Cars and the Trinity

“Why do people like cars so much?” my friend asked me over coffee the other day. She has moved back to the city we both grew up in after seventeen years of living in Boston and New York, where taking public transportation, biking, and walking is the norm. She is used to having freedom from car insurance payments and rising gas prices. She is used to having freedom from the road rage caused by rush hour traffic and freedom for reading her favorite book while others do the driving.

While my friend asked her question rather rhetorically, I did start thinking about it seriously. In the United States, there are over 250 million passenger vehicles on the road for our estimated 314 million people. Clearly we love our cars! But why?

The first two answers that come to mind are “C” words: comfort and convenience. If you take public transportation, bike, or walk, you have to prepare for and deal with the elements: snow, rain, wind, hot sun. If you take your car, you can turn on the heat or the AC (and you may even be able to use increasingly common features like heated seats, heated steering wheels, climate control zones, and the like) and slouch back into your cushy chair. If you take public transit, bike, walk, or even carpool, it might take you longer to get somewhere, you might need to plan ahead more, and you might even need to adjust your schedule slightly to meet the needs of others or to catch the right train. But if you have your own car, you can go anywhere whenever you want.

I remember leaving the car about three feet from the curb parallel parking on my second attempt at the driver’s test, just to make sure I passed. No more waiting on dad to come pick me up from softball practice. No more having to beg mom to take me shopping for that one item that I was sure would complete an outfit I was working on. No more hoping that my parents did not have any plans so that they could drop me off and pick me up from hanging out with my friends.  All I had to do was ask and then I had the freedom for moving about on my own.

I also remember coaching gymnastics in college so that I could save money to buy my first car: a used ’91 red Toyota Corolla two door hatchback. Although it was as unsexy as a red car can get, it was a reliable car with low mileage, and I felt so proud to call it my own.

Our love for cars is about more than comfort and convenience. Cars are part of important rites of passage in our society. Who doesn’t have funny stories about learning to drive with a white-knuckled parent? (My story: getting pulled over by a security guard in an empty parking lot the first time my dad let me drive. My driving was so erratic the guard thought I was drunk.) Who doesn’t remember passing their driver’s test and complaining about the picture on their license? Owning a car can be status symbol, a sign that we have “made it enough” to have our own set of wheels. Further, cars are often a part of great family memories, driving across country or maybe just across town on a family adventure that we complained bitterly about at the time but have come to relish in our memories.

While cars are part of our identity as Americans in many positive ways, I also think they point to a growing problem of individualism. When you are in a car, you do not have to interact with the rest of the world, particularly those who are different than you. In a car, you can drive past the homeless man on the corner much more easily than you can ignore the immigrant mother and her child sitting next to you on the subway. When you have a car, as I wrote above, you can go anywhere you want whenever you want without being beholden to other people.

Photo from Flickr user Lawrence OP

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday that we highlight and celebrate our belief in a God who is Three. The three persons of the Trinity—God the Creator, Jesus the Redeemer, and Holy Spirit the Sanctifier—live in relation to each other and to all that is in the universe. The fancy theological word for how the persons of the Trinity relate to each other is perichoresis. As Sister Joan explains, “Peri is the Greek word for around as in perimeter. Chor is the Greek root of the word chore, the circling we do daily to keep up our commitments. The word tries to express the indwelling, intertwining relationships of three in one love.”* Ultimately, at the heart of who God is, there is a relationship of love, of self-giving, of living in community with responsibility to others.

So what does the Trinity have to do with driving cars? We human beings are made in God’s image. I take that to mean that we are called to live in relationships of love, of self-giving, of being in community with responsibility to others. And when we get into our “car” mentality, that we can do whatever we want whenever we want, it is hard for us to live as the image of God.

Why do you think that Americans like cars so much? Why do so many people avoid taking public transit, carpooling, walking, or biking?

How can your transportation choices reflect your faith commitments?

In this coming week, how can you better live in God’s image, in community with responsibility to others?

*Joan Mitchell, Sunday by Sunday, vol. 22, no. 36, May 26, 2103.

