Chris Anderson's Blog, page 36

Really Here

I often feel as if I’m not really here.

But I am. 

I am no more or less important

than a wave or a blade

of grass or the crow squawking

in the top of that tree.

It obviously sees me.

I won’t say knows me.

But what does knowing really mean

when we are all so sad

and fleeting?

I crush the grass

and the grass closes over me.

I break the branch

and the forest closes over me.

Everything is true.

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The Wrong Wedding

     Barb and I took a break one weekend and spent a day on the coast.  We saw two bald eagles.  We learned about a coastal flower called “King,” tufts of green with clusters of small, white flowers.

      Above the tidal pools at the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse we saw a mother whale and her calf surfacing, a dozen times, and also harbor seals and pelicans. 

     It was bright and sunny in the afternoon, after a day of clouds.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the wedding feast and it’s like the wedding and it’s taking place along the road, on the way to Independence.  On both sides.

    The next weekend we drove up near Independence for our nephew’s wedding.  We found the address and parked behind a barn.  There were rows of folding chairs set out and garlands of flowers, so we sat down and waited. 

     We didn’t expect to see my brother and his wife beforehand because they were part of the wedding. 

     Then the music started and the bridal party started processing in, and we were getting more and more confused, until finally the bride came down between the rows of folding chairs, smiling broadly, and we didn’t recognize her. 

      She was blonde.  Petite.

     We were at the wrong wedding.

     The real wedding was across the highway in a garden—the same address, even the same name, just with “garden” in the title.  Just across the highway.

     So we had to get up and leave, in front of everybody, and we had to remove the wedding present we’d put on the table with the other wedding presents, and we had to run across the highway, and race into the garden, and sit down at the back, in the last row of the folding chairs set up there, trying not to attract too much attention.  Trying not to laugh too hard.

     Afterwards I was sitting at a table in the shade of the maple and the oak, chatting with my brothers, all of us heavier now, and graying, or bald.  And everything seemed fine.  Relaxed.  Good.  OK.

     The Kingdom of Heaven is like the wedding feast and it’s like the wedding and it’s taking place along the road, on the way to Independence.  On both sides. 

     It’s always taking place, everywhere. 

     All we have to do is come.   All we have to do is get there.

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Maggie & Mervin Wedding Homily

     Today would make a wonderful movie.  Everything is visible.

     Maggie is so beautiful and Mervin is so handsome and they’re both so obviously devoted and in love.  And we’re all dressed up and on our best behavior, and there’s music and flowers, and it’s just a wonderful, grace-filled moment.

     But I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to make a movie about marriage.  A movie about love.

     Of course there are lots of movies about love—every movie ever made seems to be about love–but most of them are about crazy, stupid love—sentimental love, adolescent love.  There are lots of movies about marriage, but most of them are about the stormy ones, the failed ones.

     I think real love is almost impossible to film because in some sense it’s finally invisible.  It’s from God.  It’s about the vine, not the branches.

     In the last scene of The Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson actually shows us the Resurrection, from inside the tomb.  We see the linens collapse, the ones that wrapped the body, and then we see the Risen Jesus, crouching on the floor, naked and handsome and strong, and all of us in the theater know who it is–there’s no question about it—it’s Jesus—it’s the same actor who’s been playing Jesus all along–and there’s this stirring, military music, and the drums are beating, and it’s all dramatic and cinematic and nothing at all like the Resurrection as it’s described in the gospels themselves, because the gospels themselves never describe the Resurrection.  They can’t.

     In all four gospels we are always outside the tomb and the tomb is always empty—the angels keep telling us, he’s not here, he’s not here–and the emphasis is always on the act of seeing, on the act of interpreting, and the people who are seeing and interpreting are mixed up and afraid, and even when Jesus appears to them, even when he’s standing right in front of them, they don’t recognize him at first, they don’t know who he is, and they can never hold on to him when they finally do.  He always vanishes. 

