A Still Life

As I said the other day, I have at least half a dozen posts swirling in my head from my nine day trip. It was part annual conference and part family visit with a dash of vacation. My mother flew up from Alabama to drive the first leg of the trip with me, and she lovingly kept the kids for me while I participated in the meeting. After a few days, she flew back home, then my husband flew to meet us. We then drove across another state to meet up with his folks who had driven and flown to the family home near Aiken, South Carolina. That’s a lot of miles by car and by plane. That’s a lot of gas to fuel those cars and those planes.

As we drove the hours and hours on four different interstates, I watched the big-rigs drive by. These giant trucks weave in and out of traffic, they have special detour stations, gigantic fueling depots, and even their own special billboards marketing to their on-the-road sexual impulses. As I continue to grieve for the Gulf, my home, I watched these trucks and deeply felt my participation in oil dependence as each rig passed. Clearly, I am only willing to modify my life in minor ways to decrease the amount of petroleum I wittingly consume. I am trucking along on those highways just like the giant containers of mostly useless and unnecessary items that are passing by on those same roads.

My Love, the environmental conservationist, and I talked about this irony as we drove the 10 hours home in our non-hybrid (but decent MPG) car. So many people see only the overt ways we participate in oil consumption and give little thought to the subtle ways oil consumption creeps into our daily lives. Friends often roll their eyes when I start talking about the products I won’t buy, the distance I won’t drive around town, the suburbs I try to avoid and wish not to contribute my tax dollars, and the fact that I willingly pay more to do my shopping all in one location. This is not an exercise in self-righteousness. I really am trying to get at something, well…righteous.

Lauren Winner was one of the keynotes speakers at the conference I attended, and several years ago she wrote a great little book called Mudhouse Sabbath. In it, she connects her Jewish roots to her practice of Christianity as she reflects on lessons learned in various Jewish practices. My observations on the road, not unique to this trip but magnified by the images in my head of the BP oil geyser, took me back to her chapter on kashrut/fitting food. Winner is linking faith food practices to Barbara Kingsolver’s work and writes (emphasis mine):

Why is Kingsolver so committed to this culinary calendar? Because shipping food from greenhouses around the world is America’s second-largest expenditure of oil. (The first, not surprisingly, is our daily reliance on cars.) As Kingsolver explains, ‘Even if you walk or bike to the store, if you come home with bananas from Ecuador, tomatoes from Holland, cheese from France, and artichokes from California, you have guzzled some serious gas.’ To eat seasonally (and locally) is to enact a politics of reduced consumption.

If I drive 30 minutes across town because I have some great coupons that save me a little cash, I need to be mindful that there are embedded costs I’m not considering. Am I driving alone in that car all those miles? What costs are hidden in the products I desire? And I’m only talking about oil consumption here. We could get detoured in conversations about car exhaust and waste, fairly traded and fairly grown products, and assorted other veins of equally important justice issues.

There’s always more I know I can do, and there are plenty of contradictory moments and purchases about my life. I admire my friends, a family of 5, who share one car and do a heckuva lot of walking. I admire my youngest brother who’s spending a few months studying with the good folks at Polyface Farms to learn first-hand about sustainable agriculture and healing the land. And if you’ve read much of this blog, you know I have great love for Rev. Billy and his choir who are presently raising funds to continue their fight against mountain top removal in Appalachia. At the very, very least, these friends and not-yet-friends have crept into my brain and set up camp. They are with me on the road as I ask new questions and embrace different ways of moving and being in this world. Always new questions to ask. Always new ways to discover.

If you want to live well in relationships, there are constant lessons to be learned about yourself and about others, about listening and silence, about communication and forgiveness. The lessons are sometimes hard and sometimes unpleasant. If you are one who only likes to dwell on pleasant things, then living well in relationships is likely not a priority. If you do not want to face darkness in yourself, if you do not want to initiate difficult conversations, if you prefer to avoid conflict, then living well in relationships likely cannot happen for you.

