The Redemption Project - Mealtime

You know the story. Or, at least, you've heard it once or twice. In the hours before humanity gets its hands on him, Jesus sits down to eat with his closest friends. They recline on the floor, devour food and wine, talk, and at the end of it Jesus tells them that as often as they do this, remember him.

The traditional view here is that he's talking about the very specific ritual of bread and cup that is instituted during this night. I have this idea that Jesus meant the meal itself. Whenever, he said, you get a bunch of people you love together, sit down, and eat, think about me. Because, I'm there with you.

We had family over this weekend as a Christmas make-up dinner since, last month, the flu interfered with our normal get-together. Leanne made chili, mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. We all sat down around the narrow table in our dining room for lunch.

It's quite different than how I normally eat lunch. Throughout the week, I usually have a sandwich of plain turkey and white bread in one hand while I scroll through the news at my desk. I can usually polish off what I've packed up to eat in about fifteen minutes, which allows me to get back to working. In fact, my co-workers find my bland and brief menu rather funny.

There's a bit of sacrilege in what I'm doing, I know. I'm wolfing down the fruit of someone else's labors. I am mindlessly consuming rather than enjoying the food I'm blessed to afford. In addition, I'm elsewhere.

During lunch on Saturday, my often distracted brain wasn't off in ten different moments, it was in the current one. I was busy listening and talking, being mindful of our guests who might need more to drink or another roll. And even as I was devouring the food before me (preparing for company made me hungry), I wasn't doing so in my usual mindless fashion. I was aware of the taste, the smell, the texture of what had been prepared.

What does this have to do with the redemption of all things? I can't say I'm entirely sure, but that this simply act of sitting down with others, satisfying one of our basic needs is a means to that end. It can't be unimportant since, with so little time for things, the Incarnate One made mealtimes a priority, even going so far as to tie his memory to them.

Perhaps, it's nothing more than that basic need I mentioned above. We're mortal, fleshy humans who require food and drink to keep moving, to stay alive. Maybe, sitting at a table with each other, we show that mortality, confess it to those with us. We are, for just a moment, present with one another as dependent, needful beings.

Somehow, I know I'm closer to redemption then than at any other moment.

The Redemption Project - Corin

This past week, we celebrated the birthday of two of our cats. Shasta and his brother Corin turned sixteen this past Friday. And other than the first six weeks of their life, they've lived with us all those years.

Birthdays for these boys are special since both are miracle boys, meaning at a point we thought we'd lose them and, yet, another January comes and they still share out bed and keep our lives interesting. Of the two, though, I find myself every so often saying a little prayer of thanks for our Prince, Corin.

Corin has both inflammatory bowel disease and lymphoma. The former we struggled to treat for years when we first moved into this house, trying food after food to discover the right one to manage his symptoms. The latter came in the summer of '15.

Over two nights, our little boy was in horrible pain. He woke us on a Sunday night with cries that broke our hearts. It took hours of us attempting to provide some relief and debating the all-night pet hospital before he fell asleep. The next day, we took him to the vet, got more medicine, and then endured another night of our fuzzy little friend in misery.

The day following, Leanne took him to the vet again. She called me at work, asking me to come. There were two options, exploratory surgery, which may or may not provide a solution, or saying goodbye. We didn't want to do the latter, nor did we want to prolong his suffering.

God was gracious to us. We were introduced to an amazing vet, Dr. Madison, who diagnosed our boy and, at long last, provided a medication regimen that kept his illness in check. Four-and-a-half years later, even Dr. Madison looks at him with amazement.

Part of what I believe about the ultimate redemption of all things is that beautiful line from the twenty first chapter of the Book of Revelations where amidst the vision of this new Heaven and new Earth we are told that death is no more as are mourning and sorrow and pain. All those former things have passed away.

That world is not yet realized, of course. Death has already visited friends of ours this year. And I, like you, live with the knowledge that all those I hold dear are mortal and, one day, I will find myself waking to a world without them.

But there are small signs of that world to come. And we do our small things each day with the promise that there will come a time when the broken pieces will be mended.

And, for us, there's this long-tailed boy who lies on our laps, purring and giving us just the slightest glimpse of what lies ahead.

The Redemption Project - Imposter

This'll come up at some point; so, I'll put it out there now. I struggle with depression and anxiety. I'm fortunate that I have medication that helps me, and that I'm in a place, mentally, that's allowing me to use the tools in my box to keep those broken parts of my mind in check.

I mention this as preface to what I've been thinking about in these early weeks of the year. Like many people with depression, one of the side effects from it is Imposter Syndrome. I have this little voice that tells me, constantly, that one day I'm going to be found to be a fraud.

It's only been in the past year that I've really admitted to myself how present Imposter Syndrome is in my life. It's just in the past few months I've realized how it has kept me silent about something I love: writing.

I won't attempt to explain the way my mind works in this. Imposter Syndrome has its own logic that makes lots of sense inside the walls of my skull. And, since it sounds so reasonable, I've spent a lot of years abiding by its advice. Namely, if people don't know you write, they won't ever want to read what you've written, and then they'll never be able to tell you that you're not a writer. By the same token, if you don't put work out there into the world, no one can reject it.

