Love's Refining Fire: Reflections on the Presentation of Jesus and the Border

The following is the homily I shared this morning:

The Presentation of Jesus (February 2, 2020)

Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear that when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him at the Temple, Simeon, guided by the Holy Spirit, took the month-old Jesus from Mary and Joseph’s arms. Holding Jesus, he praised God and declared that he was holding in his hands salvation, “a light of revelation,” the Messiah. I wonder what it was like for Simeon to hold the embodiment of Love. Did he feel giddy? Maybe. He was an old man, who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn’t die until he saw the Messiah. When he met Jesus, he proclaimed that now he could die in peace. There is no mention whether Simeon told anyone about his encounter.

We also hear about Anna, an 84-year-old prophet, who had spent most of her life worshipping, fasting, and praying in the Temple. She also recognized Love present in this tiny babe. Unlike Simeon, Anna didn’t simply rest in the joy of her witness, but instead spread the news to any who would listen. Anna is one of many women who spread the good news of Jesus.

I want to be like both Simeon and Anna. Like Simeon, I hope I recognize when I am in the presence of the Divine. I actually think this happens in every moment, but I often don’t notice. And like Anna, I hope that when I do recognize the presence of the Divine, I share the experience, spreading joy, hope, and love.

As I’ve read and re-read these stories, my mind keeps wandering to the U.S.-Mexico border. I remember the families seeking asylum that I met while doing human rights accompaniment in September on the Mexico side; they were waiting to present themselves to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They had made many sacrifices, leaving their homes and journeying from Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, or other parts of Mexico. Everyone I met was hopeful that officers would recognize their circumstances and allow them into the U.S., perhaps giving them a chance for purification, like Mary and Joseph sought at the Temple, and a place where they could find new life.

In order to protect migrants, human right accompaniers didn’t take pictures of their faces.

I think in particular of a little girl named Zoad- a round-faced, thin little Black girl, about 4 years old, with burn scars on her shoulder and neck. Zoad radiated light, much like I imagine the infant Jesus did in the Temple. I met Zoad on a Saturday morning, when she confidently and trustingly approached me and asked my name. The morning I met this open-hearted child, I also met her mother, who had been beaten the night before by the man they’d been travelling with. Over the next few days, I watched as Zoad’s big eyes turned with concern toward her sometimes crying, one-black-eyed, bandaged-eyebrow mother. Whether Zoad was watching her mother, talking to me, gently encouraging other children to play, or coaching them through puzzle-working, Zoad glowed. This bright and resilient child shone so brightly, despite what she witnessed happen to her mother, despite whatever she experienced before and during the journey from Honduras. She was, for me, “a light of revelation.”

In the Gospel Simeon recognized Jesus’ light and also stated that he would be “the downfall and rise of many.” Pondering how pure Love can lead to someone’s downfall, I am reminded of people who don’t see radiance, resilience, and love when they look at migrant children like Zoad, but rather feel fear and perceive threat, just as some feared and felt threatened by Jesus. In closing themselves off, they deny themselves the possibility of the refining, purifying fire of Love that Malachi describes. When people voice their anger, their masked fear, we see the “secret thoughts of many laid bare.” Their rejection leads not only to personal, but collective downfall.

At the same time there are people like Anna, who see Zoad’s and other migrants’ light and share it by telling their stories. They enter the fire of refining Love, “enabl[ing] them[selves] to make offerings to God in righteousness.” Purified by Love, they meet buses coming from McAllen, TX, make bags of food to ease the journey for migrants, organize legal clinics, collect diapers, rice and beans, offer hospitality and a safe place of respite, make calls to state and federal officials, risk arrest and go to jail because, even in jail, they are free to live in Love. Their love raises us.

Then my thoughts return to those whose fear enslaves them to the point of rejecting Jesus, in the being of Zoad and so many other Black and Brown bodies. I am deeply disturbed by the destructive actions that are carried out as a result of cold fear. As I am able, I speak out and take action to reduce harm while also working to change the systems that promote and support fear-based destruction. At the same time, I will not condemn people acting from their fear. In all truth, sometimes I’m one of them, though my fear may manifest in different ways.

