Musings

Spiritual Search and Rescue

A big city underwater. A whole swath of country blown sideways, reduced to a vast lumberyard of shattered two-by-fours. Boats blown far ashore, cars blown up rivers. Our brothers and sisters, by the thousands, drowned or killed. Our brothers and sisters, by the hundreds of thousands, made homeless. Not just their possessions are lost - for many, everything is gone but the clothes on their backs - but they have lost so many of the organizing principles of their lives. They’ve lost jobs, neighborhoods, networks of friends, access to families, relationships with doctors and dentists, informal connections that make life affordable and enjoyable. They’ve lost much of the meaning of their lives. You can’t measure these things. They are beyond price, and beyond the record of the gross national product. You can’t see a web of connections among people washing away in a flood – you can only see floating refrigerators and bobbing garbage bags. You can’t see a person’s goals and aspirations wash away in a flood – you can only see rushing water and tumbling debris.

But you can’t send in the National Guard with truckloads of dreams. The Army can’t shrink-wrap a pallet-load of hope and drop it from a helicopter. FEMA can’t send a convoy full of meanings and unload them with fork-lifts.

It would be great if the Red Cross and Church World Service could just take our much needed donations of money and replace the belongings of the hurricane’s victims, and then they’d be fine and dandy. But we all know that while homes and clothes and household goods are vital, there is another level to the loss. A spiritual search and rescue will be necessary.

The Bible offers us spiritual search and rescue in times like this. It’s the story of a people who were repeatedly torn away from all that is familiar and dear to them – exile in Egypt, exile in Babylon, repeated destruction of their homeland. It’s the story of an exiled people’s search for a story with meaning and a purpose. It’s the story of how they found a sense of direction and shared values, how they kept community and family together despite - and even because - of losing everything else, over and over again.

The Bible offers us the Psalms, which remind us that the Dear One, who is our Source and Center, is always there, no matter how high or low we go, no matter how lost we might seem. The Psalms are spiritual search and rescue when we’re lost in troubled waters. “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139)

The Bible is also the story of a spiritual searcher and rescuer, a man who stilled a storm and walked on troubled water. A mythical story that expresses the universal archetype, the potent symbol, of water: representing the dangerous but rich realm below consciousness. The image of Jesus walking on water in a storm is a potent one for this week – it’s the image of a person in touch with the scary and chaotic forces of the unconscious realm, one who understands it and is not overwhelmed by it. We who have been touched by the events of the past week can meditate on this image. We can aspire to be in touch with the way this tremendous event has troubled our inner waters, so that we can walk alongside Jesus on those waters, so that we can cry without being drowned in our tears.

The Bible is the story of a man who said enigmatic things to turn our minds upside down and inside out. Jesus said that “from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Mt 25: 29). It seems to be true, when we watch the news, seeing that the poor people of New Orleans have suffered the most…. it’s not fair, it’s not right – what did you mean by that, Jesus? Or perhaps that’s the wrong question – maybe he said what he said in order to get us to think, to abandon our assumptions, to get us to pay attention, to care –

And the Bible also includes the story of people in places like Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, Philippi, Galatia – people who felt a powerful longing for a spiritual home, a spiritual community. People whose souls were at sea. They gathered church communities of non-Jewish people who had grafted their own stories into the story of the Jewish people. It’s the story of the early Christians, people who came together in search of meaning and purpose which they had lost. People like us, many of whom have been swept away in floods of tears or pain or loss, floods that swept away our meaning and purpose and left us to seek out new ways to find value and direction in life. From day one, the church has been a refuge for people whose souls have been flooded out. It’s been a spiritual search and rescue center for two thousand years. May it be a home and a haven for those who are flooded out today, in both body and soul….

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good… “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Cor 12: 7, 26)  Our nation has forgotten this essential insight expressed by St. Paul:  that we are one body, that we depend on each other. We’ve forgotten that there even is such a thing as the “common good”. The consequence of “privatization” is now before us in stark images on television and in the newspapers. We’ve left huge numbers of our people, members of our body, out of the wealth and privilege of America. We’ve neglected our urban infrastructures. We’ve abandoned the sick and the weak to pull themselves up by their own nonexistent bootstraps. We’ve withdrawn public investments in environmental protection.

