February 9, 2020
[Special thanks to Kent Beduhn for ideas, editing, and fellowship]
I came to Church of the Saviour and 8th Day in a way that seems both totally by chance and by design. For about six years I had been searching for a church and a community I could call home. I was looking for a denomination that offered both the structures of tradition, that would help connect me with my Irish Catholic ancestry, and the openness and flexibility that I needed, as a person who had experienced God in many forms, through things like Yoga and Zen meditation.
I also needed that flexibility because the Christian tradition needs to evolve. As a student of history and the son of Irish Catholics, the ways that "Christianity" had oppressed people and justified the horrors of empire were all too clear to me. In my years of searching, I tried out many churches, from the pop-rock Evangelical to the fire-and-brimstone Baptists to tie-dyed Unitarian Universalist. One of the only constants through it all was the "Inward/Outward" newsletter, which I got in my email every day thanks to a Methodist minister I met while teaching high school. When I moved to D.C. in 2018 with the hopes of becoming a journalist, one of the first things I did after moving into an apartment right here on Columbia Road was Google "churches in D.C." Sure enough, the first one that popped up was Church of the Saviour, right down the road. I thought, "Oh, that's Kayla McClurg's church."
There was something about 8th Day and Church of the Saviour that I felt right away. I couldn't name it at the time, but it's something I've come to understand as "saltiness," which is a big theme of our scriptures today. It's a quality that my girlfriend, Alli, picked up on the first time when she visited last week. She said that 8th Day reminded her of Pittsboro, North Carolina, where she's from. She said it doesn't feel at all like D.C., which can feel so transient, impersonal, and bland. That's not 8th Day. This is a place that cultivates saltiness -- which I define as soulfulness -- and then encourages us to give it freely to one another, without reserve. As the Prophet Isaiah says, "to spend ourselves" for each other.
This is the essence of the Christian tradition I had hungered for all those years. I believe this was the essence of my grandparents' Irish Catholicism. I believe it's what got my grandfather through the horror and traumas he went through as a medic in World War II. I think it's no coincidence that Gordon Cosby, one of our founders, first got the call for a new kind of church while ministering to the troops during World War II. I have with me today the cover of my grandfather's psalter, the psalm book he carried with him through the war.
Rediscovering the essence of our tradition is the path to fulfillment that Jesus of Nazareth, a poor, wandering Jew suffering under the yoke of empire, has laid out before us.
So, as we enter into our final meeting as a community to decide on our structures of accountability and membership, we're confronted by some fundamental questions. Church of the Saviour and 8th Day have been pillars in this community for many years, but a lot has changed. So, what is our inheritance? What should we hold onto from our past, and from our faith tradition, and what can we let go of?
The Scriptures today offer a lot of wisdom and insight into these questions. Scripture is complex and multi-faceted; it offers us truth; but truth that lasts across the ages is never simple. Or, rather, it can be simple, but is not always easy to discern. The problem with discerning eternal truths almost always lies in the simple and reductive nature of our minds. We like dualities: good and bad. Light and dark. Right and wrong. Cause and effect. It is how we make sense of the world around us, how we make decisions, and create laws. There's nothing wrong with that. But thinking in that way only gives us access to one layer of reality. It doesn't give us access to the big picture, which is what we're really longing for, after all -- a sense of connection to the big picture, a purpose greater than ourselves, a why of our lives. When I read the news today, I'm stunned, but in a way not surprised, to witness a return to the political conflicts of the 1930s and 40s that led to so much suffering: fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, trade wars, all of which are based on dualistic categories of "in" and "out," "us" and "them," the tribal ways of thinking from which Jesus of Nazareth spent himself, gave his life, to free us.
A quick summary of what the scriptures give us today:
Isaiah 58: 1-12, on "True Fasting," reminds us of the traps of dualistic thinking and the norms of empire. God is non-dual and calls us to resist the norms of empire, to break the "yokes" and "chains" of both material and spiritual oppression, and to find new ways of living and relating to one another that place Love and Justice (rather than power) at the center and that honor each individual soul. It is a call to become more active and participatory in our relationship with God and with one another, rather than merely "checking off the boxes on the checklist."
