Easter Foolishness Continued

 

Yesterday, we continued to explore and experiment with what it means to be an Easter person, even when it is foolish.  We are turning to the help of a hymn, Help Us Accept Each Other.  Did you have any additional thoughts about what it means to live acceptance in your life from yesterday?  I thought about how people often don’t accept because they don’t feel accepted.  Or maybe think God doesn’t accept them.  The truth is we can create God in our image and with our opinions that can re-create us in that image.  One idea of sin is about projecting onto God all sorts of descriptions and definitions that say more about us then our words say about God.  This leads me to verses three and four of our hymn:

 

Let your acceptance change us, so that we may be moved in living situations to do the truth in love; To practice your acceptance, until we know by heart the table of forgiveness and laughter’s healing art.

 

God, for today’s encounters with all who are in need, who hunger for acceptance, for righteousness and bread, Bring us new eyes for seeing, new hands for holding on; renew us with your Spirit; God!  Free us, make us one!

 

Laughter’s healing art ~ what a beautiful image!  What a prayerful invitation.  Humor is holy and healing to our souls.  I also love how the first verse reminds us that this wayless way takes practice.  Acceptance is not some degree you earn and can hang on a wall; it is a day-by-day way of trying to be in the world today.  As Richard Rohr says, we often learn more by doing it wrong than getting it right (and I don’t always like that because I don’t like to be foolish

 

The second verse above reminds us that we will encounter bruised and broken people ~ the need may be physical or emotional or spiritual.  The poverty may come from someone who may have plenty of money in the bank or someone who has lost a job and eviction looms on the horizon.  We don’t always see each other as well as we think we do.  As someone who wears glasses, there are many moments when my vision is not close to 20/20.  And God help me if my glasses get knocked off or in the morning when I wake up and before I can put them on my face.  The world is blurry.  Maybe this is true in more ways than my vision.  I don’t and can’t possibly know everything.  I may think I have something figured out, but two years from now my understanding may seem as foolish as new life found empty tomb.

 

Often when someone talks about acceptance, immediately the defense attorney in our minds wants to object with the evidence of the worst person in history or that person who abused another.  We go to the extreme, because if we can find a loophole, then we are off the hook from listening to Uncle Gus’ rants at the family picnic this summer.  I am not saying you need to agree with Uncle Gus or that you should let him rant ~ acceptance (like love) is not one size fits all.  You can say, “That is not my understanding,” without throwing your paper plate of potato salad in someone’s face.  You can be curious, asking why and what from the past caused the person to come to that conclusion.  And this does take a lot of energy.  It is much easier to move slowly away and sidestep the confrontation.  Acceptance isn’t the only tool, but it is one that perhaps we can gain more comfort with through practice.  Who is one person (someone you truly do love, but also frustrates you) that you might try to embody acceptance for in one specific way today?  May that invitation evoke an experience of God’s strength ~ even if the interaction doesn’t go exactly according to the script (e.g. tears and hugs and symphonic strings magically playing in the background).  May the beautiful and foolish practice of acceptance continue to stir within you and be practiced by us all in these Easter days.