Go Gently

(For Wilbur Howie Sr. and all whose passing is grace.)

Much of culture demands we fight,
tooth and nail against going,
denying that we’re even moving in that direction,
color for the fading hair,
tucks and injections for the sags and wrinkles.

Fight whatever comes our way
with whatever we can arm ourselves:
radical surgery, medicine; harsh treatment, equipment;
all ways to deny journey’s inevitability,
pretending we can park indefinitely.

There is another way to travel,
not so much upstream always,
not eternally against traffic’s flow,
but putting up our sail and
letting breath blow us where it will.

A toast to all who find the grace
to tread gingerly upon the earth,
softly upon other lives so that
breathing comes as if from Spirit,
flowers bloom at every turn.

Going gently toward the place
where earth gives way to garden,
where hope is planted, not buried,
where time stretches into eternity
and living yields willingly to life.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Lent

So, what can I do for Lent, why should I do anything for Lent, and just what IS Lent? Forty days, not counting the Sundays, counted backward from the day before Easter to a Wednesday. Why forty? Because forty is a “Biblically epic” number (Ever notice that “forty” is the only number with a “four” in the English language that removes the “u”?). Think Moses on the mountain with God (40 days), Israel in its exodus wilderness (40 years), and Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry (40 days). The English word “Lent” comes from the Germanic root for “Spring” which originally meant “Long”, signaling the lengthening of days as Spring approaches.

That Easterly backward-determined Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, so named because the early church marked itself (as many still do today) with the ashes from the previous year’s Palm Sunday palm branches which have been saved and dried for this purpose (recalling the palm-waving crowd in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal” entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before he was crucified) with the sign of the cross. The ashes remind us of our finitude, recalling Genesis 3:19 “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” The cross reminds of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

In faith practice, unlike in folklore and popular culture, Lent has always been about doing and not doing things in order to more fully allow us and more readily place us in circumstances conducive to a better understanding of what God intends for the world and expects from us. If and when we choose to give up or take on something (or both), the purpose is not deprivation or denial. It is self-imposed discipline (a dying art in our culture), chosen because we believe that a particular addition and/or subtraction from our daily routine will clear away the clutter or confusion and allow us freedom from the grind of daily routine and expectation.

Our hope and purpose is for God to meet us within the space of this freedom. This discipline is the metaphorical empty chair we set for the table of our lives, in hope and expectation that the Holy Guest will arrive. When the Guest arrives, we find that, beyond the meal of our own preparedness, the Guest becomes the Host and feeds us with food and drink we didn’t know existed (manna, Eucharist) that satisfies hunger and thirst we didn’t know could be sated.

Come to the table.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Excuses

Excuses: the peripheral events
we push to the forefront in an attempt
to lessen the impact of our choices
and avoid some of the responsibility
for our words and actions
used and taken, withheld and neglected.

Everyone has extenuating circumstances
in their life that, when carefully
stacked with reason and mortared with intent,
build a one-sided wall that looks
impenetrable from the inside,
yet altogether like
the emperor’s new clothes
from the out.

Integrity in relationship comes
when periphery remains at the margins,
penitence comes from the heart,
hope flows from the promise
to learn, love, and live
toward a tomorrow where
second chances are genuine and
relationships are valued above scores.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

I was 8 years old in 1967, living in Decatur, Georgia. That Christmas, my biggest concern was whether or not Santa would bring me the Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase I so desperately wanted. He did, though I have no idea what happened to it since then. In another part of metropolitan Atlanta, larger concerns loomed.

December 24, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., climbed into the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, for what few people imagined would be his final Christmas Eve sermon. In a courageously prophetic voice, he named the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” as interconnected forces that stood between the world as it was and the world as God intended.

In many ways we have journeyed far since then, but all three of them are still standing. I’m not sure the direction we’ve moved has brought us any closer to divine intentions—more likely farther away. With regard to racism, many laws have changed, as well as quite a few hearts, though we’ve miles to go before we can sleep in the shalom of God’s true peace.

