Mark 10
We realized last weekend, in a moment, that we were done with the crib. The beautiful crib that our sister gave to us, that worked so well, but let's be honest, our baby never really slept in, except for maybe 3 months of her life... We had used it for nearly two years for holding stuffed animals and sometimes as a place for a toddler to jump, jump, jump. But now, we needed to move it out because we found a play kitchen... And she's been wanting a play kitchen for months... And this spot where the crib sits is the perfect spot for a play kitchen.
Ben was ready to move it directly to the garage but something made me hesitate... Let me just reach out to Thaly and see if she knows anyone who needs a crib. And on Sunday, sure enough, she let me know that Mark knew of someone who needed it. Through Mark, I got connected to the neighbor of a brand-new immigrant family. They arrived just a couple of weeks before school started and they needed a crib. We arranged to bring the crib over to their house and carefully dismantled it so we could assemble it quickly... And then my fears started in. Our little one was crying as the crib went out the door. Was it too soon? Then, I was afraid we would break it in transport...
We went over in the dark because it's getting dark so fast these October days, and we had a little trouble finding the house number until… we spotted them. This was the house... Children peeking out of the windows & door at our slow-moving vehicle, waiting for us, expecting us. We went up to say “hi” and so many children were streaming out of the door... I brought the mattress to the walkway and two of them scooped it out of my hands, carrying it triumphantly inside. We assembled the frame and each one came to meet us and we learned everyone's name... so many “S” names, even a Sufjan! “My favorite singer is named Sufjan?” I said. “Really?!”“Yes!” Ben and the oldest teenaged boy carried the frame inside and we finished putting it together and explaining through the 10-year-old girl (also the family’s translator) how to lift and secure the side... Then, we showed this family photos of our family. And we asked the oldest boy where he went to school. "Harding!" And I explained that I knew at least two great teachers from Harding from this congregation... And then we exchanged hugs and thank yous and the 10-year-old girl brought us bottles of water, a custom that I recognized from visiting with our Cambodian members. And we left, filled up with this amazing wonder. It was the best part of my day to meet those eight children, their mother, their grandmother... And to have our lives intersect for just a moment, and to be filled with wonder about their story, past, present... and all that is to come.
In the part of Mark's gospel that we didn't read today, Jesus says some very hard things about how people treat one another. Jesus' specific example is about divorce but the point, I think, is about how we break one another and break relationships with on another all along life's way. I do not know the circumstances that brought this family to the Eastside of Saint Paul, but I do know that their neighbor called it trauma. Knowing that so many of us have been through trauma of one kind or another, does it make us fearful, critical, self-protective? Yes... But also, there is this huge opportunity that we're invited to practice compassion, curiosity, wonder.
The Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez was asked by a friend... what did his think of his wife, Mercedes? Marquez, who has been with [her] for forty years now, said…”I know her so well now, that I haven’t the slightest idea who she is.” That is familiarity as an invitation to absolute wonder.[1]
John O'Donohue, a spiritual teacher and Gaelic speaker form county Clare, Ireland, writes this about fear... Fear derives its power... From the fragility of the human heart... Fear is negative wonder. It makes the self feel vulnerable and it can take away all the loveliness from your experience and from your friendships, and even from your action and your work.” (15)"Do not be afraid" is repeated 366 times in the Bible. That is once for every day and, as somebody said, once for no reason at all! (18)
O’Donohue notices: “Memory now seems to be focused almost exclusively on past woundedness and hurt... (What if) people used their good memories and revisited them again and again, the harvest of memory that is within them, and lived out of the richness of that harvest, rather than out of the poverty of their woundedness?”(12)
And then he writes this about imagination, wonder… which might be our way to have more curiosity and less judgement, less fear and more wonder.
“Imagination never pretends to know it all. It never demands or claims an absolute standpoint, but it always relishes and celebrates the fact it is on the threshold where it cannot see everything. The kind of knowing that is in imagination is knowing through exploration... Every person, particularly the child, has incredible imagination. (20)
Imagination is also very, very compassionate. It will never take one side of a polarity or a contradiction, but it will try to weave both together and embrace them.
He remembers how William Blake said that Christ is the imagination... The prism of all difference that is.
When your eye begins to become attentive to this panorama of [difference], then you realize what a privilege it is to actually be here. (25)
Imagination... Is about the awakening to and the recognition of the sacredness of all the difference that is. Where the imagination is alive, wonder is alive... Possibility is awake... (21)
I think that sometime in my past, I was told that the meaning of this story about receiving the kingdom like a child meant I just had to accept it, no questions, no wondering... But when I read these reflections by John O'Donohue, when I think of the children I got to interact with this week, the real children, their real behavior with all its ups and down, questions and insights, I think that wasn't the point at all.
Now, I think Jesus' words to receive the kingdom of God like a child are an invitation to greater play, greater imagination, more curiosity, more questions, more wondering...
My toddler and my big kids and my neighbors, are teaching me those practices everyday.
Mommy, I don't like this play kitchen!
Ben was ready to move it directly to the garage but something made me hesitate... Let me just reach out to Thaly and see if she knows anyone who needs a crib. And on Sunday, sure enough, she let me know that Mark knew of someone who needed it. Through Mark, I got connected to the neighbor of a brand-new immigrant family. They arrived just a couple of weeks before school started and they needed a crib. We arranged to bring the crib over to their house and carefully dismantled it so we could assemble it quickly... And then my fears started in. Our little one was crying as the crib went out the door. Was it too soon? Then, I was afraid we would break it in transport...
