Meditation on 1 Corinthians 13

 

I invite you to think of a conflict, something that makes you uneasy and makes your stomach all queasy.  This could be a situation that you’ve tried to resolve, but all your plotting and planning have not yielded the results you’ve wanted.  This could be a relationship where there is stress and strain, and you are not quite sure how things went off the rails.  This could be events or experiences; this could be something personally you are facing.

Imagine this situation is like a piece of broken glass.  There is probably a jaggedness, roughness, sharpness to what you are holding right now.  It has probably left woundedness and scars…maybe continues to do so. 

Describe this situation to the best of your ability.  Name the thoughts, emotions, soul stirrings, and where all this sits in your body.  In fact, go ahead and draw a stick figure (this doesn’t have to be museum quality Picasso painting), the more rudimentary and elementary, the better.  In fact, get a crayon to draw your stick figure!  Now, write down your thoughts around this brokenness next to the head of your stick figure – especially the things you’ve tried to resolve the situation or the questions you have or the things you’d like to say to the other person.  By the heart, write down the emotions – could be anger or sadness or numbness.  By the soul of your stick figure, write what is deep within you, your prayer for this brokenness.  You can write down the hurt you’ve absorbed and where the pain still aches and your deep hope for a different way. 

Look at your visual prayer ~ because that is what you’ve just drawn!  Your embodied prayer that resides in you.

Over the last few weeks, we have been eavesdropping on Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.  We have heard how the Corinthians loved to disagree and debate everything!!  In fact, I daresay, you could take every contentious and controversial church meeting you’ve ever been in ~ and we have all been in those ~ combine them all together ~ and that is the kind of conflict that hovered and hung in the air of the Corinthian church. Sounds delightful!  I am sure that was a fun church to join! 

Now, lean in and listen to Paul’s famous poem/prayer ~

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (That is exactly what was happening ~ lots of noisy gongs of people pontificating and proclaiming that they had the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth) ² And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. (Again, people at the First Church of Corinth had forgotten the fundamental truth that our point of view is a view from one single point!) ³ If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. (How we can sometimes offer humble brags or do things to make ourselves seem like super spiritual people.)

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (That is a really long list and reminds me that without God there is NO way I could do any of the above.)

I wonder, given the situation you described, how do the above words sound?  What do the above words provoke and evoke?  Maybe you think, “Paul doesn’t get how difficult that person is!”  Or maybe an honest, heartfelt question, “Is this really possible or practical?”  Or maybe we would just prefer these words to stay as part of a wedding ceremony than interrupt our anger at someone or something or ourselves.  For today, hold the messiness and the truthfulness that not every situation can be easily resolved in a half hour or one morning meditation post from me.  May the God who hovers creatively and compassionately over our stick figured lives be with you today.