Monday, September 23, 2013

True Liberality

Marilynne Robinson has done it again.  On my birthday I received her latest essay collection, entitled When I Was A Child I Read Books.  Sure enough: I'm only 83 pages in, but already her scrupulous, uncompromising insights are exercising my brain and stirring me to new interest in areas of life (politics, education, history, theology) that I rarely take time to consider.  Although I am a dedicated reader, I tend to choose literature of the sort that tells a story rather than makes a reasoned argument.  As a result, Facebook and MPR account for almost the whole of my exposure to whatever discourse is going on in the world.  Imagine what a breath of fresh air these essays are!  Also, how chastening.

Today's essay was particularly inspiring.  Entitled "Open Thy Hand Wide", it describes the motivation for and character of liberality in the Calvinist tradition.  It portrays an attitude toward generosity rooted in Mosaic law, an attitude that promotes unconditional sacrificial giving, that shows much greater concern for the poor than for safeguarding personal property.  Citing the law in Deuteronomy 24:10-13 which commands a creditor to restore at sundown the cloak pledged by the borrower to ensure that he may sleep in his cloak, Robinson writes, "So this-worldly are God's interests that he cares whether some beleaguered soul can find comfort in his sleep.  He cares even to the point of overriding what are called by us, though never by Moses or Jesus, the rights of property."

The rest of the essay goes on to describe the utterly biblical and yet embarrassingly foreign liberalism that Calvin and the Puritans, following Old Testament principles, promoted.  Calvin declares that it is every believer's responsibility to "advance in an increasing liberality", describing it thus: "True liberality is not momentary or of short duration.  They who possess that virtue persevere steadily, and do not exhaust themselves in a sudden and feeble flame, of which they quickly afterwards repent. ...There are indeed many occurrences which retard the progress of our liberality.  We find in men strange ingratitude, so that what we give appears to be ill-bestowed. ...But let us remember this saying, and listen to Paul's exhortation 'not to be weary in well-doing;' for the Lord exhorts us not to momentary liberality, but to that which shall endure during the whole course of our life."  

These injunctions are supported by the theology of mankind being created in God's image.  More Calvin: "We must not regard the intrinsic merit of men, but must consider the image of God in them, to which we owe all possible honour and love. ...Whoever, therefore, is presented to you that needs your kind offices, you have no reason to refuse him your assistance.  Say he is a stranger; yet the Lord has impressed on him a character which out to be familiar to you; for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh.  Say that he is contemptible and worthless; but the Lord shows him to be one whom he has deigned to grace with his own image.  Say that you are obliged to him for no services; but God has made him, as it were, his substitute, to whom you acknowledge yourself to be under obligations for numerous and important benefits.  Say that he is unworthy of your making the smallest exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, deserves your surrender of yourself and all that you possess."  

While I know and thought that I believed all these things, I find myself rebuked when I look at my life and the choices I daily make, and discover that I am not following the Christian imperative to advance in increasing liberality.  If anything, I indulge in "momentary liberality," and grow weary in well-doing.  And all too often when I survey the image-bearers around me it is from a posture of grasping selfishness, a desire to protect my own rights and preserve my own comfort.  So often I withhold a kindness that it is in my power to bestow because it would inconvenience me, or because I think it undeserved.  I forget that "I was hungry and you fed me.  I was naked and you clothed me."  I forget what it truly means, to love my neighbor as myself.  

I love how Robinson describes Calvin's angle on this matter.  "For Calvin, every human encounter is of moment, the other in the encounter is always 'sent' or 'offered.'  So respect for every circumstance is reverence to God."

It excites me to think ahead to all the people I am going to be sent in the days that remain to me, of all the opportunities to show my reverence to God, honoring him by sharing his gifts with his image-bearers.    

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Inspirited

It's the final day of calendar summer.  As I drove home from work, the far bright moon and the far brilliant lights of the Minneapolis skyline begged to be admired: pieces of a matching set, cold and glittering.  I love to inhale this cold and glittery air and then exhale it, magicked into a warm human vapor.

Tomorrow will be the first day of the week as well as the first day of the season.  I have reason to dread it.  There has been a serious muddle.  All week it has been dormant but prominent, sitting like an evil egg in the cozy nest of my community, and tomorrow it is going to break open and release its cache of consequences.  Those consequences will be long-abiding guests that we must accommodate with all the grace and generosity we can muster, for how we receive them will define us much more decisively than any words we could speak about ourselves.  

I think again about the clarity of the air I breathed tonight, how it quickened me. I think to myself that, in all that lies ahead, if only I could be like that to those I encounter.  Just a pure, clean, life-giving presence they can effortlessly inhale, and then, inspirited, generously breathe out as a gracious human warmth.  

Monday, September 02, 2013

Labor Day

Bryant Avenue North: Late afternoon
09/02/2013

Ours is the house across the street from the tattooed blonde gardening beneath the lazy sway of her front porch's American flag.  

In our own backyard, the sunflowers are leaning their faces over the fence and brushing up on their Spanish, mute spectators of the series of volleyball matches that have been conducted by our neighbors all day long.  

Behind the sunflower fence and across the alley drive, the aroma of grilled meat wafts from a hazy back porch.  

Two shouting boys tear down the alley and leap up the curb where our trash and recycling bins are standing.  They huddle beside the bins until they realize that I am watching them from behind the irrepressible sprawl of the tomato plant in our raised garden bed.  A moment's blinking surprise, a flicker of sheepish grins, and they are bolting back down the drive, leaving me to continue my happy work of harvesting the perfect ripe grape tomatoes from the drooping vines.  

Once indoors, I arrange these fruits on the counter beside my harvest of four juicy beefsteaks and a clutch of dusty carrots.  

Within the mission-style interior of our home the sounds of the neighborhood drift in through the open windows: an ice cream truck's ditty weaving through the streets, cars blasting music, voices of children and voices of adults, a rowdy array of accents and tones quarreling and laughing and hollering.  They keep me company as I do my afternoon housekeeping: loads of laundry, menu-planning, floor sweeping, dish-washing, food-preparing.  

Soon enough the food will be eaten, the laundry folded into closet drawers, the dishes air-dried on the kitchen rack.  I will take Janie out to the back stoop and watch the horizon-hugging lights of Orion signal the advent both of twilight and autumn.  

To Mom

Who would have thought, when years had passed,  and you had left this world for good, I'd find such comfort remembering the way it felt ...