Matthew 5, "Salt and Light," and "The Fulfillment of the Law" are what Jesus teaches the disciples immediately after he teaches the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are foundational teachings in our faith tradition; but they are very counterintuitive, and somewhat esoteric, and difficult to grasp. So Jesus immediately follows them up with some very tangible teachings about how to live, as well as clarifying for the disciples what his purpose was: he states that he was not here to overthrow Jewish law, or to wipe the slate clean, or to blow it all up, but to renew his faith tradition and "fulfill the law" through revealing its essence.
And finally, we have the second chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. It was a letter written to his friends in Corinth, Greece, with whom he founded a church a few years prior. They wrote to him a few years after the church founding to say, "Help! We're going off the rails over here! There are all these pressures from the very lustful and greedy culture around us in the city of Corinth; and we're all in disagreement about who to follow, how to pray, what to eat, and what roles to give women in the church.” Paul writes back with a simple message.
(There is a lot in Paul's later letters that is controversial and hard to understand, and some people have used it to justify misogyny and racism and slavery, but we're very lucky that today's scripture is one of Paul's original letters. Scholars are fairly certain it was indeed Paul who wrote this letter, it wasn't written by later people in the church who were trying to accommodate the Christian way to the ways of empire).
Paul starts, very simply, by saying: "before you think another thought; before you say another word; ground yourself in the mystery of God, which is not of your own dualistic mind, but is of the non-dual, beyond-all-forms, mind of Christ."
Isaiah 58:1-12 "True Fasting"
Let's start with the "hot" stuff, the Hebrew Bible. I'm often afraid to approach the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible, because I feel like I'm just going to walk away feeling really guilty about myself for all my shortcomings. Part of why doing the teaching at 8th Day is such a gift is that you get to really engage with the scripture in a deep way, parse through it and see just how layered and complex these stories and messages are.
The prophet Isaiah discusses ethics and personal conduct, and how they are an important component of the faithful life. But he urges us to ask ourselves why and how we form our ethics and our actions. These questions prompt us to consider our deeper motivations and how they influence the way we show up in our daily lives, and in our communities. Doing so, we are shown our habitual dualistic ways of thinking and our assumption of cause and effect. It also reveals our habitual desire to be "saved" solely by some external force, when in reality, our salvation is something we get to participate in. It is a gift of grace, which we can't earn, but we can open ourselves to the reality of grace through righteous actions, penitence, fasting, and acts of justice and loving-kindness.
These meditations also prompt some important considerations about the nature of God, and what God's relationship with us really means.
Questioning our motivations: what's behind our fasting and our right actions? This passage is excellent preparation for Lent. Raise your hand if you've ever given something up for Lent -- and then found yourself feeling aggrieved or resentful because God doesn't seem to notice? (Verses 3 and 5). "Look at how good I am, God!" Actions do matter, but Isaiah is reminding us that God works from the inside-out, not the outside-in. Inside-out is the way lifelong transformation; outside-in is the logic of empire and industry, the default in our culture.
Verses 3-4 (" 'why have we fasted, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed' say the Israelites, and yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers" reminds us that God wants us to think of our own beliefs and actions within the context of the big picture, the social picture. We might compost in our own kitchen; but are we encouraging others to do so? Are we willing to be that person in the office, who says, "Hey, maybe we should compost." Are we willing to risk our social standing? Are we challenging the fossil fuel industry? I might give the second half of my sandwich to a homeless person, but am I lobbying my ANC for affordable housing? Am I in a relationship with anyone experiencing homelessness, or housing insecurity? True fasting is not only saying "no" to your personal, individual sins -- but saying "yes" to those around you who are being harmed by societal and systemic sin. This is what sets compassion apart from mere charity -- something that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke a lot about.
The end of Verse 7 -- "is not the fast I choose to share your food with the hungry, and provide the poor wanderer with shelter, when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood" -- speaks to the importance of our underlying understanding of justice and compassion: do we treat others like "our own flesh and blood?" Like our own family? Do we recognize that we need others as much as they need us? We are of the same body.
And furthermore, do we merely give money to the poor, or do we spend ourselves -- not just our money -- on behalf of the hungry? What does it mean to "spend ourselves"? I think it means to freely give our attention and our energy to those in need, rather than just doling it out in little spoonfuls, trying to save our energy. The notion that "the more you give, the more you get" is something of a paradox to our limited, dualistic minds, and something that Jesus often tried to teach through his parables.