I hope that I am one who learns good lessons, remains open to reflection and change, and who fosters good communication. I know not all people will like me. I know I will not share all things in common with all people. I know living in community is complicated and, at times, messy.

But the past week of lesson learning has stilled and amazed me. Despite difference, despite conflict, despite silence and misunderstanding, miraculous healing can come when you open yourself to the possibility of living well in relationships. If you sincerely desire to make peace, if you deeply believe in the hope of reconciliation, then a simple gift of bread might just invite an unexpected guest into your home who responds warmly to those peace-making intentions. Good lesson learning, indeed.

I have preached on Matthew 18.21-35 multiple times in a sermon called “The Closed Gate”, and in that sermon I explore images of forgiveness from scripture and from my life. In considering Peter’s question of Jesus, “How many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me?”, I offer these words:

When Peter is told to forgive and forgive again, it’s about the work that will take place within Peter. Sometimes forgiveness is an act of blessing the gates that should remain closed, locked, and bolted shut! Forgiveness then releases Peter (and you and me) to move into the abundant life God would have us to live.  

I quote Douglas Hare who writes in his Interpretation commentary on Matthew:

Not only are we to let go of our revenge-seeking nature, we are to “reflect the majestic generosity of the kingdom of heaven.”

What does this look like?  What does it mean to “reflect the majestic generosity of the kingdom of heaven,” as Douglas Hare puts it?  This reflection takes place in loud and quiet ways—a cup of coffee and a long-avoided conversation, addressing unfinished business with a parent at a hospice bedside, a whispered prayer for someone long ago who still makes your heart pound with anger, a sincere apology, a blessing for the future.  

And then later I return to the ways of forgiveness, saying:

It is not instinctual for us to want to forgive in this abundant, extravagant manner.  However, it is God’s nature to forgive in this way—to unlock the gates, pardon the debts, release and let go.  Scripture does more than just invite us to be part of this kingdom work—scripture implores us to “repent and believe!”—forever being transformed by our merciful God.  

When I preach and when I write, I am almost always thinking aloud about the lessons I am learning, the way I want to live, and the hope I have that God invites me daily into that way. Rare are the moments of feeling I am holding myself up as having figured something out. I am fortunate to catch glimpses of the way, glimpses of God’s hope for us all, but I am often bumbling and stumbling into it.

I delivered that loaf of bread; the forgiveness loaf. Did I reflect that majestic generosity of the kingdom of God? If I got it right, then I may have seen a reflection of God’s ways of majestic generosity. Like Peter, I am the one who needs the work of forgiveness for my life. In my bumbling and stumbling, I need to see the reflection of a way I’ve forgotten, a way I sometimes ignore, a way that is not reflected around me. I am thankful for the stillness I feel within me tonight after inching closer to a lesson learned.

Not sure yet if this will be a two or three part lesson. I am raw and in the midst of a life lesson on community, grace, forgiveness, humiliation, the internet, and gossip. In processing aloud about surprising biases and lessons on community, I inadvertently posted a private email on a public email list to our neighborhood. Yikes.

So the question I am sitting with this afternoon is how do you ask for forgiveness when you do not anticipate receiving it? How do you make peace after actions that are not peace-inviting? How do you move toward reconciliation with a gut feeling that another does not wish to be reconciled to you? How do you apologize and bless even if you think the other may not care to hear it?

I’m listening to the wisdom of a good friend and a neighbor-who-could-become-a-friend. First, bake a loaf of bread. Second, this embarrassing, humiliating, middle school experience may not have happened by accident but because it invites an opportunity for something new.

I have enough dough in the fridge for a large artisan boule, and the dough is rising. I will breathe deeply as I hold the dough. I will pray as it rises and as it bakes. I will bless the bread that I share with the neighbor I have offended. I cannot control how it is received or whether it is even consumed. I cannot control what the neighbor thinks of me or how my words are heard and received. But I can acknowledge my fault, acknowledge my wrongdoing, and I can choose to make peace…at least within myself.