Month: November 2011

In Song of the Open Road Walt Whitman wrote: “From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines.” From the first moment my eyes glanced over these words they became a personal motto. The poet spoke to a deep desire to live freely and achieve boldly. I had grown tired of limits and the imaginary lines that confined even my imagination.

I believe it is the failure of imagination in our world today that is the cause of our social and economic woes. It is a lack of imagination that has shackled our politics to partisan trenches. It is a lack of imagination that has confined the churches to legalistic doctrines and ill-fated allegiances rather than fostering healing and hope and wholeness and peace and love.

Yet we find ourselves in Advent, mere weeks from commemorating the miracle of the Christ-child’s birth. If anything can inspire imagination, this ancient story ever old, ever new can revive our imaginations as we remember the coming of the Prince of Peace. The promise of God’s very essence dwelling with us should awaken our imaginations to the potential of seeing the reign of Love in our homes, cities, and nations.

Looking to the Creator, who made us in the image and likeness of the Divine, we too can embrace our imaginative spirits and live beyond limits and imaginary lines. Who wants to be confined? Who wants to be imprisoned behind walls of our own building? It may seem safe, but it is not to safety that Advent calls us.

We are called to live watchful, patient lives that embrace the reality of miracles, the reality of God with us here and now. If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is the Creator, who can limit us? Let us strive this Advent to let our imaginations soar and live to establish the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Of all public holidays, Thanksgiving is one of the most moving for me. I love that it is first and foremost a national holiday not explicitly tied to any religious tradition. Rather than being a religious holiday co-opted by commerce for purposes of profit, it is a secular holiday with deep meaning for those of us who approach life from a faith perspective.

Giving thanks is a central part of the Christian journey. The story about Jesus healing the 10 lepers in Luke 17:11-19 comes to mind. Only one turned back to say thank you and Jesus blessed him. A quick count finds that Paul gives thanks at least 35 times in his letters to the churches. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 he writes: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ.”

However, there are times when it does not seem possible to give thanks. Life can be terribly unfair and burdensome. Just think about everyone going hungry, those who have lost jobs and income, the many children who are abused, the chronic pain some of us live with. Injustice is chronic and systemic sin is all-too prevalent. The Thanksgiving holiday can be painful and empty for those who have no one with whom to share it, or no food to put on the table, or who are overwhelmed with grief.

So as we prepare to celebrate this holiday, let us make a special effort to hold in our prayers those who in this moment cannot give thanks. Let us open our tables to those who have nowhere to go. And amid the hustle and bustle of preparations, let’s carve out a few moments to quietly reflect on our blessings, however insignificant they may seem, for which we can give thanks.

Two of my favorite recent reads are coinciding in the soup of my musings this week. They couldn’t be more different. The one is Walter Brueggemann’s Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile and the other The Glamour of Grammar by Roy Clark. Brueggemann is a theologian while Clark teaches writing as vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute.

The word that’s bringing them together is “conviction.” Discussing the prophet Jeremiah, Brueggemann writes, “Pastoral vitality is related to a concrete sense of what God is doing in the world.” (Brueggemann 16) The same can be said about congregational vitality. In the end it’s a question of conviction.

As I dissected the word, I thought about its most common usages related to belief systems and legal proceedings. One can be convicted by arguments about the nature of God or some philosophical point and one can be convicted in a court of law. I remembered Clark calling two or more words that sound alike and are spelled alike but have different meanings homonyms. (Clark 38) The question then became how different are these two meanings in the context of a life of faith?

Both seem based on evidence, observable facts. To be convicted in a court of law one’s guilt needs to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. There needs to be evidence. But one’s conviction also needs to be proved when the word is used in the religious or philosophical sense. Our deeds and words need to be consistent with our convictions, provided we are truly and deeply convicted.

It made me wonder what would happen if Christianity were suddenly banned. Would there be enough evidence to convict those who profess to follow Jesus? What would be the legal litmus test for a modern-day disciple? If it’s following in the way of Jesus by meeting the needs of the poor, the sick, the suffering, I’m not so sure many of us will end up with convictions.

This brings the meanings of the word very close to each other and has given me a lens through which to continue pondering my own discipleship.