Hello on a day of taxes, unexpected events and unsure of what next.
The afternoon will be taxes. it’s been a morning of meeting a large truck with the back of the Beetle, no real damage to the truck, and something quite different for the bug. Dinner tonight with a former colleague and feeling like a bit of one step forward and two back. And yet this too will be managed.
Much of what happens on a daily basis, much of what happens even as a consequence of our own actions goes by unnoticed, as we are seemingly innocuous, often believing we have little or no responsibility for what happens. It is because we find it so difficult to take accountability? Is it possible that we are more prone to playing victim than we care to admit? Please, before you believe I am some paragon of accountability, before you assume that I never believe we can be victimized, I am posing nothing of the sort. I would like to believe I have become more honest about my shortcomings or mistakes than earlier in life, and I certainly do believe there were times that I was placed in situations where I was quite powerless, and thereby to some degree a victim of that circumstance. What I have learned about myself at this point is as follows: first, if I have no power over something, it is best to waste no energy on it; and second, if I make a mistake to own it. When I do so, I am free to move beyond it. I have often noted more recently, if I had done those two things earlier in life, I would have eliminated a great amount of drama.
I believe that those two practices allow me to wonder, to ponder, and to question thoughtfully the where and why of both who I am as well as to consider societally who we are as a collective community. Earlier this morning I was fortunate to be added to a group of Bonhoeffer scholars, a reading group from around the country who are exploring the life and theology of the profound Lutheran scholar who chose to stand against Hitler and the Nazis and lost his life in the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp only days before it was liberated. While most of my work on Bonhoeffer is a rhetorical analysis focusing on three specific points, much of his fiction and later writings focuses on what he referred to as religionless Christianity, which can seem counterintuitive to his incredibly Christo-centric hermeneutic. While this may seem to be a departure from the supposed simple questions of how and why, I believe Bonhoeffer’s work on seeing it not only important, but imperative to experience the suffering of Christ, and pondering the questions of how and why as integrally connected. Again, the how and why of most occurrences are logical, albeit often more complicated than we might want to admit. The somewhat deterministic sequential process of our lives can make it easy to believe we are merely caught up in the continual morass of daily existence, and our individual agency does little more than propel us forward toward the next experience.
The ability to confront, to truly experience, the how and why of something is to engage with it, working diligently and thoughtfully about how we can work in the midst of whatever it is we are enduring. And yet while there is always an aspect of endurance, it does not end there. To endure is significant, and it seems to me that Bonhoeffer speaks to this specifically in his concept of Costly Grace, of turning away from cheap grace. We have to experience the trials and the difficulties of life to understand them. This is not merely some cliché, it is reality. It also holds on to the belief that God can work good out of anything we create, anything we experience. I remember this earlier in life when a friend, whose younger brother was a closer friend. The elder brother and I attended Iowa State University together. He was a brilliant and studious person I respected and appreciated. I believe he was a junior at the university when he was diagnosed with cancer. He would die before he graduated, and I remember attending his funeral, and without my own experience of losing a brother, it would not have been possible to empathize with the younger brother and sister to the degree I was able. I think that was the first time I realized how God is capable to work good out of the most dire of experiences. I believe this is exactly to what Bonhoeffer refers when he speaks about suffering with Christ. He noted directly when Christ calls he bids us to follow and to be willing to die. That is extreme. But it is only in the extreme we can understand how that which plagues us or our world has significance. Likewise in our suffering we begin to understand the why. And yet, is this all there is . . . hopefully not . . . and I would continue certainly not. I am reminded of Paul’s negative commands in his letter to the Romans. In Greek it is (transliterated) may geneto – by no means. The suffering of Christ is real, and the difficulties in life are also real, but resurrection goes beyond the suffering . . . it is yet to come. The difficulties of life can see unending, but are they always ephemeral, transitory. The ability to choose is an incredibly sharp double-edged sword simultaneously allowing freedom and imposing consequence.
As I consider my daily life, everything I choose is exactly that . . . a choice . . . at this point, choices in the last 5 years are those I am most conscious of, particularly when it comes to the reality of consequence. The other evening I was fortunate to have dinner with a former colleague, his wonderful spouse and their two lovely girls. In our conversation, they admitted they did not agree with some of my larger choices in the past, particularly leading toward retirement. When I noted I wished they would have said more at the time, he noted he did not feel it was his place. I told them I would have listened as I respected their opinion. As I look back, I wish I would not have sold the Acre. I know why I did, but I think now it was more short-sighted than I believed it to be. I wish I would have not sold my BMW when I did. I wish I might have worked one more year. All of those things were not done on a whim to be sure, but the how they came to be and the why seem less considered than they were at the time. Now, I am where things are different and, in many ways, things are a sort of full circle. I am still trying to figure out where I am (not physically or in terms of location), but what I believe I am called to do.
Calling and vocation are a significant Lutheran concept, and something I believe I understand more completely now as a retired person than I perhaps ever did, and isn’t that ironic to say the least. Whatever our given position or task of daily work when it is performed in the realm of service and love of neighbor, we create a relationship for that person with God. Luther referred to us become a mask for the work of God. And therein one finds dignity in all work. What this did was equalize all work, there was no particular hierarchy of tasks or occupation. Anything done in the service of the other, out of love for the other, was holy and worthy in the eyes of God. Michael Horton in a podcast as recently as the last decade, “Luther believed that when a person knows their daily work is commanded by God, it brings comfort to their ‘cares, labors, troubles, and other burdens'” (“Luther on Vocation,” 2017). In such a possibility there is becomes less reason to question the how and why, and instead focus on the reality of God at work, diligently and consistently, through the face of our neighbor, or colleague, in the interaction with those we meet in our daily tasks, the grocery store, the convenience store, the person collecting our trash. I remember telling my parishioners that they should never put me on a pedestal because the only thing to occur is I would fall off of it. I still believe that. Ultimately, we will always question the how and why, wishing with all our cognitive power to understand. At moments, just such a result might occur; most often, like scripture notes “only in part.” Again, perhaps much like I have often noted when questioned about the afterlife, if I am faithful in the here and now, later will be taken care of. I do not need to be obsessed with the how and why, I merely need to do what I do in the sense of service and love for the other. I need to be the mask God will use.
Somehow the subtitles seem apropos; thank you for reading.
Michael
thewritingprofessor55 