Faith is not a contest. It’s not praying louder or more eloquently for all to see. It’s not giving or fasting for show.
It’s an internal, deeply personal thing between you and God. It’s a dark of the night hope, and a bright green day joy. It the bulb pushing its way stubbornly through the soil with the promise of spring. It’s holding on to the values you know to be right even in the face of temptation, or expedience, or doubt.
Lent is a time for us to dig deep into our souls, to reconnect with God and each other, to remind ourselves of who and whose we are, and then live out that truth.
We can’t choose everything in life, but we can choose what kind of person we want to be.
As we deal with storms across the country and unprecedented blizzard watches here in Southern California, consider the importance of rain. Rain can be like encouragement, bringing nourishment and rebirth to dry parched land. It can promote an abundance of life and energy.
But, in excess, rain can cause flooding and landslides. It can sweep people away into rushing water and leave the landscape devastated.
Our words have the same power. We can be supportive and encouraging, fostering life and vitality in those we engage with. Or we can be harsh and critical, pessimistic and judgmental. Our words can both heal and wound. Our choice.
We can choose to be encouraging and supportive, rather than bleak and pessimistic.
We can avoid being the person who rains on someone else’s parade.
With the news this week that former President Jimmy Carter has entered home hospice care, many people have been sharing stories about his accomplishments in office—his efforts for peace, his push for environmental stewardship, and his efforts toward energy independence, among others.
But his most striking accomplishments perhaps are what he has done since he lost his re-election bid. Rather than retreat to Georgia and exit the public arena, he began building houses for the poor, and working for democracy—a principle he firmly believed in—around the world, and standing up for women’s rights, even when that stand conflicted with his religion, and working to eradicate disease and so on. He has never stopped showing up to make a difference.
In a world that has grown more cynical and jaded since his entry into the public spotlight, he continues to show us what it means to walk the walk, quietly, humbly, and without fanfare. Here, surely, is a good and faithful servant of God.
Have you ever stopped to consider how many of your decisions are controlled by fear? Or how others may attempt to control you by exploiting those fears?
Fear is a useful emotion. It can help us avoid danger and give us a boost of adrenaline to combat foes. But bathing in it, day in and day out, as some news sources would have us do, is a recipe for disease. Our bodies simply aren’t equipped to be in a constant state of fight or flight.
One of the answers must be to consider the reality of what makes you afraid. Is someone telling you stories to whip up your emotions? Is it true? If someone is manipulating you, you must find a way to step back and give yourself some perspective. Consider other sources. Evaluate the data. Analyze what will happen if the dreaded event comes true. Find physical ways to give your body comfort.
Ask yourself, what is this person trying to make me fear, and what are they trying to get me to do. What’s in it for them? That analysis will help give us the tools to determine if the fear is real or if someone is manipulating us.
We can buck up and deal with real threats. But imagined threats, particularly when someone is trying to keep you afraid to manipulate your actions, requires your own intervention.
When I was a girl, text books used the term ‘melting pot’ to describe America as if everyone were thrown into one big pot and all the differences were boiled out, with America becoming just one big homogenous pot of glop. But better metaphors have popped up in the years since. Such as a salad bowl:
We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables – the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers – to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.
Jane Elliot
But perhaps my favorite is Jimmy Carter’s:
We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.
Jimmy Carter
I love the idea of a mosaic to define America—beauty in all the bits and pieces, each a small distinct individual unit but also a necessary part of a larger picture.
No matter how you describe it, America at its best, living up to its ideals, is stronger because of its diversity, the unique perspectives, the mix of voices, backgrounds, cultures, and traditions.
It’s startling to hear something you’ve shared with someone in confidence being talked about elsewhere. It makes you feel so exposed, but, more important, it undermines trust in the relationship. Perhaps keeping secrets isn’t possible, and Ben Franklin was right when he said, “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
But, just maybe, people should try harder to be worthy of trust. Brené Brown talks about the important elements of trust, to the acronym BRAVING:
Boundaries Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why
Reliability You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.
Accountability You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.
Vault You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential.
Integrity Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and practicing your values, not just professing them.
Nonjudgment I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment.
Generosity Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others.
It is important to learn which stories are yours to share, to leave the decision whether to share in the hands of the person who owns the story, and to be a safe place for your friend to come. We all need friends; let’s be good ones.
Many trees these days looks dead. And yet spring will come. Bulbs planted long ago under frigid ground are even now pushing out sprouts working their way to the surface. Spring will come.
Believing in spring is a bit like an act of faith. Things look bleak and dead, yet we hope for new life and regeneration. Renewal. what was broken can be mended. What was lost can be found. Those who have given up can find hope.
As we hear news that former President Carter is receiving hospice care, I pray his faith sustains and comforts him and his family, and that they find peace. In his words:
God is not my personal valet. God does not build a protective fence around my life, keep me from trouble, fulfill my personal desires, or guarantee my success. However, through prayer God offers me comfort, reassurance, satisfaction, courage, hope, and peace.”
How often do we give others the benefit of the doubt? Do we assume the innocent explanation or conclude the worst? Are we patient, or do we pounce at the very first mistake someone makes in trying to get their thoughts out? Do we search for the best in others, or do we protect ourselves in advance about the damage we fear may be inevitable by opening our hearts to trusting someone again?
Wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world where everyone gave everyone else the benefit of the doubt? Where perceived offenses weren’t allowed to fester and grow? Where there was trust?
Consider this beautiful poem on friendship by Dinah Maria Craik. Isn’t this how we would like to make each other feel?
Friendship
by Dinah Maria Craik
Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
A case from my early days as a lawyer still bothers me. It wasn’t even my case, just one in our firm, handled, in my opinion, wrong. Not wrong, perhaps, in the legal sense, but wrong in the great moral cosmic picture of things we know to be true sense. I think of it periodically. In the matter, a little girl wearing a bright red sweater crossed in an intersection against the light and was killed by an oncoming car. On appeal from the substantial wrongful death verdict, my colleague argued that the judgment was too high because this little girl wasn’t particularly special. She wasn’t a violin prodigy, for instance, or a young movie star. She didn’t make any money or show any unique promise to do so. She was just a girl, admittedly beloved by her family, but her death might, in fact, save the parents money, what with no need now to support her or send her to college or buy her a stuffed animal for her birthday.
I thought of this case when I read about a man released from prison this week after decades in jail when the judge concluded there was substantial evidence of his innocence of a murder. Not innocence in general, I suppose, because he admits to selling drugs at the time of the killing. But innocence of murder. What is this man’s life worth? How do you value it? What is the value of the students’ lives struck down recently at a college shooting, or at a celebration, or an elementary school? How do we value these lives lost in an ever-increasingly violent society? What of the lives lost in a devastating earthquake? Do we somehow weigh lives against another, concluding some are more valuable than others? Do we consider the monetary value of each life, as my colleague argued? Have we somehow gotten to a place where the tragic loss of life from violence is normal?
Have we lost something about the ‘inestimable value’ of human life?
I came across this poem offered up in the face of unceasing violence. It spoke to me in way that got behind my buffers and filters, and approached what is true.
Sometimes we just need to get out of the way. What if we think of ourselves as vessels to collect love and then pour it out–not just on ourselves and those close to us, but on everyone and everything? What would our days look like if every encounter with someone else was an opportunity to be loving and thoughtful? What would our world look like if we used our time and energy to love it? What would our relationships look like if we laid down all our weapons–anger, resentment, hurt, selfishness–and just took the time to love each other, as if our very lives depended on it? They just may.
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