There’s an old Zen story that does like this:

Once there was a great warrior. He had never been defeated, and he continued to win every confrontation into old age. He was known far and wide as the only warrior who had never suffered a defeat.

This of course was a challenge to younger warriors, and one day a young man appeared to challenge the old warrior. He, too, had never suffered defeat. His technique had become famous: he allowed his opponent to make the first move, then exploited that move and always won the day.

Despite the concern of his students, the old warrior consented to join in combat with the young man.

On the day of the battle, the young man walked up to the old warrior and spat in his face. The old man did not move. Then the young man began to hurl insults. This had no affect either. Then the young warrior began to throw dirt and stones at the old warrior. The old warrior stood, impassive.

Finally, exhausted by all his effort, the young warrior bowed to the old warrior, admitting defeat.

After the young man had left, the disciples of the old warrior gathered around him. “Teacher! I would have split that young man’s skull open! How could you allow him to hurl such insults at you?”

The old warrior replied, “Consider this: if someone offers a gift and you will not receive it, to whom does that gift belong?”

Nonviolent resistance embraces the techniques of both the old and the young Zen warrior. Like the old teacher, nonviolence does not accept the gift of violence or insults. Like the young warrior, nonviolence provokes a first response, then watches the opponent to see what the first move will be.

On April 12th, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license. There wasn’t a great deal of reading material in the jail, but one of the people arrested with King had been allowed to keep a newspaper he had in his pocket. That newspaper contained an editorial written by eight Euro-American Alabama clergy titled “A Call for Unity.”

The editorial began with the premise that, yes, African Americans deserved equality, but—that said—that said equality should be allowed to happen slowly—in the fullness, shall we say, of time. Without hubbub and marches.

King had heard this argument many times—just calm down and let the South change, slowly but surely. He had heard it from Euro-American centrists; he had heard it from within the African American leadership itself.

King began writing a response immediately. He used the bottom of his shoe for a desk. He wrote first on the margins of the newspaper; then on toilet paper; then on scraps provided for him by an African American trusty in the jail.

What he wrote is one of the great documents in US history, up there with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. What he wrote is an argument based on the Unitarian thought of Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Civil Disobedience.”

MLK knew that violence was the nature of racism. But it is also a basic human response to threat. In his letter King says this:

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:

collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;

 negotiation;

 self purification;

 and direct action.

We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.

Besides the moral high ground of nonviolence, King also knew that his cause itself stood for a higher order of morality. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau had asserted, “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”

King was asking for that plank back. He saw the higher moral order, as did Thoreau and  Tolstoy and Gandhi before him. Rather than getting the plank back, the Civil Rights movement got a small concession: I’ll let you hold onto my plank once in a a while, when you’re going down for the third time.

This is the unfinished business of what King started. And the continuing challenge to those who strive for a higher moral order. Still, today, I must restore the plank that I wrestled from a drowning human being. And there are many, many of those.

King’s letter is there still to remind us: “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

And,

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

 Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

A very simple thing happened the other day. Someone bought me the 20 cent stamp I needed to mail my father’s birthday card. But it wowed me. You see, I had included in the same envelope a card from my spouse and myself and one I had made from my two-month-old daughter to her grandfather. I was feeling proud of myself for being almost a week ahead of time this year. I had even managed to find a stamp!

With hope that this would be the year that I could get cards to Dad in time for his birthday, I hurried between feedings to our local drug store where they have a postal counter, trying to make it before the mailman arrive to pick up the days mail. About half-way there, I realized I didn’t have any cash on me, not even a quarter. If my letter was overweight, I wasn’t sure when I would get free again to run what would have been such a simple errand pre-baby, but in my new-mom state, was still a feat!

The mailman’s truck was in front of the drug store and the mailman was inside patiently waiting for an elderly woman to complete her transaction at the counter so he could take her package. He graciously accepted the other letters I had to mail (baby announcements, stamped and ready to go). And then waited (still patiently) for the clerk to weigh my Dad’s cards. The verdict: “You need $.20.” Normally, this would not be a big deal. Normally, I would simply mail the cards priority mail the next day, but this time, I felt majorly defeated.

I realize now that mailing the birthday cards had become a marker of what I can accomplish as a new mother. I had just accepted a part-time job beginning in February, and I was (and am) nervous about being able to do – not “it all,” but just some – enough to keep my head above water, to serve the congregation who has hired me well, care for my baby, and not miss too much of her magic along the way. If I could get those cards in the mail to Dad on time, I would be a successful person, even with baby!

But I couldn’t. “I can’t do it then,” I said to the clerk and the mailman.  “I don’t have any cash, not even a quarter.” I turned to walk away.

Then in a fluid motion, before I could even see what was happening, the mailman reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter and gave it to the clerk who, equally fast, put the extra stamp on the letter, gave it to the mailman, collected the quarter and put it in his drawer.

I was left standing there, an unconscious “wow” escaping my lips, only mildly embarrassed, grateful, and awed by what may well have been more an act of efficiency rather than kindness, but a simple act nonetheless that reminded me to accept the grace that is offered, the help that is extended, and to do so humbly, with gratitude and, yes, awe.

