The Oklahoma July sun is already high, promising a near 100-degree day. But as I take my morning walk, a gentle 10 mph breeze provides a welcome reprieve, reminding me of life’s small blessings. It’s Monday, and my mind feels like a hodgepodge of thoughts, but I want to share some reflections that have been on my heart.
The Power of Community: St. Mark’s Methodist Church
Yesterday, Cary and I visited St. Mark’s Methodist Church, a place we try to attend about once a month. Honestly, it’s the best church I’ve ever experienced. It’s a strong, progressive community with just the right amount of liturgy for me, beautiful music, and inspiring scripture. Their minister is amazing, but what truly sets them apart is their incredible commitment to community work.
They feed around 800 people a week who are food insecure and organize numerous food drives. For the back-to-school season, they distribute approximately 2,000 backpacks to help kids. Their mission programs extend even to schools in Africa, and they raise hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars, to support communities both locally and internationally. St. Mark’s is fully embracing of the LGBTQ community, and their dedication to living out Christian values is truly impressive. This is the face of Christianity I wish more people saw.
Living with Questions: A Rilkean Approach
Lately, I’ve been grappling with the overwhelming negativity, incivility, and outright cruelty I see in society. It feels bigger than me, and I often wonder what I can do. One answer that resonates deeply, inspired by Rilke, is the idea of “living with questions.”
Rilke suggested that sometimes we don’t have answers because we’re not ready to live them yet. Life is a journey, and while we crave immediate solutions, some problems are meant to be lived with and managed rather than definitively solved. We need to be okay with ambiguity. When we think we have all the answers, it’s often a sign we’ve simply adopted someone else’s dogma.
I believe our heart is our truest guide. There’s an inner presence within each of us – a force greater than our consciousness or reason – that observes everything we do. It’s connected to the synergistic sum of all that is, and it only offers what we can manage. Even when it prompts us, past traumas and conditioning can make us resistant to its guidance. Learning to live with questions is a strategy for navigating this. It doesn’t mean we stop seeking answers, but rather understand that truth unfolds slowly, like pulling a thread from a ball of twine – more is revealed little by little.
For instance, I’ve found that eating an apple and a kiwi daily aids my digestion. It’s a helpful “imperfect truth” for me, but it’s not the complete answer to all my health goals, like lowering my A1C. We work with the limited truths we have, knowing they’re part of a larger, evolving understanding.
The Power of the Anchored Minority
Living with questions isn’t easy, especially when faced with societal problems like poverty, hunger, homelessness, or debates about foundational values. However, as someone who has always felt like an outlier, I’ve learned to navigate this. I’ve realized that I’m not alone; there are many others who think differently, even if they’re not as plentiful.
It’s crucial to remember that minorities often serve as the anchors that keep society grounded. It’s the people who refuse to tolerate mistreatment, who feed the hungry, and who stand firm in their values that prevent society from spiraling into despotism. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, outliers remind us of deeper, truer values that withstand the test of time. Fascism will always fail; love, kindness, and compassion endure forever.
Focusing on Shared Humanity Over Labels
Another lesson I’m learning is to focus on the people around me rather than getting caught up in their beliefs or political affiliations. For years, I engaged with a fundamentalist theologian who was deeply logical in his faith but often judgmental and argumentative. He saw kindness towards “unbiblical” people as encouragement of sin. Yet, when I challenged him to compare our daily lives – how we raised our kids, spent our money, prioritized our time – he had to concede that “labels don’t always hold.”
My conservative neighbors, who might vote for authoritarian politicians, would likely stop to help someone stranded on the road or feed someone truly hungry. There are so many ways in which we are common in our everyday lives, and our actions often don’t align perfectly with the philosophical platitudes we or our chosen leaders espouse. Judging people by what they say, especially in politics, can be misleading. As someone who worked in the evangelical Christian community for over 40 years, I’ve seen loving actions from even the most conservative individuals, despite disagreeing with many of their political and biblical stances.
I’m trying to remind myself to judge people at face value for what I see them doing every day, rather than the boxes they check on a ballot. We can all be swayed by charismatic leaders who know just what to say. It’s more important to observe how people genuinely live.
Embracing a “Wonderful World”
I started this reflection talking about St. Mark’s. Their lesson yesterday was on the life of Louis Armstrong, and his song “What a Wonderful World.” As it was sung, I found myself crying. At 72, I’ve come to appreciate the truth of that song profoundly.
The world is many things, and it’s easy to focus on the evil and problems. But there’s also immense beauty: in our children, our partners, nature, science, and the sheer wonder of being in human form. The pleasure of food, touch, exercise, rest, and moments of peace and wholeness – life is full of wonderful things. This perspective is part of living into the questions of hard times. We must not be distracted from the perfection that surrounds us.
I want to be a willing partner in protecting our environment, enhancing our relationships, and being a peacemaker. I want to love what is good and perfect, appreciate art and culture, and believe in the power of love over ego. I believe happiness and love are real, and that it’s truly better to give than to receive. I revel in the endless diversity of everything around me – plants, ideas, people, animals. Every object, when studied, reveals endless varieties.
And so, I say to myself, “It’s a wonderful world.” And I believe that. My newest question is how to live into that truth, even when life can be terrifying. Part of the answer lies in doing the things I love – my podcast, peacemaking, theological and metaphysical studies, gardening, exercise, spending time with family. Through these actions, I continue to find and create that wonderful world.
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