55 minutes of kairos – a personal reflection

I watched her,

my bride, Pontheolla,

for 55 minutes,

moving about the kitchen

trying out a recipe courtesy of Gaida De Laurentiis:

Nonna’s Artichokes (one of De Laurentiis’s grandmother’s favs, I suppose).

 

She, Pontheolla, does this a lot.

Tries out new things.

Tests them on us first before serving them to anyone else:

“We’re our own guinea pigs,” she smiles brightly

and optimistically…

 

(She’s like that, too.

Always thinking, hoping that things will turn out well –

a fair and fitting counterbalance to my characteristic skepticism.)

 

For 55 minutes,

I watched her,

following, for me, a complicated recipe.

I listened, too,

for she always sings when she cooks,

rendering aloud the tune of life that breathes through her soul;

her voice, a melodic mezzo,

rising and falling in accompaniment to her graceful, grace-filled hands:

halving and trimming artichokes,

slicing lemons,

melting butter,

peeling garlic,

whisking anchovy paste,

blending salt and pepper, olives and capers,

making her own breadcrumbs (“From scratch is best,” again she smiles),

mixing her breadcrumbs with freshly grated Parmesan cheese,

then putting it all together.

 

As the clock arrived nearer the end of the sweep of one hour

it was done and

it was delicious!

 

 

She’ll never say that she’s a chef.

She always demurs, confessing only, “I like to cook.”

But she’s a chef alright.

 

She’s something else – a transporter to transcendence

(and the best, most faithful kind because she’s unconscious of her merciful ministry)…

 

for in the 55 minutes of chronos of watching and listening to her

I, almost without knowing it, entered kairos:

for the ancient Greeks that qualitative experience of time in which all things exist

and

for Christians that divine moment of the realization of God’s purposes…

 

for in that 55 minutes I stood in eternity…

 

and I was at peace with myself, my Gemini-self,

that ever holds in tension elements of lightness of spirit and darkness of mood,

thus, my self with whom I struggle greatly…

 

and I was at peace with our world, our world at, in, and of war of every kind,

about which I grieve hour by hour…

 

I was at peace.

 

Thank you, Nonna.

Thank you, Gaida.

Thank you, Pontheolla.

Thank you, God.

1 thing

a biblical reflection, based on Matthew 6.25-33, for Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 26, 2015

“…the birds of the air…neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…. the lilies of the field…neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

Jesus speaks of carefree birds and contented lilies, neither caring about today nor fearing tomorrow and, though doing no work, enjoying sufficient, even sumptuous provisions.

An ideal vision. And unreal.

I’d love to be carefree, but many concerns occupy me daily. I’d love to be content, arriving self-satisfied at each day’s end, but invariably I’ve left undone something I ought to have done. I’d love not to have to provide for myself, but daily I must do this and that, go here and there; hurriedly, sometimes frantically.[1]

Jesus’ pleasant picture arrests my attention on that hopeful hook in my heart called wishful thinking. Wouldn’t it be grand if life was like this? But it isn’t. Life overflows with countless cares and discontents.

Thanksgiving Day. America’s annual national reminder that daily we are to give thanks for life’s blessings. It’s hard, however, to render thanks when the circumstances of our lives and of the world are chaotic and uncertain, when our minds are restless, our hearts, anxious.

Yet Jesus was nailed to a cross. He knows struggle and strife, his own and, paraphrasing the spiritual, “the troubles we’ve seen.” And he says to us: “Do not worry about your life.”[2]

Why? Because worry leads to idolatry; the worship of fake gods, false saviors. Whenever we worry, the things or persons (or both!) we worry about become our chief concerns, verily, our gods to which we offer the “worship” of our focused interest and energy. Gradually, imperceptibly, we come to believe that we’re on our own and that we are our own (only?) providers. Eventually, we ascend our personal pedestal, becoming our own gods, relying greatly (only?) on our wisdom and will.[3]

Then comes a crisis of loss – job, financial well-being, significant relationship, peace of mind, health – that nothing in our storehouse of wisdom and strength of will can resolve or repair; proving again that we are not god.