Our appetite for possessions and our penchant for war seem to have escalated. I’ve outgrown the childish desire for a secret agent briefcase, and even consider larger concerns most days. I often recognize racism when it tries to convince me to act selfishly and fearfully.

Materialism is a more elusive and seductive threat. I know I’m not made more secure by the things I own—often even less secure, as I am consumed by the need to protect them—a protection that tries to convince me that other people who might want to take my things are somehow less than human and have little in common with me. Isn’t that how war begins?

Dr. King was right.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Songs of Freedom

(For all those whose flowers are picked before they bloom.)

“Surrounded by Your Glory,
what will my heart feel?”
How many times do you think
they wondered and pondered this?
And how many times
did you wonder it for them?

“Your rivers full of mercy
are flooding every thirsty soul
and making all things new.”
Make all our souls, O Lord,
thirst for you; you alone.
Let our broken hearts also be made whole.

“We’ve been blessed to be a blessing
with enough to give enough.”
Let not these few years
have been in vain.
Give us the hearts to see and share
the more-than-enough we received.

“My chains are gone,
I’ve been set free.”
Unfetter us, O God,
that we might proclaim
the liberty of your grace, the hope of faith.

“Will I dance for you, Jesus?
Or in awe of you, be still?”
How many times has the dance been mentally practiced?
How awesome it must be
moving beyond rehearsal to worship!

(“I Can Only Imagine” Mercy Me; “See Them Come” Ken Bible; “Blessed to Be a Blessing” Brown, Borop, Liles, Cloninger; “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio)

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Christmas Light

On this end of the blue sphere
December is the time when
big ball of light’s angle and duration
are fading fast and furious
as if it just might fizzle out for good.

Fine time indeed to light
an additional candle each Sunday,
reminding ourselves of the in-the-flesh
arrival of the very self of God in
the gospel birth of Bethlehem babe.

As you wend your way through
another holiday season this year,
adding lights at every turn,
may you find it in your heart and mind
to keep them burning year-round.

If the neighbors and their association
keep you from doing it literally,
I hope you’ll still conspire to
keep them burning in your life.
Every month needs Christmas light!

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Genuine Hope

Quote from the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of “Weavings”:
“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom.” (Mark 4:11) In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung comments that the world will ask you who you are, and if you do not have an answer the world will give you one. Jung understands that the world is impatient with mystery because mystery lies beyond the world’s control. Faced with true mystery, the world will impose answers or contrive confusion, neither of which can bear the weight of genuine hope. Children of God, on the other hand, are stewards of mystery. We dwell gently with it, not so much to search for answers as to be transformed by questions that open onto eternity. We embrace a lifelong movement from immersion in the opaque mystifications of the world to immersion in the luminous mystery of God’s reign. (Written by John S. Mogabgab, in “Editors Introduction.”)

Advent—that season of preparation for the arrival of God’s Christmas gift—is about remembering that our task is to “bear genuine hope.” We don’t have to figure out the mystery of Christmas in order to bear genuine hope. In fact, many would argue that insistence on solving the mystery is precisely what prevents many in the church from finding hope at all. We are better detectives than we are witnesses.

As witnesses, our egos and our intellects wish for us to have seen and understood more than we do. In the “court of faith” the divine defense attorney would certainly object to the conjecture and conclusions toward which we jump. It is very hard for us to say, “I can’t explain how it works, and I haven’t seen it all. All I know is that the promise has been made, the gift given, and nothing else will ever be the same.” Most of the time, we are more comfortable solving faith than we are living it.

“Genuine hope” is not built on understanding and reasonable conclusions. It comes from wide-eyed encounters with divine mystery, often-desperate confidence in future promises, and a willingness to take one step at a time into darkness, before light appears. It is neither for the faint-hearted nor the self-controlled. It lights in the palm of those whose hands dare to remain open.

P.S. The bluebird photo is from a friend, Carole Knight; a photo of "Little Missy" from last spring.

© 2010 Todd Jenkins