Look for the Helpers

January 4, 2015

One day in either 1998 or 99, while at work, Tom Brown called me. He said, “Marcia, I have very sad news to share with you. This morning, Julian Nichols died while jogging. He had a massive heart attack.” I was speechless for a moment, trying to absorb this reality. I was also broken-hearted.  Julian had been the dearly-loved and respected moderator of 8th Day for a number of years. I was in my early days on the leadership team at 8th Day, and Julian was a kind and gracious mentor to me. I observed him and learned from him. He encouraged me, met with and listened to me, and asked me questions. One thing, I knew for sure about Julian was that he loved this community. Every teaching/sermon that I ever heard him give was about community, about our life together in all its many dimensions. I believe that he understood serving this community as a privilege. So, on this first Sabbath of the year, I want to talk about this community And, I will get to the scripture.

2013 and 2014 were momentous years in the life of 8^th Day, and for me as moderator the hardest and most challenging ever. It seemed to me that the closing of the PH, 8th Day’s assumption of its ownership, and the issue of racism and anti-racism revealed serious fears, deep emotions, diverse opinions, beliefs and preferences that needed to be dealt with.

My anxiety grew, particularly in the late months of 2013. I did not wake up each day excited about 8th Day and the transformation of the Potter’s House. There was a heaviness in my spirit especially around the anti-racism issue and whether that should become one of the focuses of 8th Day’s call as a community. Someone suggested that anti-racism training be required for membership. Another person mentioned that perhaps the community could just divide. And, then there were a few who asked, “Where will I go if this community changes its mission or no longer welcomes me?” Additionally, there were grumblings about worship services. Personally, I did not sense that God was calling this community to dissolve, disband, or divide. I had enough faith to believe that at the deepest level of our corporate being we still yearned to be one in Christ despite our differences and conflicts. However, I did ask God, and my own inner teacher and some of you what 8th Day needed to live creatively in these times and get through the controversies and uncertainties.

And, I remembered the words of one of my saints, Mr. Rogers. My favorite quote of his is one he shared after the tragedy of September 11th. He said, “When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me.  ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers--so many caring people in the world.”

So, I started looking for helpers. Some of them were right before me: prayer and reflection, and listening and wise hearts in this community with whom I could talk. And I looked for learning opportunities. An announcement from the Center for Courage and Renewal popped up in my email in early 2014. The Center, founded by Parker Palmer, was holding a retreat in August called “Habits of the Heart for Healthy Congregations: Embracing the Tensions of Ministry”. “Strange, I thought. Why would one, I in particular, throw my arms around and welcome tension, conflict, controversy?” Perhaps, I could learn something helpful. I signed up, and Mike agreed to come along.

So, for four days in August, we joined about 95 other U.S. congregational leaders in an experience designed to help us deepen our capacity to respond to and hold the tensions and conflicts of communal life in healthy and strong-hearted ways. We were divided into six groups or circles of trust which met each morning and afternoon. We started and ended each day with a whole group session which included singing, sharing, and Parker Palmer’s reflections and engagement with the group.

I came away with a number of learnings but want to share four critical ones:

1. In a healthy community, there is openness to the language of each person’s soul. No one language is privileged over another. We support the intention to help each person listen for inner truth and for their own inner teacher. We listen with the other for the ways in which God is revealed and at work. We ask honest and open questions. We are not in community to fix another. We are in this physical and spiritual life journey together.

2. Tension, conflict, controversy is inevitable, normal. If there is no tension, there is death. Holding tension and conflict or paradox as Palmer terms it, can drive you crazy or kill you, or it can bring you new life. Paradox is a cruciform (cross-like) way of life.  The opening is at the crossbars; that’s where the heart, the seat of decision is. Think about your body with your arms extended outward. Your heart is at the crossbar. Our hearts will break, but a broken heart can become a heart broken-open to healing and new life.

3. Great truths may be paradoxical or oppositional. For example;

• Breathing in and breathing out is necessary to sustain life; the Inward Journey and the Outward Journey: neither journey can be strong without intentional nourishment from the other;
• Humans are made for community, for relationship, but also need solitude;
• Death can bring resurrection, new life;
• We only understand light by knowing and experiencing shadow and darkness.
• Unity is possible amidst great diversity or difference. And this involves moving away from “either-or” thinking and embracing “both-and” thinking.

4. Community as Jean Vanier reminds us is a continual act of forgiveness. Do we want to be right or do we want to be in relationships despite all of their messiness? This is a hard question for some of us. But, it is possible to be a community of people who are not pre-tending, who see and live creatively amidst the perils, disappointments and joys of life. 

On the last afternoon of the retreat, I was feeling low so I skipped my circle and went to sit on the small beach on Lake Michigan. Soon I started looking at all the rocks, picking them up, and found one rock that begged to be picked up. It’s a three pound rock in which various sizes and colors of many pebbles are embedded. It’s on the altar today.  Something holds all these smaller pebbles together. This rock seemed to be an image of 8th Day, a sign perhaps that our “oneness in Christ” could and would hold despite our many differences.

As I have reflected more on the past two years of 8th Day’s life and on my retreat experience, I’ve returned to scriptures and to the ways in which they continue to mirror life for us and to instruct us if we engage them with open and questioning minds and hearts.

Conflicts, tensions and controversies surface frequently in the gospels and the other New Testament writings. Jesus is born into a world of danger, intrigue and conflict. Many of Jesus’ encounters show him engaged in some tense or conflictual moment. The story of the Syrophoenician woman is one of these, and it is a story that I reacted to with frustration when I first read and worked with it. Both Mark and Matthew tell this story. Mark’s older version in chapter 7 is shorter and sparing of words. It has a sharper edge. As you listen to this story, imagine it as a short film or stage act. What are you feeling? What are Jesus and the woman feeling? How is Jesus treating this woman? Where are the pauses and silences?