Jesus, a divine diagnostician, warning us of worry’s hidden danger, idolatry, then offers this prescription: “Strive first for God’s kingdom and righteousness.” As righteousness is right relationship with God, these two things really are one thing. And that’s the point. A cure for care about many things is to care for one thing.

To ask and answer the question – What’s my “one thing”? or What’s my “god”? – is to rest from worry about many things, even more, to recognize the order and peace of life’s meaning, still more, to realize the reason to give thanks.

My “one thing”, my “god” is God as revealed in Jesus. Thus, no matter the circumstance, come whate’er, I can sing this day and, as long as I have breath, I will sing alway, “praise God from whom all blessings flow.”[4]

 

Footnotes:

[1] It occurs to me that although I don’t want the stress of life, in a peculiar way, I need it. I believe that we are not human doings, but rather human beings, by virtue of our birth, endowed with inherent worth. Nevertheless, some of my sense of my value is rooted in what I do, and not only for myself, but for others who rely on me. Their well-being depends, in part, on my well-doing. What’s at stake, then, is more than my self-respect, but also the integrity and vitality of my relationships.

[2] The word “worry” is translated from the Greek, merimna, meaning an agitated, down-in-the-bowels discomfort and discontent, usually about matters of chance and circumstance beyond our control.

[3] Full confession: I know more than a little bit about this, for I am a characterological worrier.

[4] Words by Thomas Ken, 1674

numbers – a slice of life and strife in Chicago and in America

In Chicago…

10-20-2014: the date Laquan McDonald was shot and killed on a Chicago street by police officer Jason Van Dyke

17: Laquan McDonald’s age at the time of his death

16: the shots fired by Officer Van Dyke

15: the seconds it took for 16 shots to be fired

30: the seconds Officer Van Dyke, accompanied by fellow police officers (8 or more), arrived on the site of the encounter

6: the seconds, after arrival, Officer Van Dyke began to fire his weapon

4: the length of the knife Laquan McDonald held in his hand

10: the distance in feet Laquan McDonald stood when walking away from the officers

5: in April, the millions of dollars in settlement the city of Chicago agreed to pay the McDonald family, although the family had yet to file a lawsuit of wrongful termination of life

400: the days between Officer Van Dyke’s encounter with Laquan McDonald and the court-ordered (“…by November 25”) release of the police car’s dashcam video of the shooting

1: the degree of murder with which Officer Van Dyke, upon turning himself in on Tuesday, November 24, was charged and held without bond

100s: the protestors on the streets of Chicago

In America…

countless: the police officers nationwide who perform their duties to protect their communities with the deepest respect for the people they serve and the highest regard for professional standards

countless: the people who believe that race is a demarcating line delineating acceptable law enforcement practices, and, given that, those who believe…

2: the unofficial, but no less real Americas that exist; one for white-folk and one for black-folk, and, given this obstinately abiding existential state of being…

0: American winners, and, given this truth…

321,605,012: (being the United States population) American losers

lifting the veil, 3 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on Luke 21.25-36, for the 1st Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2015

How odd it is that Advent, the Christian season heralding the Christmas celebration of the birth of Jesus, begins with a story foretelling the end of time. Abiding at the heart of this seeming irony, I perceive a truth: Life is a continuous cycle of beginnings and endings, mornings and evenings, dawns and twilights, within which ever rests joy and sorrow, triumph and defeat, good and evil. Because of this, Jesus calls us to be alert, always and in all ways.

We are called to be active contemplatives, reading astutely the signs of the ebb and flow of the life of the world around us and of the movements of thought and feeling, memory and reflection, intention and action within us, and then to be contemplative actors, reacting prudently, responding faithfully.