A Church For the Poor

The BBC’s David Willey recently reported on Pope Francis’ first major speech on the global financial crisis, saying he “has called on world leaders to end the ‘cult of money’ and to do more for the poor.” He urged for immediate ethical financial reform by making the important distinction that “Money has to serve, not to rule.” He is not just pointing fingers, though, but taking his own steps toward reform in the Vatican. For the first time, the Vatican’s own bank said they would publish its annual report to increase transparency. Willey writes of one of the world’s most secretive banks, “The Institute for Works of Religion, which has been at the centre of various financial scandals in recent years, is to hire an external accountancy firm to ensure it meets international standards against money laundering.” And when Pope Francis speaks of the poor, he is not only talking about countries far away that are struggling. He reminds us that people in countries rich and poor are suffering.

Photo from Flickr user Gerard Van der Leun

Pope Francis referenced the golden calf idol from the Bible and added, “People struggle to live, and frequently in an undignified way, under dictatorship of an economy which lacks any real human goal.” His words are calling on some important statements coming out of the Vatican over the years on economic violence. Following his election as Pope, he said, “I would like a Church that is poor and is for the poor.”

Since moving to New York City, I have found myself confronted with the golden calf and cult of money every day. Some of the richest people in the world live in New York City while others sit on benches and in subways homeless and hungry. I want my Church to work with me to address this, and Pope Francis is. A few months after moving to New York City, a friend who was in town for business invited my spouse and me to come over to his brother-in-laws place where he was staying for the weekend. We walked around the apartment overlooking Central Park with our mouths open wide, stunned. Our friend said it was worth $20 million, and the couple who owns it lives in Chicago. This residence is just a place to stay when they are in town. We returned home to our little apartment, where we felt much more comfortable, but still think of people living in extreme poverty every day. My eyes were open even more to the extremes of money.

In the United States and all around the world, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In the May 19^th New York Times, Charles V. Bagli reported on an 84 story tower being built on 432 Park Avenue. Upon completion, it will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. A golden calf. The top penthouse apartment is already under contract for $95 million, and apartments on lower floors are going for almost that much. He writes, “While their identities are not known, it is likely that many are the rootless superrich: Russian metals barons, Latin American tycoons, Arab sheiks and Asian billionaires.” In the same May 19^th New York Times, Timothy Noah wrote, “Since 1979, the one-percenters have doubled their share of the nation’s collective income from about 10 percent to about 20 percent.” Between 2009-2011, their average income rose by 11 percent. It is easy to blame the richest of the rich four our economic problems and wait for them to become more generous. But that is not the whole story. Noah argues another part of the problem in the United States is the growing gap between people who have a college or graduate degree and those who stopped school after high school. Unions used to protect the skilled working class by demanding fair wages and humane hours and conditions. It kept the gap more in check. “Only about 7 percent of the private sector labor force is covered by union contracts. Six decades ago it was nearly 40 percent…the middle classes aren’t getting pay increases commensurate with the wealth they create for their bosses. The bosses aren’t going to fix the problem.” But unions may be able to.

Pope Francis is right.

The gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing in the United States and all over the world. Money has become a cult. Wealth is a golden calf. One of the seven themes in Catholic Social Teaching is The Dignity of Work and the Rights of the Workers. This tenant came out of the Industrial Revolution, when workers were not being treated with dignity. It says that the economy must serve the people, not the other way around. It also promotes the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, and to organize in unions. Pope Francis appears ready to lift up our social teaching and hold his Church to a higher economic standard where we prioritize people over profit.

Pentecost–Speaking and Listenig

It was one of many awkward moments during our end-of-the-year eighth grade retreat. My classmates were exchanging beads with each other, sharing memories and compliments with each other as they did so, and building bracelets that represented the friendships they had formed over the past eight years at our Catholic grade school. I stood diffidently to the side, trying to look as if I was busy and not there at the same time, as I tried to decide who to approach to offer a bead. At that moment that a new thought popped into my head: I must be shy. Certainly, I knew other people who were shy, but this was the first time that I had applied the term to myself.

Over the next few years, this label turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The more I thought about being shy, the more difficult it was for me to approach people because I would spend the whole time judging myself for how socially awkward I was being. I became so timid that even seemingly simple interactions (asking the librarian for a book on reserve, delivering something to an office at school that I had never been to before) made my palms sweat.

