Dependence Day --some thoughts on Independence

“Do not say to your neighbor: Go away!

Come another time! I will give it to you tomorrow.

If you can give it to him today.”

--Proverbs 3:28

It is the 4^th of July, and here in America we are celebrating what we like to call: Independence Day.  We broke free from England and declared ourselves an independent nation.  But in time, perhaps even from the beginning this declaration of our independence has been something of a two-edged sword; on the one side, we declared ourselves free as a nation, from the reign of a distant king who seemed to rule over his colonies with little concern for the people who lived there.  And we underwent the great experiment of self-rule, became a land ruled by laws and shaped by the consent and will of the citizens.  But the other side of this sword infected our language and our ideals with a kind of cancer also known as independence. Our national mythology became inflamed with a philosophy of self-creation & self-invention; stories of self-made men, rags to riches tales of men and women who rose from “nothing” to become mighty heroes of commerce and industry, politics and economy.  This myth of self-creation is truly a cancer.  It destroys and yet, how often do we (as a nation) conflate the national myth of independence, the ideal of inventing ourselves as a new and independent nation with a personal dream of inventing ourselves as a new and independent person?

But the truth is—we are not independent.  Not as a nation and definitely not as a people.  We were made by God to be in community, to be in communion, to be dependent.  I need you.  You need me.  We need our brothers and sisters of every race and land.  All of them.  All the time. Especially when they come to us asking for help. 

You see, in the myth of independence, they shouldn’t need us.  There is something wrong about their needing us.  Living in our 4-bedroom ranch-style houses with climate controlling AC and wifi extenders and hot-tubs and remote controlled refrigerators full of apple pie and corndogs and mayonnaise, we surely don’t need them!! What’s wrong with them?  Why can’t they grab hold of their own bootstraps and… just go away?  Can’t they see we’re busy celebrating our independence? Come another time!  Maybe, when you have something to offer.

But what if the thing they had to offer us was a truth we can’t find streaming on Netflix? Dependence.  The fact that being made in the image of God means we were made for community, and being made for community means we need each other.  And so when someone comes asking for help and we say: Go away.  Get a job!  Learn how to pay your bills and follow the rules and take care of yourself!  Learn how to be independent! Like me.  We aren’t just being tough, or hard, or cruel, we are being fools.  We are missing out on something glorious and grand, a gift from God: dependence.  We are missing out on the opportunity to become even more dependent. To participate in the interdependence of God’s creation.

Think about this: when you help someone, when you feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the naked, you do something for their body, and often they are very grateful, but at the end of the day who lays down feeling more blessed?   Let us greet those who need our help as  not a burden to be avoided, or borne with (though with bitter resentment), but as an opportunity to become more fully who we were made to be. Your need is a gift to me, just as my insufficiency, my brokenness, my need for help, for community, is a gift to you. On this beautiful Fourth of July morning, I ask you to consider taking a moment to celebrate Dependence Day.

Happy Dependence Day. 

Poetry, laughter & the Trinity

“…and they hid from the Lord…”

--Genesis 3:8

The other night I was visiting a friend’s wife in the hospital.  She had been in the ICU for 2 weeks and he just needed a break. He asked me if I would just come and sit with her for a few hours while he got away.  He assured me that she would probably be asleep, but he just didn’t want her to be alone.  So, I grabbed my Bible and a book of poetry and headed up—expecting to have some time to read.  But, as fate would have it, the patient was awake and though she couldn’t speak above a whisper (her breathing tube had been removed but had left her throat very sore), she wanted to talk—or at least wanted to hear talking.  So, I sat, held her hand, and we whispered back and forth for a while; about everything and anything: her husband, my family, the weather, the discomfort of hospital beds, and feeding tubes, and the blessing of family and friends who wouldn’t let her alone.  When our conversation dwindled down to a series of silent pauses punctuated by the beep of medical equipment, I offered to pray a rosary. In part, I thought it might give her comfort, but I also half imagined it might help her fall asleep. 

When I finished she seemed to be asleep, but as I put my beads away she opened her eyes.  She looked afraid.  I assured her I wasn’t going anywhere and offered to read to her and picked up my Bible.  But then I remembered a poem in the book I’d brought and offered to read it to her. She shrugged and nodded okay, as if to say: well, if that’s all you got to offer…

But, I thought she might enjoy it and assured her we could read a Gospel next, if she liked.  Anyway, the poem was by W. S. Merwin, and it was about Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden.  In the poem an angel is told to give them something before they go.  The angel doesn’t know what it is, or what it is for, only that (despite the fact that they can’t keep it) he is supposed to give it to them.  The poem is called “The Present,” and it ends with Adam and Eve simultaneously reaching for the gift:

“… they both reached at once

for the present

and when their hands met

they laughed”

When I finished, she asked me to read it again.  I did.  And then as she looked at me, expectantly, I felt a need to talk about why I liked the poem so much.  It’s because of that laughter at the end.  “Their hands met,” and “they laughed.” There is something profoundly simple in that little bit of theological insight. A picture of community: their hands met—and renewal: they laughed.  For me, what I keep thinking about is the Genesis image of Adam and Eve hiding from God. They isolate themselves, separate themselves from His presence and finally even from each other: It’s her fault. She made me do it!  But, the snake made me do it! The complete unity of the garden, the harmony of Eden, breaks down because of sin; sin that isolates and divides. Yet in this beautiful little 14-line poem there is hope held out, a gift from God that can help Adam and Eve survive, and what is it? It is community.  Their hands come together, and they laugh. 