    We could never have filmed the Resurrection.  It was too real.  It wasn’t just some weird thing that happened a long time ago but something that is always happening and is happening now.

     To film it we’d have to show Mervin standing at the sink, doing the dishes. 

     To film it we’d have to show Maggie and Mervin sitting in the living room, reading. 

     The clouds through the windows.

     What I admire about Maggie and Mervin is that they’re not interested in making a movie but in making a marriage, and they are, and they will.  Their love is as romantic and sentimental as Casablanca, as Apollo 13, but it’s more than that, too. 

     Maggie really looks at Mervin and tries to see him, for who he is, in himself.  Mervin really looks at Maggie.  He doesn’t expect her or some fantasy version of her to serve him.  He serves her. 

     Both Maggie and Mervin understand that to believe is to interpret and that to be married is to interpret, and that the Beloved is always mystery and the Beloved is always changing, and so the interpreting is never over, is never done, and that’s the great challenge of it, and the great and holy fun.  And they’re getting married here at St. Mary’s not just because it’s a good place to get married or because they think they should but because they believe:  that life isn’t meaningless and life isn’t desolate, and that the mystery of who they are as persons and the mystery of their love for each other comes from God and flows from God and always points back to God, who is love, who is all tenderness and personality and regard. 

     There’s a little poem I like by the Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry, about the Resurrection scene in the Gospel of John, when even Mary Magdalene fails to recognize the Risen Lord.  He was too free, Berry says.  When Jesus rose from the dead, Berry says, “striding godly forth,” he was so free of “the politics of illusion,” of the false and the trivial and the consumerist, that “He appeared . . . / to be only the gardener walking about / in the new day, among the flowers.”   

     Only the gardener.  Though for Berry, of course, that’s a good thing.

     As much as any of us can be, Maggie and Mervin are free of the politics of illusion.  They’re too thoughtful.  They have too much integrity.  That’s what I admire.  They don’t care about appearances.  They don’t care about prestige.  They are willing to be overlooked, to be mistaken for gardeners, because they know that what really matters is invisible, is the Resurrection, always and everywhere going on—

     although today, in this garden, among these flowers, in their youth and in their beauty, we can’t see them as anything but what they really are. 

     They are the angels at the tomb, they are the beloved disciples, they are the ones we love and the ones above all loved by God, here and now and all the days of their lives.

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The Canoe

     I love this poem by our current poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. 

     I love the way we don’t quite know what it means, but do.  How the lines leap and there are gaps between them.  How the lines break.  The poem does what a poem is supposed to do.  It invokes the mystery.  It allows us to experience the mystery.

     I think it’s about growing older.  I think it’s about dying to the false self and rising to the new—“I am not who I am either.”  “To let go of our shame-bodies.”

     It just goes right through me.

     “La Canoa” means “canoe.”

La Canoa

It is late, it is time to leave.  To let go

of the shame-bodies.  To forget, most of all.

I’ve been waiting for you.  Behind the masks.

Behind the sideshow, the national awards.

Names, too many to remember.  One remains.

Your name.  It has no true shape.  It has

no rhyme or even letters.  It lies here,

in these quiet waters, below and above,

inside and at the center of my eyes.

Please do not expect me to tell you.

I am not who I am either.  It is time

to leave.  It is late.

Juan Felipe Herrera

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The Owl and the Thrush

What scandalized the ancient Christians

wasn’t the idea that Jesus was divine

but the idea that he was human.

The Varied Thrush, in spring:

like someone who can’t whistle

whistling.

The Great Horned Owl, in the tree

by the mailbox:

like a man blowing on a beer bottle.

A tall man, with a hat.

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Weeds In Our Wheat

Matthew 13:36-43

Let both of them grow together until the harvest time.

     There are these weeds in all our wheat, problems mixed up with all the good things in our lives, people we don’t like and things we don’t like mixed up with the things we do.  Our lives are like that.  They’re mixed.  We’re always trying to make them better, of course, and we should, but they’re always going to be like this, no matter what we do.

