Jesus' Job Hunting Process

This past week has been a week of many meetings, which leaves me much more exhausted than any other type of work.  I'd rather be teaching or reading student essays.  I'd rather spend the week registering students or even spend day after day dealing with student complaints--well, maybe not dealing with complaints, which leaves me exhausted in a different way.

As I wrote in yesterday's post, I've had the liturgical season in my brain as well, and my poet self can't help but notice the synchronicities and the disjunctions.  I spent epiphany wishing for wisdom and insight while sitting in a very long meeting in a dreadful room. 

Yesterday, I went to a training session to remind us all of the hiring process.  You might say, "How hard can it be?  Get the resumes, have some interviews, make an offer."

Our hiring process is much more involved:  there are multiple interviews and background checks and drug checks and an HR onboarding webinar kind of thing and an HR Orientation.  There are forms and a teaching demonstration and more forms and transcripts that must be provided.

Yesterday I had the baptism of Jesus on the brain.  I thought about the early days of Christ's ministry:  no forms, no interviews, no proving that one is already great at the job.  No--in the Gospels that have a baptism story, Jesus gets baptized and gets to work.  He doesn't have to go to school for years to get the credentials to be allowed to work.  There is no interview--John the Baptist recognizes Jesus and baptizes him.

I also think of my favorite aspect of the baptism stories that many of us will hear this Sunday.  I love that God declares satisfaction with Jesus before Jesus has done a single thing.  Jesus doesn't have to prove himself the best candidate for the job by choosing the right disciples.  Jesus doesn't have to attract 40 followers before being allowed to be part of God's organization.

Most of us live and work in cultures that don't accept us from the beginning.  We have to prove ourselves.  We have to have the right degrees and training.  We have to look and act in certain ways.

At church, when church is acting as its best self, we are welcomed as we are.  We hear of God's dream about how life could be better, but we are not kicked out of church if we can't make progress in a certain way.

Don't get me wrong:  our church will not allow total strangers to be alone with the children or the money.  We understand the world we're living in.  Our insurance requires us to have background checks of even the most unlikely candidates to abuse children, and our guidelines stipulate that no adult, no matter who it is, will be the only adult in a windowless room with children.

Still, it's a very different situation than the one that most of us face in other societal institutions.  It may be one of the little recognized, but sorely needed, gifts that the church has to offer, but one we rarely think to celebrate.

Poetry Friday: A Windowless Room, a Fluorescent Sky

It's been a week of many meetings, most of them in the same room.

 During Wednesday's meeting, I thought about the fact that it was Epiphany, and I sat in a windowless room under a fluorescent sky.  I composed lines for poems and eventually wrote a sonnet.  It's not a great sonnet, or even a good sonnet, but it kept me steady and focused.  Writing in rhyme and form is an interesting exercise, but not one I force myself to do often.
In the afternoon, I sketched angels and vines around the margins of my meeting agenda.  My Culinary colleague friend sitting beside me sketched an angel in profile.  Mine was full on, with a cartoonish face.  My writer colleague friend thought the angel was saying no, because of her o-shaped mouth.  I had intended to show that she was singing, so I sketched some musical notes around her head.

I thought of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"--I titled mine A Very Young Girl with Ragged Wings.  Her wings were ragged, and her gown had layers of ruffles that may or may not have been ragged.

My writer colleague friend asked if I was going to write about her.  My visual artist colleague friend asked if I was going to construct the dress.  I was just filling time during the afternoon meeting and responding to the doodle of my Culinary colleague friend beside me.  I thought about the different responses to my doodle--how intriguing!

I came home and checked through every slide for an online course I'll be teaching and did dishes.  I would have rather had a different 3 Kings celebration, but oh well.  My spouse has been fighting a cold (the cold has been winning), and even if he hadn't, I'm not sure what we would have done differently.