I am learning that my condemnation of people is not helpful. I strive to remember that within them, even if not apparent to me, is the same divine light as the one I saw in Zoad, the one Simeon recognized in an infant child in the Temple. My condemnation does not heal, but only further alienates and harms; it takes us farther from the refining fire of Love, not closer.

When I find myself angry at what I see, I return to questions one of my Nonviolent Communication teachers offered: How much pain would I have to be in to cause that level of harm to others? How alienated would I have to be from my own divine nature and that of others, to act in such a destructive way? Answering these questions doesn’t change my acts of protest, but it does change my center of gravity when I do them, moving from head to heart to the core of my being. Those questions are Love’s refining fire that burns away my anger to uncover the grief that moves me to compassion: more vulnerable, more connecting, slower to move than the fuel of my anger. Slower and more deliberate.

This purifying might allow me to approach the revealed “secret thoughts”- my own and those of others- with greater care, so that I can attempt to call in rather than call out. This purifying might help me to follow Jesus instead of succumbing to anger that tempts me to act from a place that is less than Love. I use the word “might” deliberately. I say these things with the full knowledge that I forget them as easily as I say them now…when I am hurt or tired or angry or hungry or hangry. And I want to do better. I want to practice holding Love so close, as Simeon did Jesus, so often, that it becomes second nature, my default, so that while I’m alive I can proclaim the good news through my words and actions like Anna and, when it is my time, like Simeon, I will be able to die in peace.

Always Learning

I've been blessed to have learners in my workshops who are twice my age. For those who don't know my age, that means some people in their 90s have attended my workshops. When those students are present, I feel a little intimidated (what can I teach someone with so much more life experience?) and inspired (however long I live, I want to keep learning, too). When I feel secure and grounded, I know I have something to teach them precisely because we don't share life experiences. I also know even more deeply that I want to keep learning until the day I die. There is so much to know and no possible way to know it all- a daunting and beautiful notion.

Lately I've been repeating the phrase "Never failure, always learning" (from adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy) a lot. A conversation didn't go how I'd hoped: never failure, always learning. A class or service promotion didn't take off the way I wanted: never failure, always learning. That thing I had to do that took waaaaaaay longer than expected: never failure, always learning. The lessons rarely happen in a library like in the picture above, but rather as we experiment with living life. Always learning...if we choose to engage with the lessons.

Last week I very excitedly signed up for an International Intensive Training (IIT) in Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication in Palestine. Within hours of signing up, I had a gut feeling that I shouldn't have signed up, despite the enthusiasm I'd felt while filling out the application. Curious, I sat with the feeling for a few days. It didn't go away. In fact, the more I thought about not going, the more relieved I felt. I am not going to attend the training.

What I came to is this: I believe I have a role in that IIT, but my role isn't to be there, but to support the work happening there. I invested some money in it when I signed up, and I'll give more. I also invite you to support the work by donating here and choosing "2020 IIT in the Middle East" where you are asked if you have a special purpose for your donation.

I could have seen my sign-up and retraction of my sign-up as a failure to follow through. Instead I see it as learning to trust myself more, a reminder that most decisions we make are reversible, and that it's ok to make those reversals. I feel pleased that my not attending may facilitate someone else's ability to attend. Never failure, always learning.

A few days ago I had a private Compassionate Communication session with someone seeking clarity before a difficult conversation. She left the session with the clarity she'd sought, as well as tools for the conversation. Later she told me the conversation had gone really well! Always learning.

Last week I offered my first Heart Talk monthly offering. The group was small, the sharing was rich. At the end, during our check-out, I shared that one need met for me during the session was adventure (an answer that surprised me at the time). The reality is I never know how people will respond to the concepts I'm sharing, the stories that people share as we put the concepts to use, or the vulnerability it takes to share of oneself. Adventure. Always learning, never failure.

Learning is an adventure; sometimes we take it on with willingness, sometimes with resistance. My hope for myself, and for you, is that we can approach our learning with willingness and openness, that we can approach missteps with compassion, that we can get comfortable with discomfort, that we can embrace the idea of:

Never failure.

Always learning.

Swimming in the Holy

Not long ago I returned from my church’s Thanksgiving service. Gathered was a group of people I dearly love. Some of the people I know well, or others I see only on Sundays. Whichever is true, I consider them my family.

