You can rise

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

 Maya Angelou

_________________________

These days it doesn’t take much to push me to brink of defeat

A parishioner responding badly to what felt like an innocent post

A bad review from a person rating your workshop

Another day of lies from politicians

Another walk with my monkey brain saying

“you suck”

I remember a time when I felt I was effective

Witty

Smart

Articulate

Handsome

Powerful

Persuasive

Helpful

Even sexy

But now?

If feels as if I live on the edge of incompetence

As if I am not longer

Witty

Smart articulate

Handsome

Powerful

Persuasive

Helpful

Or sexy

I just feel space

I have roles I probably should hand over to others

I remember a couple years ago when my board

Confirmed my worst fears

“You suck” they said

“You are gone”

And so I was

Replaced by people with more energy

More smarts

More charisma

More attention to detail

And now, too many days I am saying that to myself

Time to wrap it up

Call it a day

Or a life (not that is not a suicidal statement)

It is hard to let go

Of the illusion of competence

But I suspect that if I just accepted

And de-fused

It would be better for the world

And perhaps

Even better

For me

Screw duality

Sometimes I wish life weren’t so messy

Sometimes I dream for the blessed anesthesia of black and white

Yes and No

Saved or Lost

Right or Wrong

Sometimes it was all nice, and neat

But instead it is messy

Jesus entered fully into the untidiness of this world

He embraced it all

The beauty and the ugliness

The fear

The legalism

The uncertainty

He entered into the ambiguity and pain

Because that was the only way he could really

Be in the world

See the world

Touch the world

And so he was born in poverty

went down into the muddy water of the Jordan, to receive a sinners baptism

he wandered in the desert

he ate with sinners

he was praised and reviled

he was beaten and scorned

and killed, unjustly

and he calls us, his followers

to follow, follow, follow

We cannot hide behind the rules

We cannot hang on desperately to certitude

We cannot focus on what is rigid and settled

And refuse to enter the uncertainty

For if we do

We can no longer see, people

We can no longer feel, the pain

The confusion

The fear

Instead we will walk around muttering

“the scriptures say, the scriptures say,”

And lose our capacity for empathy

We will not see the young woman, pregnant from a rape

We will not see her life in tatters

Her anger, her fear, her anguish

We will only see our belief that abortion is wrong

And lose our capacity to see her

This living breathing person, who is in so much pain

We will not see the person who happens to be LGBTQI

We will grab hold of a few lines of a letter

Written over a thousand years ago

And not see the value, the beauty of that person

Who is so precious in God’s sight

Jesus always saw the person first

The one standing in front of him

He saw them completely, fully

And with the eyes of love

And for that person, he broke the law

He went against scripture (how many times was he accused of violating scripture!)

And to that person he offered acceptance, and forgiveness, and love

And more than once he said

“you have heard it said, but I say”

As he raised the bar

And called us to higher levels of empathy

And compassion

And generosity

And love

We cannot allow the comfort of certainty

To blind us

To close our minds, and hearts and souls

That is not the Jesus way

The Jesus way is to lead with the heart

The Jesus way is to enter into the mess

And always, always

See the person in front of us

As a child of God…

And love

I can't do this anymore

Once you've had enough and you can't do it anymore, you consider the possibility that there might be a better way. That's when your head cracks open and God comes in.

Marianne Williamson

____________________________

I have heard myself say it

All too many times lately

I can’t do this any more

I can’t do forgiveness

I can’t do love

I can’t do generosity

I can’t counter falsehoods with facts

I can’t confront what I think is ill

I can’t keep trying to look past the behaviors

To the person

To the soul

I just can’t

I am too angry

Too sad

Too disappointed

Too frustrated

Perhaps, if the truth were told

I am simply too empty

The reality is

I could never do any of the things I desired in the first place

Without the Sacred

Rocking and rolling in my soul

Pushing me

Challenging me

Moving me into action

Getting me past my self

My priorities

My fears

My prejudices

Setting me free from all those things

“out there” that would suck me dry

And leave me

Empty

I have no chance of being a force for good in the world

Unless I am, like a vine, connected to a life giving branch

I have no chance of staying alive, emotionally and spiritually

Unless I have a spring of living water, welling up in my soul

And that is the beautiful thing about reaching the point

Where one can’t do it any more

Because that is when the wind blows

The fire burns

The water springs up

That is when all that is God

Flows through us

And we pick ourselves up

And start again…

Paul got it

as he honestly admitted (Romans 7)

“My own behaviour baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe. … I often find that I have the will to do good, but not the power…

 I thank God there is a way out [of this ambivalence]

through Jesus Christ our Lord”

I thank God when I can’t do it any more

That the God in me (that is the secret after all)

says (in effect)….

“finally, now its my turn”