By the end of the day, I had written 2 poems in free verse (one written before I left for school), an unfinished poem in free verse, and a sonnet--plus a series of sketches--all in all, a great day in terms of creativity.  Here is my sonnet:

We stare at our phones and our screens,
no time to search for a star.
We consume information in constant streams,
but wisdom remains afar.

We sit in endless meetings
under a fluorescent sky.
Some look at numbers to determine meanings,
but most don't even try.

We wish for clear direction:
Come to Bethlehem and see.
We hope for resurrection:
Take your family and flee.

But even if the messenger did appear,
we are much too distracted to hear.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, January 10, 2016:

First Reading: Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 29

Second Reading: Acts 8:14-17

Gospel: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

In this season of New Year's resolutions, consider this question: How would your life changed if you believed that God loves you the way you are, right now, before you even make any changes to become a better person?

It's true. God's not waiting for you to become more spiritual before God claims you. Even if you never get to the point where you pray more often, where you give away more money, where you become that good and patient person you are sure you can be, God loves you, marks you, claims you, is deliriously happy with you.

You don't have to lose that twenty pounds for God to find you worthy. You can have a wrecked household budget, and God still loves you.

Is your wounded elementary school/high school/adult child within you leaping up for joy yet? God would have given you beautiful Valentines during those horrid parties where the popular kids got all the Valentines and you didn't. God would choose you for the volleyball team, even if nobody else would, and God would never say hurtful things about your serve. God would have made sure to include you at lunch so that you wouldn't have had to spend your lunch hour hiding out in the library. God wouldn't make painful comments about your frumpy wardrobe, your golf swing, your decorating skills, your home repair skills, your kids, your career.

I worry that I'm veering towards goofiness, but I think that during our long years through the nation's educational systems, most of us learn all the ways we are inadequate, and most of us never unlearn those lessons. Even as grown ups, often the focus (in pop culture, in our jobs, in our families, in church even) is on our failings, on all the ways that we would measure up if we just did this thing or that thing or another thing. And then we work hard on self-improvement, and we've still got those messages: well, great, now you can focus on changing this next enormous thing.

All this effort towards self-improvement can make us a bit self-absorbed, and we forget to work on some of the real and serious problems in the world. What would happen if we decided that God needs us to be the person that we are, right here, right now, without any changes? What if we declared ourselves to be good enough?

Try it for a week or two or three. Tape the words of God to your bathroom mirror: "You are my beloved son/daughter; with you I am well pleased." Act like you believe that God loves you. Silence those voices in your head that tell you otherwise. Cease that negative self talk. And minimize the amount of time you spend with people who don't value you.

Think about the ministry of Jesus. Think about the healing nature of kingdom building that God calls us all to do. Jesus doesn't waste time saying, "Oh, if only I didn't have to spend so much time with all these sick people. If only I could get an audience with our Roman ruler. If only I had a different purpose, a different ministry, a different destiny."

We never see Jesus working to lose weight or to exercise more or to read more or . . . . Jesus gets right to work at the job God has called him to do. And keep in mind that God declares Jesus beloved and pleasing early on, before Jesus has actually done anything.

We don't have time to waste with all this negative New Year's negativity. God loves you before you ever make a self-improvement plan. In your baptism, God has already declared you perfect. Perhaps this year, instead of endless self-improvement plans, you could pledge to remember God's love for you each time your skin touches water. Imagine how your life might change if you could just do that!

The Feast Day of the Epiphany

Today is the Feast Day of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the ways in which the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus is revealed early in the Christ story. More specifically, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the wise men from the East to see and bring gifts to the baby Jesus.

Lately I've appreciated this story with its promise that God's message is available to all, not just the chosen few.

Of course, we have to be alert.  We won't always get the message in the blaze of an angelic choir.  We may need to study our source material, whether that be the sky or the sacred texts, for years or decades, before we see the miraculous.

God's message may send us on a journey that we didn't expect.  God's message often has that impact.

