Correction

In the recent blog, "Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?" I named Chloe as a deacon. Should have written Phoebe. Chloe was another woman who apparently was a leader of some magnitude in the church at Corinth, but is not identified as a deacon. Check Romans 16:1, and 1 Corinthians 1:11.

Snot

The only person, the only face, the only name I can remember from my first two years in school was a second-grader I often walked to school with, a hare-lipped boy we all knew only as “Snotnose.” Sadly, the name always fit. Of course we all at times have suffered from that condition, but with him it was a constant. One of my own snotty discoveries came after I began working: plowing, mowing or raking hay, mixing feed by the ton, unloading semi-truck loads of porously sacked blood meal, and other tasks that filled the air with dusty pollutants. Blowing and cleaning out my nose at the end of the day, It took only a few of those experiences before I came to see the function of snot. That black stuff that emerged educated me. Snot is not an obscene topic. It is merely mucus. Think of them as synonyms, which they are. Snot simply refers to the stuff in the snout. Check a dictionary; check an etymological dictionary. In polite society we find one term–snot--objectionable; if we study human physiology, we find the stuff itself–mucus--indispensable. In its pure state, this slime, in cooperation with the hairs in our nose, functions as a filtering vacuum cleaner to provide our lungs with clean inspiration. As we inhale, mucus traps and hold in the vacuum bag–the nose–much of the pollution that contaminates the air in every breath we take: dust, pollen, airborne germs, and other assorted detritus that drifts full-time through the atmosphere. When we exhale, the vacuum bag tends to empty its dirty accumulation. If the buildup begins to clog the system, we typically turn the power up a few notches for a more vigorous exhalation to blow the now contaminated snot out. Thus our lungs are protected and our health body maintains its homeostasis. What would we do without snot? This structure, the nose, stands guard over the lungs (and by implication, the body; by further implication our very self), but the guardhouse is not 100% effective. Sometimes the airborne invaders overwhelm it and infections of varied types attack the system--perhaps the most common intruder is the common cold. From the battleground on which the invaders and our immune system combat each other, many of the wounded and dead wind up overloading the limited storage space the guardhouse provides. On top of the miseries we already suffer from infection, we find ourselves with breathing problems. The intonation of our speech changes. If in public, we are embarrassed as people see us shift our breathing to a makeshift vacuum cleaner, the mouth–sans hairs, equipped rather with teeth, thus not as effective in trapping whatever foul invaders may take the occasion to advance their attack. With the nose overloaded with used up snot, we take action and blow the garbage out so the good mucus can get back on the job full-time. And, we move more closely into our comfort zone. I am writing such an essay because it is an exercise suggested by Bonni Goldberg in her book, Room to Write. This exercise was designed to facilitate a less inhibited approach to writing. I suspect that, for me, it will work. To use T. B. Maston’s applicable phrase, are there any “abidingly relevant principles” that emerge from this brief essay on bodily slime? I think there are. If time and purpose allowed, we might note the other many assorted elements with which the body protects itself, and the half-dozen or so systems with which the body rids itself of used up, useless matter, or substances that threaten our health. Moreover, we might find it adventurous to study the ubiquity and function of mucus in places beyond the nose. I am interested just now, however, in what analogies we might adapt from the foregoing essay. We live in a social atmosphere in which monstrous pollution, garbage, filth, and toxicity is unavoidable. Television is high on the list, but the list is long. We need guard towers, we need protective filters (soul mucus), or we will be–we are being–destroyed. But even with the best of protection, at times our complex of defenses is inevitably overwhelmed. Our soul becomes a battleground. Not only do we need a strong and effective immune system to rally and defeat the intruders, we similarly must develop and maintain an active and efficient elimination system or systems. Day and night, week by week, if we are alert, we become aware that our mind, heart, spirit–whatever–is stopped up or is becoming clogged up with stuff that has been used up and no longer of value, stuff that was useless to begin with, stuff that threatens our entire being with its toxicity. Part of a psychic guard station/vacuum cleaning/filtering system by learning where pollution is severe and intentionally avoiding these danger zones, to the degree that is possible. Take lessons from Thoreau’s, Walden, Scott and Helen Nearing’s, Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Listen to the Psalmist, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” Embed things into our character that automatically screen out pollution because they are part of who we have become. Such character traits will, like the mucus and hairs in our nose work without any need of conscious effort on our part. This only begins to suggest ways to filter out the garbage that our society systematically offers us as food. Each will have to develop systems that are appropriate to who they are, but develop them we must, or multiple infections will destroy us; our life will stumble down a degenerative hill. A second step toward spiritual, mental health is to excrete all of this stuff that jams up the plumbing of our spiritual anatomy. Sometimes, like the blowing of the nose, it requires forceful, even violent expulsion. If our spirit is healthy, much of this will be done unconsciously, much as the body secretes wastes through sweat. But we also need to maintain the sensitive awareness of the daily alien intrusions and develop habits of regular daily elimination of all the junk that obstructs or threatens our well-being. Otherwise, mental and spiritual constipation will provide a perfect setup for misery. A few methods of excretion occur to me immediately; I’m sure will come to me later. Talk with someone–trusted friend, professional counselor, God–about the trash that is clogging up your life flow. That can make a beginning, at least, of getting it out of your system. Somewhere years ago I heard the idea of “the expulsive power of a new affection.” Can something be found that is interesting enough and powerful enough to take over the space and thus expel the enemy agents that have gained a beachhead in your mind? One lesson learned from snot is that at times there are things that must be eliminated from our life or it can become mighty miserable. What has our scrutiny of snot attained? It has established that we need to learn more about the mental and spiritual defensive structures that can filter out the pollutants that fill our individual and social environment. If these structures are to do their job, regular and careful maintenance is necessary. We need to identify and become more aware of the importance of our several systems of elimination. We must understand how they work so we can regularly rid ourselves of all the crap that inescapably accumulates in our lives. Thinking about snot is not a waste of time.