At the service I had the pleasure of singing Carrie Newcomer’s “Holy as the Day is Spent,” a song that recognizes the sanctity of many seemingly ordinary moments.

How often do we regard these moments only as ordinary and forget that in them also live opportunities for gratitude, for holiness, for recognition of abundance?

About 3 years ago, I started writing daily gratitude lists on Facebook. The lists are short and sweet; they are my attempt to recognize that even on hard days, even when devastation feels like the status quo in the world, there are so many things, people, moments to be grateful for. In the three years since I started my list, several friends have started posting their own lists and others tell me that they appreciate mine.

My lists are short and sweet. My gratitude is long and deep.

So today on this Thanksgiving Day, even as I acknowledge its complicated and violent history, I dive into giving thanks, swimming deeper than I go in my little lists, knowing that I can’t possibly cover all I’d like to.

Today I am thankful that I woke up.

In a warm bed.

I am grateful for my 19-year-old calico cat named Frida who walked across my chest and then sat on me, meowing until I pet her and then got up to feed her. I am thankful that she snuggles with me as I write my morning pages every day. I am grateful she has lived to be 19 and I am grateful for her orange tabby sister Telula who died at the age of 18, a few days after Thanksgiving last year. I’m also grateful for Clyde, another orange tabby who used to live with me and now lives with my parents.

I am grateful that my 46-year-old body continues to move with relative ease and is healthy most of the time.

I am thankful that I have clothing and that it’s even clothing I enjoy wearing. Some of it I’ve bought new, some at the Goodwill, some I’ve been gifted, and some I’ve acquired through clothing swaps, fun occasions to give and receive clothing that may have interesting stories already attached to them.

Today I am grateful that I have access to food, any kind of food I want, really. I am grateful for the times I have money to buy local, organic, and sustainably produced foods. I am grateful for the farmers committed to providing nourishment for others. I am grateful for so many interesting tastes I have experienced and the cooks who have prepared them. I appreciate the technology, old and simple or new and more complex, that makes food preservation possible.

I am grateful that I can turn on the tap and clean water comes out. I can regulate its temperature for drinking , bathing, washing hands, washing clothes. I can flush my toilet. I can water my indoor plants and my garden. I am grateful for rain that eliminates the necessity to water my garden.

I am grateful to have a car and that I had the means to buy a hybrid, so I don’t use as much gas as I would with other cars. I am also grateful for times when I can carpool with others, both for the savings in gas and the joy of traveling companions. I am grateful for times I can walk to where I want to go. I am grateful for public transportation, though I rarely use it.

I am grateful for heating and air-conditioning, particularly when it’s bitterly cold or swelteringly hot outside.

I am grateful for the cardinals, robins, doves, hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, squirrels, raccoons, opposums, and even a groundhog (and other creatures) who I see in my yard often or rarely. I am grateful for the diversity of plants, animals, and other parts of Creation that I have access to, even in my small yard. I am thankful for the creative way Life has evolved and that I get to experience even a small part of it at my home and a larger part when I am away from my home.

I am grateful for books, audiobooks, podcasts, libraries, radio programs, and other ways I learn new information and am inspired by creative expression through words.

I am also inspired by drawings, paintings, collage, glasswork, mosaics, ceramics, sculptures, music, dance, and other ways humans touch our souls when they expose their own.

I am grateful for scientists, who explore the world with a particular curiosity and openness, and for intuitives and mystics whose curiosity and openness lead to Connection. I particularly love when these two ways of seeing come together and affirm from their different perspectives what IS.

I am thankful for the rhythms of days, moon cycles, and seasons, that teach us, if we choose to learn, to honor every stage of being from birth to growth to slowing down to death.

This is today’s incomplete list. Reading over it, I am aware that some of the things I’m grateful for are related to the privilege I carry in the world and some are related to simply being alive. Like Thanksgiving, my interaction and place in the world comes with complications. I’ve written about such things before and will again. Today I choose simply to acknowledge that and focus on gratitude.

Today I choose not to name the particular people I am grateful for. There are so many people, SO MANY PEOPLE I am grateful for. Some I’ve exchanged words with. Others I will express gratitude for on other days in other ways. Perhaps I’ll acknowledge them in a blog post some time.

For now I thank you for reading this post.

I hope you find as much abundance in your life as I find in mine.