Bring on the Nuts!

There was no ignoring the sign. Posted right as you enter the church school building, it was there to protect children with allergies, but the secondary message made me smile. How true, I thought, and how sad. I couldn’t resist writing a brushstroke about it.

There was a day when the church was made up of nuts, imperfect brothers and sisters united in their need for God and basking in a grace that surpasses human understanding. The tax collectors and sinners of Jesus’ day formed this thing called “the church,” which was referred to as the “Body of Christ.” That body, made up of “raggamuffins,” to quote Brennan Manning, was magical. It took ordinary people like you and me and made them into something more.

Slowly, however, things changed. Maybe when the emperor converted, bringing the entire empire along with him, the church became something different. Maybe when the church grew powerful, and priests began to rule rather than serve, it changed. Whenever it happened, and however it has continued, the church became a place of prestige, a place where the blessed children of God gathered to celebrate and give thanks for their good fortune. While we should always and everywhere give thanks to God for our many blessings, we can’t do so as people no longer in need of Grace. No matter how blessed we are - no matter how large our bank account, or how high the social pedestals on which we stand - each of us, every single one of us, is imperfect. Whether we want to (or are able to) admit it, each of us is fallen, or nuts.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound like good news, but it’s the best news I know. While we were yet sinners (nuts), God came and sat beside us and extended a love beyond anything in this world. What’s more, the very things that should disqualify us as children of God are the very things that allow God to enter in and show his grace. “You can’t have a savior if you don’t think you need saving,” a friend recently joked.

So, bring on the nuts!

Let’s embrace our authentic selves - the good, the bad, and all that lies in-between – and let God do what God does! Let him take our wounds and heal them, our unhealthy wants and transform them, and our desperate needs and fulfil them. Let’s break the chains that bind us, the ones that make us obsess over trying to appear perfect, and run free. God’s arms are opened wide. All we have to do is run.

Characters

C. S. Lewis once compared God creating you and me to an author creating a character for a novel. Having created characters for a novel, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the comparison.

Characters must be distinct. To create characters that are alike makes it difficult to remember who is who. Character has to have a purpose, a reason for being in the story. Characters must move the story forward, and, lastly, characters must be real. By that, I mean they must be three-dimensional. The way that happens is by giving them irregularities, flaws that make them human. Characters need a “limp,” someone once said, through which they walk through life.

When I apply these truths about creating characters to God creating you and me, I see some important things to keep in mind:

·      We are called to be distinct. I think that is what Jesus meant when he said we needed to be salt . . . to have taste. We were not created to be like others, even though much of the time we strive to look, sound, and be like others. In the end, it becomes difficult to see who’s who. Better to uncover what makes us unique and live lives out of that uniqueness.

·      Each of us has a purpose, a reason we’re in the story. It might not necessarily be grand and glorious purpose, though it might be, but each of us has work to do that is uniquely ours to do.

·      We are here to move the story forward. It might not be the purpose we wanted or envisioned, but the story depends on us. As people of faith, we believe life has a plot and everything we do needs to serve the plot.

·      Finally, like a character in a story, we need to be real. We need to be three-dimensional. That means not hiding our flaws or quirks but living a life with and through them. In other words, we need to accept our “limps” and walk through life anyway. So many people deny the things that make them real; they hide them and hope no one will notice. The magic of life, the magic of authentic living, however, is embracing all of who we are and bringing it all to whatever we do, to whatever conversation we have, to whatever relationship we’ve been given.

Can you imagine such a world - a world full of real, wonderful, quirky characters serving a plot we didn’t write? It’s beyond exciting. It’s enough to get me out of bed and be the character I was created to be.

Want to come along?

Going Back

It was a trip to the past. Despite what I’ve learned about living in the present, I knew there were reasons to return and see if dragons were still there.

Thirty years ago, I was asked to be a chaplain at a famous, old school in England. (Let’s just say, they were teaching classes when Columbus discovered the new world and celebrating their 100th anniversary during the tumultuous years of the Protestant reformation.) Being the first American chaplain was something special, they told me, and my ego was released from its cage by the keys of a life-long need to prove myself.  The air in my puffed-up chest soon caused me to choke and I tripped over the very academic robes I sought. It was not the first, nor the last, time I played a role and strayed from whatever authentic self I knew. Returning to the campus after all these years felt like a spiritual confrontation.

A few years ago, I was taught a unique form of self-love, one more valuable than a day at a spa or a spontaneous day off from work. I was taught to sit beside a younger version of myself, one of which was the British school master - the one with a young family and promising career and no clue how to care for either. At first, I tried to say something to the earlier me, something I’ve learned since then, but eventually sat back and listened. I understood what he was saying like no one else could, and, in the end, it was like meeting a friend again for the first time.

Such “time travel” is challenging and unsettling, and yet it can also be enormously healing. Whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, we carry every chapter of our lives with us, every version of ourselves. Sometimes we stuff the difficult ones in a closet and deny they exist. Other times, we dress them up and pretend they were something they were not. Such chapters aren’t going anywhere, and the sooner we sit and listen to them the healthier we will be.

Yes, living in the present is a significant spiritual discipline, but so is looking back. As someone wise once said, “The past can be in the car, it just can’t drive.” Going back, looking at a familiar landscape with a new pair of glasses, and maybe even sitting beside the person you used to be, can unlock closets, remove costumes, and provide a sense of compassion – self-compassion – that is nothing short of a spiritual awakening.