Thoughts for the Week—June 2008
Thought for the Week: 6/30/08—Altered States
We all need an altered state of mind now and then. Going away for a week or more, whether for vacation or a business trip—or a mission
trip—produces a different state of mind.
Maybe the formula is (Distance + Time = Perspective). Or something like that. Anyway, it’s something we all need.
We can look back over the past several months or years and see a longer stretch of our trail than we could facing forward step by step.
It helps us see what was maybe more important than we thought it was at the time, and what was way less important than the weight we
gave it in the heat of the day.
Perspective is a way of seeing ahead by looking back. If we use it right, it can be a mid-course correction. Keeping us more true to our
real path, the path we should be on, rather than the one we may have wandered off to chase a distraction.
It is a blessed thing to not have to think about the daily routine for a short while, and let the usual concerns fall to the background chaff of
our mind. It lets a deeper part of us sort out what has meaning and what doesn’t.
It is a blessed thing as well to go through the process of re-entry to the “Normal State.” (As if…!) The discontinuity of time off lets us
drop some of the less productive things and start over. It helps sort out what was good in our meditations and what wasn’t, and makes us
get back to the work at hand.
We can come back to the normal without surrendering to the usual fussing and nit-picking, with maybe a little better patience and a broader
humor. And a fierce willingness to give no quarter to the unimportant. Perspective renews a sense of mission.
Which is maybe why the Lord built a little dose of it into every week with the Sabbath…ya think? Worship itself should be that perspective
every week, every day of our lives. Not an escape—perspective. Not refuge, but renewal. Not a hidey hole or a nice concert, but the
challenge of meeting ourselves and our Lord face to face, unafraid and ready to see our lives as they really are. Perspective: an “altared”
state of mind.
Thought for the Week: 6/17/08—Whiff Test
When I walked into the office the other day, I swear it smelled funny. Nothing looked out of order. No one said anything. There was just
a musty odor that hung in the air, not unpleasant. I wondered if maybe Karen hadn’t had time for a shower after her morning run, but had
the sense not to ask….and thought nothing more about it….
A couple of days later the conversation turned to how strong the “flavor” in the air was from the spices that had arrived a couple of days
before for the Great Chili Extravaganza. Really glad I’d kept my opinions to myself…
(I knew a psychiatrist on staff at St Elizabeth’s Hospital in DC when I interned there 30+ years ago who swore he could differentially
diagnose psychoses by the smell of patients. I never could decide whether he was entirely serious, or he just needed to reside full time in
our gracious facility. Or maybe it was just an Austrian thing, which he was.)
What do we learn from all this, brethren?
1) Trust your nose. If something smells fishy, there may be fish nearby. If it doesn’t pass the whiff test, ask more questions.
2) Not everything that smells funny is what you think it is. It is better to ask.
3) Whatever it is, it is not necessarily your neighbors’ (or the staff’s, or the rector’s, or the vestry’s, or…anyone’s) fault.
It is much better to ask.
4) Put away the peppers that come in the mail before they put you away.
5) Fix the problem, not the blame.
The Lord might have said something like, it is better to take the chili peppers out of your own schnozz than to go around recommending
showers for those whose personal grooming is better than yours in the first place. But the one about the log in your eye (Matt. 7:3ff)
preaches better.
Thought for the Week: 6/09/08—Dropping the Drama
Watching the last phases of the political primary campaigns has been a real reminder of how much we hurt ourselves (and others) by
indulging in psychodrama when we should be paying attention to business. It certainly isn’t just politicians.
Have we just given up on doing our jobs, tending our relationships, and fostering our families? Is it really fun blowing every phrase we hear
and every whim we feel into the stuff of daytime soap opera and (most revealing of misnomers!) “reality television?”
One of the most telling aspects of the Gospels is how much time the Lord Jesus spends telling folks *not* to spread the word about him
and what he has been doing, healing people and the like. Lots of ink has been spilled about that in learned commentaries, but it seems he
wanted people to focus on the message rather than on the “magic” and the “mania.” Bon chance….
Take what you will from it, but my conclusion is that part of the good news is “Everything is not about me.” Actually that comes as a huge
relief. You and I do not have to take on our shoulders the “saving” of our neighbors, or even setting them right. That’s God’s job, and he
is remarkably, entirely up to doing it.
And that leaves you and me free to breathe a little easier, let people (including us!) make their mistakes, learn from them, and move on. No
need for blow ups and tantrums. Relax—the Lord has this stuff in hand.
There is a God. You are not him. Enjoy it.
Thought for the Week: 6/02/08—Missionaries
Most of us born before 1970 or so thought we grew up in a Christian country, at least culturally. That may have been pretty much an
illusion, but it seemed so at the time, for all its faults.
Whatever, it’s pretty clear, it ain’t so no mo…
It’s not that we’re a more diverse lot than we were before—that has almost always been true. What is really interesting is the deep hostility
that important segments of our society now feel free to express toward Christian faith, tradition and morality, whether in academia,
entertainment, or even “news” media.
But I have a surprise for you: this is GOOD NEWS.
Somewhere in The City of God Augustine says it’s always better for the Church to be persecuted by the outside world, because when we’
re not, we turn to doing it to each other. Insightful old codger, he was.
When we think that we call the shots and our way is what everybody agrees with, we have the luxury of getting soft, lazy, self-satisfied and
just plain torpid. Witness much of North American Christianity. It will take us a long time to recover; we will face probably generations
more of loss. But in the hardening fires of what is and is coming, Christ’s people are rediscovering what it is to be a missionary people.
To be witnesses to something different from what your neighbors hold normal and natural is not easy, nor lightly undertaken. But it is life-
giving, and it will bring new light and life to our own existences, our nation and our world. Jesus Christ is Lord; let the movie moguls spew
their porn and the media splash their lies. He that death could not hold, falsehood, greed and lust cannot defeat. Believe it. Live it. Tell it.
That is the mission.
*** No column was produced the week of 6/24/08, as the rector was on the Medical Mission to SE Mexico.