Saturday, November 14, 2020           (today’s lectionary)
The blessing way
On this crisp Illinois morning the sun is about to rise above our horizon. Houses block my view, but nothing blocks the sun.
Martin Buber said that when I “observe” the sun, when it becomes an object of study, the sun is an “it.” And when I sit before the sun, centering, praying, waiting for I-don-know-what, then the sun is more a “thou.”
God has called us through the Gospel to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But with my “buffered” western self, I’m likely to merely “observe.” Even if I appreciate beauty in the sunrise, I turn away quickly to what I need to DO, what I can control. The “Enlightenment Buffer” insists that I not waste much time on childish things like poetry. And so inevitably I find that all I “possess” are far smaller things, and never the “glory.”
Supernatural energy is unseen, therefore it does not exist. But that is not true, not really. Descartes was wrong. The Enlightenment Buffer has made us very efficient, but very lonely. And so from our polished, practical points of view we look longingly at the desert and the mountains and the sea. But not for long.
Spend even a little time with the Zuni or the Navajo or the Hopi, visit the Amazon jungle or Aborigines in the South Pacific, travel to Africa, and another Way shows itself. Rather than a buffered self, I will find company in “porous” people. Charles Taylor says “the porous self has an enchanted worldview; it sees itself as interacting with the spiritual world; it is vulnerable and open to forces beyond the spiritual realm.”
Will not God secure the rights of his children, those who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? No! But … when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith upon the earth?
I see now the sun is bright, rising further south than I expected. It’s been up awhile, obscured by the wall I usually appreciate, but that now I wish wasn’t there. I’m comfortable and warm, but the wall I built has blocked my view.
Sitting in Arizona sand at dawn, there is nothing to block my view. Of course it can be frightening. With Jay my mountain-climbing buddy, I sat all night after we ran out of gas. On just a dirt track heading back from the Havasupai canyon, we waited. The sun went down and the blistering heat went with it. We huddled close until at last, just after dawn, we heard the distant sound of what we hoped would be our first responder.
Light shines through the darkness for the upright. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.
In Desert Spirit Places, author, professor and priest Brad Karelious invites us into Enchantment. He and his family spend a lot of time on dirt tracks in the desert.
In the Western world, accompanying the Enlightenment, science and a focus on human reason, a process of disenchantment set in, as the buffered self compartmentalized or even dismissed spiritual experiences. Initiated by the philosophy of Rene Descartes, this modern sort of self turns radically inward, becoming personal and private. Indigenous cultures like the Zuni, in contrast, turn outward – to nature, the land and communal relationships. There is no separation between the material world and the spiritual realm; all is infused with the sacred. While the Western world compartmentalizes, the Zuni seek harmony and balance in a unified world. (p. 37)
Later today Margaret and I will drive through fields and forests around a beautiful man-made lake. To Grandma’s house we go. She won’t have made cookies or dressing or cranberry salad, because she’s 98, and now we make those things for her.
Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey.
There is something about just sitting with her. Like the rest of us, she inherited the Enlightenment Way. But more than those of us who must be busy making cookies and dressing, she has returned to the Enchantment. I don’t know where she goes when she closes her eyes, but I see the guileless smile that spreads across her face. And I want what she’s having.
Let us support each other, that we may be co-workers in the truth.
