Silo Building

I once heard a story about a farmer who was good at what he did. His harvests were plentiful, so he needed to build bigger silos. Soon, they were filled, and he built more. Then, as the story goes, he learns that his time was up, and all he had to show for his life was a bunch of filled silos.

I try to recall this story whenever I find myself clinging to things that don’t matter. It’s a story that’s particularly relevant today as we swim though some peculiar waters. A virus has altered our day-to-day living. We’re told to stay away from others, to work from home, if we still have jobs, and it seems so strange to live this way. We walk down the barren aisles of the grocery stores and avoid eye contact with the other customers as if the virus could be spread by simply looking at each other. 

Fear distorts us in so many ways. 

Economic interdependence has revealed itself like a dew-covered spider web. We look out our windows to make sure our silos are still standing, and I wonder if we aren’t somehow being asked the same question as the farmer: On what are our lives truly based?

I have no doubt this troubled time will alter the way we live our lives. What I wonder is, will it alter us for good or ill? When it’s over, and it will be over, will we go back to business as usual? Will we clench our first more tightly, or open our hands? Will we return with greater vehemency to silo-building, or will we focus on something beyond our silos? When we return to work, will we still take walks around the neighborhood with our families and wave to neighbors? Will we continue to play board games, or go back to eating dinner in front of the television while clinging to our phones?

Like everyone, I can’t wait until this is over, but I pray that, when it is, I remember the important lesson it’s been trying to teach us, the same one that was taught to a farmer long ago.

Lent 2020: Entangled Yarn

The young girl came up to her teacher with tears in her eyes. She held something behind her back, and when the teacher asked what was wrong the girl brought forth a tangled ball of yarn. Reluctantly, she placed it in her teacher’s waiting hand. 

Just minutes before, the girl had received the yarn as if it were a sacred gift, but in her excitement made it a wound-up mess. She went to another student for help, but they were only able to do so much. With nowhere else to go, she returned to the teacher for help. Sitting in the chair made for her students, the teacher placed the yarn on her knees and went to work. Strand by strand she worked like a surgeon until the yarn was as it had once been. Looking up, the tears remained on the little girl’s face, but now there was a smile as well. The teacher didn’t chastise the girl, nor prohibit her from ever playing with yarn. Instead, she held it out for the girl and said: “Let’s try this again.”

I’m afraid we’ve made the season of Lent too complicated, too churchy. With ash on our foreheads, and our fingers tightly gripping what’s left of our resolutions, it might be helpful to think of our lives as the yarn in the story. They were given to us as sacred gifts, and hopefully we received them with great excitement. Like yarn, however, we often get our lives entangled and, left to our own devises, probably make things worse if we don’t ask for help. 

Lent is a season to return to the teacher. It’s a time to place our entangled lives into the hands of the one who gave them to us in the first place. Mourn the mess, yes, but don’t despair. In the hands of the teacher the most stubborn knots can be undone. Obsessions can be lifted, habits transformed, and impossible situations resolved. Light can be found in darkness, dead relationships can be resurrected, and hope found within despair. 

But first, we have to see the knotted yarn for what it is. Then, we need to find the faith to go to the one who’s hand is out, waiting - the one who, in love, will whisper, “Let’s try this again.”

Lent 2020: Facing the truth.

It was a moment of truth. No need to get into the particulars, we’ve all had them, but when they arrive they cause us to gasp and/or recoil. They make us uncomfortable, and many of us instantly run to solutions or excuses to remove, ease, or deny the truth that’s suddenly looking us square in the face. I’m so adept as this behavior, I’ve had to pay someone to teach me to look at the truth! Even with that person’s help, my eyesight is far from 20/20. 

I could give examples from history, moments that illustrate the importance of looking at truth, wrestling with it, sitting uncomfortably beside it, rather than face or deal with it, but that would distance us from the moments in our own lives that need to be looked at. Focusing on society, or history, is so much easier than looking in the mirror. 

Lent is an invitation to look at truth. No wonder it is not a popular season in the liturgical calendar. Some denominations don’t even recognize it, but those of us who do, those of us who are willing to make this journey, are in for a powerful and wonderful adventure. It’s not a pilgrimage into the light, although I believe there is light in the end. It’s a pilgrimage into the truth, and often that begins with darkness. 

What’s really going on in our hearts? 

What are we really up to when no one is looking? 

Who are we really when we strip away the shiny paper with which we wrap ourselves?

It’s not easy work, which is why so few are willing to do it. We’ll be tempted to focus on solutions, like giving things up (so we’ll lose weight), but the real beauty of the season is found when we walk slowly enough and look deliberately enough at ourselves. We’re told the truth will set us free, but it’s going to hurt like heck to get there!

The light that is Easter awaits us all at the end of these 40 days. It’s more brilliant than any other light, and more powerful than any darkness. In fact, the darkness cannot consume or comprehend the light, we’re also told.

So, I invite you on a journey that is yours alone to take. May we have the courage to begin, the fortitude to continue, and the grace to reach the end. 

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