I don’t know much about birds, but I love listening to them and watching them.  There is a bird who has made a nest on the corner of the front of our house, and she steps out onto the powerline each morning and begins chirping.  Her whole body vibrates with the passion of her song.  I imagine she is warding off any would-be marauders of her nest.  However, she could just as easily be singing the praises of the day or lamenting a loss.

While I was in the back yard lying on the hammock the other day, I saw high in the sky two large birds, which were circling each other.  At first I considered that they may be watching something dying on the earth below and waiting for the appropriate point to descend.  Suddenly amidst the circling motion, they departed one another, each flying off in a direction opposite the other.  I kept thinking that they would turn back to each other, but they flew completely away, each disappearing into a separate corner of the sky.

Sometimes when I do my prayer sit in the back yard, the diversity in songs and volume coming from the birds all around me so fill the air that it seemingly takes over any personal intention I may have had.  I wonder… if what I am tempted to construe as a distraction could be precisely the point.

We live in a world and culture where the default stance seems to be one of explanations that seek certainty and plans that coincide with expectations in which we place our energy and trust.  Figuring something out can bring much satisfaction and many times it can serve the betterment (or so it seems) of a situation.  I wonder though if we often place too much stock in this default stance of planning for outcomes of certainty.  Do possibilities of surprise and wonderment that try to present themselves remain invisible because our fixed sight does not allow the peripheral vision needed to see them?

For some reason, today’s Gospel seems to make me think of these things (Mt 8:18-22):

When Jesus saw a crowd around him,
he gave orders to cross to the other shore.
A scribe approached and said to him,
“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
Another of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
But Jesus answered him, “Follow me,
and let the dead bury their dead.“

It is interesting that the opening line involves Jesus noticing the crowd and then deciding to “cross to the other shore.”  Crowdedness can be stifling and confining.  Indeed if you are claustrophobic, it can actually initiate a panic attack.  I wonder what the other shore could mean.  Openness?  Unimagined options?  An unforeseen future?  There is a sense of freedom in this image of “crossing to the other shore.”  However, this freedom is not a fleeing or running away from anything.  It seems to be more an invitation to any who will listen.  It’s more a command than an invitation.   As Matthew tells us, Jesus “gave orders to cross to the other side.”

A scribe, perhaps in response, addresses Jesus by declaring “I will follow you wherever you go.”  Jesus responds to this by making it clear from the start that this “other shore” is not one of security and certainty.  In other words, it’s not the status quo, it’s not even necessarily the desired outcome of an expectation or a careful plan.  There are no places of comfort guaranteed in the move from the familiar.  Indeed, “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Could this mean that possibilities that could arise as the result of risking leaving the familiar and stretching out into new ‘territories’ or other ‘shores’ will confound our minds. i.e., the way we normally think of things?

There is a type of ‘homelessness’ that Jesus seems to be speaking about here that is not something that we should fear.  Although our ‘heads’ may not be able to rest in the uncomfortableness of any newness that we may encounter, I wonder if the places we could end up if we would indeed ‘follow,’ would situate us more deeply in the heart.  In other words, when we take the risk of (first of all) imagining that things may not be what they appear to be, or even better, that we may not be seeing the ‘full picture,’ we might, of all things, actually encounter something new and wonderful.   And this encounter, if we allow it, could even transform us so much so that our heart becomes more expansive.  Is this not a way of thinking about compassion?

It’s hard to let go of something we feel comfortable with, even if that ‘something’ is not life-giving.  We sacrifice much in our lives simply to hold on to the ideas that we have about people and things.  We may want something new, but we just can’t seem to break out of the grip that familiarity and comfort have on us.   Could this be what Jesus means when he tells the disciple who wants to ‘go first and bury my father,’ to ‘let the dead bury their dead?’  How many things (ideas, prejudices, justifications, etc.) do we allow to crowd and, even worse, bury us?  This is a type of ‘death’ we participate in that we don’t even realize many times.  And, we even assist each other in this process – the dead burying the dead – by judging each other based upon our personal ‘convictions’ and in the process actually fail to question, challenge, and support each other in ways that could give Life!

It amazes me how much we fear ‘death,’ when indeed we actively participate in death when we allow and many times promote the staleness of familiar patterns of addiction and destruction in our lives.  We can justify anything with our minds, and we can feel quite comfortable in doing so.  When I take the time or space to really look at myself as I go through the day, I see how much I contribute to the ‘dead burying the dead.’  However, I also see opportunities to re-imagine or to ‘not go there.’  Like the birds in the sky there is a point where we can go in another direction, and maybe not even know where we will end up.

In commanding us to ‘cross to the other shore,’ and follow Him, Jesus is inviting us into the present which is always pregnant with the future.  In other words, if we can become present enough in our lives and with each other in a mindful (heart-full) way, we can begin to see that, as Ilia Delio, the Franciscan theologian, reminds us[i], there is always the possibility for something really NEW!  In the present, God is the Future.  And this future is not determined by planned outcomes but more characterized by the refreshing transformation that can come from authentic engagement in Life itself.

The Life that we are called toward and forward into is a life that does not rest in nests or hide in dens.  It is God’s own life that we are already in, though we fail to engage in it.  God’s life is not simply an ‘other shore,’ but the very basis for Life (ours and everyone else’s) to be created and re-created over and over again in a Newness that will unsettle us, only so that we can live Life itself.  This is the ‘homelessness’ of God that in fact expands the Home that is our Heart!

What if the future is not simply about something happening but more so the possibility for Life to keep going.  Here the outcomes are based on response-able and compassionate engagement with each other more than planned expectations.  Dare we follow Christ into such a future – God’s future?

[i] See https://www.omegacenter.info/   Video presentation with Ilia Delio, “God, Evolution and the Power of Love,”Courtesy of the Church of Conscious Harmony, Austin TX, January 2017.

Peace,

Thomas

(originally published July 2, 2018)