Thursday, March 12, 2015
You Need a Shower!
In most cultures there are some things you cannot say to
another person, even if you are good friends: they are too intimate, personal
and they violate unspoken rules against trespassing. One of them, almost
universally accepted, is to tell somebody that they need a shower. Your mother got
away telling you that, at least when you were young, and maybe your friends
after you had worked out. But normally this topic is taboo. But that does not
mean that we don’t know people who could use somebody who would tell them exactly
that…
Just as necessary, yet just as awkward to broach, is the topic
of spiritual hygiene. In our current climate it is almost impossible to tell
somebody that they need a cleanse, that their spiritual house is due for spring
cleaning. Yet we all know people who are unpleasant to be around, who look
unhappy, who are covered by the grime of life, who need a spiritual shower. But
who will tell them? Centuries ago, the church instituted what
amounts to “showers for everybody” season. Like in some families, where some
evenings are reserved for “all the kids to get a bath”, God’s people has picked
some times during the year when everybody is supposed to get clean.
The foremost of those seasons are the forty days of Lent.
During 7 weeks before Easter you are encouraged to get into some personal,
spiritual hygiene: get a wash, a scrub, a cleanse, exfoliate…spiritually.
But far from this being an exercise in
self-cleaning, the church puts before us objective means of disinfection:
examination of conscience is a practice intended to help us look at various
aspects of our life and consider where we have strayed. Confession, either to a
brother or sister, or to an ordained minister, is a way to get it out into the
open and deal with it. Prayer and fasting is a type of dieting where we
re-calibrate our intake of food and consider what we really feed on, not only
physically but also spiritually. Almsgiving helps us get out of ourselves and
actively pursue the good of those less privileged than us. The list goes on…
When we read this we can be tempted to assume that these things
are good for other people, but that we don’t need them. Just like people with
distinct BO we are the last to realize how desperately we need a bath. Which is
why the church has decided that we are
all going to get into the shower once a year, “whether we need it or not”. As
Psalm 51 says: “Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry.”
So before you decide that Lent is not for you, think again…and
if you dare, ask a friend whether you need a bath.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Ploughing a straight furrow
In the old days -days
I still remember from Austria, if you can believe it- farmers plowed with the
use of farm animals. In Austria it was horses, but in other parts of the world
they use(d) oxen. So the animal was given a yoke, and the plow tied to the
yoke, and the farmer would walk behind the plow . The animal would be told to pull, sometimes with the added incentive of a whip, but it was the farmer who needed to steer the plow to make
sure he plowed a straight furrow. Otherwise, once the seed went into the
ground, the rows of corn would look crooked and uneven. In order to do that he
had to keep his sights in front of him, beyond the animal; he needed to know
where he was going.
This is where the image of the Gospels comes in: “No one who
puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” If
the farmer averts his gaze and looks behind him, he will not accomplish his
goal- he will mess up his field.
But it is not farmers this saying is concerned with, but us.
Farmers would not dream of looking back when they plow: all their attention
is given to what lies ahead. But we, in the middle of daily life, so often look
back. We wonder whether the others are coming along, or we ask what would have
happened if we had taken a different path. And while we spend time looking over
our shoulders, we mess up the task at hand and plow a crooked furrow.
The most common type of looking back comes in the form of
regrets: if only I had studied something different, married a different person,
not done this particular thing, mustered the courage to embark on that
particular project, and now it is too late. Regrets eat away at us and avert
our attention from what we are currently doing. Regrets typically don’t help us
move forward, but keep us in the past, or at least cause us to wonder whether
the life we are living is the best possible one. Advertisement does not help, as
it constantly shows us what exciting thing we could be doing right now.
Chances are we made some bad choices in our past; chances
are we could have seized opportunities but didn't. Once we realize that, let’s
acknowledge it, learn the lesson, and move on. Let’s not keep looking over our
shoulders, wondering whether we are in the wrong line of work: all this does is
make us tentative, inattentive, and bad company. There are times when it does
not matter what fields you are plowing, the important thing is that you are plowing at all. And new opportunities constantly arise which allow us to
adjust our course: chances to make up for lost time, open doors to step
through, grace-filled moments to mend relationships which
we screwed up. But opportunities are always in the future, not in the past: so
look ahead, and keep plowing your field!
