you know
the vigil being kept has entered its second
week. Somehow she convinced us
she would live forever. The realization struck us
like a firework going off: she was just like us. She was
mortal.

She would soon die.

In shaky script she wrote to me three days before
she died. Breathlessly she asked for a pen,
a paper, and we scrambled to fulfill her command
like priests in the temple appeasing a god. I stood
beside her bed and watched her do it. She wrote
that she wanted me to
come back next week to work with her
on her obituary.

I said I would.

She put her hands on Maile’s stomach and smiled. We asked
if she thought it was a boy
or a girl? “Another boy,” she whispered, shaking her head
in mock sadness. I leaned in before I left
and whispered, “You were always my favorite.”
I cried when I said those words. But
she laughed through her short breath, as if
even then, she was only planning to stay
in the hospital for a short time. “What?” everyone asked. “What did
you tell her?” I refused to say.

That was
three days before the end. Three days before

nurses mute the machines. No more
beeping, no more buzzing, no more
chirping. The room is quieter
than it should be with so many people. Ten
of us? Twelve? Fifteen maybe? I tick off the seconds
between, each breath a tiny struggle, a refusal
to leave. Three seconds. Four. Not yet.

Anything said is said in a whisper. To leave the room
is to undertake a silent pilgrimage, holding the latch
so it doesn’t snap, guiding the door to its rest.

Maile sits beside me. She reaches through the silence
for my hand and holds it against
her stomach. The baby moves. Kicks. Rolls in
its own little universe. Does it know what we
are waiting for? How must that feel to be Maile,
a mother, holding life? How must that feel to be
my grandmother, sitting quietly beside the bed of one
who once twisted and turned inside of her, now
fading?

Through the eighth floor window the sun splashes us
with pink and red and a deep sense that everything is
being fulfilled. But how? Could this be the end of the world, the last
night? We are a prehistoric people basking in the glow
of the apocalypse, worshiping a God who does not answer
the way we want.

Her last breath is like the thousand
that came before it, diminished. The candle is out. She is finished
waiting. There is a silence between her last breath and the first
cries of our anguish. Generations are born and die
in that space of time. Everything else in the world
stops. The clouds bow down in their
sunset. The red lights in the city synchronize – everyone
pauses. It is a silence you can fall into
if you’re not careful.

The moment she dies, just after 9pm on July the 3rd, fireworks
go off all over the city. We watch them from the eighth
floor. We hold each other. Words are completely
powerless. I feel that I never want to speak again.

Later that same night, I am home. I am writing an obituary
a week early, years early, decades too early (she was
only 48). My daughter waits for me
to climb the long stairs to the third floor
of our darkened house. There, most nights for the last
two years, we said a prayer for that beauty
who had just died, fled
this earth, dodging fireworks. For two years we prayed
for a miracle. I think I need a break from
prayer. I think I need to stop asking,
at least for a little while.

By the time I pry myself from my office and lean
my way up each sorry step, wondering how I will ever
be able to say the words, my daughter
is already asleep. Her light still on. I pull up the covers
under her chin, turn out the light,
and look through her window, towards the north. Towards
the night.

This is how I pray now: I climb the steps each night. I walk
the short hall. I hold my daughter’s hand as she says
the words. Sometimes, I think we need others to do
the praying for us. Sometimes prayer is as simple as waking
each morning and standing up out of bed, or clearing away
the brittle bouquets and bringing in fresh flowers.

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On Having a 13-Year-Old Son

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I walk down the long, dark hall to his
room, the door barely cracked open, the line of light
like a sunrise. I push the door open and see him
on his bed, headphones on, his head moving
to the bass. He flips the page of the book he is reading.

He does not see me.

Thirteen is the continental
divide, the place where two rain drops falling
side by side can end up in opposite
oceans. It is Matchbox cars and a
laptop, Elmo with baby brother and hesitant
conversations with young ladies. Thirteen
is to have the soul of a child lost in the body
of an almost-man, like a hand in
a too-big glove.

I look at the top of his head and remember
the first time I saw that head crowning, dark hair still
wet from his mother’s womb. So much anticipation, waiting
for the first sight of that face. That face. Screaming,
he came. That is the way of the world.

I move to nudge him, to say good-night. Instead,
I look at him, his long body stretching the entire length
of the bed, his shoulders widening. Beneath the curve
of the blanket I see the form of a strong back. I wonder
what it is to be a father, what it is that joins us
to our sons, what strange awkwardness in seeing ourselves
right there
becoming men in ways large and small, doing things
we remember
doing things we
try to forget.

