“Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” — John 7:51
people are quick to judge then often can’t even budge
when they hear facts that tell another tale. Lord, quell
my judgment change my mind let me be open, kind.
This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.
Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have so many questions.
Turns out the Bible is full of questions.
So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.
John 9: 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
First, forgive me for the language, but this question from the Bible irks me. It really does. I think “who sinned” in modern vernacular would be spoken today in the words I chose.
Who f*cked up? Someone did! Remember – Adam hid
When he f*cked Up and ate That apple! Think we’re great?
We can’t see. Humans fail. All people Are so frail!
Yet some one Not like me Must be flawed. We should see
Who is at Fault, or who F*cked up. We Have no clue
The thought behind the question is what irritates me. Whose fault is it that someone is blind? Is it his? Is it his parents?
How small minded we are!
Here are the questions I would ask — and do ask! How can I help this person? What can I learn from this person? I’ll bet they have some amazing stories; would they share them with me?
This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.
Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.
The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is probably true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.
Turns out the Bible is full of questions.
So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.
If you think about it, they’re pretty amazing things.
I remember as a child being amazed at my father’s vast vocabulary. He knew a lot of words. I forget what the exact challenge was, but I was scouring the dictionary for a word he didn’t know. (Aside: I realized as I wrote those words that kids today don’t have that dictionary-searching experience. If they need to look up a word, they don’t pull out an enormous heavy book; they simply type the word into a search bar, or click on the word, and ~ poof! ~ there’s the definition.)
Anyway, I was searching the dictionary and found a word that I was sure he wouldn’t know: Quisling. He not only knew the word, he knew the origins. For the record, a quisling is a traitor who collaborates with an enemy occupying force for personal gain. Vidkun Quisling did just that in Norway in WWII.
That kind of word is called an eponym, a word that was a person’s name. In looking up the definition of eponym, I found that the word boycott is an eponym. Charles Boycott, an English landowner in Ireland back in 1880 treated his tenants so badly that they decided just to ignore him.
Fascinating, right?
Last Sunday, I was preparing for a class at church. For a year or more I’ve been attending an Episcopal church, but honestly, I still don’t know what I’m doing. All this standing, kneeling, sitting, genuflecting, making-the-sign-of-the-cross stuff gets confusing. I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t entirely care if I forget to genuflect before I enter the pew. Still, I’d like to understand the whys and try to be respectful. So the rector invited me to a book study on Walk In Love: Episcopal Beliefs & Practices (by Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe). The topic last week was the Eucharist.
It turns out that the prayer book has six different terms for this thing that we do in church. “The Holy Eucharist is called the Lord’s Supper, and Holy Communion; it is also known as the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, and the Great Offering.”
I love when other languages have words for which we have no English equivalent. For example, there’s Danish hygge (warm, fuzzy, sitting-by-the-fire feeling), German schadenfreude (getting pleasure from someone’s misfortune), and Hawaiian pana po’o (scratching your head when you can’t find something). I particularly liked discovering this Halloween-y word, vybafnout, Czech for jumping out and saying “Boo!”.
Back to Eucharist, though, I can’t help but wonder if we don’t have a human equivalent of what God intended in this sacrament. We don’t have one word for it. We don’t have even one way of doing it.
I’ve taking communion with matzo crackers and little individual cups of grape juice, hunks of leavened bread ripped from a whole loaf and dunked in juice, little round wafers dipped in real wine, and even Girl Scout cookies with a little milk. You may think that last one sacrilegious, but I’d go back to God looking at our hearts.
In the class someone asked about the elements becoming the body and blood of Christ. “Is it magic?” she asked.
“It’s mystery,” I blurted out, and Father went with that, expounding on sacramental mystery.
In preparing for class, I followed rabbit trails, as I am wont to do. I came across the word aumbry and looked it up (not in a dictionary, but in the search bar). An aumbry is a recessed cupboard in a church where sacred vessels and vestments are stored.
From there I found pyx, a small round container where the consecrated host can be stored.
And then I came across monstrance. Such a Halloween-y word with such a non-Halloween-y meaning. No monsters, but instead a vessel in which the consecrated host is displayed.
Monstrance
Words — they’re pretty amazing, right?
But I also don’t like when people’s words don’t match their lives (my own included).
I recently came across a quote from Thomas Fuller that I keep thinking about: “How easy is pen and paper piety for one to write religiously! I will not say it costeth nothing, but it is far cheaper to work one’s head than one’s heart to goodness.”
I think I’ve always been this way, too. I have two distinct memories of my mother expressing her frustration to me regarding all my questions.
One was when she was pregnant with my youngest brother and a button flew off her housecoat. I don’t remember the actual question I asked, but I do remember her response — “It’s because of the baby!” I suppose I should I have known that but I didn’t. Maybe I had already asked her 653 questions about her growing belly or maybe she had already tried to tell me 653 times about this new member of the family who would be arriving soon. In any event, it all became real when the button flew off her housecoat.
A few weeks after the housecoat fiasco
The second time was several years later. On the kitchen counter I had found this interesting looking plastic circle thing. I could spin it and I could see that there were little pills inside. My mother saw me playing with it and snatched it away.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s mine,” she said.
