Family Photos

About a month ago, my children and I went through old boxes of family photos.  It was fun for them, and for me, to see pictures of them when they were babies, when they were toddlers, and little children. Tucked away in some folded, faded paper were some old photos, really old photos of me, as well. There were pictures from when I was born until about 6 months of age, along with pictures of my incredibly young parents.

I was surprised, when I pulled up a photo of my mother’s face at age 23. I was surprised to find my heart grow wide and warm when I saw that face, and tears well up in my eyes, along with a great, pure smile of love to light my face. Her face at age 23 was the first face I regarded –  I saw it with pure love as an infant, and I gazed upon it like that as often as I could for as long as I could until the clouds of accumulated learning and imitation that begin to form the personality overshadowed the original purity of that loving gaze. But in that instant, seeing her face in the photo stirred up the memory of my own essential connection with love. I remembered the simple, unencumbered love that was in the beginning, and it was a lovely gift – the most precious of gifts, to realize that with all the troubled, tense times that have intervened, that essential love is not destroyed, nor forgotten. It just needs to be returned to, remembered, and often, in order to grow.

I am aware that once my own children, as babies, coming into the world and living in those first months in the wonder of the essential nature, regarded me with that same powerful love, and they pulled it out of me in return. For a few topsy-turvy months we were so deeply in love, and I mean by that, we were in the stream of that unconditioned and unencumbered love that has no opposite, that love that comes not from our own likes and dislikes, not from our desires and wants, not from any sort of “compatibility”, but that love that comes from a higher source, closer to God. And then, we began to come down to earth, as they say, and into the ordinary stream of daily life with all its little fights about “I’m not getting what I want,” and “your wants interfere with my wants,” and the ordinary insanity that we call life.

What is it that pulls us out of the higher dimension of love and into the illusion that happiness lies in getting what we want, simple wants for most people on earth – uncontaminated water, a little food, some shelter, but much more complicated wants for most of us here in this community: the perfect meal, the perfect cup of coffee, the perfect companion, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect trip, the perfect game of bridge or golf? And of course, these, like perfect health, are not wants that we can ever really fulfill – why do we keep trying, I wonder?

And what can call us back from chasing all that silly, useless stuff, to simply being in love?

What causes us to remember the love and truth we took birth for and return to the original state of being in love?

Is it possible for us to grow in that essential love, to see it ripen and mature and actually move with it into service - humble, daily service that seeks no praise, reward or recognition - in this world?

Ten days before Easter, I got a phone call from someone who lives in another state, but has attended this church for the past four years when he is in the area staying on a farm about 10 miles out. He said he wanted to donate a chunk of land and enough money to start and maintain a children’s home, if it would be a ministry of the church.

In the midst of the Holy Week pilgrimage, I found myself beginning another pilgrimage, seeking to learn all that I could about what such a ministry with children might entail. I have friends who work in this field, and one old friend who is the CEO at St. Francis Academy (former Home for Boys), and I worked in a residential facility for troubled children once myself, long ago. I knew even before I made the first inquiry that this is one of the most difficult areas of ministry there is. The state and federal laws are complicated and difficult to comply with – and their complexity seems to increase by the day. Sustainable funding is a huge problem. And yes, if you work with troubled children you take the very real risk of being sued for life and limb. In some cases, the cost of liability insurance is so high, that it stops any hope of new ministries that can help troubled children.

Sure enough, most of my conversations with people in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Mississippi, reinforced this hopeless picture.

I was thinking that a children’s home would be impossible until I met a man who works with troubled children in our county, and does it 24/7, as a volunteer, Merlin Leach. Merlin came to Osage to retire 14 years ago. He is a psychiatrist with a national reputation for being an advocate for children. He’s also a celebrity of sorts, having appeared on Oprah. So, once he had settled in, some of the folks in our county who knew his background and knew that that families and children in Carroll County needed help in healing from abuse, asked is he’d help in this area.

