The Comma

Is it God’s sense of humor, or karma, or my own hubris?  My last post asked the question “can people change?’  Of course when I ask that question about people, I am really asking about myself.  Can I change?  Can I change in the ways I would like to change?

Well, one thing I have been trying to change for the last several months is how often I blog.  In January I made the public commitment to post every Thursday by noon (public commitments do help when I want to be different.)  And though I have not been great at the noon goal, I have been faithful to my weekly commitment.  Until last week.  Until I posted the question about change, gave my defiant answer to Donald Trump, and then promptly missed my next deadline.  

I have plenty of excuses.  It was a very full week.  And I did start to write something.  But of course starting and finishing are not the same thing, and I have had plenty of full weeks since last January.  I guess I could say that it was the curse of the “change” post that laid me low.

So here I am, one week later, wondering what happened, and wondering how to get back. 

What happened?  Well, one thing is that, believe it or not, I really do want these posts to be good and readable, and when I started writing last week, I just couldn’t get the “good and readable” flow going.  But the truth is that in these past months I have posted even when I wasn’t really through with the post, just because I had made the commitment to, and because some of my blogging friends have encouraged me by saying that generally something is better than nothing.  At least it gets the conversation started.

Another thing is that there is so much that I wanted to write about last week.  Things kept coming into my head and then going out again before I made the time to write them down.  I wanted to say something about Memorial Day, a “thank you” to veterans, and to others as well who have worked to help our country live up to its ideals.  People have given their lives for their country in ways other than in war, as a member of my Bible study eloquently reminded me. 

I wanted to write about the Thursday morning “Breakfast of Hope” I went to last week.  That was the name of the fund raising and consciousness raising breakfast of the Northwest Kidney Center, which a member of my congregation serves as the Executive Director.  When she invites her pastors to the breakfast, she always says, “Come see what I do with the other part of my life.”  I always love that invitation.  And  I even had a title for that post- “Hope for Breakfast.” 

And for months now I have wanted to write about our current economic crisis.  Back in February I read an outstanding post on a blog by evangelical writer Brian McLaren who suggested that if we as a nation are looking for recovery, we ought to take that word seriously, like people do in twelve step programs.  There “recovery” does not mean getting back to the good old ways of doing things, but finding a path to a new and more whole way of being.  And boy, could our economy use some of that!

But instead of any of those things, I wrote nothing.  And whatever else might have been happening, that’s what really happened.

Now, how to get back?  Well, now I have to step up to the reality of my post from two weeks ago.  Yes, with Flannery O’Connor I can say that “the meaning of redemption is that we do not have to be our history.”  But then I have to admit that change is not easy.  Often, we (read “I”) will begin, and maybe even succeed for awhile, but then falter.  We (read “I”) will need to summon the courage to show up, even when we’ve blown it.   We (read “I”) will need moments of confession, and the grace of forgiveness.  We (read “I”) will have to decide, over and over, to begin again (never an easy thing, and especially hard when you are doing it publically).  

So I say again “Absolutely! People can change! That is what we do here, or more to the point, that is what God does with us here. That is Good News.”  But then I have to add my own p.s.:  “By the grace of God.  And one day at a time.”

I begin this post with a public confession. I watch junk TV. I don’t know how I find time for it, with two flocks to tend and my two-hour daily commute, but sometimes, at the end of the day, I fall exhausted onto the couch and turn on “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” for a good cry, or “The Biggest Loser” for an inspirational lift.

And this really is a confession, because I although I have an intellectual distain for such “reality,” (sometimes those “real life” shows make sitcoms seem genuinely insightful), nevertheless, I watch them. And, maybe because a preacher’s “next sermon” mind never really shuts off, occasionally I hear something on one of those shows that sets me off in a theological direction.

I say all that by way of telling you that the other night I was watching “The Celebrity Apprentice” (I know, I know, I can’t believe it either) and, in response to something Joan Rivers had said about her sense that Clint Black had maybe changed (I know, I know, I am actually about to quote Donald Trump! In response to Joan Rivers! About Clint Black!) Donald Trump asked, “Does anyone ever really change?”

Well of course that got me thinking. After all, aren’t I in the “change” business? What is my faith about if not about change? Transformation in fact.

But Donald’s question still is a haunting one.  Can people change? I ask it every time I find myself doing the same things over and over when I want to do differently. Why do I still wear my good shoes out to the barn when I know, for a fact, that they will no longer be my “good shoes” when I do that? Why do I carry the dog food and the sheep food to the ram pen in the same trip when more than once I have accidently dumped the dog food into the sheep feeder and spent the next twenty minutes pushing the ram away while gathering up kibbles and bits? Why am I posting this a day later than I hoped?  Why do I still watch junk TV? 

And why do I so often forget the path of Jesus when I am absolutely convinced that it is the path of Jesus that leads to life?

I also find myself asking the same question (“Can people change?”) when I consider my my congregation.  We do dream together of change.  We dream that we might rise above the personal and the “systems” habits that hold us and become something new. After all, as Christians we all are in the change business. In a world that is often driven by greed, we are holding on to the hope that our world could be shaped by grateful generosity. In a world that clings to fear and the myth of redemptive violence (read “torture as the way to power,” and “war as the way to peace”), we refuse to give up on compassion and peace. In a world that fills itself up with hate and short-term profit, we are imagining love and justice.

And in our own private lives, we dream that we might be the people God knows us to be.

But, as one person in my congregation is fond of saying, “The best predictor of future success is past behavior.”

And then I heard Jim White last Sunday in worship quote one of my favorite authors. It was during his invitation to confession. “Flannery O’Connor,” Jim told us, “has said that ‘the meaning of redemption is that we do not have to be our history.’” 

Absolutely! People can change! That is what we do here, or more to the point, that is what God does with us here. That is Good News. So if you see Donald Trump, please give him my answer. “We do not have to be our history.”  And then, invite him to worship with us. God’s gifts are such that even he (or you, or I,) might be transformed.

Catherine is on vacation this week! Bless her in her time away…she’ll be back on Sunday May 10.