     And what’s interesting to me in Jesus’s explanation of the Parable of the Weeds is that he’s saying God will do the sorting out, the Son of Man, through his angels.  They will “collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers,” and this won’t happen until the end of time, the end of age.

They want the early church the way they want it and they don’t want to wait.  They want to judge and they are judging.

     The context for this is the urge of the disciples to do the sorting themselves and to do it now.  They want the early church the way they want it and they don’t want to wait.  They want to judge and they are judging.  They want to weed out and they are weeding out, or trying, and the problem with that is that it’s not their job and the problem with that is they don’t know and can’t know which is which really.  The weeds and the wheat are so mixed up with each other that it’s hard to tell who is good and who isn’t. 

     If we pull up the weeds now, we’ll ruin the wheat.



     And I think we’re the same.  Who are we to say what’s wheat and what chaff?  Even in ourselves.  It’s like the writing process:  we’re never good judges of our own work when we’re in the act of writing.  Sometimes what we think is bad is good and sometimes what we think is good is bad and we can’t tell at all if we don’t wait and let the writing cool off and even then we can’t be sure.  We don’t have enough distance.

     And maybe that’s not just true for how we judge others.  Maybe what we think of as our biggest limitation—I don’t know, our shyness, or our quick temper—will turn out to be our biggest gift.  Maybe something we don’t give much thought to at all, something we taken for granted in ourselves—our sense of humor, maybe, or our quickness with numbers—will turn out to be of real use somehow.  We don’t know.

It’s like the writing process:  we’re never good judges of our own work when we’re in the act of writing.  Sometimes what we think is bad is good and sometimes what we think is good is bad and we can’t tell at all if we don’t wait and let the writing cool off and even then we can’t be sure.

     And we can trust God.  We can trust God to see the goodness beneath the problems, the value beneath all our sins.  He knows the difference. 

     So, let us stop trying to judge, others and ourselves.  Let us stop trying to weed our fields until they’re perfect.  Let us just live in the moment and do the best we can and trust the Son of Man and his angels to sort it all out.

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The Feast of St. Lawrence

to celebrate today’s Feast of St. Lawrence, a deacon, here are 2 homilies:

Who Do You Say You Are? – John 12:24-26; The Feast of St. Lawrence

     If President Obama summoned you to the White House and said, bring me all the riches of the Church, bring me all the Church’s wealth, what would you bring him?

     Would you bring him all the art and all the stained glass?

     Would you bring him the Catechism?

     Would you bring him the Eucharist?

     What do you think is most important about the Church, most defining?

We’re always talking about the Church.  We’re always saying this about it or that.  But what are we talking about really?  What do we think the Church really is?

     Here’s what St. Lawrence did in the fourth century—St. Lawrence, one of the early deacons–when the Emperor of Rome summoned him and demanded all the riches of the Church in Rome.

    He went out and rounded up all the poor and the sick and the lame, and he took them and brought them to the palace, and he said to the Emperor, here, here is the wealth of the Church.  And he meant it.  He wasn’t joking.  And for this he was martyred, roasted on a spit.   

     We’re always talking about the Church.  We’re always saying this about it or that.  But what are we talking about really?  What do we think the Church really is?

     Or say you’re at a dinner party with some people you don’t know very well and you’re making small talk the way we do.  You’re telling each other what you do for a living and where you live and that kind of thing.  There’s always a subtle element of competition in these moments.  We’re always trying to assert ourselves, make ourselves look good. 

     So what do we talk about?  Who do we say we are?

     We can’t brag about our acts of charity, of course, or about our great spiritual poverty, because that would be an example of spiritual pride.  Those things have to remain secret.  But what are we feeling in that moment?  What’s happening to us interiorly?  Do we allow ourselves to be defined by our income or our possessions or our profession or our accomplishments?  Do we subtly try to work into the conversation our latest triumphs?  The important people we know?  The important person we are?

