Duck Spirituality

We’ve all heard about the duck who glides on the water’s surface, looking calm and serene, while below the surface legs pump wildly to keep him or her moving. That’s what living has felt like to me. I’ve wanted to appear capable, even talented, but beneath the surface I’ve been paddling furiously to keep up.

It began in school when I was told I had a learning disability. From then on, I paddled hard (or coasted) lacking the humility to admit I was not all I seemed. I did it socially, performing “as if,” often with the help of artificial substances. This morning, when a friend showed me this opening of Faust, I realized I’ve done it spiritually, too.

I was born with a soul that looked at the world as if there was something more than what I could see. Enraptured by the dream that life has a purpose and there’s one behind it all that loves and cares for us, I began paddling. I went to seminary, contrary to the flamboyant way my life looked on the surface, and learned a lot of theology. I used God-given talents to appear knowledgeable and wise, and yet beneath the surface I was paddling as fast as I could. The life I presented was not the one I was living.

In the end, I had a degree and a resume, but not what really mattered: a living faith. The journey from head to heart is, for me, the longest and most difficult one there is. Reading a book or writing something clever is easier than loving my neighbor or admitting my imperfections.

In the end, though, admitting we aren’t all that we appear to be on the surface is the pathway to true peace. Allowing others to see our exhausted paddling feet is when authentic community happens and living faith can begin. In what time I have left, that’s what I am going to search for. How about you?

The Stage

“The stage has grown further away,” said the once prolific performer. Now advanced in age, he climbed the steps onto the stage rarely, and it felt as if the stage itself had moved. It hadn’t. He had.

As the two of us sat on the porch in silence, I thought about the “stages” on which I had once performed. I could see, like him, that the stages seemed further from me than they used to be. It’s as if time slides the stage out of reach, then out of sight. I suppose it’s only natural, but the distancing stage phenomenon is something that troubles me.

There are all kinds of stages: jobs, roles, activities, friendships. Each in its own way has given us an invitation to show up, take our place, and offer whatever it is we have to offer, but if we ignore those invitations enough, those opportunities, like the stage for the performer I was sitting with, grow distant. We are left bemoaning the emptiness that surrounds us and think only of what used to be.

The key is to get up and walk toward the stage. Even with weary legs and scratchy voices, we need to make the effort to return and sing whatever song we have to sing. We need to pick up the phone and call that friend who once meant so much to us. We need to turn off the news and go join the group who asked us to do something. We need to pull out the long-forgotten instrument, pick up the pen, or make a meal like we used to. Yes, it will take some getting used to, and we are bound to stumble or forget the words to the song, but the more important thing to notice is the stage somehow draws closer and the steps are not as steep.

Time is not our friend when we squander it, but it can be a precious gift when we don’t.

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.