I just saw a commercial that started with beautiful images--families hugging, a toddler being tossed in the air, an older woman swimming in the surf. The narrator asked us, "what are you doing to get happy?" I thought back to my platform address on Sunday, to the comments I heard from people later that day about what makes them joyful--dancing, playing with their children, doing good for someone else.
Cut back to the commercial, as we see a delighted looking woman and the narrator asks another question: "Have you tried soup to make you happy?"
I love soup. Especially on a cold day, it really does warm you up. It makes me, I suppose, a little happy to have a good bowl of soup.
But I have to tell you, buying soup is not, in the end, going to make you happy. If I could have added one more layer to my address on Sunday, it would have been considering the way that real human connection, religious human connection, is fulfilling in a way that our material culture never will be. Urged to buy more and more of whatever people are selling today, we think we'll find some kind of joy in that experience. I'm here to tell you, it's not the soup. It's the people across the table.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
When All Is Not Well
Last night I watched a movie about super hero kids which turned out to be surprisingly violent. It was cartoon violence--the movie was actually a comic book adaptation--but the blood looked plenty real to me. In an attempt to disengage from the gore on TV, I opened my laptop and scrolled through the headlines.
It wasn't better. A man had barricaded himself in a burning building, shots were fired somewhere else in the city. Even People, my refuge of ridiculous pop culture, was no better, highlighting a tragic story of a child lost.
The world is sometimes simply too much for me. I reach my limit of bad things for a day, and I want to shut my eyes and pretend it's all a comic book, none of it heartbreakingly real.
At those times, I often remember words from Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest whose writing I find deeply resonant. This morning, it's these few paragraphs I remember; the whole piece can be found here. May these words be a reminder to you, too, of the beauty that always lies beneath and behind the heartbreak.
There is always tragedy somewhere, as the news reminds us so well. But there is not always tragedy everywhere, which the news does not make quite so clear. The good news, also known as the gospel, is that where ferries are going down, brave people are diving into water to lift thrashing children to safety. Where crops are failing, generous people are providing relief for farmers and migrant workers, and where a young girl is kidnapped from her bed, an entire community is turning out to hunt clues, post flyers, cook food and keep watch with her family.
Meanwhile, there are entire towns where nothing terrible is happening for an hour or two, where parents are caring for children with remarkable tenderness, where nurses are tending patients, mail carriers are delivering packages, and at least one man who owns a small business is taking off work early to coach a girl's soccer team. Terrible things will continue to happen in these places, which the best efforts of such people will not be sufficient to prevent, but their bursts of gratuitous kindness are the mustard seeds from which healing bushes sometimes grow. They constitute the alternate reality that I want to live in, even if it means limiting my exposure to other kinds of news.
When I resist the economy and despair of the dominant world in which I live, I resist from a minority viewpoint that I learned in church. In that alternate reality, which operates on the divine economy, human beings are worth more than what they can buy or sell, and suffering breaks open as many hearts as it breaks down. There are many kinds of evangelism, I know, but here is one I can embrace: in a culture of fear, addicted to the bad news of sin and death, to keep telling stories of human kindness and divine grace—without commercials of any kind. In a world like ours, the church may be the only corporate sponsor that can afford to deliver such good news for free.
It wasn't better. A man had barricaded himself in a burning building, shots were fired somewhere else in the city. Even People, my refuge of ridiculous pop culture, was no better, highlighting a tragic story of a child lost.
The world is sometimes simply too much for me. I reach my limit of bad things for a day, and I want to shut my eyes and pretend it's all a comic book, none of it heartbreakingly real.
At those times, I often remember words from Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest whose writing I find deeply resonant. This morning, it's these few paragraphs I remember; the whole piece can be found here. May these words be a reminder to you, too, of the beauty that always lies beneath and behind the heartbreak.
There is always tragedy somewhere, as the news reminds us so well. But there is not always tragedy everywhere, which the news does not make quite so clear. The good news, also known as the gospel, is that where ferries are going down, brave people are diving into water to lift thrashing children to safety. Where crops are failing, generous people are providing relief for farmers and migrant workers, and where a young girl is kidnapped from her bed, an entire community is turning out to hunt clues, post flyers, cook food and keep watch with her family.
Meanwhile, there are entire towns where nothing terrible is happening for an hour or two, where parents are caring for children with remarkable tenderness, where nurses are tending patients, mail carriers are delivering packages, and at least one man who owns a small business is taking off work early to coach a girl's soccer team. Terrible things will continue to happen in these places, which the best efforts of such people will not be sufficient to prevent, but their bursts of gratuitous kindness are the mustard seeds from which healing bushes sometimes grow. They constitute the alternate reality that I want to live in, even if it means limiting my exposure to other kinds of news.
When I resist the economy and despair of the dominant world in which I live, I resist from a minority viewpoint that I learned in church. In that alternate reality, which operates on the divine economy, human beings are worth more than what they can buy or sell, and suffering breaks open as many hearts as it breaks down. There are many kinds of evangelism, I know, but here is one I can embrace: in a culture of fear, addicted to the bad news of sin and death, to keep telling stories of human kindness and divine grace—without commercials of any kind. In a world like ours, the church may be the only corporate sponsor that can afford to deliver such good news for free.
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