Confluence Formation – Détails, épisodes et analyse

I’m feeling kinda partial to babies this year.. anyone with me??

I had a baby this year.

My daughter was born, this year!

Now, technically (literally, spiritually) speaking, it was my wife who had the baby.

What I had was the honor of being there to witness—up close and hands on—the primal miracle of birth.

Emma is preaching this very evening at the church where she’s been serving for the past few years. It’s her last Christmas Eve with them, as we’ll be moving up from Boston in the new year.

Over the past year and a half I’ve been splitting my time between Boston and Midcoast, back and forth a whole bunch. I wore out one Subaru, and got a whole new one.

And I’m so excited to be moving back to Maine after a few years away. And bringing my new family with me.

The sermon that Emma is sharing with her congregation this very evening—she titled: The Risk of Birth.

And it is that, isn’t it? Risky business, birth.

Not only for you mothers who have carried and birthed children. Though certainly there is a special quality to the courageous act of mothering.

But also—for every one of you, every one of us: Being born into this world is both a primal miracle and a radical risk.

Risky because the world is not as we know it could and should be.

Our world is filled to the brim with loneliness and despair, with warfare and violence, with greed and envy, with judgement and hate.

The world we all got born into is not as it could and should be.

And that’s precisely why we do things like this.

We gather to gather what we need in order to steady our hearts, boost our spirits, and ready us to go out and reshape the world.

The past several weeks here at Edgecomb Community Church we have been slowing down each Sunday morning to meditate on the world-changing qualities that this season brings to light..

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love.

We’ve looked at these things considering how—as people of good faith—we are invited to add them to the world, regardless of whether or not we’re feeling them at any particular moment.

I want to point out to you something that you probably already know:

That LOVE is not simply a warm feeling.

And PEACE is different from the mere absence of conflict.

And HOPE is something other than just optimism.

And JOY is different from happiness.

Happiness—as the writer, Frederick Buechner, pointed out to me—comes at us in predictable ways: a happy marriage, a pleasant vacation, a job well done.

But JOY is more surprising than that.

JOY, as often as not, tends to turn up when it’s not being looked for, and in places you’d not necessarily think to look.

HOPE and PEACE and LOVE have the same tendency to turn up in unlikely places.

I can think of one of those unlikely places..

a very particular—smelly, lonely, dark, dank, and frightened—corner of a stable in a small town called Bethlehem, in the hill country of Judea, a place now known as Palestine: Where the JOY of life showed up one starry night a couple of thousand years ago.

I can imagine the primal scream and the final push that resulted that night in an infant child, all gunked up with the goo of birth, lifted with LOVE to his mother’s breast for first communion.

I can feel in my own muscle the HOPE with which that child’s roadweary father scurried around trying to find anything that approximated a clean bundle of cloth to wrap his new child in.

I can look back on this story at the contours of PEACE that took shape in the memories that rippled out from every encounter with the child.

Peace, Hope, Love and Joy are not just sentimental words.

They are the qualities of an active faith.

Faith is often misunderstood as a passive thing. Something that we possess. Something outside of us that we get a hold of, if we’re pious and holy enough.

But that’s not quite right. Faith is active. It’s not something we possess. It’s something that we live. Drawing on the qualities within us, we birth God into the world again and again.

God is often misunderstood as a good luck charm, a sort of totem that we take out from time to time in order to fend off bad feelings or hard realities.

But faith is not passive. And God is not an easy fix.

Faith is active. And God is dynamic—not so much a thing to be believed in as a force to be caught up in—a movement that invites us to participate in the world—as messy as it is—with courageous and illuminating acts of HOPE and PEACE and JOY and LOVE.

The great gift of the Christmas story, in my opinion, is less about who showed up and more about how he did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it was Jesus who showed up.

But he was never not going to show up.

God is too biased toward life to not be in it with us.

The great gift of the Christmas story is not that God showed up in human form but the particular way that God went about showing up in human form.

