Stronger than the World

On my way home recently, I decided to stop at my favorite bagel shop. It's a far walk from the metro, but I decided that I would get a bagel for lunch, buy a bag of bagels to share, and then take the bus home.

I ate lunch there, bought a half dozen bagels, and waited for the bus. All seemed to be going according to plan. But just before my stop, a whole crowd of people got onto the bus. When my stop came, they hadn't yet had a chance to move to the back. So I was faced with a choice: assume that the crowds would part for me, or take the back exit.

What I should have done: take the back exit. What I did: assume that the crowds would part for me.

They didn't. And as I bumped into a very apologetic gentleman, the bag of bagels broke. My precious bagels fell to the ground, as I'm sure my jaw did.

I picked them up hastily, and sadly exited the bus, feeling defeated by the world and my own clumsiness.

Now I play the ten second rule (sometimes the thirty second rule), but not with bus floors. I had to toss them in the trash. If you've ever wondered what a broken promise looks like, I'd say it looks like fresh bagels in a trash can.

If you're laughing, I suspect that it's probably because you know what fresh bagels in a trash can feels like. You know what being defeated by the world and your own clumsiness feels like.

So where is God in those little moments of frustration, in the fresh bagels that fall to the floor, in the alarm clock that doesn't go off, in the computer that freezes, or in the countless other little moments that make us sigh?

I think there are a lot of potential answers to that question, once we give ourselves the freedom to ask it. We don't usually allow ourselves to ask it because it seems... petty. Small. And maybe it is. But once we admit that we are small and our questions are small, we can be free enough to ask them honestly.

I suspect that maybe God is in the realization of our call to solidarity -- in that sobering realization that there are too many who go hungry in the world, and that for many people in the world, a story about wasted food isn't very funny.

These moments always humble us because they remind us that we aren't the center of the universe, that the world doesn't turn on our principles or wishes. There are principles like gravity and the free will of other people that operate completely independent of our plans. Maybe God is in that awareness of our smallness, which allows us to slowly become aware of his complete "Other-ness," and our mission to love and serve each other in solidarity, with that love that is "stronger than the world" and all of its frustrations.

Evening Prayer

"But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:19

What a heart Mary must have had, to be able to keep all these things, to cherish and to see God’s presence in everything.

I’m not there yet. I don’t know yet how to hold all these things as gifts from God. Not always sure how to see God's presence in everyone -- like that person who stands on the left side of the escalator during rush hour (seriously, if you're in DC, the rule is walk left and stand right, people). 

Still, my heart took in three things earlier this week as I walked home from the metro.

The first: every day I walk past a parking lot where a driving school has their driving lessons. I walked past a teenager talking on the phone with her mom, asking her to pick her up. The joy in her voice was contagious as she said, “And I drove on the Beltway today, Mom! It was great! I’m so excited!”

Then I walked past this little toddler outside with her father, who was doing yard work. She was busy doing yard work, too, attempting to “rake” the yard, likely causing more work for him, but he told her that she was doing a good job.

And just before I reached my house, I noticed this little patch of wildflowers near a construction fence.

And so my prayer tonight is a prayer of gratitude for these little moments of joy – moments that prove to me over and over again that life isn’t about wealth or status, but about being more like Mary -- small enough to let our hearts ponder this great love that surrounds us daily. 

Filling in the Blanks

Fill in the blank:

If people really knew ________ about me, I'm not entirely sure they would love me.

It doesn't have to be a great mystery or a deep dark secret. But you know that the blank is there. Maybe there are lots of things you could fill that blank with. 

The blank is that something-that-separates-us-from-each-other. It's that broken part of ourselves that we try to make sense of. It's that thing you talk around so that you don't have to talk about.

I recently re-read the story in the Gospel of the woman caught in adultery that the crowd wants to stone. Jesus somehow disperses the crowd, somehow sends every would-be stone thrower away. And then he says something amazing: "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." 

He really sees the woman and knows who she is. Go and sin no more. He doesn't hide the fact that he knows what she has done and who she has been. She is completely known. How does she bear that?

Neither do I condemn you. He knows her completely. And loves her completely. She is both known and loved.

We hold those two truths with us at all times -- the One who knows us best is the One who loves us the most. We let that truth sink in and penetrate and carve out a space in our hearts until there is space for compassion and forgiveness, until we know in our bones that the One who knows us and loves us also knows others more and loves them more deeply than we are capable of.

And then -- then life begins to happen. We are known, which means our smallness is known; we don't have to pretend anymore. We can give up all the things we thought made us worthy of love, all of those things that we thought might fill that blank space, and start living in that all-consuming, all-knowing, all-freeing love. We can laugh at ourselves.

We start living. Which isn't particularly exciting on the surface. We imagine a perfect morning and then hit the snooze button three times instead. We get up in the morning and go to work, and sometimes we don't want to but we do it anyway, and we try to do it with a smile and sometimes we fail at that, too. We answer our e-mails. We go about our small, everyday tasks. 

But in filling that space, in knowing and in experiencing our weaknesses, in loving us even though we are weak, Christ grants us a freedom to be small -- to embrace the smallness of the blind man who cries out for help, the smallness of Peter, who is willing to walk on water, the smallness of the woman about to be stoned. In each of these stories, you can almost feel the immediate freedom that comes from each of these people encountering Christ and handing him their smallness.

And so it is with us. Our small, everyday tasks have meaning. They give us reasons to laugh and to cry on a daily basis. And more than that, we begin to see that our real task is to love each other as Christ loved that woman. Our real task is to suspend our judgment and our gossiping and our manipulation. Our real task is to put down the stones that we want to throw and to speak hope to that blank space inside each human heart: You are known. You are loved.