Meeting Paul Again

 

\

One of the great threads and themes of life is orientation to disorientation to reorientation.  We move from learning/holding/knowing one thing then to questioning or even deconstructing then to a new way of being/living.  One way to see this thread woven in your life is with music.  Yesterday, I professed and confessed my love of 80s hairbands.  Bon Jovi telling me I was, “Livin’ on a prayer”; Poison preaching that, “Every rose has its thorns”; and Van Halen telling me to “Jump”. 

 

That music left a mark on my life ~ and maybe makes you shake your head disappointed that I wasn’t raised on the classics of the Beetles or Aretha Franklin or whatever music moved your soul in your teenage years.  The music I put on mixtapes gave me an orientation ~ a way of making sense of the world.  I think of Bruce Springsteen shining a light on lives of working class or the Temptations velvety smooth invitation that, “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.”  (You are going to be singing My Girl all day long now ~ you are welcome).  This is true with religion.  In Sunday School you were taught and caught a way of making sense of faith.  In high school you were given a perspective (a point of view ~ which is a view from a point) on history.  In college you paid an institution to learn the process of being a pharmacist or doctor or lawyer.  An orientation often creates a structure and system. 

 

But, we also know that life is evolving and expanding…things don’t stay the same.  80s hairbands turned into 90s gravely grunge music; hip hop ushered in a new way of telling the experience of African Americans.  It isn’t that the Temptations were wrong, but that wasn’t the only truth.  In your career chances are you had to go to continuing education classes to keep your certification or learn new insights or maybe went back for a doctorate.  For me, I sought my doctorate in ministry when I discovered what gives me life and fills my soul is preaching ~ and I wanted to learn more.  This can be a moment of disorientation, because how you have been being a pharmacist or doctor or lawyer or pastor starts to be questioned.  You discover a new piece of the puzzle you didn’t have before or are given some data that dismantles what you were previously taught.  This is a moment of decision making ~ do you try to incorporate and include this new piece or toss it aside?  Disorientation is not fun ~ remember the early days of COVID all the confusion and fear and frustration?  Disorientation makes us feel dizzy, our mind spins, heart sprints, gut squeezes with tension and we want resolution, and we want it now!! 

 

The path between disorientation to reorientation, incorporating and including new information and insights, can be rough and rocky.  I dare say this is where we are as a people in our country and as a church right now!  We are stuck somewhere in the messy midst of what was isn’t coming back and what will be isn’t clear yet. 

 

Saul/Paul found himself in this place.  He thought he knew who the enemy was ~ Christians ~ it was clear.  But then, God, who seems to delight in upsetting our apple carts goes and interrupts Paul’s perfectly planned ways of dealing with those people.  Saul/Paul must stew in his own un-knowing/blindness/less than perfectness/doesn’t have it all figured out yet for three days.  I often wish the path between disorientation and reorientation was only three days ~ because some days it feels like I have been living in that place for years now (perhaps my whole ministry!).  I wish I could shorten and smooth the distance between dizzying disorientation and revealing reorientation…but for me, often it takes more time than I would like.

 

Rewind and review the mixtape of your life ~ the past to the present ~ where have you gone through orientation to disorientation to reorientation?  I think in our church, we have done some of this work around our three covenants or right now we are engaging in this with our core values.  And the deeper truth is that this process is never one and done.  The story of faith is that we rinse and repeat this cycle like washing our hands.  Plus, we can be in orientation around one topic and disorientation around another topic and reorientation on a third topic ~ you can exist in all three spaces simultaneously just for frustrating/flummoxing funzies.  Good lord.  But the good news is that God can be found in all three.  You may even make a chart on a topic where you have gone through this or are in the messy midst of this right now.  Let the wisdom of this sing and simmer in your soul this day. Amen.