In retrospect, being shy actually had an upside. In an effort to keep attention deflected from myself, I became a really good listener. I learned to look people in the eye when they were telling their stories and to nod and say “hmm” sympathetically to show them I was following along. Most importantly, I developed the art of asking good questions, questions that kept them talking about themselves. While this sort of question asking started out as a conversational coping mechanism, I soon discovered that I loved learning about people’s stories. Almost always hearing others’ stories helped me learn more about myself or gave me a sense of joy at connecting to another person’s humanity. Even later I found out that the questions that I asked allowed the story-tellers to see the value in their stories and occasionally helped them find their own answer to a dilemma they faced.

The downside of being a good listener is that I am not the best speaker. To this day, I feel shy talking too much about my experiences. After a minute or two, I feel the flush rising in my face, and I casually use a question to shift the conversational focus. I am hesitant to share what is bothering me with others and to seek their support. Yet good communication and strong relationships take both listening and speaking. If I only listen and do not also talk, I deprive myself of the chance to be known more deeply by other people and deprive them the chance of knowing the true me.

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, the feast that commemorates the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus’ disciples after his death. In the first reading from Acts 2: 1-11, we hear the familiar Pentecost story of tongues of fire resting above the heads of the disciples, as all of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages. A gathered crowd of Jews, who are from all over the world, amazingly hear the disciples speaking, each in their native language.

We usually think of Pentecost an event of speaking. We concentrate on the disciples’ ability to speak in a way that is intelligible to people all over the world. Yet as Eric Law has pointed out, Pentecost also involves listening.* Had the disciples spoken to an empty street, or to people who could not understand them, we would not have an event to celebrate this Sunday—and we might not even have a church! Like all effective communication, Pentecost needs both speaking and listening. Pentecost needs the disciples proclaiming God’s deeds of power and the good news of Jesus, and it also needs people to hear this good news and to take it to heart. Growing in our relationship with God, with Jesus, and with each other involves speaking and listening.

Which is more comfortable for you—speaking or listening?

Is speaking or listening valued more in your family? By your friends? At your school? In our society?

How are both speaking and listening important for relationships? How are both speaking and listening important for faith?

*Eric H. F. Law, Sunday by Sunday, vol. 22, no. 35.

Photo from Flickr user Lawrence OP

Majestic Redwoods

At the beginning of the Easter season I was thinking a lot of Aspen trees and how their root groves can survive forest fires and spring forth new life. Now, after the Seventh Sunday of Easter has past, I am on to Redwoods. My friend just got back from travel on the West Coast. She showed me pictures of the Redwoods trees, tall and majestic, clearly God’s good creation.

Redwoods from Flickr user pellaea

Nature has healing power, and it is important for us as humans to get outside and reconnect, to be humbled by the wisdom in the trees. We are lucky to have public land in our country, many state parks that preserve trees like the Redwoods. The Redwood species contains the largest and tallest trees in the world. They can live to an age of one thousand years, reaching over 300 feet tall and over 50 feet in diameter. It is hard to stand at the foot of a Redwood without being moved to awe and silence, and the poem below articulates so beautifully:

The Redwoods

Joseph B. Strauss

Here, sown by the Creator’s hand.
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand:
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth’s living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now-their splendor gone:
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our days,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials’ span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here, we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awestruck soul;
For here we sense life’s proper goal:

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
to make our world like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, Oh, traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.

In the second chapter of Genesis when God creates trees we read, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Trees were created to give us beauty and food. They offer us life as well as knowledge of good and evil. It is clear from the beginning of time, trees are powerful creatures to be treated with a level of reverence, appreciation and curiosity.

Maybe it is their age, or maybe their size that dwarfs us into remembering God. The power of trees manifests itself in our most epic of tales. Talking trees show up in folklore around the world. J.R.R. Tolkien created Ents in The Lord of the Rings series, named after the Anglo-Saxon word for giant. Ents are a patient, deliberate and cautious race that closely resembled trees. Like trees, Ents live long but are mortal, and get angry when humans cut down large numbers of trees. They are ancient shepherds of the forest and allies of all free people.

J.K. Rowling wrote personified trees into the Harry Potter epic tale most notable in The Whomping Willow. The Whomping Willow is a magical species of plant whose limbs function as arms, and disguises a secret passage leading to Hogwarts. Like the Ents, The Whompin Willow can have a mean streak, damaging the Weasley’s Flying Ford Anglia in 1992 and destroying Harry Potter’s broomstick in 2000. It is interesting that both the Ents and The Whomping Willow are protective of trees and judge humans who try to destroy them.