We went over in the dark because it's getting dark so fast these October days, and we had a little trouble finding the house number until… we spotted them. This was the house... Children peeking out of the windows & door at our slow-moving vehicle, waiting for us, expecting us. We went up to say “hi” and so many children were streaming out of the door... I brought the mattress to the walkway and two of them scooped it out of my hands, carrying it triumphantly inside. We assembled the frame and each one came to meet us and we learned everyone's name... so many “S” names, even a Sufjan! “My favorite singer is named Sufjan?” I said. “Really?!”“Yes!” Ben and the oldest teenaged boy carried the frame inside and we finished putting it together and explaining through the 10-year-old girl (also the family’s translator) how to lift and secure the side... Then, we showed this family photos of our family. And we asked the oldest boy where he went to school. "Harding!" And I explained that I knew at least two great teachers from Harding from this congregation... And then we exchanged hugs and thank yous and the 10-year-old girl brought us bottles of water, a custom that I recognized from visiting with our Cambodian members. And we left, filled up with this amazing wonder. It was the best part of my day to meet those eight children, their mother, their grandmother... And to have our lives intersect for just a moment, and to be filled with wonder about their story, past, present... and all that is to come.
In the part of Mark's gospel that we didn't read today, Jesus says some very hard things about how people treat one another. Jesus' specific example is about divorce but the point, I think, is about how we break one another and break relationships with on another all along life's way. I do not know the circumstances that brought this family to the Eastside of Saint Paul, but I do know that their neighbor called it trauma. Knowing that so many of us have been through trauma of one kind or another, does it make us fearful, critical, self-protective? Yes... But also, there is this huge opportunity that we're invited to practice compassion, curiosity, wonder.
The Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez was asked by a friend... what did his think of his wife, Mercedes? Marquez, who has been with [her] for forty years now, said…”I know her so well now, that I haven’t the slightest idea who she is.” That is familiarity as an invitation to absolute wonder.[1]
John O'Donohue, a spiritual teacher and Gaelic speaker form county Clare, Ireland, writes this about fear... Fear derives its power... From the fragility of the human heart... Fear is negative wonder. It makes the self feel vulnerable and it can take away all the loveliness from your experience and from your friendships, and even from your action and your work.” (15)"Do not be afraid" is repeated 366 times in the Bible. That is once for every day and, as somebody said, once for no reason at all! (18)
O’Donohue notices: “Memory now seems to be focused almost exclusively on past woundedness and hurt... (What if) people used their good memories and revisited them again and again, the harvest of memory that is within them, and lived out of the richness of that harvest, rather than out of the poverty of their woundedness?”(12)
And then he writes this about imagination, wonder… which might be our way to have more curiosity and less judgement, less fear and more wonder.
“Imagination never pretends to know it all. It never demands or claims an absolute standpoint, but it always relishes and celebrates the fact it is on the threshold where it cannot see everything. The kind of knowing that is in imagination is knowing through exploration... Every person, particularly the child, has incredible imagination. (20)
Imagination is also very, very compassionate. It will never take one side of a polarity or a contradiction, but it will try to weave both together and embrace them.
He remembers how William Blake said that Christ is the imagination... The prism of all difference that is.
When your eye begins to become attentive to this panorama of [difference], then you realize what a privilege it is to actually be here. (25)
Imagination... Is about the awakening to and the recognition of the sacredness of all the difference that is. Where the imagination is alive, wonder is alive... Possibility is awake... (21)
I think that sometime in my past, I was told that the meaning of this story about receiving the kingdom like a child meant I just had to accept it, no questions, no wondering... But when I read these reflections by John O'Donohue, when I think of the children I got to interact with this week, the real children, their real behavior with all its ups and down, questions and insights, I think that wasn't the point at all.
Now, I think Jesus' words to receive the kingdom of God like a child are an invitation to greater play, greater imagination, more curiosity, more questions, more wondering...
My toddler and my big kids and my neighbors, are teaching me those practices everyday.
Mommy, I don't like this play kitchen!
You don't like the play kitchen, why?
It's too big!
Hmmmm... But here's the great thing, it might seem a little small now,
but you will be growing and then it will be just right!
but you will be growing and then it will be just right!
But I think I need a small, small one for my baby
Oh....and where would you put that?
Right here, and then I could play here and baby could play here.
When we enter into the wonder of the children in this church and in our neighborhoods and in our homes without judgment but with hearts to learn, with hearts seeking relationship, we enter whole new worlds... Worlds that remind us to keep our eyes wide open for all the possibilities, for the ways that things are still unfolding. These eyes help us see our way forward… with Christ who is imagination, who is compassion, and the One in whom we trust.
Right here, and then I could play here and baby could play here.
When we enter into the wonder of the children in this church and in our neighborhoods and in our homes without judgment but with hearts to learn, with hearts seeking relationship, we enter whole new worlds... Worlds that remind us to keep our eyes wide open for all the possibilities, for the ways that things are still unfolding. These eyes help us see our way forward… with Christ who is imagination, who is compassion, and the One in whom we trust.
We are 150 years old… and also, we are at a new beginning—a brand new Deacon/Kitchen Coordinator (Consecrated and Installed yesterday), a new Office Manager, new people in the room, new giving/learning/serving opportunities, new kitchens on the way… and although it will stretch and change us to be open to all that newness, we’re invited to see all this as a path of plentitude opening before us.
A Blessing “For a New Beginning,” by John O’Donohue,Walking in Wonder, pages 25-26
A Blessing “For a New Beginning,” by John O’Donohue,Walking in Wonder, pages 25-26
[1]Quoted by John O’Donohue in his book Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World, page 14. All bracketed numbers throughout the sermon are referring to the pages within this same book.
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