Pass It On

At some early point in my grandparents' marriage, my grandfather bought my grandmother a fur coat. This has always been a fact that fascinated me. Having never known them when they were young and in love, it seemed to me an act so out of character, so at odds with what I knew of them. They were the ultimate practical midwesterners, a farm family whose values of thrift, hard work, and utility saw them through the Great Depression and eked out a living from their land for their family's future. The coat was beautiful. I don't know what kind of fur it was--nothing exotic, I'm sure, most likely rabbit. It had a burgundy lining that was a satiny material, and the one time I put it on, it slipped on so effortlessly and felt so light. And I always imagined that my frugal grandmother, with her warm, sentimental heart, when she wore it, must have felt completely wrapped in such extravagant love.

My grandparents' move from their enormous farmhouse to the tiny apartment where they spent their final years necessitated a major downsizing of their possessions, and the coat was one thing that had to go. As it turned out, there was an acquaintance of the family who had a special skill--she was able to take fur coats and turn them into teddy bears. So my grandmother's coat became several very warm, very soft brown teddy bears. The satiny ribbons around their necks were made from the coat's burgundy lining. Most went to family members--Grandma and Grandpa kept one.

I don't know for sure what Grandma did with it, I only know it was on her bed as long as I can remember. That doesn't mean she slept with it, but I like to think she did. I hate to think of her sleeping alone. I have always hated sleeping alone, even when I was a child. I'm raising at least one child who hates to sleep alone too. After the divorce, when his father had been out of the house for only weeks, it was a first line of attack. "Mom, I've been thinking. Your bed is made for two people, and I really wouldn't want you to be lonely." No. You are not moving into my room. "But Mom, wouldn't it be great if we could just use my room as a playroom? It could be so neat and organized!"  Good try, but still no. I suppose some day he will eventually get too old, but in the meantime, while I feign obligatory mild annoyance at being occasionally woken in the middle of the night for a storm, or a nightmare, or some other reason, I am still just as satisfied that there is space for him to lie down in my room until morning.

There is something telling to me about that moment at the end of the day, when all that's outside retreats and we are left with only our nearest and dearest, pulled close in the place of both our greatest vulnerability and greatest safety. I like to think that on those long nights after my grandfather was gone, it was the bear that kept Grandma company, with the same warm love as the coat he bought her always had. When Grandma died, her bear came to me, and it sits on my bed too. She may not have slept with it, I guess, but I often do. I think about how it must have been for her, sleeping without her friend and partner of 73 years, and how I hope the bear was like having a hug from him again. I think about how, for me, it is like having a hug from her. I wonder, what are the tokens of extravagant love my boys will have from me, the talismans that will keep them company in the night when I am gone? And maybe Grandma and I are both too old to sleep with a teddy bear, but I know she wouldn't have minded about a thing like that, and these things I also know--there is love in the world, and we are not alone. And we must keep passing it on.

Who's Your Daddy

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets

and stones those who are sent to her! How often

I wanted to gather your children together, the way

a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,

and you were unwilling."    ~Matthew 23:37

The recent days in America have been difficult ones. Last Tuesday's election results plunged a good portion of the nation into a fog of disbelief, fright, and mourning that is proving difficult for the other half of the country to understand and, failing understanding, to sympathize with or even tolerate. On social media and in other forums around the country, phrases like "crybaby", "whining", "sore loser", and "suck it up" have begun to loom large in the national conversation.

For Christians, this has looked slightly different. (Although, unfortunately, not as different as one might rightfully expect.) A bit less name-calling has happened, but instead there have been repeated admonitions to remember that God is on the throne. For the most part, I've heard these delivered with what I believe to be the best of intentions--reassuring those who fear, and comforting those who mourn. But there is an underlying assumption here, and it concerns me. The implication is that to be angry, afraid, or sad in this situation demonstrates a spiritual weakness; that if Christians really believed that God is in control, if they were truly placing their trust in him, there would be no place for their grief.

To be honest, my household has been struggling with the election results, and for me, the outcome has been cause for immense disappointment and sorrow. I don't believe, however, that a lack of trust in God can be blamed. It seems to me that for Christ-followers, a devout faith may actually be the basis for those feelings.

Many people and groups who have been historically (and are still) at risk in this country have found in our President-elect someone who causes them to fear for their safety, their welfare, their families, and even their lives. In this last week, they have not been consumed with political disagreement, but with the questions, "Am I safe? Are my children safe?"  The call of the church is to be the hands and feet of Christ to just these people--the forgotten, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the stranger. Christ has charged us with the task of being his ministers of reconciliation, and he tells us that it is our love, more than any other characteristic, that will be our testimony of him to the world. The church has embraced Donald Trump, for many and varied reasons, and some even reluctantly; however, the fact of that embrace means that all of those reasons have been judged more important than his demeaning, threatening, and endangering those that we are supposed to love, defend, and advocate for, and this failure to put love for others ahead of our own concerns has undone me. Here are some of the reasons I grieve.

For people who call themselves followers of Christ to have so failed to love according to his example has done perhaps irreparable damage to our credibility as a church and our testimony for Christ. My sadness is great that, far from carrying out the ministry with which we've been charged, we have most likely driven many away from the church, and even away from Christ.

My heart breaks for those who have been embittered, disillusioned, shocked, and angered by the actions of a church they believed was there to love and support them. Even for those outside the church, I think this expectation existed, but for those within the church, the betrayal has been particularly sharp. Someone has attacked their personhood, placed them in imminent danger, and we, their brothers and sisters, have not risen to their defense--have not even considered it a dealbreaker for doing business.

Most of all, I have mourned for a church who seems, in some respects, to have lost her way--to have traded her spiritual birthright of eternal purpose for the earthly trinkets of power, comfort, and privilege. We have become inextricably tangled in the web of our own desires, priorities, and self-interest; we have ignored the call to stand apart and be witnesses to a separate truth. Honestly, I did not realize we had come here.

The reactions that were sparked in about half of you on reading that last paragraph are yet another reason for my grief. This election has shown that we are not only a country, but a church sharply divided. (And white Christians, we must be honest here--when 90% of our black brothers and sisters have voted against someone that 80% of us have voted for, we cannot continue to talk blithely of racial reconciliation and being one body in Christ, and pretend that this division is not a gaping chasm along racial lines.)  The kingdom of God in which every tribe and nation worships together in harmony is a promise of the future, but those of us who have opened the door and accepted the invitation to walk through should understand that it is meant to begin among us right now. We are intended to be living in that kingdom, but we are so far away.

 

And I believe this, all of it, grieves the heart of God as well--our pain and struggle, our failure, our fallenness, our foolishness, our contentious disunity. I do not doubt for a second that he is in control, as always. But he is generous with grace, adamant about free will, and we have chosen our own path, one that brings harm to ourselves and others, all of whom he loves. And like all of humanity, all the fallen creation, I long in earnest for a better world. My heart suffers together with every other in the agony of childbirth, as we look with expectation to a day when what is broken will be made whole again, and we lament with inconsolable grief for the time and distance we see still to cross.

So yes, make no mistake--my Jesus is King. But he is a king whose fatherly heart has been broken by the grief, fear, oppression, and self-destructive faithlessness of his people since time before time. Don't make the mistake of shaming those whose hearts, however briefly, follow his example.