     What do we think deep down is our own true value?  Our own true worth?

The pattern of the Christian life is the opposite of the pattern of the life of the world.  What is up for others is down for us.  What is down for others is up for us.  What should define us is our hiddenness and our obscurity.

     “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”   Which is to say we have to fall to the ground.  We have to die.  It’s to say that the pattern of the Christian life is the opposite of the pattern of the life of the world.  What is up for others is down for us.  What is down for others is up for us.  What should define us is our hiddenness and our obscurity.  What should guide us is not ego and pride but listening and compassion.

     Sitting at that dinner party we should be at peace inside.  Because we know who we really are.  We are the seed.  We are the pearl beyond all price.  We are loved by God, infinitely, as is everyone else around the table, everyone else.  We are all the Church and we are all the riches of the Church.

God is in the Details  –  John 12:24-26; Feast of St. Lawrence, August 10th

     I’ve been in a couple of situations lately—once with a couple getting married and once with the family of a man who had died and were planning his memorial—and in both these conversations people were telling me not to mention Jesus too much.  They wanted a wedding, they wanted a memorial, but they didn’t want anything too Christian and they didn’t want anything that would offend other people. 

     They wanted the liturgy to be generic and inoffensive—as if Christ is offensive, as if Jesus Christ Our Lord and Master is somehow to be avoided and apologized for if mentioned at all.

     And I don’t want to judge these people. They’re good people and they’re trying to do the right thing. They just don’t have enough experience with Christianity to really know what they’re talking about.

     And of course I listened and tried to reassure them, and of course at both the wedding and the memorial I mentioned Jesus again and again, because Jesus is the way and the truth and the light, and there’s nothing generic or nonspecific about him, and without him I am nothing and we are nothing, and it was all fine anyway, as I knew it would be, no one objected, because at the mention of the name of Jesus what people actually end up feeling is a sense of his goodness and his rightness and his authority and his gentleness. 

We can’t get to the summit if we don’t take a path, and there’s a fair amount of suffering involved in that, there’s some day-to-day dying, because we have to confront the mundane reality and everyday sinfulness of a church when we join it, churches being no better than we are, churches being human institutions whatever else they are.

     I think people don’t want to die.  I don’t want to.  I think we don’t want to sacrifice ourselves and give up our freedom or take risks, and the problem with that is that if a seed doesn’t die and fall into the ground it remains just a seed.  It has to be planted.  It has to be committed, and it has to stay in one place—within a tradition, in a particular garden, a particular field—and people in that tradition have to stay in it for a long time and be nurtured and grow day in and day out before they can blossom and then bear fruit.  We can’t grow if we’re not planted.  We can’t get to the summit if we don’t take a path, and there’s a fair amount of suffering involved in that, there’s some day-to-day dying, because we have to confront the mundane reality and everyday sinfulness of a church when we join it, churches being no better than we are, churches being human institutions whatever else they are.

     Which brings us to St. Lawrence, a saint I think a lot about and am challenged by and inspired by because he was a deacon in the ancient church, and a deacon who did sacrifice himself and did fall into the ground and did die, and then rose, in the spirit.  He didn’t worry about offending anyone.  He did offend someone, the emperor, and that got him killed, and he knew it would.

     (Lawrence was roasted on a grill, slowly, over a fire–which is why—I’m not kidding—he is now the Patron Saint of Bakers.)

     (At one point as he was being burned, according to tradition, he said, turn me over.  I’m done on this side.)

     St. Lawrence wasn’t dying for some general idea.  He wasn’t dying for some vague feeling.  He was dying for a specific man who himself died, and rose, and in his person and in his selfhood embodied the greatness of God in human, approachable terms—who was never too good for the ordinary, who came into the world through a specific tradition, a specific religion—I mean Jesus now—Jesus who wasn’t spiritual but not religious but was only spiritual through the Jewish religion, and who calls us to be both spiritual and religious, too:  religious in the sense of committed to the real and ordinary world of people and details day-to-day, and spiritual in the sense of always seeing through those details the higher reality of God. 

