Essentials

We do not know much about the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness. The gospels largely leave us to speculate, to guess, to wonder, to ponder--as they often do at critical moments in their narratives. So, for the most part, we can speak of His experiences only by reference to our own, imagining what we might have thought and felt under such momentous circumstances.

I was puzzling over this the other day when I ran across a story about the neurologist Oliver Sacks, who recently discovered that he has terminal liver cancer. Sacks wrote a beautiful essay about his response to the news, a fugue in multiple parts on living fully. The line that moved and impressed me the most was his observation that he had "no time for anything inessential."

Perhaps, above all other things, this was the experience of Jesus. Sitting in the wilderness on a hilltop, how could his mind possibly have strayed toward anything trivial? Surely his entire being was stripped of all inessentials as he meditated on his next steps, his act of ultimate love and redemption, his sacrifice.

In thinking about this I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from the notebooks of Albert Camus, an atheist, reflecting on his visit to a Franciscan monastery:

"September 15

"In the cloister of San Francesco in Fiesole there is a little courtyard with an arcade along each side, full of red flowers, sun, and yellow and black bees. In one corner, there is a green water sprinkler, and everywhere the humming of bees. A gentle steam seems to rise from the garden as it bakes in the heat. Sitting on the ground, I think about the Franciscans whose cells I have just visited and whose sources of inspiration I can now see. I feel clearly that if they are right then it is in the same way that I am. I know that behind the wall on which I am leaning there is a hill sloping down toward the town, and the offering of the whole of Florence with all its cypress trees.

"But this splendor of the world seems to justify these men. I put all my pride in a belief that it also justifies me, and all the men of my race, who know that there is an extreme point at which poverty always rejoins the luxury and richness of the world. If they cast everything off, it is for a greater and not for another life. This is the only meaning that I can accept of a term like 'stripping oneself bare.' 'Being naked' always has associations of physical liberty, of harmony between the hand and the flower it touches, of a loving understanding between the earth and the men who have been freed from human things. Ah, I should become a convert to this if it were not already my religion."

Amen.

Committee Work

This morning, like many February mornings at our farmhouse in Northern Michigan, brings the discovery of fresh fallen snow. The world outside is layered like some extravagant but oddly monochromatic cake, everything now rounded, softer, the hard edges not taken away but at least beautifully obscured. Out our front window I watch the woods across the road: the snow accumulates on a pine branch until the burden becomes too great; the branch bows gently, lets the snow go, and recovers. I watch this and sip on my espresso and think: "that would preach."

I am always amazed by the differences a morning can bring. I think of all the times over the years when I have been chased into the night by fears, anxieties, my mistakes, an unpleasant reminder of the fragility of life, a worry about a loved one, the haunting sense that--to paraphrase the great David Carr--I am a terrible fraud whose only hope is that the caper doesn't end too soon. Then I've awoken the next morning to discover that, somehow, in the course of the night those demons fled--or, at least, that they've taken a temporary leave of absence. Sometimes the trick is to be sure I don't forget them too soon; they had something to tell me or teach me that I needed to hear. But there is clearly something else--maybe within me, maybe without, maybe both--that helps me bow and let them go.

I think it was John Steinbeck who said "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it." In my own unsystematic theology, I have long suspected that God provides us with these committees, assemblages of angels, if you like, who will work diligently but silently on our behalf if we will give them space to do it. This is tough when our minds are abuzz with so much static and racket. It is as though these holy co-conspirators in the interest of our own sanity and purposefulness have to wait for us to spend ourselves into sleep before they can really get to work.

There is a lot to do in the season of Lent. Some of us will give things up. Some of us will take things on. Some of us will do both. Maybe it is also important for us to rest as well, to give the formative forces God sends our way an opportunity to whisper to us when we're not busy chattering and doing. Maybe it is an important time for us to be still, to feel and own the burdens that have come upon us, and then--waking or sleeping--to bow and let them go.

Amen.