What prudent faithfulness means for any of us in the concrete circumstances of the living of our days, I cannot, I dare not say. For me, as a follower of Jesus, I believe it is my calling to incarnate, to embody love, unconditional benevolence to all, and justice, right and fair dealing with all. In this, my calling is nothing else than to make immanent, tangibly real and present (given my humanness, however imperfectly), a transcendent God. And, in this, my calling is nothing less than to take part in the apocalyptic act – especially for the sake of all who sense an absence and long to know the presence of God in their lives – of lifting the veil, however slightly, that covers the face of the holy, always wholly unfathomable God.

lifting the veil, 2 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on Luke 21.25-36, for the 1st Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2015

To whom did Jesus’ terrifying words matter, make sense? His people. Those who, believing in a divine and dynamic arc of history, awaited the coming Day of the Lord.

Why wouldn’t they? Oppressed by the occupying Roman Empire – and previously by the Persians, then the Greeks – their national life was the experience of the Book of Job writ large. A prophecy of the end of history and the inauguration of God’s righteous reign would be glad tidings, a sign, in the words of Jesus, that their “redemption is drawing near.”

Perhaps, then, it is those at any time whose daily existence is heavy laden with a sense of suppression’s strife and suffering for whom apocalyptic words are not strange, but the longed-for song of a promised new age. Perchance this explains why subjugated peoples of any era respond to cries of revolution and calls for action, whatever the theme or tone, whether the voice is that of a César Chávez, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Malcolm X, or Malala Yousafzai, and whatever the cause and however distinct and divergent, inclusive or divisive, whether Black Lives Matter, ISIS, or Occupy Wall Street.

But can this be the only truth? Is it only those who bear the burden of oppression of the worldly-powers-that-be for whom the language of cosmic upheaval bears meaning? What about anyone who, for the most part, lives largely above the middle – knowing more joy than sorrow, triumph more than defeat, or, perhaps at worst, in nearly equal measures? Even for those of us whose lot in life is such as this, blessedly falling far short of the boundaries of oppression, still have our share of worries and woes. Thus I hear the voice of Jesus urging all of us to “stand up…raise our heads…look…be on guard…be alert at all times.”

For what?

lifting the veil, 1 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on Luke 21.25-36, for the 1^st Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2015

Apocalypse. From the Greek, apokálypsis. Literally, “lifting the veil” to reveal something hidden, usually regarding the end of time.

Apocalyptic language – “signs in sun, moon, and stars, earthly distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves, and people fainting in fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for heavenly powers will be shaken” – sounds strange. Is strange. Unless, I think…

One lives in a strife-riven land where, sorrowfully, terror is an experience well-known and daily expected…

Or one cleaves to some notion of millennialism, seeking to discern the signs of the coming final judgment…

Or one ascribes to an ancient Jewish view of history and cosmology that there is this present transient age and God’s everlasting reign, between which shall come the Day of the Lord filled with violent upheaval, the celestial birth pangs of the coming of that next, eternal age.

My hunch is that most Americans don’t believe much (any?) of this. Even if we did, I doubt we’d look forward to fainting in fear at the sight of darkened skies, the sound of tempestuous seas, and the news of distressed and confused nations.

There’s another reason apocalyptic language doesn’t register on the top 10 list of favorite things. Beneath the words, beyond the imagery stands, lurks a transcendent deity. Distant and dispassionate. Unreachable, unapproachable, and ultimately unknowable. Perhaps unlikable. A deity who is the author of good and who, apparently, from what we can observe throughout human history unto this very day, allows evil. A deity who, given all that we know of life in this world, hasn’t done all that well with this age. So, why trust what this same deity intends for the next?

Perhaps we shouldn’t. Still, as I reflect on these words of Jesus, their very existence, at the very least, suggests that they mattered, made sense to someone, somewhere, at some time. Who?