Thirteen is the heat of summer, the sweltering
waves rising from melting macadam. It is the
condensation on the outside of the glass,
the ring left behind on the table. It’s the season
the creeps in through the screens, heavy
and warm, with thunderstorms on the horizon.

I back out of the room quietly. Tonight I will leave him
to find his way. I will not ask him about his music
or what he is reading. I will not try to create an artificial
crossing. Tonight. Step by step I back out of the room,
until I am pushing
the door closed softly. But

just then

he senses me. Turns his head. Smiles his boyish grin
the grin that is all 13-year-olds and yet only him,
the grin that gaps at the back where his last baby
teeth have fled.

“Good night, Dad,” he says, extra loud because of
the head phones. I almost say
Turn down your music,
but I do not. I only smile
and close the door.

Good night. Yes. That is what we call it. I leave
the door cracked open, that line of light
a sunset.

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Defining Christianity in a Single Word (My Sermon at Saint James)

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O Lord, help us to behold, to hear and to receive you in Word and Sacrament
That our mouths may proclaim your praise. Amen.

It was the fall of 2009, and my wife Maile and I were financially ruined. The housing bubble burst, and it left us reeling. Our house had halved in value, my business debts had climbed to over $50,000, and the winter loomed – for a residential painter, it is the slowest time of the year.

We made the hardest decision of our married life: we would leave Leesburg, VA, the town we loved, and move our family of six into my parents’ basement 150 miles away. We cut our losses where we could, we put a reasonable payment plan in place to address the debts we had accrued, we gave up our home, and we hired the largest moving truck we could find. We stuffed it to the ceiling with what felt like our life. And we drove north.

I felt like a complete and utter failure.

On one particularly dark night, just before we made the move, my wife found herself face down on our bedroom floor. Like David, or Esther, or one of the prophets of old, she cried out to God. Her tears soaked into the carpet. “How can you do this to us?” she asked God. “We tithe. We serve the poor at the women’s shelter. We’re heavily involved at our church. We are trying our best to live the life you want us to live, and then you … do … this.”

“How can you do this to us?”

There, on the floor in our home in Leesburg, just before we moved away, Maile heard something. She sensed something. God spoke to her, perhaps not in an audible voice, but as close to that as she’d ever experienced. God told her:

“This is a gift.”

This is a gift. That was it. No explanation. No further encouragement. Only that phrase. This is a gift.

“Well,” she said, “it’s a pretty crappy gift.” (The word crappy there is a paraphrase.) She stood up. She got back in bed. And she went to sleep.

* * * * *

In the reading from Luke today, Jesus enters a city that has a serious problem. A man living in the tombs is filled with many, many demons. He could not be contained. He injured himself and, I imagine, others. So Jesus did what Jesus will do when he is present in a situation: he turned the tables. He cast the demons into a herd of pigs, and the pigs rushed over a steep bank, into a lake, and drowned.

We don’t hear too much about the swineherds, who presumably had just lost their livelihood. We do know that they “ran off and told it in the city and in the country,” what Jesus had done. People came out to see what had happened, and they found the previously violent, possessed man sitting at the feet of Jesus. The man was in his right mind. He was no longer naked, but clothed. And the people ________.

The people did what?

The people…rejoiced?

The people…thanked Jesus for ridding their town of the demons?

The people…rushed to bring him the rest of their sick so they, too, could be healed?

No. The people were afraid. And they asked Jesus to leave. So he did.

* * * * *

Isaiah tells us in today’s reading, rather unexpectedly, that God comes even to those who do not seek him. Think about that for a moment. God is showing up in our lives all the time, even when we are not actively looking for him. Even in situations that are uncomfortable or unexpected or at first appear to be detrimental to the life we have planned out for ourselves.

One of the main questions of our existence is, How do we respond to the active, radical presence of God working in our lives? Do we accept that a life in Christ will not always be predictable, will not always look like the lives of those around us? Do we draw closer to God when presented with unexpected turns in the road, things that look like trials or hardships?

Or, like the people from the Gerasenes, do we allow our fear to overcome us? Do we ask Jesus to leave the situation by trying to take care of this relationship or that career situation ourselves? Do we we ask Jesus to leave by facing our discouragements, disappointments, and devastations on our own?

In his book Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning writes,

Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus’ cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployment, loneliness, depression, the loss of a loved one; when we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain; when the world around us suddenly seems a hostile, menacing place – at those times we may cry out in anguish, “How could a loving God permit this to happen?” At such moments the seeds of distrust are sown. It requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.