On this day, let us pray for the discernment to be able to see God's message against all the other twinkles that might distract us.  Let us trust that our gifts will be enough. 

Poem for Epiphany Eve: Flights of the Family

I'm always interested the stories that we tell year after year--especially by what parts leap out at me in any given year.  It changes from year to year.

In this year of the largest mass migration since the end of World War II, perhaps it is not surprising that it is the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt that keeps beckoning to me this year. 

Of course, as I look back through my notebooks, I find that I've been inspired by this part of the story before.  There are gaps in the Gospel story where my imagination rushes in.  Jesus escapes Herod's murderous intentions.  Herod's actions turn the family into refugees as they flee to Egypt.  The story picks up later, in Nazareth, with Jesus grown.

Two years ago, I was reading T. S. Eliot and Coleridge and had some fun imagining what might have happened in this gap.  I wrote this poem.

To read the Eliot poem that inspired it all, or better yet, to hear Eliot read it, go here.  Instead of talking in the voice of the magi, I'm channeling Mary here.  Or is it Christ's voice?  As I was writing it, I was thinking Mary.  If I was a literary scholar, I could make the case for Christ or for Joseph, or for any number of political refugees.  I never have Central American refugees too far from my brain, and I see some images from our current dramas in the poem too.

Here's my take on it all.


Flights of the Family

                       
                    “A cold coming we had of it,
                      Just the worst time of the year
                      For a journey, and such a long journey”

                                        “Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot


A cold coming we had of it,
the desert floor like an abandoned
sea bed, the cactus hobbling
our efforts, a murderous dictator behind
us, uncertainty ahead, only vague
warnings by an angel to serve as a guide.

We moved by night with a foreign sky
stretched above us, all celestial navigation
useless.  We detoured around hostile
cities and dirty villages, angels singing
their songs to hurry us forward.
A hard time we had of it.

We stayed several summers amidst the alien
people clutching their gods.  We learned
new ways of foretelling the future
in that temperate valley smelling of vegetation.

But we had to return to the kingdom of Death,
that old dispensation.  I have seen birth
and death, so much death, the nails,
the pieces of silver, the thirty betrayals
that come before every daybreak.
I would be glad of another birth.

Prayers for All of Us Returning to Normal Life

In my part of the world, public schools begin again today after a 2 week break.  Those of us teaching college may start classes today or this may be a week of getting ready for those classes.  Those of us who are administrators return too--my hope is that no one has decided to quit in the past two weeks, but if someone must quit, that they do it soon, while I still have time to scramble.

Even those of us who don't have the leisurely breaks of students and teachers are likely coming back to our first full week of work in weeks.  Many of us have had at least one holiday in the past 2 weeks, if not 2.

We return to more sober work places.  Gone are the parties and the decorations and no more plates of holiday treats will be found in our offices.  Many of our colleagues may be more crabby or tired.  Some of us are returning with colds.

Let us pray for all of us today.  Let me compose a prayer for all of us returning to regular life:

Creator God, many of us return to our regular work lives today.  Help us to remain open to messages from you, whether they come by way of angelic messengers, signs in the skies, dreams, or deep yearnings.  Let us align ourselves with Mary and Elizabeth and all others who choose to believe that the improbable and impossible are not out of reach.  Give us the loyalty of Joseph and Anna and Simeon, and please grant us discernment to know who is deserving of loyalty.  Grant us the wisdom of those easterners who studied the stars.  Help us avoid every Herod who would do us harm.

Epiphany Approaches

Somewhere, in a distant land under different skies, wise men study the stars:

The rest of us wait for more obvious messages, the angel choirs, the clear message, "Go and See":

Some of us may understand the urgency already:

The largest mass migration since World War II has been underway for months, brutal leaders transforming citizens into refugees.

Those of us lucky to enjoy stability wait for the Christmas flowers to bloom.

We know that the best gifts may be the unexpected ones.

And we have all been given the best gift of all.