On Grace and Goldfish Crackers

She looked up at me with those wide brown eyes, the slight lines of guilt and shame on her two-year-old face betraying her inner fears.  I had caught her red-handed.  She’d opened my two liter of Diet Coke and, slowly, methodically, one-by-one, dumped two dozen of her goldfish crackers into the small circular opening.

Beloved daughter.  You make me laugh and want to dance with mirth.

Her penetrating look is searching my face for a response.  Anger?  Irritation?  Laughter?

It was for her own good that I patiently said, “No, honey.  We don’t do that.  That wastes food and drink and makes a mess. Now I have to throw this away.”  But I think she could see the twinkle in my eye that indicated to her I was not angry.

I often fuck things up, God, and make messes.  I have done it yet again, though you have patiently chastised me time and time again.  Like a little rambunctious toddler playing in the kitchen, stand before you a bit fearful and a bit ashamed.

Beloved father, be patient with me.  Delight in me, I beg of you, as I delight in my daughter.  For if I as a human father know how to give good gifts to my children — patience, correction, gentleness, love — how much more will you, Father in Heaven, give good gifts to me, your child?  Amen.

Sunday Mornings

My Sanctuary

I had the very odd experience this morning of walking around my parents' neighborhood and bumping into "the damned."  You see, it's a Sunday morning and all of the "saved" are at church because this is considered to be a sacred time of the week among the faithful.  Now lest it sounds like I'm picking on the church, I want to be clear: we all need sacred spaces and sacred times.  It is part of what makes us human.  Without that which is "set apart," we collapse in upon ourselves.  This was Augustine's definition of sin, by the way:  the self curved in upon the self.  It's also the way that C. S. Lewis describes hell in The Great Divorce or Sir Edwin Abbott in Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.  But I digress...

But here's the odd thing about this morning's experience.  As I realized that I was "among the damned" on this Sunday morning, I had a memory come back to me of when I preached behind a pulpit in Indianapolis (in what now seems like another life) and declared with boldness: "The church does not have a monopoly on God!  We think that because we are here within these 'sacred' walls, we are the 'saved' and they are the 'damned,' but that is not so!  The church itself is a mixture of good and evil, just as the rest of the world is, just as our own individual selves are."  I suspect that I remembered it so well this morning (isn't memory such an odd thing?!?) because I really believed it when I proclaimed it from the pulpit.  I still believe it, yet I oddly perceive the truth of it a bit better now.