Willow from Flickr user _venerdi

Trees make appearances all over the Bible, our ultimate epic tale. In Chronicles the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord. In Job, trees offer hope as, even when they are cut down, sprout again. Their shoots will not cease. In Daniel 4: 10-12 we read, “The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it.”

I am not sure why trees have captured me so much this Easter season. I think, in part, I know that it is good for us as humans to get down on our knees now and again. So few things bring me to my knees these days. Really big, old, wise trees do. They remind me that I am in the presence of God, that they have survived more than I will ever see in my lifetime, and that they are here to stay. So even though there are no Redwoods in New York, I think I will walk among the trees this week and take a suggestion from the poem to “Sink down, Oh, traveler, on your knees/God stands before you in these trees.”

Ascension

In these bodies we will live / in these bodies we will die. / Where you invest your love, / you invest your life. / Awake my soul …  Awake my soul … awake my soul … For you were made to meet your maker.

                                                                                                                                —Mumford and Sons, “Awake My Soul”

Last week I wrote about dance, about the joy dancing brings me and how when I dance I can find myself and simultaneously connect to something greater than myself. Having spent a bit more time dancing to iTunes in the privacy of my bedroom this past week than I normally do, a new thought has occurred to me: I might be a music person. This thought has come as quite a surprise, as it runs contrary to my inability to carry a tune, to the fact that the only activity I really ever quit growing up was piano lessons, and to my desire to keep the radio off in my car so I can relish the quiet.

Bantu Dancing from NeilsPhotography (Flickr)

But this new self-identification has brought back other memories that indicate I may have been a music person all along (but maybe just thought a bit too narrow-mindedly about who a music person is). For instance, as I type this, I can easily recall the words to some of my favorite hymns from the red Worship or blue Gather hymnals that we used in our church. (“Gather us in the lost and forsaken, gather us in the blind and the lame; call to us now and we shall awaken, we shall arise at the sound of our name…”;  “Let us build the city of God, may our tears be turned into dancing…”; “Sing to the mountains, sing to the sea, raise your voices, lift your hearts…” Seriously, I could go on and on!) As a child, a lot of Sunday mass went over my head, but singing was something that I could participate in, something that made me feel a part of the community. And the joy in the voices of those around me never failed to bring a smile to my face. In my child’s imagination, I envisioned each of our individual voices joining together above our heads to create a gift that was greater than the sum of its parts, a gift that floated up and out of church to be with God in heaven. Now, as an adult, I can see that God was also touching us as we sang together each Sunday.

*****

The Mumford and Sons song I quote above tells us that we are made to meet our makers. I think that the phrase “meet your maker” is usually connected with death in people’s minds, as in “Will you be proud or ashamed of this or that action or part of your history when you meet your maker, that is, die and face judgment in front of God?” In this sense, it an ominous phrase, one that might scare us into acting as we know we are supposed to.

But as I think about these lyrics as we approach Ascension Sunday, during which we celebrate Jesus returning to heaven to be with God, they take on a new and positive meaning for me. We are made to meet our maker. That is, God made us, all of us human beings, to be in communion with God. Just as Jesus ascended to be with God, we, too, will “meet” God fully in the afterlife. Yet in transcendent experiences in this life, experiences in which we touch something greater than ourselves, I think we already get to meet our maker, if only dimly, if not as perfectly or as completely as we will know God after death (see 1 Corinthians 13:12). In this life, we get to experience mini-ascensions that give us a a glimpse of the glory that comes when we are fully one with God.

For me, music and dance help me to know myself at the same time as they enable me to connect with something greater than myself. For me, music and dance can lead to mini-ascensions, to moments of pure joy and connections with the divine. In musical transcendence, I feel most myself because I am connecting with the God who made me to be this self. Musical transcendence awakes my soul, as Mumford and Sons sing, because in it I am touching the source of my soul.

In what experiences do you experience transcendence, that is, the sense that you are connected to something greater than yourself? Have you met God in these experiences?

