I invite you to look at the art/chart of your one wild and precious life
that you have been working on with God over the last month. One of the invitations of this process is for
you to see your life for the mystery it is.
You are a combination and conglomeration of experiences and encounters,
events and emotions. This makes you,
you. No one else has the same recipe for
life, even though every human shares the same 99% DNA. Hold that mystery in your head, heart, and
soul. We are the same and
different. From the recipe of
your life, you tell a story. A story
about needing to do things for yourself, cause no one else will do it for
you. Or a story that the world is a
dog-eat-dog place and you are wearing Milk-Bone underwear, so you better
protect yourself. Or a story that if you
want peace in the world, you need peace in yourself. Is there a story you tell yourself
about yourself?
As your story unfolds unpredictably and uncontrollably every day, you keep
adding ingredients to your life. You
talk to that person or go to that meeting, for example. And let’s say Fred says something
sarcastic. In the split second between
the words leaving and leaping from Fred’s lips and your response…in that
nano-second…. your brain will fill in a story.
And because your brain is built for efficiency and wants to take the
path of least resistance, the story will be familiar, firing along
neuro-pathways that have already been formed and forged in the past. Your experience with Fred, coupled with your
past emotions with Fred, alongside how you have been taught/caught to deal with
sarcastic people, in that blink-and-you-miss-it moment, fills in space and
fires a reaction or response.
If you happen to like sarcasm or agree with Fred, you join him in
laughing.
If you happen to believe that Fred doesn’t know his head from a hole in
the ground, you go a different direction.
If you think Fred is the odd-ball and should be ignored, you go to that
place.
You have a story you tell yourself about yourself, others, and God. I am inviting you to become awake, aware, and
alert to that story. One invitation for
this summer homework is to wake up to why you do what you do when you do it.
The challenge of our faith is to let God re-write our narratives in new
ways. Or as Ian Morgan Cron once said, “You need to
give up the old idea that you know what happened.” Eek!
What do you mean? “Of course,” my
inner defense attorney jumps to her feet and declares, “I know what I am doing! I am an adult.” But my shy soul says, “Wait, let’s see where
this goes.”
We live in a world addicted to certainty and confidence. We live in a society that preaches assertion
and get what you can while the getting is good.
And we bring that bigger story into church with us and expect, demand,
that the Gospel of Jesus conflate and conform to our story, or else we will
find a new church that doesn’t challenge us as much.
Where does the idea that you, I, we, me, none of us really know fully
what is happening land in you? When Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 13 that we see in a mirror dimly, I think this might be
part of what he is saying. Does the idea
that we have stories operating in our minds and controlling our
lives/reactions/decision make sense, or do you resist, even reject such an
idea? Hold this invitation as you look
at the art/chart of your one wild and precious life this week. May you hold your life lightly for the
mystery it was, is, and will always be.
Amen.
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