Who's in charge here?

CONTROL


Being out of control just sucks. Feeling out of control sucks. It does. It just does.

I used to feel that way. It was a child's way of trying to keep the wolves from the door. It is a common experience of children who have experienced abuse. It is a common experience of children who grew up in the midst of chaos.

Who ever thought I would come to be a grand champion of Chaos. In theory. And even: in practice.

I love chaos. Being out of control is fine with me. It is the way of the world. We are not in control. We can be in charge of certain things, of some things. But we are not in control.

There is - news flash - no control. Meteors charge into the atmosphere. And this, this: children die. Markets blow up. Gangs shoot up the school ground. Planes crash.

Children die. I'm still feeling the shock and grief, from a distance, at the death of a two-year-old from Tay-Sachs. And friends remind me with a facebook post this afternoon of the death of their son two years ago from another hideous disease. I used to think somebody should be in control of these things. SomeBody should. But that's not how it is. Nature has its way with us.

Chaos, in theory, even in practice, takes us through the landscape of No Control. It takes us through the quagmires of grief and sadness. It pushes us across the terrain of loss. Real loss. Over which we have no control. And it nudges through fields of bleating sheep and crazy awful quicksand that can sink us if we don't make the best navigational choices. Chaos takes us into the valley of the shadow of death. It dumps us down in the dumpsters, the trash heaps of emotion. It is all about uncertainty. Questions. Where will I / we end up? What next?

It is not reasonable at this moment, with death breathing on my shoulder, to celebrate chaos. That would be crass, insensitive, insufferable.

But. I know, from painful experience, and some joyful experiences too, that chaos can lead to a new place. It is not a place free from jagged cliffs. But it is a place where life can be lived big and loud and good and true.

Control -- attempting to control -- makes us crazy. Chaos leads us on a meandering way straight through the rugged heart of life. And gives it back to us. Whoever thought it could be true?

But that seems to be the way it is. Chaos, lets the light in. Chaos, brings us past the roughest scatchiest patches. Chaos brings us through.

Nobody's in charge here. We go with what we get. And we make the choices that are put before us. Chaos. Chaos sets the table.

If there is any beauty, any wonder, anything good and virtuous...

THINK ON THESE THINGS



People mess around with translations and different renderings of the biblical text so much these days, I don't even care that I did not get this right. The point is, think on these things.


Vanity, vanity. Trying to explain, to rationalize, to put things to rights.

If we had any sense at all, words would fail us.

The evil, awful dying of a child. One I am thinking of, in particular. But thousands today around the world. And the twenty people in this country who died today of gun violence. And the millions who suffer from war and famine and systematic starvation. Half the children in the US living under the poverty level. Good lord!

We waste our time with explanations. All, any explanations. It us beyond us. Let's be honest. We try to find our way through the jungle of inexplicable suffering, horror, evil with words that placate. But let's be honest. Let's just say, we don't know why.

Oh, we may know some of the facts. A missing enzyme. Cruel dictators, greedy bastards. Scared and abused people who only know how to scare and abuse others. We know that part of 'why.'

But the ultimate why? Let's be honest. We really don't know. To say otherwise is to fashion a god in our image. Even the revealed God didn't fall for our clumsy platitudes. The tower falls on the just and the unjust. Deal with it.

We have one way through this abyss. Grace. To see grace, to be grace. To see beauty, to be beauty. To be honest, to shine with light.

So, on this day, as we grieve and think about the dying of the child, and the man who suffers with cancer, and the woman who is starving, and the stupidity of lawmakers, I can offer only only this, but what this it is.

If there is any beauty, any wonder, anything good and vibrant, anything light and lovely,
think, think, take in and revel for the moment. In these good things. Grace.

Original ash

"ORIGINAL BLESSING, but then....



It is pure arrogance to presume that we are born into purity and goodness. We come bearing those gifts to the world but the world receives them not and sooner than later, we seem to be borne down by the powers of selfishness, primordial powers that are so primitive we assume they are part of our nature. I think that is an argument for another day.

The reality is that we are weakly, some more than others, and cannot bear too much reality -- as the playwright reminds us. So we succumb to dastardly deeds, some more than others. My own children still seem innocent to me -- the one who watched them day by day and saw so little to fault.

Yet all have sinned, as it is said. And today is a time of taking account. I am not pleased about calling this Ash Wednesday and I'll tell you why. It has nothing to do with the reality of acknowledgement, that from dust you have come and to dust you shall return. This is my problem:

Today is the anniversary of a day like many others during the Holocaust. A train from France arrived at KL Auschwitz. And within hours the skies filled with ash. Hundreds were gassed, killed by unnatural acts. Their ashes make our remembrance of Ash Wednesday an odd event. It feels like it should almost not belong to Christians anymore. Unless...

Unless: We are honest about this truth. That part of our sin was a terrible complicity in the death of millions. The ash-rendering of others. Too grave, too enormous, too horrible to comprehend. The church has its place in this complicity and for us to ignore this truth is to compound the problem. Do we dare to place ashes on our own foreheads, blithely, without cognizance of what we have been part of?