The Wonderment

Testing

I've never been much a fan of testing, except for the tests which are five-day cricket matches.

Perhaps it has to do with how I tend to with often not thinking like the test creators. No, I've never been a very good standardized test taker.

And I struggle when people opine that my illness is just God testing me. When people tell me this, they are very apt to quote 1 Corinthians 10:13b at me, when Paul wrote, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you will be able to endure it." But they miss the first part: "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone."

Painful illness is not a standardized test. Despite pain scales and medicine dosages, pain is not standardized. I don't believe my illness is a test. Life is not a test, but a gift. What we do with that gift is the test.

The test of my faith is in every day, and pain or no pain, illness or health, the question is: how merciful, how generous, how kind, how loving, how just, how reverent - that is, how faithful - am I?

When we take up a spiritual discipline, as many do with Lent, we are seeking to strengthen our abilities to be faithful, rather like taking practice tests in preparation for college entrance exams or to graduate middle school or high school, or practicing musical scales before a public performance, or practicing on the basketball court before the game. Practicing teaches us the skills we need to rely on to survive and thrive in the challenges that lie ahead of us.

We need challenges, for without challenges, there is no quest for mastery, no experience of achievement. If we were instantly good at everything then where would victory be?

So we set ourselves these disciplines, to examine ourselves, discover our aptitude for fulfilling our faithful promises, and figuring out how to do even better. Yes, life has pain and their sorrow, for we all have some and some of us experience an unjust amount of that (though I would never consider myself in that category). But the pain and sorrow and injustice is not a test.

The test is what we do with the gift of this life.

 

Bearing Fruit

a retelling of Luke 13:6-9

The snow was falling outside. The Rabbits were snug in their warren, engaged in one of their favorite activities of the year:
planning their garden. The Rabbit family loved their garden, though it must be confessed that sometimes one or two or five of the Rabbits
would sneak out in the night and nibble some sweet and tender lettuce. Not very much, mind you, but enough so that they were
reassured that the lettuce was indeed sweet and growing well.

"Well," Nonny Rabbit announced, "It seems we have agreed on what we're planting. We can check the seed we've stored and order
the seeds we need." Nonny patted the stack of papers that held the ambitious Rabbit Family planting schedule.

"Wait," Bonny Rabbit said, "we haven't talked about the fruit trees!"

"Fruit trees!" exclaimed Fanny Rabbit, "I love apples! Can we plant more apples?"

"Fruit trees take up space," grumbled Danny Rabbit, "I'd rather plant more lettuce!"

"But we have apples for the winter, and not much lettuce down here in the warren," Sonny Rabbit argued.

Grandy Rabbit wrinkled her nose and shook her ears, "We have perfectly good grass roots to nibble. That's what we did back in the day..."

"...of the Year One, dear. We do things differently now." Grundy Rabbit gently patted his beloved's paw.

"But," Lonny Rabbit added, "what are we going to do about that apple tree we planted three years ago? It never bears fruit!"

Bonny and Nonny and Grundy and Fanny started to chuckle.

"How about we give that apple tree one more year?" Grundy asked.

"Lettuce now! Cut it down!" Danny argued.

Nonny sighed. "That fruit tree has not borne fruit for three years, because we remove all the young fruits every year."

Lonny gasped, "You ate it and didn't share?!"

"Of course not!" Bonny laughed.

Grundy smiled. "If we let the fruit trees bear fruit right away, and don't have the discipline to wait and remove those early fruits, the tree will be weaker and less fruitful later in life."

"This is the first year we will let fruit set on the tree and grow to maturity. Next year and the year after there will be more and more apples!" Fanny rushed to explain.

Grandy joined the smiles. "We have to choose discipline."

The little Rabbits groaned. Grandy was always going on about discipline.

"Oh," Danny Rabbit joined the smiles now, too. "Just like we decide we can't do everything we want, so we have time to spend together,
and do other things that feed us all, like sharing stories and working in the garden..."

"And bringing our extra harvest to our neighbors who cannot garden for themselves..." Lonny added.

"And sitting still, breathing, thinking of the Great Rabbit In the Moon." Sonny put in.

"Yes," Nonny Rabbit said, "for they all bear good fruit. We might want to rush hither and yon and try to do everything, but we can't. We have to choose."

