YODA's Poem-- Reflection and Poem for September 13, 2015

A Reflection for XVI Pentecost (Proper 19)                         All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC  September 13, 2015                                                                                       Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Proverbs 1:20-33              James 3:1-12                      Mark 8:27-38 

YODA’S POEM

 

In the month since we have set up The All Saints School (TASS), there has been a change in the noise level around my office. My office looks out on the playground, and I used to look out the window and see some stray deer or people walking their dogs.  Now with the area fenced in and the children going out to play, I hear lots of other things, and I watch how the children interact with each other. I had forgotten what it is like to have a bunch of two and three year olds playing and how in touch with each other they are.  In the first couple of weeks when the children were new to the school,  there were moments of anxiety, and some of the children were away from their parents for the first time and they cried. When a 2 or 3 year old starts to cry, it is not unusual for another child to join in on the lament, and soon there are five children crying together.

I remember when my daughter was a baby, and if I came home after a stressful day and fed her a bottle, she could feel my stress as I held her in my arms. Later as she grew, I marveled how much she was in touch with the world around her and the feelings of others. I think there is something that is inborn in us that responds to the tears, stress, laughter, or joy of another human being and to the joy and wonder of the world.  However, something happens to us and we start to focus all our energy on how we can meet our own particular agendas, and we begin to lose touch with others and the world. We fill ourselves up with skills and we no longer pay attention to the wisdom with which we were born.

In the first lesson from Proverbs, Wisdom, a Hebrew feminine personification of God -  and, please know that they were not seeing Wisdom as a separate God but as a part of the God that is both masculine and feminine - speaks and calls for people to pay attention to all she has to say. The author doesn’t just say she speaks, but that she “cries” out. She cries because she is in touch with all the brokenness of the world. The writer of the introduction of Proverbs does not see God as sequestered on a High Holy throne, but as dwelling in the middle of our lives, crying out to us and with us, crying out so that we might listen and pay attention. I was talking to a mother this week and she remembered how her mother used to sadly sigh at how her children were not following her loving direction, “I’m trying as best as I can.”

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that he must enter into the suffering of the world. Peter tries to straighten Jesus out, but Jesus tells Peter he is focused in on human things and not the divine. He then tells the disciples that living into the fullness of life means to step away from their own agendas of control. He tells them: “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life.” I think when he is saying “forfeit of life” he is meaning that they, we, are missing the point of life.

I was mulling over these lessons when I was walking my dog in the predawn hours before I do my morning workout. I am telling my dog that we need to go out and he needs to do his business “because I have an agenda and a limited amount of time to  walk you, respond to my email, do my prayers because I’ve got a boatload of names, do my work out because I need to work off that too-big lunch from yesterday, shower because I need to not offend, read the paper because I need to catch up, have breakfast so that I don’t wolf down a big lunch today in a hurry without even tasting it, and then get to work because I am behind in the things I need to do because the music we picked to duplicate in the bulletin for the services is not covered under our copyright agreements, and – and – and -; So- let’s get with it!”

We walk out and there is just a sliver of the waning moon, and the night is clear so the stars are shining so brightly. My dog, Yoda, one ear up and one ear down, stops and sniffs the air to catch the scent of the animals in the woods. He cocks his head to listen to the crickets and the katydids. For one second I am lost in awe of the vastness of the space, but I remember my agenda and remind myself I have a long way to go.  We walk a little bit more and he wants to sniff the ground, over and over again. I’m telling him that “we are out here for a reason- so get with it!” He looks back at me and his eyes in the flashlight seem to say in a non-rhyming, non-metered poem:

YODA’s Poem

 “You are the one missing the point.

        We are here to listen to the deeper wisdom.    

              God is here in the space between us, in the echoes of the crickets,

                   in the cry of the fox,      

                       in the ocean breeze cleaning the air which we foul with our fossil fuels,

in the sleep of our neighbors refreshing their bodies and souls as Wisdom is whispering to them in their dreams            

because they, and you, didn’t pay much attention during the previous day, and

            in the rental homes full of visitors trying so hard to get their money’s worth and desperately have a week to remember in pictures.

Listen to your mother God who is trying as best as She can with you.

The Apostle James is right in warning you the danger of setting yourself in being a teacher when you still have so much to learn.

Listen to the cry of Wisdom.”