Manning goes on to talk about his friend named Gus, a man who lives as a hermit for six months out of the year while spending the other six months preaching the Gospel and feeding the hungry and homeless. He asked Gus if he could define the Christian life in a single sentence. “Brennan,” Gus said, “I can define it in a single word: trust.”

* * * * *

Trust. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? But what can something as ethereal as trust do in the face of a senseless tragedy like Orlando? What can trust do in the face of hate and prejudice when it’s wielded against some of the most marginalized in our society? 49 of our brothers and sisters are gone.

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

What can trust do when confronted with this, our fractured world?

The simplicity and child-like quality of trust is itself redemptive. When we choose to trust, even in overwhelming circumstances, when we choose to trust even when our calling doesn’t make sense, when we choose to trust even when our present and future is obscured by pain or violence, fear or loss, we are choosing life and hope.

Trusting God looks like helping in ways we didn’t think were possible, much in the way police officers helped people out of the Pulse Night Club or the way people lined up around the block to give blood.

Trusting God looks like saying “yes” when we are called to minister or befriend or support our brothers and sisters who have been forced to the outside of our communities.

Trusting God always ends up looking a lot like love.

* * * * *

Trust.

This is the lesson Maile and I learned in 2009 and the ensuing years as God presented us with the gift of poverty, the gift of solitude, the gift of unpredictability, and the gift of a pilgrimage away from our closest friends. We learned that the best gift we can receive from God is never the actual thing God gives us, but rather the loving and patient way God uses the giving of the gift to increase our trust in Him.

I am now a full-time writer, something that had always been a dream of mine. I have been to Istanbul and to Sri Lanka writing for wonderful organizations. I’ve had the honor and privilege of helping people write out their life stories. Maile is a stay-at-home mom with our five, soon to be six, children. She volunteers at Atlas and here at Saint James.

Seven years after God told Maile, “This is a gift,” we are only beginning to see the innumerable ways that this is true. When we dropped the door of the moving truck seven years ago, we had trouble seeing the gift for what it was, but this is a life better than anything we could have imagined.

Please hear me when I say that I do not personally believe that God orchestrates events like Orlando. I don’t believe that all devastation and death is a gift from above. That’s a theological debate for another day – perhaps Reverend Lauren would be willing to chat with you about that. But no matter your circumstances, I think the question all of us face is, “Can I trust God? Even now?”

This week, as we go about our ordinary lives, can we open our eyes to the unexpected movement of God? The surprising encounters? The fateful decisions? The circumstantial happenings? Instead of allowing these unexpected changes or crosses that we bear to fill us with fear, can we somehow allow them to increase our trust in God?

You may be in a situation where you are lifting your pain and disappointment up to God, crying out, “How could you do this to me? How could you let this happen?”

As Frederick Buechner says, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”

So I say, do not be afraid. Do not turn away from Christ. Instead, wait with patience and trust. May you, along with the psalmist, cry out:

“Be not far away, O Lord;
you are my strength; hasten to help me.”

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Under My Hand, the Softest Splinter (or, Hope, Even Now)

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Maile exhales in her sleep. The window that looks out
onto James Street is open, the summer air still against
the screen. Maile stirs
in bed, pulls a pillow in
under her belly, under our baby yet to be
born. It is 4am, and I am awake
again.

A car slips by, its radials humming. What new evil
will flare in the world
tonight? I wonder. What new out-
pouring of hate blood violence
on a knife’s edge driven home by an after-
math of anger and suspicion?

I move up against Maile and wrap my arm
around her, my hand on her nearly-ripe stomach.
Then, my hand is
nudged by a human not-yet-here,
a human not-yet-born. Its presence sudden,
real. What have we
done? I wonder. Why invite anyone
into this hate blood violence victims contempt,
into this swirling world of rage and

pop-pop-pop go the guns. Rat-tat-tat. I can feel
the air moving around me as the bullets
fly. I hear them absorbed by flesh and bone and walls.
My thoughts are the sound of
shattering glass. Someone, somewhere, lets loose
a primal cry. Then

under my hand, the softest
splinter. Is that a foot? An elbow? Is that
the soft nudge of hope, the insistence
of something beautiful yet to come?

There were, after all, people waiting
to give blood. Their blood for blood, their life for
life. There were 200 Muslims bowing
in prayer for victims, candlelight glowing in place
of gun fire flashes. We are them and they are us and
all around are gentle nudges reminding us of something
beautiful yet to come. Will we bring it
into being? The labor is never easy.