 

 

A Great Humanitarian

http://vimeo.com/53080640

Father Rick Frechette, a priest and doctor active in the healthcare, education, and quality of life of Haitians living in Port-au-Prince, is the winner of the 2012 Opus prize for humanitarian entrepreneurism. The prize, $1,000,000, is sure to go a long way in Haiti in Father Rick’s intentional, effective and relevant ministry model. Father Rick is a passionate priest who has spent the last thirty years serving the people of Haiti. Roughly five years of so into his service he went to medical school to better meet the needs of the people he serves.

A former student of mine, now a college student at St. John’s University in Minnesota, had the pleasure of meeting Father Rick this spring on campus. He said, “One of the coolest things about talking to him was his commentary on the practical implication of theological teaching. Haiti has a myriad of social complications that does not support Catholicism. He spoke authentically and beautifully on the necessity to make concessions in canonical law if it essential in bringing the love of God to people.” He knows spiritual wholeness is tied up in wholeness of the body and justice in the world.

Father Richard Frechette, C.P.

Father Rick, like so many committed Catholics ministers, showed up in Haiti with no preconceived ideas. He kept his eyes open and responded to the needs of the people as they arrived. He does not mince words or waste time. He acts. “Time counts. If not us, who? If not now, when?” This model would not work if he was acting on his own. He doesn’t pretend to be from Haiti. He doesn’t pretend to be a specialist in something he has no experience in. He says, “Trust God. Trust people. Trust their dreams.” He listens to the people and their dreams, and he walks with them as their dreams become reality through hard work and fierce love. Like the love of Jesus we see in the Gospel, the love of the ministries Father Rick has helped set up crosses societal boundaries to bring love and dignity to the orphans, the sick and the slum dwellers. He empowers them to stand up tall and when they are strong, to help their neighbors too. It is no wonder he was chosen for a humanitarian award. In demanding that the people of Haiti be treated with deep humanity, he encourages me to offer humanity to those in my life. I hope you feel encouraged, too.

What is your heart beating for?

Where are your steps taking you?

Who do you recognize as a fierce humanitarian in your life?

How can you offer others humanity today?

Shake It Out

“And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off, oh woah.”

—Florence + The Machine, “Shake It Out”

In my four years of high school, I never once got asked to a dance. Each time a dance came up on the calendar, I would amass all the courage I possessed, sit by the phone with sweating hands, and finally call someone, anyone, who I thought might agree to go with me. (Too bad this was before the days of texting! When the answer came back negative, I could have just pretended that I never asked in the first place.) Then I would go through an equally excruciating process of finding something to wear. I was shorter and rounder than the average girl with much less fashion sense. Yet I would drag myself to the mall and try on what felt like hundreds of dresses until I found one that I hoped would not make me look ridiculous.

Why not just stay home? Because I simply loved dancing. Even though I almost always felt awkward at school, all too aware that I did not quite fit in, no matter how hard I tried, during dances I could lose myself. Moving to the music, laughing with my friends brought an exuberant joy that I rarely felt otherwise. (Do they still play “Come On, Eileen,” “Blister in the Sun,” and “Fishin’ in the Dark” at high school dances? I challenge anyone to continue in their blue mood after dancing to these songs.) For a few hours, I enjoyed myself, and while I did, I felt comfortable in my own skin and was transported beyond myself.

After high school, my friends and I tried to recreate that emotional high of high school dances by going out dancing at 18+ nights at a few clubs. Between the cigarette smoke and having to constantly fend off men so that we could just DANCE, it was not the same. But I sensed that I needed to move, not just for my physical health but more so for my emotional health. So I could keep feeling like myself. So I could keep feeling comfortable in my own body. So I could keep having the experience of touching something greater than myself. So I enrolled in dance classes, from ballet to modern, from jazz to pop. Granted, as a Midwestern, white girl, I am sure I looked ridiculous trying to do Latin motion with my hips or to pop and lock in hip hop class, but it did not matter because I had so much fun trying. I always felt like my best self in dance class: not self conscious, willing to try and fail, willing to laugh at myself, willing to laugh period.

Recently, I heard Florence + The Machine’s “Shake It Out” and it got me thinking. If you have been reading this blog regularly, you know that I have been struggling with depression surrounding my parents’ recent separation from each other. You also know that I have been looking for healthier alternatives to using food and television to avoid and numb my sadness. Hearing Florence sing, “It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake him off” reminded me of therapeutic power of dance.

