Dismissals

The sun rises late this time of year. Nine hours daylight, the sun descends, we are in darkness again. This lack of light weighs upon me, more now than once, for the workings of the world are askew, enmity is abroad, and I long for the return of light. The days will grow longer and, as they do, I await the advent of something new. I believe that peace will enter the world. It may be no more than an infant, yet a new hope will be among us. To All, Peace and Light in the days and year ahead!

In my early twenties, I took a job in a machine shop. I was low man on the totem pole save for the old man who swept the floor and redd up the shop. One day, I got myself into a mess on what should have been a simple job. I felt the sidelong glances of senior machine operators. They enjoyed my misery. The old man pushed his broom in my direction. He stood next to me and, with a precision and dexterity I would have doubted, soon had my machine humming. Without a word, he returned to his broom.

She’d been with him 20 years but whatever fire and energy had kept them together was all but gone. On a snowy January day, she packed what was hers into a U-Haul trailer, hitched it to her old Jeep station wagon and started west toward Seattle. She had a daughter there who was none too keen on this plan but what’s a daughter to do? The trailer jackknifed in Laramie, Wyoming. The repairs took weeks and she never left Laramie. I heard she married the tow truck driver. I don’t know if that’s true, but it just may be.

I found a jewel in a book on preaching: “One may become a Living Parable as one’s life becomes more and more conformed to the life of Jesus, so that one’s life both instructs and puzzles the wider society. Parabolic living and witnessing to the gospel give us the power to transform to lives.”*  Imagine a life where accidents and happenstance … coincidence and providence … where the odd and the unusual do not upset or disturb us but give rise to new ways of understanding … new ways of working in the world … new ways of doing God’s work in the world. (*Paraphrased from The New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching, December, 2008)

I sat a bench at the Cleveland Museum of Art that I might spend time, as I am wont, with the Schlagl Altarpiece. I was alone for a while until a young couple entered into the gallery. They held hands, they laughed, flirted and made their way around the room. Coming upon the Schlagl Altarpiece, they stopped and were brought to silence as their eyes followed the visual narrative of the Passion. Neither said, “Oh, my God!” The words did not need to be spoken. They stood there for a few minutes and then left in silence, still holding hands.

I might’ve said, “Is there anything I can do to help you?” He said, “I can get the garbage out to the porch but I can’t get it to the curb.” Every Thursday morning his trash bags wait for me on his porch and I tote them to the curb. I do a pretty fair job of it, if I do say so. No wages, no choir of angels, no Nobel prize in the offing, only the occasional, “Thanks!” I don’t entirely understand why I do it … but I don’t need to understand something for it to be worth doing. 

The old car was a beater … rusty … passenger window stuck shut … muffler didn’t muffle much and the radio didn’t radio at all … but it mostly ran OK. A friend needed to get to Boston in a hurry. I handed him the key and he drove on the hottest day of the year. He called me from Beantown. “Wow! We made it but it sure was hot!” I asked him why he didn’t use the car’s air conditioning. Silence … then, “Well, I just thought … seemed like nothing much else worked.” You never know. I wished him a safe, cool return trip.

It may be the times we live in. People seem so certain … of everything! It’s contagious! A friend said to me, “I wish I could be as certain of just one thing as you are of everything!” I needed to hear that. I’m learning to let go. Stand down. Give ground. Hold my peace. Listen. Pray. Trust. Here’s the Merton prayer: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I…

Friend, I am glad to hear from you. It is true that our Lord doesn’t tell me everything that’s on his mind, or tell me all that I think I ought to know. I am sure there are good reasons for this. I live, as patiently as I can, simply not knowing. Then, as if from nowhere, one of our Lord’s messengers writes to me, or says a quiet word to me, and I am refreshed and made new. Thank you for being that messenger! May the peace of our Lord continue to work in your life, and in mine!

When I was a boy, my family lived in the West Indies. There, I saw lepers. On Saturdays, lepers came and sat on the ground outside the city market. Wrapped in rough cloth, even their faces, they begged for alms. My mother knelt and spoke to the shrouded figures. She offered what she had, food or coins. The memory remains to this day. There are lepers hereabouts … not necessarily suffering from what we now call Hansen’s disease, but men and women, leper-like, brought low by illness, accident or misfortune … stigmatized and scorned … children of God indelibly marked as outcasts.

This ministry business has, for me, held rather more disappointments than successes, trying to fix broken bits of the world that simply stay broken. That may be the natural order of God’s world, I don’t know. I’ve learned that grand plans and great intentions are for naught next to the good that comes of spending time with someone, drinking coffee or sharing a meal and hearing what others have to say. Maybe that’s what is required of us, that we take the time to be with others … do what we can … remain thankful … and enjoy our time along the way.

I went to the museum for a little time alone. Entering the lobby, I saw a couple I knew. Bess was in a wheelchair, Andy was fussing with the machine that validates parking tickets. “Darn thing! Ticket’s jammed!” I helped. We chatted, retrieved their coats, then made our way to the parking deck. Though we were unsure exactly where their car was, we found it, said a long good-bye and they drove off. I returned the wheelchair to the museum. I looked at my watch. It was time to go. I left knowing that my timing had been perfect.