- There’s hardly anything better than the
dawning of a clear, still spring day.
- The world is lush and soft and green
and cool. The only signs of industry are the robins and the rabbits
getting breakfast. No killing is evident. No scarcity seems
possible. Nothing is ugly. Once in a while a car backs out of a
driveway and pulls easily away. Here and there a sprinkler basks in
its ability to be beneficent to bluegrass. The light slides sideways
over the land and the bark of trees shimmers with shades of peach
and ripening wheat. Waking up is sheer delight.
- If you live on a quiet street in The
Best Little City in America, that is. And if you make enough money
to pay the mortgage on a nice house and fill the gas tanks of a
couple of cars, and if you can afford to stay in touch with your
family and you can go to the ball game on Saturday and church on
Sunday and take little vacations whenever you want to and play a
little golf when you want to and sleep soundly and safely every
night.
- But there are a lot of other places you
could live, and in those places it’s hard to get up in the morning,
because it is not lush and soft and green and cool.
- You could live under a bridge. Several
people in our town do. You could live at Pine Ridge, where there are
hardly any jobs and not enough houses and a complex cultural history
that is full of sorrow and mismanagement, and not even close to
dissipating. You could live in Mozambique and other African lands
where reliable reports like the one launched recently from Britain
(titled "Because I Am a Girl") highlight the fact that 100 million
girls "disappear" each year, killed just before or after birth,
because male children are more valued.
- I can’t begin to wrap my mind around
the number 100 million when it comes to infanticide based on gender.
- Here are more figures from the same
report: 2 million girls a year suffer genital mutilation; dying in
childbirth is the leading cause of death of 15- to 19-year olds;
every month 7.3 million girls are living with HIV/Aids compared to
4.5 million boys; a million girls are trafficked as sex slaves each
year, as compared with a quarter that number of boys. Of the 1.5
billion people living on less than a dollar a day, 70% are female,
and 96 million young women aged 15-24 are unable to read or write.
The Independent/UK, 5.15.07
- Numbers like that can numb your mind.
Worse, they can make you think you can’t make a difference in the
world. You remember that Jesus said we will always have the poor
with us, and you don’t really know what he meant when he said that,
and so you just keep on living the lifestyle you have chosen, and
hugging your kids and celebrating graduations and anniversaries and
try to make good choices about how you spend your
- money and vow to be nice to the
neighbors’ dog, even if it does dig up your tulips every time it
slips its leash.
- Meanwhile, one of the most influential
men of faith has died, quickly, in the blink of an eye. A lot of
people let him speak for them, and a lot of others were appalled
that they did. Much will be said about Jerry Falwell for a few more
days, perhaps weeks, and then he, like the rest of us, will recede
into the shadows of history, and someone else will become the
bigger-than-life figure on the cultural/religious scene. I never
heard him denounce discrimination against women, or anyone else, for
that matter. But he talked a lot about the secularization of
America, and what he meant by that, and who he thought was to blame
for it. He was very good at raising money to fund his dreams, which
he said were God’s dreams.
- It’s hard to argue with someone who
says their dreams are God’s dreams.
- It’s also hard to refute their claims
that holy scripture supports their point of view if you haven’t read
the texts for yourself. A lot of people are pretty good at
rationalization and self-justification. Some people who call
themselves Christians are experts in this field.
- Still, on a morning like this, and with
the rich wisdom of a Sacred Story that is the original foundation of
the culture of life as easily available to you as your morning cup
of coffee, it’s hard not to want to give your life over to it. In
spite of everything ugly in the world, it’s really hard, on a
morning like this, not to trust a God who promises that when the end
of history comes all the peoples of the world will be living
together in peace, and the river of life will flow through the
middle of them, and the tree of life on its banks will give fruit
every day of the year and its leaves will heal all the nations.
Revelation 22
- On a morning like this, it all seems
possible, and sometimes the best you can do is hold on to that
promise.
- And if you’re having trouble doing
that, because sorrow is breaking your back or meanness is numbing
your mind or fear has slammed the door of your heart tight shut,
then I will hold that promise for you, until you can pick it up once
again.
- That’s what it means to be church.
That’s mostly what it is all about.
- May wonder stop you in your tracks
at least once today
Reflections
on faith and life by Rev. Kathryn Timpany