“But what is it?” I persisted.
“It’s so I won’t have any more babies,” she snapped, and she sounded so angry at me and all my questions that I learned to keep most of them to myself. I had a lot more questions about that plastic circular pill dispenser — but those questions wouldn’t be answered for many years.
But questions — I love questions.
I started gathering all the questions in the Bible into my journals.
Reducing a story to questions brings out a poignancy we might miss otherwise. Take these four questions, all asked by Isaac in the same chapter:
Who are you, my son?
How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?
Are you really my son Esau?
Who are you?
I’m always working through a section of the Old Testament and a section of the New Testament concurrently — one OT question per day and one NT question per day. The same same few days when I was writing Isaac’s questions, I journaled these questions asked by Jesus in the book of Matthew:
Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
But who do you say that I am?
The very first question in the book of John is “Who are you?”
So many questions about identity!
When I was reading Howard Thurman’s books and books about Howard Thurman, I found that he had three questions he liked to ask young people. I scribbled them down on a post-it note that I keep handy
Who are you? Who are you really? (identity)
What are you for? Or, what do you want? (purpose)
How will you get it? (means)
Sometimes, in yoga, when I’m trying to relax into long pose, I ponder those questions.
I ask God those questions, too — sometimes about Him, more often about me. Who am I? Who am I really?
God hasn’t snapped at me yet.
Things I like: questions.
Things I don’t like: When people look at me like I just asked the stupidest question on the face of the earth.
Back at the beginning of June I had this brilliant idea to encourage myself to write — I would do my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month, choosing things I like and don’t like that begin with the letter of the day. Pshaw. Looky here. June is almost over and I’m only up to K. Still I will forge ahead with the goal of completing this before 2022 ends. Today I will tackle K.
I’m also using Linda Hill’s Stream Consciousness writing challenge to further encourage me and to get the job done. This week’s challenge is “product/produce.” She says, “Use one, use them both, use them any way you’d like. Bonus points if you use both. Have fun!”
K was a tough letter for me. I can think of a thousand things that I like that begin with the letter K — my son, Karl, being at the top of the list. I also like kayaks and kangaroos, kids, kindred spirits, and kookaburras. I could go on.
However, because I recently started delving into Kierkegaard, I’m going to use him as my like.
Soren Kierkegaard is fascinating. Utterly fascinating. He’s way over my head, but I feel like a beginner swimmer (I used to teach them) who delights each small success. I put my face in the water! I floated! I’m a long way from actually swimming, but when a tiny bit of understanding lights up my dense gray matter, I am thrilled.
At first, I dug in by trying to read one of his books. I was like a newborn baby trying to eat a steak. It didn’t go very well. So I started listening to podcasts discussing him. I started reading about him.
Since this is stream of consciousness, please forgive me if I don’t get this exactly right — but I heard this Kierkegaard quote, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” And whoever the podcaster was talked about anxiety being that staring into the abyss of too many choices. Whew! Yes!
Another podcaster (or maybe the same one) talked about Kierkegaard’s idea of losing yourself in the infinite — that dizziness of freedom — but also losing yourself in the finite — where you aren’t allowed to be yourself because you’re so busy conforming to prescribed ideas of who others think you should be.
It’s heady, mind-boggling, and I’m loving it.
(Non-Stream-of-Consciousness warning. I wrote this post just writing — true stream of consciousness — but I have a thousand and one misgivings about delving into controversial topics. Please feel free to stop reading here. I won’t be offended. And if abortion is a hot button topic, by all means stop reading. I’m not trying to push anybody’s buttons.)
What don’t I like that begins with K? This was hard. Even things that didn’t make my “like” list — for example, kebabs — didn’t make my dislike list either — I’m kind of neutral on kebabs.
However, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion left me with so many mixed feelings. Please bear with me as I sort them.
I don’t like killing — that’s my K. I don’t like war. I don’t like murder. I don’t like the death penalty. I don’t like abortion.
However, abortion is such a complicated issue. When we reduce it to slogans on t-shirts or on protest signs, we miss that fact.
I know people who have had abortions. A high school friend. One of my freshman college roommates. Another woman who got pregnant in college. The wife of a Bible study leader. Yep — you read that one correctly. She was a diabetic and her kidneys started shutting down. Her husband said, “We can find another way to have a baby, but I can’t get another (fill in the wife’s name).”
I know people who have chosen to carry the baby despite adverse circumstances. The woman who cuts my hair. The daughter of some missionaries.
I know people who have adopted babies carried by unwed mothers.
In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller talks about listening to other people’s stories instead of judging. It’s been years since I read that book, but I remember a part where he set up a confession booth, not to hear other people’s confessions, but to confess his own judgmental-ness.
We’re too programmed with our knee-jerk reactions. I’m too programmed with my own knee-jerk reactions.
I hate killing. I don’t like abortion. But, then, there aren’t too many people who seriously like abortion. The issue is just so much more complicated than that.