There's an important distinction: there are many ways that humans are "yoked" and "chained." It's of course very important to focus on those suffering from oppression in the material realm (the poor, the jailed, the cast-out, the homeless), but there are plenty of other ways that we are yoked, too. Many people with all the material comforts in the world are spiritually and psychologically hungry and sick and homeless. I have been one of them. How can we lovingly intervene, or subtly counteract, the yoke / chain relationships we see within us and around us? I'm talking about addiction, narcissism, codependency, anxiety. We're called to help break every yoke, as Isaiah says in verse 6, not just the most obvious ones.
Isaiah also speaks to the nature of God and God's relationship with us. What's the point of all this inward searching, of examining our underlying motivations? Why should we do it? What happens to us when we do the inward searching? Do we get what we want? Are all of our needs and desires met by God? Well, yes, but not in the way we might expect. As verses 8 and 9 say, if you do these things, "your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear...you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I."
This hearkens back to Exodus, where God reveals Godself to Moses, in the form of the burning bush, and tells him to go and free the Israelites and free them from captivity, and to tell them that the God of their ancestors sent him. (Remember, Moses is a Hebrew, but doesn't know it. He was raised in the palace of the Pharaoh). Moses asks, "OK, so what should I tell these people? If I say I was sent by the God of their ancestors, how can I prove it? They don't know who I am." God says, "Tell them you were sent by 'I Am'."
God is pure existence. God is not a rescuer. God is not a fixer. God is existence itself, the very ground of our being. Isaiah continues, "if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness." Not, "you will be rewarded with riches." Not, "you will be rewarded with a plush condo and a four-post bed." Not even, "you will be thanked by those you help for your good works." Instead, if you do these things, the life force, existence itself, will rise up within you, and will be your joy, your nutrient, your sustenance. "You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." (Verse 11)
And most applicable for the task at hand as a faith community discerning its structure, and its path forward: "Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations. You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." This restoration work has happened in many ways over the decades here. I've only been here for a year and a half, so there's plenty of history I'm only just learning. But what I know from speaking with those of you who have been around, and my experience with God, with "I Am" in this community, is that the essence of the church has remained intact and vital.
I think about the ways I see people in this community "spending themselves" to loosen the yokes of those around them: I think about Dixcy advocating for Cruz in the hospital after his recent accident. I think about Helen creating space and opportunity for people who have been cast out by the system that has cast her out for much of her life. I think about Connie and Kent and Meade, and all our social workers helping people free themselves from the internal yokes of their demons and trauma. I think about Jonathan teaching and organizing in churches to help break our addiction to fossil fuels. The list goes on.
On to the New Testament, the Good News from Matthew 5: 13-20 This is the second half of Jesus' famous "Sermon on the Mount." Just before this in Matt 4, Jesus has been purified in the desert by experiencing, yet not giving into, the devil's temptations. This prepares him for his ministry. He's tempted to turn stones to bread, to use his spiritual powers merely to satisfy material hungers. This is an even tougher temptation, because of the social implications. He could use his connection to God to turn stones into bread to feed others, to be "good" and to help people. Jesus responds, "Man shall not live by bread alone." He knows he's being tempted to prove to others that he can save other people; and he knows it's not just about material hunger, it's about spiritual hunger.
He's then tempted to jump off the tower and let God's angels swoop in to save him, testing a dualistic cause-and-effect kind of spirituality. "If you're truly in touch with God, you could jump off a building and God would save you." But as one of my favorite teachers Richard Rohr says, "The divine plan is one which involves personal participation, listening for and responding to the call to faith. It is not some type of magic. It is a much slower process, the only truly human process, the only one which redeems and transforms us completely. Any other change would only be external and mechanical. It would not respect our humanity. And so it is not God's way of salvation." (Themes of the New Testament, p.19) The devil then tempts him by showing him the kingdoms of the world, and promising him earthly power. Of course Jesus says no.
He then calls his first disciples by the Sea of Galilee, and begins proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of heaven is near, and healing the sick in synagogues and marketplaces. He starts to attract a big following. He starts going viral, in today's parlance. But when Jesus sees the crowds, he retreats to a mountainside, where he shares the Beatitudes with his disciples. There, he praises: the poor in spirit; those who mourn; those who are meek; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart; the peacemakers; and those persecuted because of righteousness. These are very counterintuitive teachings, and remain somewhat esoteric and hard to grasp even to this day, because we live in a world that worships power.