 

Illustration: storm, free-hand drawing

truest power & authority, 3 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on John 18.33-38, for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (aka Christ the King Sunday), November 22, 2015

Pontius Pilate, in condemning an innocent Jesus to death, forsook the just use of his power and authority. Ever since, whenever, wherever, and by whomever the Christian creeds are recited, Pontius Pilate is remembered as the one under whose aegis Jesus was crucified.

Yet as grave was the state-sanctioned murder of a guiltless Jesus two millennia ago, there is, for me, a sadly repeatable wrong, replicating Pilate’s error, to which all and surely I can and do fall prey. It is the failure to identify, to see in Jesus the truest nature of power and the truest character of authority.[1]

Power and authority are not found in vast armies, which Pilate would have had no difficulty recognizing, verily dreading as proof of kingship, but in open arms and open hands. Not in a crown of gold, but of thorns. Not in an opulent throne, but the rough hewn wood of a misshapen cross. Not through the shedding of another’s blood, but one’s own for the sake of another. Not in hierarchy and patriarchy by which one sits above and apart from others, but equality and inclusivity because of which one stands with others.

Truest power and authority as beheld in Jesus are found in self-sacrificial love and justice. And the world – our über-partisan, hyper-contentious, conflict-ridden, death-dealing world – needs these two God-given gifts and graces.

Speaking for myself, it is my prayer that I live more greatly each day in loving and just service. Though flawed, feeble, and faltering, I, with God’s help, strive to remain faithful to this pledge. In this, I demonstrate what I believe about power and authority and what, since Pilate, I have learned, if anything, about truth.

Footnote:

[1] I boldly confess that I intend this statement to be universal, thus, applying to all – whether one, as I, is a Christian and proclaims Jesus as Lord and Savior or one follows another religious or spiritual tradition or one, as a secular humanist or philosophical existentialist, agonistic or atheist, considers Jesus only to be the dramatis persona of a fictional story told in the biblical gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). For whether Jesus is believed to be real or imaginary, in my reading of the gospel accounts, in his portrayal as the eternal embodiment in word and deed of unconditional love and justice for all I behold truest power and authority.

truest power & authority, 2 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on John 18.33-38, for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (aka Christ the King Sunday), November 22, 2015

Roman soldiers drag a bound, beaten, and bloodied Jesus into Pilate’s headquarters. Pilate, eyes widened and eyebrows raised in amazement, wondering what trouble Jesus could be, asks a question sharpened by the inflection of incredulity: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Laughing in disbelief, Pilate considers letting Jesus go, if not for the sake of fairness, then at least having assured himself that Jesus poses no threat. That is, until Jesus answers with a question (reminiscent of the poignant query he earlier asked of his disciples, “Who do you say I am?”[1]): “Do you ask this on your own or did others tell you about me?” Is this your question? Do you want to know for yourself?

Pilate, put off by temerity of his prisoner, even more put on the spot to give answer when he is the inquisitor, defensively second guesses his own line of questioning: “I am not a Jew, am I?” Why should the identity of the ruler of the Jews, a weak and fractious people, matter to a mighty Roman? But then Jesus responds to Pilate’s original question (saying neither “yes” nor “no”), “My kingdom is not from this world.” A frustrated Pilate demands, “So you are a king?” Then Jesus speaks of truth.

Pilate asks the quintessential question in the heart of all humankind, “What is truth?”, then promptly departs, leaving Jesus’ fate to the crowd that cried, “Crucify him!”

 

Illustration: Jésus devant Pilate. Deuxième entretien (Jesus Before Pilate. Second Interview), James Tissot, 1886-1894

Footnote:

[1] See Matthew 16.15, Mark 8.29, or Luke 9.20

truest power & authority, 1 of 3

a biblical reflection, based on John 18.33-38, for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (aka Christ the King Sunday), November 22, 2015

“Are you the king of the Jews?”

