A Reading from the Book of Lyndsey

Be careful what you write. You just might get it.

Three weeks ago, in the last blog entry, I wrote about our uncertain cosmos and living in the here and now as a response. Two weeks later, we lost a dear friend very suddenly, at the ripe old age of 16.

An illness in infancy left Lyndsey with developmental disabilities. Something else, God knows what, left her with personality to burn. I would see her on weekends when her mother, who raises and shows animals as I do, would bring her to the shows. While Lyndsey didn’t take part directly, she was never far from the show table, and her exuberance at being with friends was palpable.

Our first meeting at every show followed something of a script. Lyndsey would lead with one of her giant, freely given hugs, then tell me excitedly who from her family was there. “Mom’s here, and guess what? Ty’s here too! And Stephan! He came too!” As though they never came to shows, and their coming was a great big deal.

Now, with Lyndsey’s passing, I realize she was right all along. It is a great big deal.

Here we are back at uncertainty. Every time we meet, we give the gift of our presence to others, and they to us. We have no idea whether it will be the last time we see each other. All we have is now, and the joy that this meeting, this presence, now brings us. All we can do is to be here now, fully attentive to the moment at hand, and relish the joy.

That is a very, very big deal indeed.

The Joy of Not Knowing

Then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out. (Ecclesiastes 8:17)

How, then, do we live with this mystery?

Surely we know ways not to do it. Over the millennia, the human race has had glimpses into the Divine and gradually shaped them into doctrine—which, in turn, ossifies into certainty. In times of catastrophe, many ask “why,” get angry when they hear no answers, and abandon God entirely.

Curiously, neither of these impulses is bad in itself. Well-considered doctrine can open even deeper insights into the truth behind the universe. Consider, for instance, the notion of the Trinity and what that says about the supreme importance of relationship among creatures.

Neither is it bad to rail at God. The Bible is packed with characters who do just that—as they hold an unflagging passion for the Divine. Even “abandoning God” might be a positive step for a time, especially if it means abandoning one’s preconceived notions about God.

It’s the insistence on fixed answers that runs us afoul of reality. We want certainty; we get God. That has some profound implications. With our understanding of God ever changing, we might someday have to give up our most cherished notions of truth. We might even live our whole lives by principles that turn out to be misguided.

So how do we live? Well, I don’t know for certain (of course). But here are two clues that might help us move forward.

The first comes from another passage in Ecclesiastes: “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil” (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13). I see this as an invitation not to hedonism, but to mindfulness—focusing on the Divine in the here and now. From what I understand, Buddhism provides extraordinary insight into this: because we can never know whether God exists (the idea goes), we must concern ourselves with what we can achieve, like mindfulness and enlightenment.

The other clue comes from St. Paul. After his rousing discourse about continually pressing on to the prize of knowing Christ, he admonishes his readers with “Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:15-16).

So we focus on here and now, live out our lives according to what wisdom we’ve gained, and embrace the Divine mystery for what it is. It sounds like a life of faithfulness. And when we go off base, we can trust that, at the right time, the Divine will guide us back. Can we ask for a richer or more reassuring adventure?

The Power of God in Our Hands

“Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”(John 20:17)

… Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:21-23).

Just how completely do we share the life of God?

In this passage, Jesus makes several earth-shaking claims about our relationship with the Divine. He calls his disciples by a new name: not servants, not even friends, but brothers. The God he has always called “my Father” is now “my Father and your Father.” He gives us power to forgive sins—a privilege traditionally reserved for God alone.

These aren’t the only sacred texts that present this kind of view. The psalmist says of human beings, “You have made them a little lower than God….You have given them dominion over the works of your hands” (Psalm 8:5). St. Paul says in his simile for the church, “For just as the body is one and has many members…so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12)—when you’d expect him to say so it is with the church.*

Does this make anyone else a tad nervous?

Through millennia of training, many people of faith have adopted a much lower view of humanity. We think of God as Sovereign, as Judge. We adopt a “humility” that is more like self-deprecation. We emphasize scriptural passages that tell us (rightly, as it turns out) that without God, we can do nothing.

So what if God has shared with us, not just boundless love, grace, and guidance, but also power? What if we’re called to, in the words of my old therapist Harold Bussell, “trust God’s decision to trust us”?

Here’s what scares me: As humans, we don’t do power well. Either we forget the Source of that power and grow dangerously arrogant—five minutes with the nightly news provides all the evidence you need—or we shrink from it and become ineffective. Shrinking from power, ironically, creates a vacuum for the arrogant to step right in.

Maybe the key is in the relationship. If God is now our God too, if we have received a closer-than-breath connection with the Holy Spirit—and we live in that connection—the Presence stands as a bulwark against the fearsome pitfalls that power brings. It enables us to hold power lightly, remain constantly mindful of its Source, and wield it for good.

And wield it we must. The world desperately needs someone to effect change: to heal the starving, bind up the brokenhearted, toil for justice. In a word, God invites us to join him in co-creating a better world, bringing it closer to the vision of God’s reign.

As we do, let us look at this “power sharing” and see in it the utter extravagance of the Divine love. God has shared with us his work and his power to do it. Only deities that truly love can trust their creatures so completely.

*Thanks to Hal Miller, theologian extraordinaire, for this eye-opening insight into 1 Corinthians.