What I hear in this poem is an implied lesson about Eden, original sin, and the consoling power of community.  Of just being together. Though I did most of the talking, she nodded, she smiled, she asked me to read the poem again.  And as we talked, even laughing at one point, I felt the truth of Merwin’s words lived out right there in that hospital room: the consolation and comfort of community—of friendship, of love, is truly a healing gift from God.   

And I realized that the opposite is true too, and is implied in the poem’s allegory: division, separation, isolation, loneliness are somehow linked to the very nature of sin, from the very beginning.

And I began to wonder if there wasn’t a lesson here about God’s very nature: about the Trinity, even.  If sin is to turn away from God, to separate ourselves from Him, divide ourselves from Him by choosing what is not God, then perhaps the unity of the Trinity isn’t so much a mystery as it is an example.  “Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect…” Jesus says (Mt. 5:48). And maybe that doesn’t just mean: follow all the rules; but maybe it really means something like: love one another, take care of each other, you were made to be community --Just like Your Heavenly Father.

Finding the fruit, tending the vine

“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine…
your children like olive shoots
around your table…”
--Psalm 128:3

I was at the hospital yesterday visiting a friend and in the short time that I was with her she was visited by three chaplains. By the time the third came, we were laughing.  It was like the beginning of strange joke; three chaplains walked into a hospital room: the first was a Jew, the next was a Christian, and the third was a Muslim... Now, I just need to figure out the punch-line. 

And I am wondering if the punch-line has something to do with misunderstanding. Because I’ve been thinking about misunderstanding a bit lately.  And it all started when I read Psalm 128 about a week ago. As I came to the line about the “fruitful vine” I was elated; I realized this psalm was read at our wedding! 

Back in 1988, when we were choosing readings, I remember being struck by how apt these words felt. I was marrying someone who loved gardening and I loved olives! How much more perfect can you get?  What I understood the psalm to be promising was something like this:

Marital joy and pleasure, will be yours! A companion! Children! And spaghetti sandwiches whenever you want! (And that is not a euphemism.)  I understood them to be about opulence, comfort and security –sustenance and pleasure! I half expected a Nobel Prize, and invitations to speak at Cambridge and Harvard to spring up along with all those olive shoots.  But—in hindsight—I think that might have been a slightly immature understanding of God’s promise, even of God’s fruit…

You see, what I have come to understand after 30 years of life with a beautiful wife, loving daughters, and periodic struggles with depression and insecurity, as well as a file cabinet full of rejection letters is this:  the fruits God gives us are not always the fruits we imagine we want, but they are always the fruits we need (to paraphrase Mr. Jagger & Mr. Richards). 

Here is an example of what I mean:  Last Thursday I volunteered to print and bind several copies of an anthology for a children's writing workshop I was helping with.  The booklets needed to be ready to hand out to the students when they arrived at 9am the next morning. Not a problem, I thought.  I have access to copiers, and a little binding machine.  I figured it would take a couple of hours at most.  I started working on it around 4:30pm.  Of course, everything took longer than I imagined and by 9:30 I was calling home to warn my wife that I might not be home before midnight, and in my heart I was beginning to suspect that it could take all-night.  And I was beginning to suspect that it was my own incompetence that was making everything take so long; my disorganized ways, and my hunt and peck typing skills and my lack of focus and…

I guess my wife could hear the anxiety and frustration in my voice, because the next thing I knew she was volunteering to come help me. When she offered, my initial reaction was: No. Please, don’t come. You don’t need to do this.  It’s my mess. I’ll take care of it.  But, finally she convinced me that she wanted to help and by 10:15 she (and 2 daughters) arrived with dinner in tow. They told me to take a break, and went to work.  As I ate, I could hear their laughter, their joy, bits of silly conversation ringing out as they worked and chatted.  By 11:30 they were finished. and though we were all tired, and eager to get home, our spirits were high and laughter was still ringing out.  In fact, I felt positively renewed.  I had been overwhelmed and frustrated, frightened at my own incompetence; I felt broken and useless when I called her, but now I felt almost giddy and full of life.  As we headed out the door I kept thanking them and hugging them. I couldn’t help myself.   

What kind of fruitful vine does God promise us? When I was 30, I thought it would be all strawberries and cream, olive oil and mozzarella, but now I see: sometimes it comes in the form of a wife who won’t take no for an answer.  And sometimes it might even come in the form of a husband who needs more help than he can ever imagine.  What if the real fruit has nothing to do with comfort or pleasure or spaghetti sandwiches, but is found in the opportunity to help each other, to put the needs of another before your own; the chance to be a little bit more like Christ?  What if we started looking at each other's brokenness and saw not insufficiency or something to be rejected, but a gift from God, a fruitful vine, an opportunity to grow in love (and joy and laughter)? Wouldn’t that be something? 

Now, if only I could figure out how to apply that to a hospital patient and an abundance of chaplains.