There will be blood. Yes, there will be
blood. But there will also be a rushing
of waters
the crowning of a head
the first glimpse of powder on a new face
never seen before. There will be
the slipping into the world.
There will be screaming. Yes, there will be
screaming. But there will also be hopeful
tears smiles and bulbs blooming
the cutting of that which joined us
a rapid latching on
a sense of awe that even when evil rises in the middle
of the night, a new birth is coming.

I leave my hand there on her belly. I fall
asleep, the undulating waves of –
what is it, hope? –
living, breathing future
pressing on my finger prints. An elbow, I’m sure
of it. Or perhaps a heel, born
to crush the very head
of this persistent evil, perhaps a gentle hand, born
to usher in a fresh peace.

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What I’ve Tried to do for 17 Years (or, The In-Between)

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It would be so much easier to wait a week before writing this post. In a week I will know a lot more. In a week I could write a strong piece in the vein of a “disappointed-but-not-giving-up” writer. Or maybe it will be a shocked, celebratory piece. It all depends on the news I get this week. But here, now, on this muggy evening in mid-June, four months after my agent began shopping my novel around to publishing houses, the in-between is hard to navigate.

Still, I think I should write this post. I think we need to share more in-betweens with each other. I think we need to be willing to say, “Look, this is where I am, and it’s not where I want to be, but will you come along, whatever might happen?”

* * * * *

I’ve received a few very kind rejections during this process from publishing houses who can’t figure out how to market the book or are uncomfortable making predictions on how it will perform. You know. Where they say things like “beautiful writing” and “wonderful voice” and “talent” yet at some point throw in the “but.”

But for all of the rejections and silence, my agent and I have gotten somewhere. Three publishers are interested, and one is even considering The Day the Angels Fell at their pub board meeting this week. So. I will know one way or another by Wednesday.

I know I’ve been on a strong “don’t give up” kick recently here at the blog, but, seriously. Don’t give up.

When I was 22, I was rejected by 5 MFA programs. That’s right. Five. I still have the rejection letters in a file somewhere. I wanted to get a masters degree in creative writing, but no one would take me. I applied to the best-of-the-best programs and a few of the average-of-the-most-average. Thank God they said no. I didn’t have a clue who I was as a person, much less as a writer.

For the next nine years – yeah, nine years – my writing life consisted of writing in my journal non-stop and regular rejections of my short stories by various literary journals and magazines. It was a steady diet of rejection, of “no,” of “you’re not good enough.” I wrote in my journal and then, when the sting of previous rejections had faded away, I’d write another short story and send it off. Months later, a form rejection. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Why didn’t I quit writing during those nine years? I’m not really sure. I had no outlet to the rest of the world – there were no blogs, no online magazines, no way for strangers to easily find and read my work. There was very little affirmation or encouragement. These days of easy access to readers is a both a blessing and a curse for writers. But I continued writing, gathering all the words, filling all the journals, and lining the journals up on my bookshelf, one after the other. “One page a day,” I’d tell myself, and that’s what I did.

Then, when I was 31 years old, eight years ago, I got the chance of a lifetime: I co-wrote a book for a real, live publishing house. During the last seven years, I’ve co-written over 20 books for other people, and I self-published a few of my own. But I’ve always kept that dream. I always wanted to be a novelist, published by a publishing house. I think that will always be in my mind, always something I aspire to. I no longer look down my nose at independent publishing. I think it’s a wonderful option, one I will probably use again in the future. But to have a publishing house love your work enough to bring you in, to publish your book? That’s always been my dream.

And now? I’m so close. But you never know how these things will go.

Maybe it’s because I’m almost 40, or maybe it’s because I’ve got five kids and one on the way, or maybe it’s because I no longer feel the pressure of trying to be a young prodigy…whatever the case, no matter the news I receive, I know I’ll keep writing. Not because this is the closest I’ve ever come to having a traditionally-published book, but simply because I’m a writer. I write. It’s what I do.

So. Enough about me. Maybe you feel like you’re stumbling along in whatever it is you do. You probably wish you were further along or higher up, better known or appreciated more than you are. Trust me when I say that you have no idea how the creative work you are doing today will come into fruition ten years from now, or twenty years from now. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing. Get better. Work harder. Study your craft. Keep making mistakes. Keep getting rejected.

It’s what I’m doing. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last 17 years. Maybe you’re just starting out, or maybe you’ve been on your path for 17 years. Or maybe you’ve been walking much longer. No matter. Let’s walk this road together.