Jesus could have gotten here any old way. But reflecting every year on the particular way that Jesus did show up—in this unlikely story, in the midst of the mess, the child of immigrants on the move, unhoused, underresourced, in the arms of a teenage mother, under the care of a frightened father, against all odds: Reflecting on this story has got to get us asking questions about where else the divine might be showing up in our world in corners where we haven’t bothered to look?

And where else might we go about putting God in the world?

When I think about faith and God I can think of no better way to sum up both than with these words uttered by the 16th century Saint, John of the Cross: “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”

The same can be said for Hope, Peace, and Joy.

Faith is the act of putting these things where they are not. Making Hope, building Peace, cultivating Joy and putting LOVE into the corners of the world where they are least expected.

Let it be known, dear hearts: When we move through the world in these ways, God moves through the world in us.

AMEN

Spiritual growth is not linear.

It’s better understood—and certainly experienced—in spirals.

It turns back on itself continuously, yet progresses. The new places we land as we grow are always fresh, but usually, somehow, also familiar.

From time to time I thumb through old journals. They’re on the top shelf in my office presently, a space reserved for the finest spirits and indulgences.

The other day I indulged. I stood on a chair by the shelf, pulling down journals, and taking deep thirsty gulps from the years of my life that they represent.

Why do I do this?

When I could be writing new things, or otherwise moving forward, who do I look back?

Sometimes it’s curiosity that moves me. Who was I then? And can I catch glimmers from before of who I’ve become?

Just as often it’s because I want reassurance.

I want to be reassured that I’m making progress. I want to be reassured that I did my best then with what I had.

Something I noticed the other day, standing up there looking back at all those previous versions of myself, was how much creative energy I spent trying to understand and explain myself.

I look back and I see a boy, and then a man, longing for justification and understanding; longing for a final and fixed authoritative voice that says: “You’re good.”

I look back, from time to time, in large part because I want that still: That once and for all reassurance of my goodness.

As I see the previous versions of myself doing, I still succumb to the urge to outsource the answer to that core question, which comes in so many forms: Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Do I have what it takes? Am I man enough?

I’ve been writing myself in circles about this. (And I’ve written about it before. Likely will again, and again.)

At first I thought the lesson, the wisdom, the growth for me in all of this is that I ought never to outsource the authority to answer so core a question. I ought to draw foremost and primarily on my own inner knowing. I ought to self-assure, that: Yes, of course I’m good.

And there’s something to that.

But what I’m seeing now as I scratch these fresh yet familiar words onto the pages of yet another journal that will one day occupy the top shelf, is this:

That question—the core question in all of its quotidian guises—is going to be there yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Doubts and worries find their way.

So whether through outsourcing or insourcing, my aim isn’t to land on a final fixed answer to the question, never to be bothered by it again.

I recognize that I am alive with questions. My aim is to be fully alive. Not to strive, and not to arrive, but through every reliable source of support that is available to me, outside and in, my aim is to more readily respond to the question when it does arise, in whatever form.

I want to notice that question for what it is—the natural experience of someone who cares a whole hell of a lot. I want to notice it and more readily respond, not with analysis or justification, but with grace and action.

Yeah. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m willing to do.

To put less of my energy toward analyzing whether and how I might be good, and more of my creative energy toward the joy and privilege of being the good that I am.