After talking on the phone, I met Merlin at the Child Advocacy Center in Green Forest. He showed me around the old house there behind the Methodist Church, and we had just sat down to talk, when the door bell rang. He answered it with easy friendliness. A young woman said she hoped there might be someone who could help her, she was very pregnant and alone, and had nothing. The baby’s father had just left.
What is remarkable is that he said yes, not just with his words, but with his whole being. There were no reservations – he was just there to help. This level of being available for service is very rare in our world – is it not? How often, when you make a phone call or knock on a door seeking help does someone give you their full attention? He said yes, gave his full attention, and I watched and listened as he asked her about her situation and then told her about the ways that he and others could be of help. But what was most encouraging was the way that he didn’t hesitate in the least - he was available to help, and when asked to help, he said yes and he followed through right then and there. Before she left, he gave her a layette knit by women in Holiday Island, a beautiful set of hat, blanket, booties, and sweater to greet the newborn baby when it comes.

After she left, he gave voice to the truth I’d seen in his response. He said, more of less, “Right now she is in the midst of what seems the most hopeless situation. The meaning in her life will return to her when she loves that baby. Anything we can do to encourage her in finding meaning in her life by loving that baby is worth it.”

Amen.

The yes that Mary said, the great “fiat”, the great yes to God in giving her heart to the new life of Christ is a yes that we are all invited to say, each and every day, in the midst of every situation, no matter how difficult, complicated or hopeless it might seem in the worldly sense.

The rule of life of the Northumbrian Community says it well.
        “I say ‘Yes, my Lord’
        in all the good times,
        through all the bad times.”
And then it goes on to explain what saying yes entails in terms of daily Christian living.

    “. . . the Community’s Rule is a response to that insistent question: ‘How then shall we live?’ It is a call to risky living: it is not a comfortable or easy solution to life’s problems. Whilst we welcome any who wish to walk
with us in seeking God, we ask that those who wish to become Companions
with us in Community say ‘YES’ to Availability and Vulnerability as their
way of living. This involves availability to God and to others – expressed in a commitment to being alone with God in the cell of our own heart and to being available for hospitality, intercession and mission. Intentional vulnerability is expressed through being teachable in the discipline of prayer, saturation in the Scriptures and being accountable to one another, often through soul friendships. It also means challenging assumed truth, being receptive to constructive criticism, affirming that relationships matter more than reputation, and living openly among people as ‘church without walls.’”  --     Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 10

And the Rule concludes that this living of the Gospel, like we say of marriage in the BCP, ‘is not something to be entered into lightly!’

I have found that this Rule of Life, in the introductory pages of the Celtic Daily Prayer Book, is as good a way of expressing what it means to live the Gospel as I have ever seen in a short form. Practicing these disciplines in our daily lives in communion with just a couple of others who are committed sincerely, will, over the course of the years and decades truly change us.

As Jesus said, looked at through the eyes we have acquired from our formation in the world, the Gospel appears to be drudgery. Do you remember when he asks the disciples, If you have a servant and he works all day in the fields, when he comes into the house at night, you don’t ask him to sit down at the table and rest, no you ask that now he serve at the table. The open secret is that this service of God is the greatest joy imaginable (although it entails many inner struggles). For us it is as if we stopped answering the phone – of course, then people would stop calling. If we stop saying yes when the master calls us to service, well, our phone goes dead and it seems that he stops calling. But if we make ourselves available, if we sincerely say yes to service, and follow-through and mean it, the voice of the Good Shepherd can be heard. When we say “yes” we will be rewarded with more and more work to do and our attention to the Master’s voice brings a deep stillness in which to rest within, even as we work harder on the outside. But here is the secret – the open secret, only a secret because the world, and our worldly selves, do not in the least understand. It runs counter to what our worldly selves think is true. With true availability for God comes more and more of the invisible energy of love by which to live joyfully in the midst of the most trying, complicated and weird circumstances. Because with this work of God’s service comes more criticism, more obstacles, more complexity – AND more and more of the invisible energy of love with which to face it. And in the end, the Master will say simply: Well done, good and faithful servant. And to a true servant – those are the sweetest words of all. None of the world’s glory or praise or wealth can even approach the joy of hearing those words from the Beloved.

Amen.

The Rev. Edie Bird
April 29, 2007

Return to St.  James' Home Page                                                                                                                                                04.07