Once I crossed the Sierra Madres

with a bus driver named Arturo

who had one arm

and a stick-shift bus.

Sometimes between the

the shift and wheel Arturo’s

good right arm would

pause to make the sign

of the cross toward a portrait

of the Virgin that banged

the windshield from a string.

The lesson here is that

never is a miracle more than

beating the percentages.

Perhaps Arturo still is

waving down the

twisted camino

at each shrine

along the way.

“What’s your hurry?”

always he will ask—

“Do you think you

don’t have time to

find your grave?”

http://seanmcgirr.blogspot.com/2012/10/mexican-buses.html

Over winter solstice, I watched my father tending to KG, his first grandchild, with unconditional love. We had just celebrated her one year birthday and she was beginning to cruise around with increased confidence.  As she found herself standing in front of my mother’s highly breakable ceramic nativity scene, KG began to methodically hand each figure to my father.  He gratefully received them from her and moved them to another shelf. 

My sister, the mother of the much adored child said, “No, KG.  No touch.”  My dad just stayed there, receiving each figurine from the determined Katie Grace.  “I’ll catch them,” he said.  “I don’t really tell her no.” 

Now I confess, my sister and I both nearly fell off the sofa in that moment.  Who was this man gently hovering over his grandchild with a blissful air of yes, the same man who was forever telling us no as children? 

“ No! Kristy quit!   No, no!  Deanna don’t!”

I mean sometimes we thought those were our names: Deanna Don’t and Kristy Quit.

Did someone body snatch our father? 

Upon further reflection, I think it is maybe a little less complicated than alien body snatching.  I think my father has had an epiphany about unconditional love. 

The way that child lights up every time her Pop Pop walks into the room.  How she reaches for him no matter who is holding her. 

It is powerful to be loved that way.  It breaks open our hearts.  It tells us we are enough and calls us to love others with broken open hearts.  Radically inclusive, unjudging hearts. 

Beloveds, may you all know that you are loved the way KG loves her Pop Pop.  Unquestioned, unjudged.  Loved.  Beloved.  Yearned toward. Reached for.  Held.

May this knowledge continually break open our hearts so that we can experience the divine love of the universe and shine the light of this love onto each other. 

May this season of Epiphany bring you not only the sweetness of King Cake – may it also bring you the sweetness of receiving the unconditional love of the universe.

Early in ministry, there are skills to be learned. Preaching, counseling, the coffee-hour nod that says, “Yes, I’m listening,” even if it’s not true. Oh, and another one. Boredom. Overcoming it? No. Letting it pull you down below where you can breathe, and then holding you there. For hours. It’s important to know how to be there, in boredom. But for me, it was something that didn’t come easy. Some skills will take practice.

Apprentice clergy go through a form of ritual hazing known as Clinical Pastoral Education. Here’s how it works.  For a few months, full-time, you’re a hospital chaplain. Your mission? To offer support when situations get bleak. To help people face pivotal, primal questions just at the moment something vital is being torn from their lives. And also? Despite the plastic badge that says “Chaplain,” you have not the foggiest how a person would do this. Like when someone lifts her tear-stained face, and says, “Why would God let this happen?” And, in response, you decide now is the time to fetch everyone coffee.

Later, with other glassy-eyed lambs of the chaplaincy, you gather in a conference room with a senior chaplain, to think about what you have done. You do this through something they call a “Verbatim.” It’s just like it sounds—a blow-by-blow you write up of some fumbling interaction you’ve just had with a patient. The purpose is to reveal how very far your attempts are from whatever it is Jesus might have done, had he himself served a turn as a summertime chaplain. With a Verbatim, the lambs become wolves, tearing each word apart. Why, for instance, when the conversation turned to cancer, did you launch into a long story about the time your aunt thought she had leprosy, but it only turned out to be a bad rash on her neck?

Still, basic incompetence has never stopped me, and it would not this time. I got myself assigned to the edgiest units. Ones with names like “Critical” and “Emergency.” No hang-nails for me. No mere broken limbs. Give me “touch-and-go.” Give me “hours to live.” Throw in the surprise arrival of an estranged sister, and I’d be all a-tingle. I strolled the halls, seeking crisis. Buttered up the tough nurses, so they’d let me know when anything truly awful went down. The family room outside surgery was a good place to find trouble. The family room is where the dutiful adult children endure their hopeless grown siblings as loved ones off somewhere undergo God knows what. The dutiful ones keep information in a folder, and they keep track of the time. The hopeless ones are tear-stained wrecks, sprawled on a sofa that’s strewn with wet Kleenex. With luck, they’ve been drinking. Here’s how a chaplain can stir up some business. Walk into a family room, perch on a chair and murmur, “So, tell me, how is everyone?” Like fish in a barrel, friends. Fish in a barrel.