As if to ground the teachings in a more practical, tangible set of ideas, Jesus moves on to two things that all Hebrews -- indeed, all peoples -- can understand easily: Salt and Light.
"You are the Salt of the earth." What would this have meant to his disciples at the time? Salt was a fundamental element in ancient life. It was a potent mineral, a distillation of the earth and the seas into a tangible form. The Hebrews harvested salt by dumping sea water into pits and letting it evaporate in the sun until only the salt was left. Here are a few ways they used salt:
As a seasoning: eating salted foods with a friend was a way to symbolize the closeness and durability of that friendship. Salty food also tastes good, so there's that. (I'm looking at Eve and Marja right now. I just love your friendship!)
A disinfectant and preservative: newborn babies were rubbed with salt before being swaddled in cloth. This was thought to help toughen the skin, and prepare them for the journey of life now that they had left the womb. (I'll have to check with Luiseli to see if that's still a best practice for midwives!)
A component of religious offerings, used to symbolize the permanence of God's covenant with the Israelites. A salt covenant is a permanent covenant, so casting salt on the offering reminded worshippers of that reality, that God had a permanent relationship with the Israelites that would never falter, a covenant that could never be broken, which we still carry on today.
So, Jesus is telling his new disciples -- up on the mountain, away from the crowds and all the potential for power and fame -- that they themselves are the key ingredient in all these things: in friendship; in parenting and caring for children; in religious ceremonies; and, most importantly, in the very covenant with God that is the basis for this whole thing that we're doing together! It's you, it's you, it's you.
He then tells them that "if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." Salt loses its saltiness when it is mixed with other things, with water, or with other minerals. And then it's only good for throwing down on the roads, to prevent people and carts from slipping. That's a fine use, we need road salt, but that's far from all we're made for.
I think what Jesus meant by "saltiness" is "soulfulness." Salt is the very last thing remaining when we dissolve sea water; in a similar way, our souls are defined by what's left when we dissolve everything else: our racial and class identities; our personas; our belongings. It makes me think of being on the porch at Wellspring back in May, during a big rainstorm at the silent retreat. All of us there were huddled under blankets, trying to stay warm, sipping mugs of tea, and I looked out and saw Paul Fitch walking barefoot through the fields, an open umbrella swinging at his side, totally in love with Creation, his clothes and his comfort and whatever anyone else thought of him be damned. I visited with Cruz last week, who is still recovering from his bike accident. He told me about a phone call from Johnny, of l'Arche, who told him again and again to have faith, that he was praying for him, to keep praying.
Saltiness can be a little unpleasant, too. We often use the word "salty" to describe someone who's a little sassy, or ornery, or argumentative. My favorite part of Fred Taylor's remembrance service last week was hearing stories from so many people who said, "man, me and Fred had a lot of fights." I only knew him in his later years when he had softened a bit, as people often do in their old age. Someone last week told a story about Fred going to a group of mothers who were planning to foster some kids coming out of Junior Village after it was rightfully shut down. This was a secular group, and their plan was to simply take these kids into their homes and raise them alongside their own children. Very noble endeavor, very important. And they asked to meet with Fred, to ask for his advice and expertise as someone who knew a lot about the child welfare system. And you know what he told them? "It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work, because you're not doing an inward journey together as well." Fred knew, from the time he had spent doing the inward journey in mission groups and on silent retreats, that in order to be a parent -- and especially to be a foster parent for children who had been very traumatized -- that these mothers were going to need a ton of internal strength.
Let's note that Fred did not say it wouldn't work because they didn't have Jesus, or they didn't have the Bible, or they weren't praying. He just said "you don't have an inward journey." Inward journey can take many forms. He knew that you need to have a really strong connection with the eternal -- with the I AM -- within you, to weather the storms of life. And these poor mothers who were just trying to be helpful and give these kids a home were quite offended by what Fred had to say. But years later, when they crossed paths again, they told Fred that he was right.
One example of "saltiness" I've seen recently here in the community was Molly advocating for more accessibility, more welcoming of voices that aren't just highly educated, intellectual white people like me, who wear sweater vests and ties. In some of our past community meetings, she's lamented this, brought it to our attention, because it's what her soul demands. That's Molly sharing her salt with us. It's acts and words like these, which can feel a little uncomfortable, or grating, that actually make our covenant a "salt covenant," a covenant that lasts.