I do not believe that there is an actual devil personified… but I have felt a weight on my back in the recent months. I have experienced the sensation of something holding me down, something blocking my joy, something bigger than myself that makes it hard for me to do what I want to do and to live as my best self. And in addition to dealing with this weight unsuccessfully with food and television, I have also been dealing with it with words, with writing and talking and praying. And it is not that writing and talking and praying are bad things, but in using words to talk about that weight on my back, the weight is still there. The wisdom of “Shake It Out” is that it reminds us that we have a different recourse for battling the devils on our backs. We have our bodies. If we move them joyfully, the devil will not be able to hang on.

Even if it is only in my bedroom with iTunes playing, it is time for me to dance again. In dance I find joy. In dance I can find myself. In dance I am able to touch something greater than myself, perhaps even to touch God.

I am done with my graceless heart.

So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart.

Cause I like to keep my issues strong.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah.
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah.

—Florence + The Machine, “Shake It Out”

What brings you great joy in life? When do you feel most yourself? What helps take you outside of yourself or helps you connect with something greater than yourself?

Found Art

Last weekend I went to the Brooklyn Museum with a friend to see a watercolor exhibit, but I was unexpectedly taken by an exhibit called Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui. El Anatsui is a globally renowned contemporary artist. He was born in Ghana and now resides in Nsukka, Nigeria. He works with metal and wood, turning them into installation sculptures that fill the room.

In the first room, huge draping sheets hung elegantly from the fifth floor rotunda, complimented by floor structures and wall hangings in subsequent rooms. I was enamored by the art of El Anatsui in part because it took me back to Africa. But also, I love how he uses found material, things some people would consider trash, and turns it into art. He uses bottle caps and soup can covers to create wall size colorful, textured tapestries that come to life with texture and the illusion of movement. They are regal and strong. You have walk up very closely to realize these massive, gorgeous structures are built with trash. He says that his art reflects his nomadic background in addition to our need to care for the earth.

Psalm 139 reminds us that God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. Nothing became something beautiful– us! Turning trash into art, meticulously knitting together things thrown away as junk and making them beautiful, is such a dignified act. It took my breath away. This art doesn’t create something from nothing, but something from something! A bottle cap served a purpose as a bottle cap. But then once it was popped, it ceased to serve that purpose anymore. Someone deemed it trash, and threw it away. In the bottle cap, instead of seeing something useless, instead of seeing trash, El Anatsui saw material for his next masterpiece!

The exhibit challenged me on a few levels. It reminded me, yet again, that we never throw anything away. We just throw it to a different place. God challenges us to care for God’s creation. The art challenged me to see things in a beautiful light, to look for potential in everything. If El Anatsui can see art when he looks at trash, so can we! Faith is all in how we look at things! The world is beautiful and full of potential! Finally, it also reminded me of the power of God’s grace. God meticulously and lovingly created us, one cell at a time. Nothing became something. Now that we are something, God is still creating us toward God’ s good will. Where we see weakness in ourselves, God sees potential. Where we see ugliness, God sees beauty. Where we see trash, God sees art. God welds together these beautiful tapestries of people to make communities filled with beauty and grace. We are still becoming, still being formed and molded by our God. We are not trash, we are art.

Photo:  Flickr user  juan tan kwon

Beauty Revolution

In this video by Dove on perceptions of beauty, a forensics artist draws a woman using only her description of herself. Then a stranger, after sitting with the woman for awhile, describes her to the same artist. The woman is called back to the room to see the difference in the drawings. Not only are the drawings inspired by a stranger more accurate, they are also more beautiful.

How we feel about ourselves in the world does make a difference in how we act and treat other people. When we feel loved, cared for and beautiful, we tend to be more generous. People respond to us more positively, and the cycle continues. Being a teenager can be hard on our self-esteem. Our bodies are changing rapidly, and we can feel out of control. We try to adjust our inner sense of identity with our changing bodies and expanding minds, but it is tough to keep up.

When I coached gymnastics, I travelled to a Junior Olympic National Competition with a young woman when she was a senior in high school. At the competition, the gym was filled with young women who were in the best shape of their lives– strong, powerful, graceful and flexible. I asked her to look around the gym and pick out the woman who she thought had a body type most similar to her. I then picked the woman I saw as the most comparable in body type. The exercise opened her eyes to how her own self-image was warped. She did not see herself as the world saw her.

