God's Engraving.

In the far corner of the antique store was an area reserved for estate jewelry. Having belonged to people before, these pieces reflect a time and elegance past. I noticed a pristine silver platter, and the sales assistant explained how they remove all the scratches, marks, and engravings to give it that brand-new look.

As I left the store, I thought about the exorbitant effort made to make the platter look new. What did it look like before? Whose initials were they? Was it a wedding gift, engraved for a lifetime of happiness? How did the scratches get there? Did a child unsuccessfully try to help clear the table, or a dog voraciously lick up the left over juice? Whatever initials or scratches were there, they're gone now. Anything that identified the platter is gone. Now it looks like any other platter. Much was lost in the process, but I'm sure it makes it easier to sell.

 We are not all that different. We, too, have been engraved, bare the marks of our particular family.  If baptized, we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.” We also have lots of scratches from fully lived lives. The sad thing is we work just as hard, if not harder, to remove all distinguishing features. In an effort to appear brand new, or to look like everyone else, we remove the very markings that make us unique.

Perhaps it makes us easier to sell, but I’ve come to see the scrapes and marks as part of who we are. The wrong and right turns that left their marks on us, the great and not so great moments that made deep impressions, are all part of “God’s engraving.”

How dare we polish them out!

Speaking in Tongues.

I remember the first time I heard someone speak in tongues. I was visiting a Pentecostal church in Jerusalem and had been warned it would be unlike other services with which I was familiar, but it was still surprising when people around me began. The woman next to me was the first, and a man quickly came over claiming to have the “gift to interpret.” It was all new to me, and I am still not sure what to make of the experience, but I remember it each year on Pentecost.

This is the day we celebrate the birthday of the Church and give thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling among us, causing the early disciples to speak in tongues and other languages. There was a mighty wind and fire surrounding them as well, and two thousand years later we recall the moment and celebrate the institution we call “Church.”

I know there are still many churches that are “spirit filled,” as they say, where speaking in tongues is a common experience, but I wonder if I have missed such manifestations of the Spirit by simply looking there for evidence. Recently, I have come to see many other places where people speak in tongues.

There’s a Pope now sitting in the seat of St. Peter who few can figure out. When elected, he moved his seat down off the stage to be on the same level of his brother cardinals as they came to great him. He rode the bus back from the election, rather than ride in the reserved limousine. He lives in an apartment, not a palace, and drives a beat-up car. To a Church that had grown complacent and focused too often on itself, he speaks a radical message of change. He speaks of the poor, outcasts, and others who might well enter the kingdom of heaven before the religious leaders. He might as well be speaking in tongues. I think he is.

I remember the first time I went to an AA meeting. The 12 steps and traditions were read, as well as a meditation, then people spoke about letting go and letting God, about taking one day at a time, about surrendering, and holding on to things by giving them away. None of it made any sense to me at all. They might as well have been speaking in tongues. I now know they were.

I remember sitting around with classmates from a long-ago time and talking about our lives since graduation. It seemed like everyone had made much of his or her life. The room was filled with investment brokers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and one politician. When I shared my work with drug addicts, many of whom were homeless and recently freed from prison, people politely nodded and fidgeted in their seats eager to move on to someone else. My work, particularly when seen through the eyes of those who “knew me when,” made little sense. I might as well have been speaking in tongues. Perhaps I was.

Happy Pentecost.

Inhabiting The Truth

How would our lives be different if we inhabited the truth? I don’t mean, what would it be like if we told the truth, although many of us would benefit from that as well, but rather what would it look like if we lived into the truth . . . about us?

In his amazing book entitled Tattoos on the Heart, a book describing his ministry among the gangs of Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle writes the following: “we seek to tell each person this truth: they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them – and then we watch, from a privileged place, as people inhabit this truth.”

What would it mean is someone whispered such a truth into our ears?

“You are exactly what God had in mind when God created you.”

I can only speak for myself, but living into that truth would be a challenge. So often, I inhabit other messages, none of which are true, but, to quote Julia Robert’s character in Pretty Woman, “sometimes they’re easier to believe.”

“It’s never too late to start your day over,” they say in recovery circles. Perhaps we could adapt that sage advice and say: “It’s never too late to inhabit the truth.”

I’m up for it, if you are.