So, onto the Light: It would be easy for the disciples to hear this part of the sermon, about cultivating their own saltiness and assume that this was about maintaining purity. "Don't let your soul mix with anything else, because it might make you lose your soulfulness, your saltiness. We need to carefully preserve and ration our salt in little teaspoons so we don't run out."
But Jesus -- as was his way -- anticipates what the disciples are going to think next, and tells them the exact opposite, by telling them they are also "the light of the world." He says, "a town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."
I'm reminded of a blessing Alfonso gave me after a workshop with Life Pieces to Masterpieces over the summer. We were randomly paired to receive a blessing from someone else in the workshop. I had been lamenting and grieving the lack of connection with other men in my life that day, and Alfonso comes up to me with little Santiago on his hip, and places his hand on my heart and says, "You never hide. You are always visible."
Jesus telling the disciples they are the "light of the world" democratizes God in a radical way. Similar to Isaiah's reminder that God is "I Am - ness," Jesus is telling us that God is not external. God is not "out there" somewhere only in the sky, picking and choosing whom to be with based on our deeds and virtues. God doesn't reward us when we fast. God doesn't swoop in to save us. God does not elevate us just because of our good deeds. Instead, we wake up to the reality of God, when we do these things with the proper intention and motivation. What is our intention? What is our motivation?
Kent and I were messaging yesterday, he was giving me feedback on my sermon. And I was saying how excited I was, how much I was anticipating giving this teaching, and singing together; and he reminded me to take time to slow down. To breathe. To ground down in the I AM, not the "Kip is," but the "I Am." For me personally, this is so important because I'm very wired to seek others' approval, and to be seen as being "good at things." When I was a kid I had this shelf, which I might now call an altar, full of trophies from youth sports. A lot of my own suffering and disconnection from God and from others has come about because of this manic chasing after accomplishments and approval. For so many years, it kept me from simply grounding down into the reality of I Am dwells within me. And what I'm really longing for is a connection with God, and a sharing of that connection with others. What I'm longing for is service.
Jesus is saying, "God is never not here. You, in fact, are the elemental form -- the incarnational form -- of God, who is existence itself. Existence itself is never not here. So, it's up to us! It's up to us to distill Existence Itself within ourselves, to cultivate our saltiness, and to share it with others through honest relationships, to receive the Light of existence in our hearts and minds, and then blast it out to the world with abandon.
These ideas may have seemed blasphemous to the disciples, because many religious teachings of the day declared God "out there" or "up above," an external God. This is a great moment for us to remember that Jesus did not intend to overthrow his own Jewish tradition; but rather to re-infuse it with God's eternal presence, which he was experiencing in a direct way since his baptism by John the Baptist. In Verse 17, he says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." In following the example of Jesus, we, today and every day, have the chance to fulfill our tradition by revealing its essence, and share it freely with one another.
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
A little context for this letter: Paul's letters to the early churches of the Roman Empire were actually written before the gospels, so they are some of the earliest texts in the New Testament. These letters are so important for us to examine because they have formed much of what we know today as "Christianity." For those of us who grew up in Protestant churches, much of the theology we received comes from Paul, as read by Martin Luther!
Reading Paul in depth was a revolutionary experience for Martin Luther. For him, Paul offered a direct route to God, radical, unconditional grace. As Marcus Borg writes, "Paul's message of justification by grace through faith brought about a joyous liberation from his anxious effort to be right with God by meeting God's requirements, a fear-filled task that tormented him into his early thirties. Radical grace meant for Luther that God accepts us just as we are.
I think about Fred Taylor's words played on a recording last week at his memorial service: "accept that you are accepted." That's the first step. Accept that you are accepted. Radical Grace meant for Luther that God accepts us just as we are, and the Christian life is about living more and more fully into this realization, not about measuring up to requirements. For Luther, Paul's message was about the end of requirements as the basis for our relationship with God. Sadly, for many Lutherans, this was heard as "justification by believing in the right things," replacing the Catholic "grace through works" with "grace by belief." Marcus Borg continues, "[ironically], what Luther experienced as joyful liberation from anxiety became the source of deep anxiety." Learning about this sad evolution of theology explains for me why, in my home state of Minnesota, Lutherans are jokingly referred to as "God's frozen people."