"And that," Grandy thumped her back leg, "is discipline!"

At which announcement all the Rabbits fell to laughing and asking Grandy and Grundy to share a story.

Where Do You Choose to Abide?

Steadfastness does not receive muchattention in our larger culture. We are awash in stories and images of what is fleeting, of break-ups and short-term triumphs. The courage and discipline of the steadfast only rarely is recognized, but we yearn for those stories, for year after year a handful of them are made and nourish our spirits troubled by a pervasive sense of live in a world dominated by the values of greed and getting ahead lest we be left behind. 40 Moms, 40 Messages was six weeks of daily encouragement to help LGBTQ folks tap into a network of caring and compassion at a time of year when so many feel abandoned and alone. My Immigration Story challenges us not to abide in a place of fearing our neighbors and family, but of knowing our neighbors' and our family members' stories, helping us choose to abide in compassion and not in fear.

Social media is often rapped for encouraging the losses, which is silly, since there are all kinds of people practicing night after night and day after day steadfast presences of compassion, love, generosity, wisdom, attention, healing, and encouragement through social media. Some of them even have lots of followers or might be celebrities. The vast majority, though, are regular people remembering we are all each other's neighbors, that we have responsibilities to one another and to this earth. And many of them find that value grounding through their spiritual and religious traditions.

We can abide anywhere. Whether we choose to dwell in the presence of surprising wonder, with gratitude, with kindness, with generosity, with forgiveness, and strengthening positive connections or whether we choose to abide in fearfulness, rage, corrosive scorn, and other signs of despair and feeling that we are insufficient to the day, is up to us. There are people who undergo terrible things, who are facing violence and oppression every day, yet who choose to extend sanctuary from their hearts into this world. There are people who have life relatively easy, who have a lot and who can only perceive how little they have, who struggle with self-esteem, who feel they have no choice.

I used to be in the latter group. I realized I wanted to be in the former one. When I first started choosing a more open-hearted way, I did not then trust I had a choice, but since I was miserable anyway, what did I have to lose?

What do we have to lose if we try to live open-heartedly? If we're already on the cusp of perishing, why not try life-affirming?

This week's lection includes Psalm 27, one of the songs of refuge, a prayer of courage to abide. I think Psalm 27 is a prayer for those risking faithfully to stretch into, imagine, and help create a world that is more compassionate, more loving, and more generous, a world where we help one another and restore the desecrated and devastated places. Why?

Because there are still adversaries - inside our own hearts and in the world at large - we need spiritual practices that help us stay connected to other open-hearted people and to our sense of strength and wisdom from transforming love. There are people who make money out of suffering and whose livelihoods are sustained by devastating places and communities. There are all kinds of messages to eviscerate our spirits, to cause us to question whether we really matter, to doubt that we have gifts for goodness, to turn us away from our calling from the better angels of our nature.

One of the reasons I turn to Witness.org regularly is to attend to how many people are documenting and sharing and calling each other to human rights abuses and climate injustice. A recent blog on citizen video explains to journalists how to utilize the power of people connecting with each other in these routes outside of big business media to tell better stories and more meaningful ones, calling us to connect. That's an invitation for transformation, because Witness.org is encouraging the people who end up telling the majority of destructive stories to connect to a network of people advocating for and creating positive change.

Spiritual practices help us connect to our calling, our inherent worth, and each other. That's why my spiritual practices include social media, because there are few tools to help us connect positively so widely available today, thanks to public computers at public libraries that allow access to blogs and Pinterest and Facebook and social media like Twitter that work via text messaging for the great many who do not have internet access. Furthermore, practicing steadfast connection through social media teaches me to pay stronger and better attention not to the stories that shatter our spirits, but to find and attend to the stories of the open-hearted. Like prayer and meditation for me, practicing connecting via social media helps me abide in the land of the open-hearted, and making choosing a life-affirming way easier, moment by moment and day by day.

Whether, like me, you're engaged in Lenten practices, or not, I encourage you today to make some life-affirming connections, to choose compassion, generosity, and your better nature. Some of us have mighty obstacles and long histories that make this choice difficult, but it is one that can still be made, and will become easier the more you connect with others living that same decision. Why not give it a try? We only have pain, dissolution, distraction, and despair to lose.