Hearing God While Reading the Bible

Today during Ed’s funeral, we learned that the greatest single word of assurance for him came from John 14:1-3, specifically: “I go to prepare a place for you. . . .” When God spoke directly, personally to Ed as long ago he read those words, he heard God saying: "I go to prepare a place for you.” Ed had felt alone in the world prior to that life-changing moment; there was no place where he felt that he fit. But when the risen Jesus spoke clearly to him of “ a place for you,” he knew that there was a place already prepared for him, just him, a place waiting that no one else could occupy. After that word from God, any time he felt a question about his standing with God, he went back to that personal word from God. But we know the setting in which these words were spoken by the historical Jesus. Knowing that he was facing death, knowing that his close disciples felt as if they were about to be abandoned, Jesus assured them that they should not be disturbed, because although he was about to die, he was going to prepare a place for them, so that at the appropriate time they could join him in a prepared place. These words were addressed directly to the few special disciples. They were not addressed to the multitudes. These words weren’t given as a generic message of comfort and hope. How can we appropriate these words, believing that God speaks them personally to an individual in the 21st Century? Can biblical hermeneutics answer out question? Hermeneutics is all about interpretation: methods, principles, practice. It intends to help us understand the true meaning of a written passage. At the heart of hermeneutics is the concept of exegesis, which is the effort to extract from the text only what is in the text. Exegesis is to be contrasted with eisegesis, which is the practice of reading our own ideas into the text. Careful use of the principles of exegesis give us an objective, we might even say scientific, understanding of what a text is saying in truth. Eisegesis is a subjective reading that can read almost anything into a text; it has no objective constraints. Standard practice in schools of theological training stresses exegesis as the only dependable pathway to biblical truth. Eisegesis is frowned on. For long years I lived under the control of these ideas. However, I’ve come to realize that exegesis alone is not sufficient, perhaps not even necessary to hear God speak through the written holy script. Exegesis, in all its dimensions, de-finites meaning only in the literal sense of definition, that is, it sets the boundaries of meaning, and that is all it can do. It indicates where the fences are. A fence, a wall, a border, knows not the content, intent, or portent of what it confines. Sometimes exegesis cannot completely fence in meaning. Sometimes meaning jumps fences, breaks them down, slips through the border guards. Sometimes the borders are permeable or semipermeable. At other times the fences have gates, built-in gates through which meaning finds or achieves greater freedom. “The letter kills; the spirit frees.” Nor do any principles of interpretation dictate or clearly delineate meaning. Certainly hermeneutical principles cannot provide objective, indisputable, comprehensive understanding, much less insight or direct communication. Hermeneutics exists only as a faithful servant to be called only occasionally, as needed. None of this is to denigrate exegetical, hermeneutical principles and methods. However, occasionally the need arises to remind servants of their station, to put them back in their place. Servants are not masters. Consciously or not, deliberately or not, one theme of history is that servants tend to forget who they are, or reject their status and usurp the authority of their mistress or master (Mark 12:1-12). Principles of interpretation, the work of exegesis, the learning of the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic languages and perhaps other Semitic languages are all of value. To repeat, the vocabulary, etymology, grammar, and syntax of a language guard against subjectivism, but the guard–like the servant–is not the Lord. I cannot overemphasize the respect I have for all these objective tools, but they must be kept firmly in their place. I remember the manager