From there (Galilee), he (Jesus) set out and went away to the region of Tyre.  He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could  not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean  spirit  immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his  feet. Now  the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast  the demon out her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is  not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered  him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your  daughter.” So, she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

In the verses before this story, Jesus has been engaged in a series of controversies with the Pharisees and scribes over traditions and rules about piety (religious obligations) and purity (what is allowable to eat and drink and with whom one can associate). Jesus makes a strong distinction between outward piety (what is observable, what attracts attention) and authentic devotion to God. What is in one’s heart is what matters. That’s the key to Jesus’ teachings. Without this inward commitment and devotion, the customs and traditions are for show. They set aside the word of God.

At the start of this story Jesus has left Galilee and “escaped” to Tyre, a city on the Mediterranean coast northwest of Galilee. He must be exhausted and tired of disputes since he wants no one to know he is in Tyre. When the woman breaks into his “sabbath”, I imagine Jesus being put off by yet another demand on his time and energy.  He could be impatient and possibly short with her when he says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children are the Jews, the people of Israel, the ones to whom Jesus is initially called to minister.

At first, I felt offended by how Jesus treated this woman. She is desperate for help; she’s not there to just annoy him. There is tension, and as I imagine this encounter, probably some time passes as Jesus considers the challenge of the gentile woman. I wonder what was going on in his mind and heart as he saw this woman and heard her very human need. Jesus could have refused to listen to her, asked for her to be removed. He could have sent her away or told her to return later. He could have left the scene. But, he really stayed in the moment, listened to the woman’s response, and held the tension. I wonder. how God’s spirit is moving through him?  I don’t believe Jesus responded immediately to the woman’s remark.  Perhaps it finally became an “aha” moment for him: a moment of truth and dawning light. This is Jesus in all his humanness, and he loses the argument. He made the decision to heal beyond the prescribed boundaries. When confronted, Jesus revealed himself with the Spirit’s guidance as learner and trusted the teaching the woman offered, a teaching that I think was of God. The dogs, after all, are in the household; they are not strangers.

The commentaries on this story note that this exchange points toward a future in which Gentiles, outsiders, will be included in Jesus’ mission even as the mission to Israel continues.

So, what? What should I/we take from this story and our journey as a faith community over the past two years? I know that like all communities, groups, and families that conflicts, controversies and disagreements will be part of our landscape. Where are our helpers as we head into the new year? There are many, I think, but I’ll suggest a few.

First, is the knowledge that as in Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, we individually and communally have choices: 1) we can try to resolve tensions and differences if the need to do so could be life-giving; 2) we can just agree to disagree and live with it; or 3) we can hold/live with the tension, the opposites, as Jesus did; he and the woman both had ground or an argument to stand on. In our biblical story, there was healing and growth, I think, for both Jesus and the woman.

Second, we have helpers in this church and beyond, people who are good thinkers, organizers, problem solvers, teachers, doers, friends, advocates, intercessors, musicians and on and on. Wisdom, gifts, skills, strengths, and resources of all kinds are plentiful. Let’s call on these helpers.

Third, we can intentionally create and use containers for holding tension: circles of various kinds. Circles allow for each person to listen and also to be heard without feedback or judgment. They can be vehicles for storytelling, problem-solving, celebration, and more. Other containers are mediation and various kinds of accompaniment (spiritual companionship, mentoring, advocating, friendships).

Last, language, spoken but also non-verbal, can be helpful or hurtful, but let’s focus on the helpful dimensions:

• Invite and offer personal and spiritual storytelling because when we hear other’s stories and share our own, we find common, humanizing ground, and we grow in under-standing. We can use the gift of biblical stories as ways to mirror, address and struggle with our individual and communal questions and faith journeys.
• Embrace our questions and doubts. We can use honest and open questions in both tense and calmer moments. These are questions that make no assumptions of the other. Jesus often asked, “What do you want me to do? Sometimes he directed the question back to the asker. Examples of open questions that we can use are “What did you mean when you said you felt (sad, disappointed, frustrated)? What did you learn from the experience you just shared? What values do you think are most important to hold in this matter? Remember, too, that Jesus’ questions went to the person as well as to a problem or issue.

 

We are now at the beginning of a new year and new liturgical season, Epiphany, the manifestation or showing forth of Christ in the world. The gospel reading for this week in John (1: 3-5) announces: “What has come into being in him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  There will always be times of sorrow, discord, turmoil, shadows and darkness, but we have been and are carriers of Christ’s light. The call of our community “to be Christ’s body in the world and to respond to his overwhelming love for us”, attests to that strong intention as do our day-to-day ministries, commitments and works of love and compassion that show forth light in concrete ways.

The first chapter of John’s gospel also includes John the Baptist’s testimony that from “his (Jesus Christ’s) fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (1:16)   Grace means that which brings delight, joy, happiness or good fortune, but it also refers to divine kindness, forgiveness, favor and mercy. At the farewell lunch of the Banyan Tree Mission Group this past November, Gail Arnall that she thought 8th Day had gotten through the last two years with incredible grace. This past week, I happened on a letter I wrote to myself at the end of last August’s retreat. My letter ended with the statement, “Grace is a real thing!”

As we look to soon returning home to the Potter’s House, may we all claim God’s grace. Let’s go forth with deep gratitude for our life in this community and for the grace of God that has sustained us and will continue to sustain us. So be it.

 

Resources: New Interpreters Bible; notes from Habits of the Heart for Healthy Congregations: Embracing the Tensions of Ministry.