From Your Minister
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One of my favorite books as a kid was The Boxcar Children, in which four siblings, whose parents were simply and completely absent, took care of themselves and each other. They set up residence in an abandoned boxcar with pine needle beds and dishes they found in a junkyard.
I think I loved the book because the kids got to set the terms of their own life. They got to create a hospitable space and enjoy it together. So often, children are given no agency, no power to define the terms of life, but are forced to adapt to whatever fabulous or hideous configuration they are born into.
Even in the most controlled situations, children set up rituals and practices to define their own terms of living. Magic words that must be said before bed. Secret identities which involve superpowers and heroic destinies. I, myself, was often in the process of making a raft to float down the Kanawha River to Magic Island where, I was told, “Bums lived.” I thought bums just might be my clan, more than these strange people whose name and house I shared.
However kids make sense of the world, the terms of the adults closest by are non-negotiable. One way to think about these early years, these formative experiences, is that we are guests at an event that someone else is hosting. We adapt to the situation into which we arrive—if it’s a costume party, we scramble into a costume ourselves. If it’s a poetry reading, we learn to talk in rhyme.
The Boxcar children delighted my seven-year-old self because those kids were hosting their own event, not waiting for someone else to create an event and invite them as guests. Truthfully, it is people who create their own events and invite the world to them that interest me most. I’m bored by people who stand by the wall and whine, “This party is no gooooood! There’s no music; no one is dancing; the conversation is superficial!” I’m much more drawn to the eccentrics who begin singing and dancing themselves, or sharing something deep. Who carry the party with them. I’m drawn to the ones who claim their power as hosts, as agents, as the ones who define the terms of their lives. The ones who do not experience life as passive guests, whose only power is to critique the hosts.
Of course it is complicated. Some people are told at birth, You there! You get to write the terms of the invitations! It’s your party and others will be lucky to be invited to it! The power to define our lives and the lives of those around us can come from sheer privilege—the power to demand that other people conform to our wishes of what makes a good party or to treat others as our nameless hired help. That is not what I am talking about.
Nor am I talking about those people who can only manage to be hosts, never guests. They need to be in control of every conversation, every event, to define it precisely for themselves without noticing whether others in the room are coming alive or disappearing. That’s not what I’m looking for either.
I’m talking about the people who understand that it is through giving what is ours to give to the world that we are most likely to receive what we need ourselves. Those who offer hospitality in order to feel welcomed in the world themselves. Who get it that, ultimately, there is no distinction between being guest and being host. (In Latin, Greek and Arabic the same word is, in fact, defined as both guest and host). People who understand reciprocity, who know that being guest and being host is a fluid dance. Those are my clan.
Our prisoner members inspire me in this way. It might seem that they have no control over their experiences; they are completely at the whim of someone else’s capricious or reasonable demands. And yet, for many of them, finding and staying centered in a spiritual practice allows them to shape the aspects of their lives which still remain in their control. And often, they write to tell me of their desire to share this newfound joy and strength with others—cellmates, penpals, CLF ministers and staff. These are the people I want to learn from and be with—people who offer hospitality to others, knowing that it is only in offering what they have that it becomes truly theirs.
Each week at the end of our online worship, we close by sharing the words, “I carry the flame.” This emerged organically in our worship, and I love it. We are stating that we are the ones to keep the flame of love and justice burning, to take it out into the world, to offer light and warmth to those who seek it. Yes, we’re also the ones who sometimes need to huddle wordlessly by someone else’s fire, or to share just how dimly our own flame is burning. That very sharing is another step in the dance of mutuality, inviting others to shift their own positions. We are all of it. We are the guests, we are the hosts, we are the dance itself. The dance that carries the flame.
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