of a nationally prominent Angus Cattle Farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma back in the 1950s. He had brought his prize cattle to show–and win–in the International Livestock Show in Chicago. After getting the cattle and hired help (read, “servants”) settled in, he checked into a nice downtown hotel. The manager, Earl, was inconsiderate, wrong, and extremely rude to the bellhop who carried his luggage for him to his room. The bellhop, expecting a tip, extended his hand, palm up. Earl dismissed him abruptly with a curt: “I don’t shake hands with the help,” then turned to the task of unpacking and settling into his room. In recounting this occasion, I have not intended that we should adopt and project Earl’s attitude toward the “help.” I reviewed this scene as one way to emphasize that the “help,” the “servant,” always holds a place subordinate to a superior, and must maintain always the subservient place. Formal hermeneutics is subservient to the living Spirit who first inspired these words and would now speak to our own living spirit. I have great respect and appreciation for formal hermeneutics. It has been a needed guard and servant for me, a close companion for most of the past fifty years. Because of my training in a “modern” and conservative theological seminary. I too often allowed it to be the director–even the dictator–of my reading of the Bible. (Clearly, it would rule that Ed did not hear God speak to him in the words of John 14; those words were directed to Jesus’ apostles.) I refer to my “modern” theological training, for although pre-modern–patristic and scholastic–interpreters were not at all hermeneutically unsophisticated, their way of reading the text was quite different from the modern. In the late 20th Century, a postmodern generation also refuses to be fenced in by “formal” rules and boundaries. Postmodern searchers for a scriptural word from God search intently within and without the gate. They are realizing the limits of the exegetical limits on meaning and truth. This diatribe came about as in the wee hours of the morning I drank coffee, ate toast and eggs (from my little silver-laced bantam pullet). As I ate and wrote a letter to one of our daughters, I had The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, open to the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah. At about three o'clock I took a sip of coffee, looked over at the text of the message, and read: “‘There’s hope for your children.’ God’s decree.” I know the occasion of these words, to whom they were addressed, and know that God’s word is not in any one line, or one verse, but lies, rather, in the whole story of the Hebrew Exile. However. . . . When I read, “There’s hope for your children,” this troubled father of sometimes troubled daughters, grandchildren, and great-grand children heard the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God’s powerful presence, speaking words of comfort to my own aching heart. To me, for me, in that moment, the Holy One of God’s covenant community spoke, saying: “There’s hope for your children,” and I gratefully acknowledged and praised God. A few years ago, the Benedictine oblate, Kathleen Norris acquainted me with the ancient idea of lectio divina, which is defined as: An ancient form of meditation on scripture where one reads "very slowly through a text until a word or phrase 'lights' up and attracts the reader. The text is then laid aside and the phrase is repeated in the heart...without analysis." It is: Reading or more exactly, listening to the book we believe to be divinely inspired. In this way we hear the word of God in the scriptures. It is the most ancient method of developing friendship with Christ by using scripture texts as topics of conversation with him. God spoke to his people in Exile, Jesus to his fearful disciples; Jesus to my friend, Ed; and the other morning, to me. Not, the Bible said, or the Bible means, or “we may understand this as God’s word to us.” No, God’s word, that is, God speaking directly, through the written word, Spirit to spirit, divine love to human cry. Lectio divina: words on a page suddenly light up and it is not just a book, not just an inspired text, rather, in that moment we are inspired–in-spirited by the Comforter Jesus promised.