“King.” An antiquated word laden with outdated meanings of hierarchy and patriarchy that grate against more expansive, inclusive tastes and temperaments of our post-modern era. Yet when I interpret “king” as a metaphor for the ever-present, never-absent realities of power (the ability to do something) and authority (the capacity to act on the power one possesses), then I behold new meaning in this old story of the encounter between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

Jesus, throughout his servant-ministry, reached out in radical hospitality, welcoming especially the disconsolate and the disenfranchised. Jesus, though, was more than a pastor helping others. He was a prophet, a proclaimer of God’s word, who denounced both secular and spiritual leaders for their single-minded preoccupation with maintaining the status quo of institutional preservation over care for the least and the last. This aspect of his mission brought him before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Though Pilate cared not in the slightest that Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, or even raised the dead, he could not ignore the reports that Jesus was being hailed by the people as their king.

The scene: Jerusalem.

The city of David, the long-ago monarch whose legacy made an indelible mark on the idea of messiah; the long-awaited coming of whom fired national hopes of promised liberation from Roman occupation. It also is Passover, the annual centuries-old celebration of the emancipation of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. The rebellious fever of an already restive people couldn’t be higher. Pilate had to check out the rumors about the arrival of another king.

 

Illustration: Jerusalem, Oliver Pichat, 1886

what is (your) truth?

 a biblical reflection, based on John 18.33-38, for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (aka Christ the King Sunday), November 22, 2015

Jesus and Pontius Pilate. The New Testament’s most intense and all-encompassing encounter; embracing issues of being and meaning, history and destiny, opportunity and choice, life and death.

Jesus is brought for judgment to the headquarters of Pontius Pilate, Judea’s Roman governor. Jesus’ adversaries know that a charge of blasphemy, claiming to be God, is a theological matter of no importance to Pilate. To accuse Jesus of calling himself a king, however, has political ramifications that Pilate, seeking to keep order and the favor of Tiberius, the Roman emperor, cannot ignore.

In this all-and-everything encounter there also is irony. Pilate’s headquarters is a place of judgment. For Pilate. Pilate, the captor, with power over life and death, is challenged by Jesus, the captive, to see the truth of his innocence and to do what is just.

Exercising a writer’s license, I revise the dialogue in modern idiom and reinterpret the scene…

Pilate, curious and concerned: “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Jesus peers into Pilate’s heart: “Is this truly your question?”

Pilate, annoyed, feints: “Why should I care? All I need to know is what you did to be brought to me?”

Jesus parries, responding to the original question: “My kingdom is not here.”

Pilate trumpets: “Aha! So you admit you are a king?”

Jesus keenly discerns that in Pilate’s question he has revealed the resolution to his dilemma: “As you have said, then it is true.”

Pilate, exposed, reacts defensively: “Humph! What is truth?”

This last query is rhetorical, for Pilate, neither wanting nor waiting for an answer, “went out.”

As the story unfolds, Pilate, with no evidence of a crime, condemns Jesus to die. And for two millennia, history records that Pilate, with power to do justice, sacrificed Jesus and his own integrity for the sake of political expediency.

This, for Pilate, was his destiny-and-legacy-altering moment in time as described by the hymn:[1]

Once to ev’ry (one) and nation comes the moment to decide,

in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, off’ring each the bloom or blight,

and the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.

Blessedly, for most of us, we do not encounter, endure a singular instant or one occasion when we must bear the triple burden of compromised principles, troubled conscience, and history’s timeless judgment. Still, at the heart of human life, I believe, is the quest for truth. So, I ask (for what is a quest without questions?):

Where and when, how and how often do you, do I stop our daily business of doing long enough to focus on our being and our search for truth?

What is your truth, my truth through which we make meaning, make sense of our lives?

And what happens not if, but when in our various relationships and communities our truths conflict and contradict the truths of others?

 

Illustration: Quod Est Veritas? (What is truth?) Christ and Pilate, Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, 1890

Footnote:

[1] From the poem, The Present Crisis, by James Russell Lowell (1845); adapted into the hymn Once to ev’ry man and nation by W. Garrett Horder (1896).