What if we were able to shift our self-perception to reflect how beautiful we really are, inside and out, body and soul? How would you describe yourself if you were in the Dove experiment? What misperceptions would arise? What parts of your body to you need to learn how to love? Who do you think could describe you most accurately to the artist?

We read in Psalm 139 that God knit us in our mother’s wombs. God knows the number of hairs on our head. God adores us, every inch of us. Can you imagine if God were to describe you to the artist? What if we were able to see ourselves as God sees us? Not just who we are, but who we are becoming? It is time to start a revolution in our schools, families and youth groups, a revolution of irrational self-acceptance and love. A revolution of noticing and appreciating beauty. Commit with me to complimenting a stranger today. Compliment a friend tomorrow. And be brave enough to compliment yourself every day. Let’s ask God to help us see ourselves as God, our loving creator, sees us. Self-acceptance and self-love is contagious. It will catch on.

To Love Like Jesus

In this week’s gospel reading from John, Jesus tells his disciples that he is giving them a new commandment: to love one another. Interestingly, the Golden Rule to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is not Jesus’ invention. In Leviticus 19:18, God tells the Israelites, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” So for centuries, Jewish people had been striving to follow God’s command to love the neighbor as the self. What, then, is new when Jesus tells his disciples to love one another?

What is new is Jesus himself. The next line in the gospel reading has Jesus saying, “As I have loved you, so also you should love.” In other words, Jesus’ life, his actions and teachings, is where we can look for clues as to what it truly means to love one another.

Think about what you know about Jesus–how he acted, what he taught, with whom he interacted, what seemed to be most important in his life. What does Jesus’ life teach us about what it means to love one another?

One thing that is new with Jesus is the emphasis Jesus puts on forgiveness. When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive a brother or sister who sins against him, proposing seven times as a suitable answer, Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18: 21-22). The point is not that the seventy-eighth transgression is the final straw; rather, Jesus is trying to demonstrate that his followers are called to forgive to the point that it may seem ridiculous to those who do not believe in God’s forgiving love. Can you imagine forgiving someone seventy-seven times for doing the same wrong thing to you?

And Jesus did not just teach forgiveness. He lived it, too. Take Jesus’ relationship with Peter, as just one example. Peter falls asleep in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is clearly in agony and asks Peter and the others to stay awake while he prays. Peter denies that he knows Jesus three times, directly after Jesus has been arrested and is facing trial for his life. Peter was not there when Jesus was crucified, and he did not aft first believe Mary Magdalene when she told him and the other disciples that Jesus had appeared to her post-resurrection. How would you feel if one of your closest friends abandoned you like this in your time of greatest need? Yet Jesus does not write Peter off or begin a smear campaign against him. Instead, he continues his relationship with him after his death, appearing to Peter and even commissioning him to go and baptize people and to spread the good news of the resurrection.

If we are to love one another as Jesus loves us, we are to practice extravagant forgiveness.

Another thing that is new with Jesus is that who counts as our neighbor gets expanded and changed. First, Jesus includes our enemies in the group of people who we are to love. Jesus points out that it is not hard to love those who love us or to greet those who are like us. Really, who does not do that? But followers of Jesus are called to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. And again, Jesus does not just talk about forgiveness but he also forgives. Even on the cross, Jesus prays that God will forgive those who have crucified them.

Second, Jesus asks us to think differently about who we are to love. In telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus demonstrates that our neighbor is anyone who needs our help. That is, our love should not only be motivated by who we love or who loves us. Rather, our love should also be motivated by the needs of others. So who is our neighbor? Our neighbor is the person in need, regardless of where that person lives, what religion that person believes in, what that person looks like… And not surprisingly, Jesus demonstrated this expansive definition of the neighbor in his ministry. He healed lepers and those possessed by demons, people who would have been kept on the margins of society. He dined with tax collectors and included women in his followers, more people who would have been on the margins of society. Jesus spent time with those who needed his love and healing the most.

If we are to love as Jesus loves, we are to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and help those in need, regardless of their differences.

Think about Jesus’ command to love one another again. Who in your life needs to be forgiven? Who seems to be against you who could use your prayers? Who in your world is in need? How can you show love for this person? Write down one way that you can love as Jesus loves this week.