A little on Paul's backstory: he was just a few years younger than Jesus, but never knew him in person. Was a devout Jew with a fierce love of his religious tradition and a desire to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors. He persecuted followers of Jesus, even approving of stonings and killings. He experienced a conversion on the road to Damascus as a mystical experience of the risen Christ. Like us, Paul never met Jesus the man. He only experienced the risen Christ, the eternal presence of Christ, personified as Jesus, and it changed the course of his life. Spent the rest of it traveling across the Roman Empire to preach the gospel and help Christ-following Jews and Gentiles develop their communities and liturgies. In this letter, Paul is working out with his friends in Corinth what it means to be true followers of Christ, and how to navigate the pressures and influences of the imperial authorities, and the often hedonistic forms of pagan religion that were common at the time. It's not unlike what we're doing here, as a small community of faithful people working out how to follow God's call in community with one another, amid very intense countervailing pressures and influences of the American Empire.
Let's remember: Paul was the founder of his church. In our modern day terminology, he would be like the Founder and CEO. And the Corinthians write him saying, "Help, we're going off-track, we don't know what we're doing!" Paul could stride in there and claim he knows how everything works, and say "This is the right way to do things." But as Paul says in his letter, that's not why he came to Corinth originally. He says in verse 2,
when I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom, as I proclaimed the testimony to you about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise words or persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.
This has been a huge blessing for me in the last few years, to acknowledge when I don't have the answer to things, when I'm weak, when I'm vulnerable, when I need others' help. I think back to a moment at our fall community meeting at Dayspring, where I was experiencing my depression again and had not come to terms with it. Helen pulled me aside and said, "Honey, your light is low." And I broke down in tears. Because she saw right into my spirit. She didn't say, "You need help," or "I think you're depressed," she didn't try to analyze me, she just felt the connection sprit-to-spirit and said what she felt.
In Verse 13, Paul describes exactly that: "this is what we speak: not words taught to us by human wisdom but words taught by the spirit." The words of the spirit are understood by other spirits, Spirit to Spirit, heart to heart, even if -- especially if -- it's weakness to weakness. It's understood in the heart's acceptance of the spirit.
So what builds this quality of Spirit-to-Spirit understanding between us, enough to know belonging, to know connection, to know trust? Let us take a moment to look around this room: think back to moments of Spirit-to-Spirit, heart-to-heart connection you've had in 8th Day.
I'll tell one more story and then read a poem. The story is about my Dad. He was the epitome of health his whole life. He helped sell his company about seven years ago, and he was suddenly out of work. He was doing fine, materially. Plenty of money in the bank, a good house, college-educated kids, healthcare, the whole bit. But he started feeling very stressed out, I think because he was so identified with the earthly self as a lawyer and businessman, and someone who achieves things in this world. We couldn't tell what was going on with Dad, and he couldn't tell what was going on.
One day, he had a heart attack on the tennis court. No prior history of heart disease in himself or his relatives. He had a 98% blockage of a major artery. The only reasons he lived was that someone he was playing with knew CPR, there was a defibrillator next to the court, and there was an ambulance a few blocks away. The doctors said they had never seen anyone experience that kind of heart attack outside an ER and survive.
My dad brought us to church when we were kids, and always cultivated a sense of the great Mystery. I don't think he would call it "God," because that word was scarred by his Catholic upbringing. We don't talk in those terms. But since his heart attack, he's made sure that every person he hugs, he hugs heart-to-heart, on the left side. For some reason, we tend to hug on our right side. He makes sure we hug heart-to-heart.
Finally, I'll read to you a poem. Some words that came to me recently as I was trying to ground into the mind of Christ:
you are the salt of the earth
distilled from the pools of seawater poured
by hands Galilean, Irish, Andean, white
and pink crystal rubbed
on the arms and bottoms of babies
to toughen the skin, the thighs
of calfs, preserving
the fat and the meat through long
wet winters in the barn, you
are the salt
are the brine
are the crusty
lip
of the bowl of soup savored
at the truckstop diner, you
are the tang of the Saviour the eternal I AM, the light
dawning up
through the floorboards
and down through the steeples
of Dublin and Belfast
Rome and Corinth
warming the eyes so the body may know
the beloved
world awaits us
awaken.