     A God we can die for, a God we have to die for, a specific God, a particular God, because that God died for us.

St. Lawrence wasn’t dying for some general idea.  He wasn’t dying for some vague feeling.  He was dying for a specific man who himself died, and rose, and in his person and in his selfhood embodied the greatness of God in human, approachable terms.

     Let us pray for the grace to be as clear as St. Lawrence and as free as St. Lawrence and as brave as St. Lawrence.  Let us all pray to be good deacons, true servants, free of our self- consciousness and free of our fear.  Let us be as fierce as Lawrence was.  As confident.  As unafraid.

     Through Christ Our Lord, amen.

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I Know Where This Goes

A scrap of spruce bark

exactly like a puzzle piece.

Two rounded edges

and a scoop.

I know where this goes.

A line of geese.

A burst of wind,

fanning the surface

of the bay.

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Going Fishing

Matthew 17:22-27

O Lord, today may you catch us.  May you pull us out of the sea of our worries and our distractions.

     I don’t know what to make of the gospel today.  I almost wonder if Jesus isn’t joking, or putting Peter off.

     If I owed you money, and you asked for it, and I said, well, go to the lake, and throw out a line, and the first fish you catch will have a coin in it, and that’s your payment, how would you react?

     It’s as if he’s saying, don’t bother me with stuff like this.

We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to weep and fast and pray.

     Or maybe the fish with the coin in its mouth is a symbol of the little gifts our lives are always giving us.  We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to weep and fast and pray.  Every day there are pennies from heaven, they just come, they just appear.

     Spontaneity is implied here.  It’s the first fish.  You just drop your hook in.  Whatever happens happens.

     I remember being at the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum, and having lunch at a restaurant that looked from the outside like some kind of gas station, and what we had was tilapia from the lake, St. Peter’s Fish, lightly fried, and the people at the restaurant put a coin inside of one of them, according to tradition, so that the one of the pilgrims in our group, I forget which one, took away a little prize.

     There’s something playful about this.  It’s a game.  Is that the way faith is sometimes?  It’s just fun?  Just easy?

     Or if faith is like the coin in the mouth of the first fish, if revelation is like this, then revelation is subtle.  It’s hidden in the water.  It’s not obvious.  And we do have to make an effort.  We have to go to the water, and we have to put out our line, and we have to be patient, waiting for the first bite.

     Or there’s the image in the monastic tradition of prayer as fishing.  We get up every morning and go to a quiet place and we watch for the first thoughts that arise, our first memories or images or desires.  We fish for them. 

     Barb and I went up to Hillsboro on the weekend to the parents of our soon-to-be son-in-law and in a glass case in their house there was a Chinese wood-carving of a wise old man, a traditional figure symbolizing wisdom and insight.  Mervin’s parents are Indonesian, of Chinese ancestry, and this carving has been in their family for a long time.

     And what is the wise man doing?  He is fishing.  The wise man is always fishing.

     O Lord, today may we go to the sea and put out our lines and may we bring up the fish with the coin in its mouth. 

     O Lord, today may you catch us.  May you pull us out of the sea of our worries and our distractions.

     O Lord, today may we love you and see you as you love and see us.

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There’s A Deep Pattern Here

There’s a deep pattern here, and it’s the pattern of the cross.

We must die to live.

Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped

but rather emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave.

And therefore—therefore—he is highly exalted.

That’s the pattern:  self-emptying.  Kenosis.

There’s a deep pattern here and it’s the pattern of an ecology. 

It’s complex. 

All the little things belong, fit together, serve the whole.

There’s a deep pattern here and it’s the pattern of the Incarnation. 

God is always embodied, in the world,

and so everything is messy and complicated

and the larger order is never really clear.

It is always glimpsed.

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