One of the tasks of spiritual search and rescue is to work for change in the structures of society, to correct and prevent injustice and human misery. I pray that this terrible flood will result in a much greater willingness by Americans to make significant sacrifices over a long time to end the kind of grinding poverty that left a hundred thousand people stranded, abandoned in the center of a major city, dying and destitute. People who had no cars to drive out of town when they were told to leave, and nobody to take them in elsewhere even if they could have afforded to go. People who were left behind a very long time ago, and were left behind again this week, as a lasting consequence of racism against those who happen to be black. People who need to know that their lives matter in places far away from the neighborhoods in which they are isolated. People who need to know that they are precious members of a larger body.

Now is America’s chance to let these folks know that they have relationships, connections, people who care about them besides each other in the gritty blocks of New Orleans where they have been stuck for a very long time. I pray that this tragedy will flood this country with compassion, wash away greed and selfishness from my heart and the hearts of all others, and immerse this land with a much more powerful sense of civic responsibility. I pray that this disaster will convince our nation to make major sacrifices to end poverty, correct the grim legacy of racism, protect the environment, and serve the public good.

This disastrous event proves once and for all that America needs spiritual search and rescue! We need Jesus to take us by the hand and teach us how to walk on the troubled waters of our tears and our fears. We need him to teach us how to love and care for each other when the waters are rough. We need him to remind us that we are all one body, and if any suffer, we all suffer. We need spiritual search and rescue — to prevent and relieve that suffering wherever we find it….

Labor, Capitalized

“What should I call you?” they ask me.  Happens a lot.  They want to make sure they are following the correct protocol in dealing with a minister.  They are folks who are out of touch with religion but want a functional relationship with it.  They are folks who want to get married or want their kids to be baptized in our church.  They are a bit apprehensive.  They are facing a socially awkward moment with potentially eternal consequences.  Is it Reverend, Father, Pastor, Rector, Monsignor, Your Holiness, or …?

My answer to the question: “Call me Jim.”

If these folks knew more about my profession, their nervousness would evaporate.  For one thing, ordination is easy, if you want it to be.  Just because I did it the hard way, that doesn’t make me more Reverend than those who got that status for a few bucks by mail order.  Then there’s the job itself.  Sure, I counsel and sermonize and think and write deep thoughts.  But mostly I schedule events and organize volunteers and stack chairs.   

In my last church job, one day I was stacking chairs in the sanctuary while a group of mothers and their babies were gathered on the floor.  The church had opened its doors to play groups sponsored by the local Mothers’ Club.  The moms said nothing to me at all.  It was as if I wasn't there.  At first I thought they were being rude intentionally. 

Then I had an awakening.  Those ladies didn’t know I was the minister of the church.  They thought I was the janitor.  Therefore I did not exist.  I was invisible.  I did not matter to them in the least. 

I knew that if they knew I was the pastor, they would greet me politely and thank me profusely for the use of our space, which I had arranged to offer to them at a cost below the expense of providing them with PG&E service.   I didn’t know for whom to feel sorry:  them, myself, or the invisible janitors of the world.

The realtors’ lobby succeeded some years ago in elevating the title of their profession.  Their concerted effort hypnotized much of the press and many politicians into referring to realtors as Realtors ©.  Never mind that there are at least three people with Realtor©’s licenses on every block:  they exercised capitalism with a capital C.  A lack of financial and cultural capital keeps janitors, who work just as hard as realtors or pastors for their daily bread, in lower case.  A case so low, as I experienced that day while stacking chairs, that you can’t see it at all.  Can you imagine what would happen if janitors had a lobby as well-funded as that of the Realtors ©?  Or if they were supposed to have God on their side like we who are Pastors ©?  Not only would we have to capitalize the title of Janitor ©, we’d actually have to acknowledge their existence, say hello to them, and thank them for their work!  To say nothing of paying them a living wage.

By the way, our church janitor, Teresa, is a hard-working, very interesting person with a rich emotional and spiritual life.  Thank God for you, Teresa, for keeping our church clean and tidy, because without you, I can very easily imagine how messy our building would be! – particularly because in my last job as a pastor, you weren’t there….

Janitors have no lobby to glorify their job status, as do Realtors ©.  They have no denomination to protect them, as do Pastors © like myself.   They only have you and me, people who are not much impressed with their own capital nor with their own capitalization, to give them the respect they are due.

May all who work hard and long and well for their living feel ennobled on this day, when at least for once Labor is given a capital letter!