If you are 110% pro-life, you need to sit at a table opposite someone who has made that awful decision and listen to their story of their hows and whys. If you are 110% pro-choice, you need to sit at a table opposite someone who has lived with the regret of that decision, or who was forced into that decision by some well-meaning person, and you need to go watch an ultrasound of a 10 week old fetus moving and see its tiny heart beating.
It’s complicated.
I realize that I have not used produce or product once in this post. But, hey, I produced a post! There!
How about you? What’s something you like that begins with K? What’s something you don’t like?
This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. I’ve fallen behind but haven’t given up! If you want to join me, just add a comment naming something you like and something you don’t like that begin with the letter I.
My favorite book in the Old Testament is Isaiah.
It was maybe 10 years ago when I started memorizing chapters from Isaiah. Whole chapters. I started with Isaiah 43, then did chapter 6, then 50, 51, 52… all the way up to 63. A few years ago, my memory cache was full — over-full, in fact, because when I look back at those last chapters that I “memorized”, I remember very little of them.
I can, however, say this with some level of confidence. Memorizing chapters straight through — and thereby memorizing verses that didn’t initially “speak” to me — was a life-changing experience. My view on many issues did an about-face. I can’t point to a single verse that led me there — I only know I got there, and I credit Isaiah’s words with speaking deeply to my soul — Love people. Love them where they are.
Part of my memorization process was writing the chapters out over and over, and sometimes I would write them in my own words. I published a post in 2015 of a paraphrase of Isaiah 56. Looking back at it, I see how Isaiah was shaping me.
Initially, I was going to use incompetence for my “I” dislike. Let’s just say I am frustrated at work.
“Are you sure you want to write about that?” one of my daughters asked. “It might be kind of pointed.”
Ahh — she was right. I would be venting — via blog — about mistakes someone else made and that doesn’t profit anything.
The Peter Principle is that people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. The Dilbert Principle is that incompetent people are promoted to get them out of the workflow. Either way, the result is incompetent people at high levels in organizations.
One day, as I was grumbling in my heart about incompetent people in management positions, I caught a glimpse of someone’s insecurity — and I can honestly say that my grumbling heart was flooded with compassion. It washed away my resentments.
How awful it must feel to realize that you are in over your head!
How terrible to look back at a job you were really good at — and that you aren’t doing any more — with longing while you’re stuck in an office trying to do a job that requires skills you don’t have!
And here’s the real rub — everyone resents you. Everyone complains about you. You’re alone in your little office struggling, and you can’t admit that you can’t do the job because that would be failure. That would be a losing face, losing respect from other people. You used to receive accolades for a job well-done. Now it’s the opposite.
Insecurity raises its ugly head — and you begin to lash out.
I don’t like incompetence, but I think I dislike even more the insecurity that comes out of it.
Scottish Gaelic: Is toil leam Isaiah. I like Isaiah. Cha toil leam mì-thèarainteachd agus an dòigh anns a bheil e a’ toirt air daoine a dhol an sàs. I don’t like insecurity and the way it makes people act.
How about you? What’s something you like that begins with I? What’s something you don’t like?
Five years ago for Lent, I carried a rabbit in my pocket as a tool for mindfulness. I wanted to remember that people are often smiling on the outside but hurting on the inside. I know, I know — this may not make much sense to you unless you followed my Lenten journey in 2017. If you want to read about it, here’s a semi-explanatory post from that year: Tuga and Aleluja.
Tuga is the Bosnian word for sorrow. Aleluja is the Bosnian word for — can you guess? — Allelujah.
This year I have two more little rabbits. Meet Dòchas and Bròn.
Dòchas is the Scottish Gaelic word for hope. Bròn is the Gaelic word for grief. I gave them last names, too. Dòchas a-Maireach and Bròn an-Diugh. Hope Tomorrow and Grief Today.
I carry them both in my pocket — separate pockets, of course.
For this Lenten season, I want to become friends with Bròn. Bròn an-diugh. (Pronunciation — and I may not have this totally correct — Bròn is like our word “brawn” but you need to roll that “r” a little. An-diugh sounds like on-jew, because the “di-” in Gaelic is our soft “g” sound as in giraffe, and the -gh at the end is silent.) Grief today.
I listened to a woman last week go into a long tirade full of conspiracy misinformation. She had told me weeks before that wearing a mask was the equivalent of the Nazis requiring Jews to wear yellow stars. Another gym member had started the whole confrontation by shouting at me about the masks — “This is BULLSH-T! This is BULLSH-T!” After the Nazi comment, I had turned and walked away from the desk.
Later that same day I put a check-in note on the woman’s membership — that if she checked in again, I wanted to speak to her. She finally came back on Friday — and I spoke to her a little and listened to her a lot. She has such deep fears and hurts.
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.” Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
While she was talking, I reached in my pocket and held Bròn. I don’t know if hers was grief or just unhappiness at our world today. She needed to talk, though.
And I listened.
At the end of her diatribe, she extended her hand across the counter. “What’s your name?” she asked. I told her. “It was so nice to meet you,” she said.
“What just happened?” my co-worker asked after the woman had headed to the pool. She had been sitting there listening to the whole thing.
“I’m not sure,” I told her.
But I stuck my hand in my other pocket — and there was Dòchas, hope.