That. That’s some top shelf s**t right there. I could sit back and sip a while on that.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“In my house there are a hundred half-done poems. Each of us leaves an unfinished life.” (Mary Oliver, Thinking of Swirler)

From my heart:

Isn’t that glorious, beloved one? You fill your days with purpose and your nights with reaching out—with arms and dreams—to the life you love living, and still more time flows in behind you. More days flow in from the expanse of what hasn’t been. And they will keep flowing long after your days flush through this world, like a bubbling in a mossy wood, perhaps, or like a mighty river, or a waterfall. All of them heading to the ocean. And whatever you don’t complete, whatever you leave unfinished —so long as you truly started it— will get picked up again, after you, by the clouds, and cycled back into life.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?” (Fred Rogers)

From my heart:

That’s where you’ll find me, as often as not. That’s where you’ll find what you need. And not that you have to go hunting for them, those little quiet moments. Really you just need to notice them. And then notice your own sweet heart when you notice them; what happens there. You don’t have to wait until later. The chittering of the birds just now… The velcro crash of the waves over your shoulder… The way that the shoes are piled up by the front door over there…

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“The fourth myth is the belief that it is possible to be totally logical, rational and objective.” (I forget where I read this)

From my heart:

The challenge for you, my darling, is to live among men who are deeply invested in the fourth myth, and to see the harmful effects of that myth on your own heart, while also continuing to believe that it is sometimes possible to benefit from trying to be partially logical and rational and objective. Absolutism is the spectre that hovers over and in any totalitarian belief. The very exciting challenge is to be whole, rather than ever totally anything.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.” (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)

From my heart:

You aren’t alone, there, scraping your every effort against every day, vying of your own will for results that’ll amount to something. The gods are there too. It’s actually quite beautiful if you believe in the gods, which is to say, if you believe that you are not alone in your longing and your efforts to make of this world something awesome, something worthy to pass along. Believe that you’re alone, and you’ll run ragged with unnecessary struggle. Believe in the company that is available to you, and you’ll rest from time to time in the joyful grace of the work.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, but we must live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” (Richard Rohr)

From my heart:

You can sit there in that rocking chair and run your thoughts through your head all morning until the soles of their feet bleed, but they’ll still have miles to run, and it’ll be circles they’re running in, until you give yourself something to act on. You can do the same with your fears, your doubts, your worries—and I’m not saying you never should take those things for a run around the block—but taking an actual step, out here in this world of constraints and hardship—taking an actual step, often precisely in the direction that you’re dreading the most—will free your mind to help you make new worlds.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Every step and every strain and hard breath and heart pump is an investment in tomorrow morning’s strength.” (Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose, I think)

In my mind, I responded:

Ok. Then I’ll walk on. Though I’m done living for perpetual tomorrows. I need to be absolutely clear what it is that I’m up to, because doubts creep and there is no such thing as a clear path. Only the path as it is. Often jumbled. And knowing why I’m walking helps. Are you there, my why?

From my heart, I heard:

I am the walk.

My mind:

So, tomorrow’s strength isn’t the why that I’m after? So, strength is a by-product then?

My heart:

Yep. Strength is a by-product. And a young man’s game. You’re already strong. Whenever you’re doing what you’re here to do—no matter your pace, no matter the stretch of your stride—you’re moving with strength. Trust that your heart will pump, your blood will flow, to feed the next step you need to take. And take it.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“...men of intelligence who formerly possessed an ordinary amount of refinement.”

From my heart:

And what is the ordinary refinement that you are shedding? I know you care a lot, my hearty soul, about the hopes and dreams, desires and priorities, the wants and needs of others in your near orbit; of those especially who, through admiration and gratitude for your gifts, stake some claim on your time and your attention. But care a little bit less today. Give more thought to what is yours to make and offer, and do that a little bit more today. No one has a viable claim on your time, unless you elect to give it to them. Give your time and your care to whom and what you wish. Trust that. This is your next level of growth.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.” (Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweetgrass)

From my heart:

Like the rough Father says, though a little bit gentler. Like Jesus said, more or less. Like the Mother does, when the babe screams. Like I’ve shown you all along. Like you yourself recite everyday: “...to freely give themselves to the world.” Eventually no sacrifice remains. Eventually I’ve consumed all sacrifice in the fire of my truth: That when you give, in just such a way, you will receive it back. I love the sound of your cries, my beloved. I love your protestations, my darling. They tell me of your heart and of your appetite—and there is nothing more that I would rather know.