The Need to Change

No matter how good their evidence, the doctors don’t always know. Doctors from three major hospitals told us that Bea had only three to six months to live, so we borrowed a credit card and with three hundred dollars friends had given us, we set out for California for a last visit with Carol’s sister. That was forty-some years ago. Bea died last year (not of cancer). The doctors don’t always know. On the other hand, the doctors usually prove to be right. I had been their pastor only a week or so when I was told that I should visit a very sick young mother who lived on a farm seven miles north of town. I was new and I was young and it seemed to me that Mae more endured than appreciated the pastoral visit. A few weeks later she was in the hospital forty miles away. When I arrived, the lady at the desk directed me to Room 312. A doctor was leaving 312 as I walked down the hall. I asked Mae how she was doing and received the bitter response, “How would you feel? What would you do if the doctor had just told you that you had cancer and only six months left to live, and you had a son who is only six-years-old?” These unexpected words hit me like a slap in the face, but I realized that the doctor’s words had been a far greater blow to her. It was early afternoon when the doctor came to her room and told her. She was alone. Friends and family were home and about their business, and the doctor had not been expecting that I would be arriving. He merely had told her the devastating facts and left her alone, without any available support expected. I was glad I had showed up. We were virtual strangers, but at least I was another human presence, someone she could absorb some of the shock. I had a six-year-old at home myself, and found myself replying to her “What would you do?” question with: “I don’t know, but I think I would spend that six months putting into that son all of myself that I could.” Within a few weeks I conducted her funeral. Whether my word were of any value or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that now, more than forty years later, I still think that would be my most honest answer as to what I would attempt to do. With Bea, the doctors were wrong and our visit of 1963 was not our predicted last time together. We had many good visits in the years that followed. With Mae, the story was different. Her time was up. I was not allowed to become anything other than a stranger. Someone else raised her son: his father, and then later on, a stepmother. Yet another story, more recent, speaks of a different kind of opportunity. Recognizing that she has come to a fork in life’s road, which will she take before death takes her? Will she choose, or merely drift? Again, a young child is involved. For long years the mother has been careless about her own health, to the point that she now realizes her life is at risk. Her fear of death seems to be like that of Mae’s: “What if I were to die and leave this precious child behind?” More to the point, “How selfish and inconsiderate of me if I were to die because I refused to change my way of living, and thus deprived my child of her mother?” In this situation, I responded, as I often do, with the words of an old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you have been traveling the wrong path, turn around.” Bad eating habits, lack of exercise, failure to follow doctor’s instructions, or even to see the doctor as often as needed–no matter how long these have done their damage they all can be turned around. As Carlyle Marney often said, “You don’t have to go on living like you have.” I remember reading somewhere: “Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it.” Most of us have the essential life skills. Many of us, if we stop to think, know what should be done next. Most of our failure most of the time lies in our not doing what we know we should, and what we know how. There is still time for this mother to turn around and move toward a more promising future for mother and child. Most of us realize the need to turn major elements of our life in a new direction. But will we do it?