Sunday Afternoon

KNOWING GOD

"..We develop false theologies of God. We make him into Jonathan Edwards's sadistic Angry God, who eagerly anticipates staining his own robes with our blood. Or we make him the Great Balancer, who will send us a tragedy as soon as things really start going well for us. Or the Grandfather God, who looks the other way while we do what we wish, but who is always there with a Band-Aid and a cup of hot chocolate when we want him."

- Sand in the Gears

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We're approaching the time of Diwali, one of my favorite Hindu holidays, remembered from my days as a Hindu wannabe. The chant we sang while holding the little candles was so beautiful.
I think that I took the kids a couple of times, but they don't remember it. The play of the lights along with the Diwali chant was enchanting and warm.

The text for today [in the Christian church] was the Decalogue (10 commandments) and the story of the vineyard and the tenants [Matthew 21: 33-46].

It's the world as vineyard. Whatever happens in the vineyard spreads to the entire world. What is valued most highly here? What are the rules? What is working? What is failing? Here we are, we're right in the middle of the vineyard. This vineyard is all around us. The commandments have been broken, never mind the instructions of the landlord. Economic uncertainty and thievery. Here we are, in the middle of the vineyard, wondering ; "Does the Source of All believe in us and love us enough to forgive us and love us no matter what ?" It's so easy to forget the instructions. None of this is really ours. It is entrusted to us, but we think that everything is ours. We own our world and then seek to defend it.

I've been thinking of the 'Heavenly Father' in a slightly different way since my earthly father died. All religion and spiritual yearning is about relationship, or the lack of it. When we buried my father, I felt bereft, and yet I wondered who that man was that we were burying. In many ways he was a stranger. I remembered my father, and honored him, but did I really know him? I think about his life as a veteran of WWII, as someone who probably lived his whole life with PTSD. In many ways he was successful and accomplished. But beneath the veneer of success and piety, he lived out of the place that says' we're all on our own' -- living as if we are the landowner of our own life and our own vineyard -- "My life is mine and no one else's business." In many ways his relationship with 'The Father' was always colored by the war, by that sense of being alone, fighting for survival, trusting no one, allowing no one to know him to see his heart, his inmost being. He was always seeking approval, but of what - of who? His actions were those of a person who believed in nothing. No abundance. No generosity. No gratitude.

It's not our vineyard and never was. It never will be. We are invited to be as faithful as God is faithful to us. We are invited to be good stewards of what is ours on loan. My father accumulated quite a bit of material wealth in his life. He wanted it, he amassed it, he was proud of what was his. Yet now he's dead, and what was all that for? Did it give him what he hoped for? Was he a good steward of the vineyard that was his on loan? Did he return his gifts back to God, having tilled and pruned the vineyard to make this land, this world a better greater more compassionate place? I really can't answer those questions for him. Because as I say, I can't hold the assumption that I knew him. I knew him, but did I truly know the heart of the man? No, I didn't.

This is a poem about the day we buried my father.

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"We are called to discern between God's voice and ours. To discern is to know the difference between the two.
Isaac is the one who laughs. When Abraham builds altars, Isaac digs wells........

What are the wells you are digging from your disappointments?
What happens when you come to the place where life is not what it seems?

After all, Scripture is a dialogue, not a one-way conversation."

- Stringer


MY FATHER'S HOUSE

Walking up the graveled cemetery trail,
Sweaty in the hot sun,
Tired, bone tired -
Among my relatives, moving in a trance --
We have changed shoes and clothes
to walk to the grave over grass and pebbles.

This day has been going on for years.

Today we buried my father
The man I hardly knew.
Is there anything I feel ?
Or is that for later --
A feeling that only arrives only out of solitude and silence.
Out of contrition.

Will what I feel come to me
Sudden as a dream
or will I just feel the accumulated sum of
all the left out and discarded times -
Burdened by all the emotions
that were never brought up
to see daylight.

Or is it that I simply cannot feel
Love as that radiance
that Divine luminosity
That clear light at the center of my being.
The marrow in my bones.

My superpowers don’t work here.

My inner contours and corners
make it difficult to
assess what it is that I have lost.
Inside this community at the graveside
The story I repeat is that only certain people are valuable
If only we could worship God together.

If only we could love out in the open
Free from judging others
Free to find the coast clear
To come out of hiding.

We walk from our cars to the mausoleum.
We sweat on benches
watching the flag on the coffin --
The army boys folding and folding again
to get it right
A perfect flag.

We walk to the freshly opened earth
Time stands in suspension with no breeze.

As others leave,
I walk down the asphalt path under beeches
to the grave of my mother
in the baby corner
Next to my baby nephew's place.

Still holding unshed tears
for my father’s
disappearance into the ground,
I let the feelings come as I find mother's stone.
I always cry when I come to her spot
Under the trees.
I know what I feel for her with no ambiguity.
At opposite corners of the place of graves
In identical boxes
My parents lie in state.

We will not die
Yet we will all be changed.

Time flows and trickles
like the stream of sweat
mixed with day long weeping.

The moon begins to rise
Above the ocean.

14 Sept, 2008
Jupiter Fla.