As I mentioned, even though I've been aware of Imposter Syndrome it's only been in this past year that I admitted to myself how foolish this logic is. And, from that, decided that it was way past time to stop listening to this particular voice in my head.

This is part of the reason I took up this project. Primarily, it's a small contribution of hope and light into the world that needs it. But it's also a means for me to own up, to step bravely into the room and say that this is what I do. This is part of who I am.

Why say all this? Because it's true and the truth of it, I think, has been nagging at me all week, standing in front of a lot of other thoughts. The part of me that's tired of hiding behind the mask wants this out in the open. Confession, it feels, is the means to pulling the fangs from the monster.

But it's also because reading what others have written about this struggle has helped me. This, then, is my way of doing what others have done for me. Perhaps you stumble on this and it helps you fight your own imposter voice. Maybe, I can give someone else a leg up, allow them to get over the wall that is keeping them from being who they are.

Since, in the end, being redeemed means being all that we have been created to be.

The Redemption Project - Twelfth Night

Five days into the year, I feel like I may have taken on an even more difficult task. It's one thing to talk hope and redemption in the waning days of a holiday season, but the cold light of January is a sobering view. Add to that wildfires in Australia and rumors and rumbles of war, and I find myself sitting here on a chilly Twelfth Night morning wondering if such a project seems Pollyanna.

The world is a place of brokenness. And sometimes that brokenness appears even more pronounced, particularly when the fears and anxieties of what might be play upon our hearts and minds. What does this wildfire summer in Australia bode for the coming seasons here in the north? How far and how fast do the current tensions with Iran escalate?

Is it foolish to go looking for hope and beauty in such a climate?

I've been reading this week (guided by Sara Arthur's wonderful Light After Light) a passage from Ecclesiastes. If it's been a while for you, this is one of those dissenting opinions in the canon of Scripture. Vanity of vanities, as the old KJV reads. Breath, say the newer translations, and chasing after the breeze. The Teacher, it seems, might agree that this task is foolish.

But, perhaps not. The Teacher seems to be reminding me that it's always been like this. There have been greedy bosses and folks just out for themselves. There have been oppressed who are not rescued and oppressors who go unpunished.

Yet, that doesn't mean we don't look for truth, love, and beauty. In fact, we should all the more; because, the brokenness is the way of the world. Notice, and this is one of the things I love about this book, there's no sense at all of denying what is happening. The Teacher is not a person with their head buried in the sand. The world is presented as it is, but it is accepted. The Teacher acknowledges that there will be sorrows, but he does so to point us away from despair. Because, I am finding, it is only in taking and acknowledging the broken places all around us that we can see where there is also mending.

This does not mean we leave the world as we found it. Seeing the cuts and breaks in Creation should always drive us to help heal and mend. But, if we cannot see some of the healing already occurring, how can we hold onto enough hope to do our part?

Second Sunday after Christmas

"...'get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt....'" Matthew 2:13

The Wise Men have come and gone, Mary gets Jesus off to bed, and then she and Joseph lie down. The precious gifts of the Wise Men are there in the corner and, in the dim light, they stare at them, expecting them to disappear like a dream. For a family that experienced the wonders of Christmas Night, even this is almost too much to take in.

But the moment doesn't last. Joseph's sleep is disturbed by a dream, this one a warning to grab his son and his wife and run. And before sunrise, they are on the road, headed for the unknown.

In the years the calendar gives us a second Sunday of the Christmas season, it falls either on or near Twelfth Night. The season of Christmas is almost over. Soon it will be time to pack away all the decorations, the lights, and the music.

Truth be told, the season, for most of us, ended over a week ago. That beautiful moment when the church is dark, the candles are lit, and voices young and old sing together often quickly gives way to the cold light of the world after Bethlehem. It's a world where things break, you get sick, and things are neither calm nor bright.

Perhaps this is why I wish as a community of Christians we'd tell this story more often. It is not just a pivotal moment in the life of Christ, but it's one that speaks to our experience of the Christmas season. It, and not the arrival of the Wise Men, is the true close of the season. It is a story that expresses just how abrupt the transition from the manger to the world beyond is.

Maybe if we told this story more, it would allow us to mourn, as our hearts long to, that the redemption of all things is not yet. Perhaps it would give us license to be sad as we encounter what Auden calls this "bleak post-Bethlehem world." Sad, not that we're back at work and the year's to-do list yawns in front of us, but that the world is not what it is meant to be. We are not what we are meant to be.

Tonight, before going to bed, I'll cut off the lights inside the house for the last time. When I wake in the morning, before dawn, I'll unplug those outside, plunging the yard into darkness. It's a darkness I will then have to, like the Holy Family, head out into. There, I will find no promise of safety and, sometimes, no guide on the way.

But like them, I'm not alone. And, eventually, I will find my way home.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, close by as I walk into the darkness and the unknown.