As we breathlessly parsed the Verbatims, the chaplain supervisor rarely ever spoke. He hailed from the great state of New Hampshire, and was a motionless model of the state’s famed reserve. One got the sense that you could have taken a bucket of ice water filled with dead mackerel and dumped it over his head, and the most he would do would be to glance out the window, and emit a slight sigh. It was clear, however, from the way he would occasionally purse his lips in the midst of my Verbatims, that he was of the opinion that a person could stand to tone it down just a hair. Of course, those dry lips that pursed and un-pursed could have meant anything. In the absence of a bucket of ice water, and the way the hospital air-conditioning sucked all the moisture right out of the air, it could have been simply that the poor man was just parched.

In any case, my ministry was one of inserting myself where I wasn’t strictly required. For example, a sober conversation with the heartbroken family of an eighteen-year-old about whether the time had come, finally, to turn off the machines that had kept their boy alive. Already, the small room held the hospital’s medical ethicist, a representative from the organ donation company, and another chaplain named Frank. Did they benefit, as well, from my luminous presence, the guttural tones of my active listening? Because the answer to that question was not yet clear to me, I made sure to be there. Up in critical care, I appeared in the room of a man who was dying alone. He was beyond speech by now. Conversation was out. Companionable silence is something I can do for two minutes, three tops. At last, I hit upon an idea. What the old fellow probably needed was for me to hum hymns. So, that’s what I did. “Old Rugged Cross.” “Amazing Grace.” And, even though it was the middle of summer, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” In my defense, I did hum it slow so it came out a dirge.

Later, in the Verbatim, someone gently mentioned the effect that even a brief outburst of humming can have on the nerves on a typical day, let alone in the hours one is attempting to peaceably die. A otherwise kindly soul said that, in fact, my humming might have helped to hasten the poor man’s demise. Another wondered whether the nurses who had popped in and out all afternoon might have been not actually smiling approvingly at the humming young chaplain, as I had reported, but instead only smirking.

An old friend says I went into ministry for the second-hand thrills. The chance for a front-row seat to life’s wreckage. As if I were a ghoul. Which, years later, still seems off-base. I went into ministry for a regular paycheck. God knows I was not ever going to be any good for much else. You know how all the want ads say the employer is seeking a “detail person?” Well, me, that is not. I once spent ten minutes looking for my glasses only to realize that I was wearing them. My only talents are whistling and catching peanuts tossed into the air in my mouth. Besides, since I was a kid, people have sought me out to tell me their problems, and—God forgive me—through it all, I have been fascinated. Fascinated by how people can manage to get themselves into such an intractable mess. And fascinated by how they can get themselves out. Or else learn to live with it. Or how sometimes they learn to live with it, but then are transported out of trouble through no effort at all of their own, in a way that some will call grace, and others call luck. If there were bleachers on the sidelines of human society, I would enjoy sitting there, watching. Well, watching and cheering. Taking honest delight. Perhaps with buttered popcorn. Yes, I had advice, but I offered it like anyone sitting up in the bleachers who calls out advice—with the full confidence that it will be ignored. By the end of my twenties, it had dawned on me that, to get by in this world, I would probably need to get paid doing something. And ministry seemed easier than teaching kindergarten. So, I was in. And, ok, maybe it promised a front-row seat. Not to the wreckage. But to what stirs within it.

There came the day, late in the summer, when nothing was happening in Critical Care. Nothing in Emergency. I was bored, restless. So, I wandered up to other units, outside my assignment. In one room, a woman lay dying, her family gathered around. But the nice-enough priest sitting there didn’t seem to grasp that this was his moment to shine. I forget how I convinced him, but soon, I’d replaced him, intent on marching the whole family through all the stages of grief, perhaps twice, before the old woman had even taken her last dying breath. Was I badgering these poor souls? Who can say. But, whatever the case, I was summoned for a chat with the chaplain supervisor.

He said that if I went into parish ministry without learning how to be bored, there would come a Tuesday afternoon when things would be slow, and I would stir trouble up out of my own need for action. For the rest of the shift, he said, I was to walk the halls, but to visit with no one. To practice being bored. For me, that afternoon, ghosting the halls without purpose, was more difficult than responding to people who’d been hurt in a wreck. It took some time before I was able to breathe. Walking by rooms where people seemed upset, especially, was like walking by the donuts at a Weight Watchers meeting. Just one? But I couldn’t. And, I will tell you that, as I walked, I realized that, even without an eager chaplain on hand, people would continue to suffer and also to find ways to lessen their suffering. They would die, and the ones they left behind would figure out how to live. Sometimes, these things would happen more easily if I were not there. Sometimes, my absence helped more than my presence. The Taoists have a word called “wu-wei,” the power of inaction. It is there when one is in harmony with the Tao. With the way of all things. Another person might say, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” As if there were a power beyond the merely human.

For over ten years, I have served the same congregation in the same little town. Have I stirred up trouble? Oh, yes. Ask my people. They’ll tell you. But, here’s the thing: without ongoing study in the practice of boredom, without learning wu-wei, a ministry composed purely of action could have made things dramatically worse.