0ver 400 people poured into our sanctuary one afternoon this summer for the funeral of Mitch, a 25 year-old who died after a 4-year struggle with cancer. His family shared with me the blog he had written over the course of his final year. It was at once beautiful and crass, poignant and blunt, insightful and silly; all told, a remarkable offering of himself to others facing cancer diagnosis.

One of his posts, “Wedding Week”, speaks of his preparations for marrying the love of his life, a woman he affectionately called Squid, known by others as Sydney. He ends the post by saying “I can’t wait to start living the rest of my life with Squid.”

The rest of his life would be 3 months.

Sydney gave one of the most moving eulogies I’ve heard in 20 years of ministry. Still clear and articulate through her weeping, she spoke of her love for her husband. She said that she couldn’t imagine how painful it was going to be to live her life without him and yet she would endure such pain and worse for the 2 years of love and 3 months of marriage that they shared.

Sydney nor Mitch were particularly religious and yet Sydney articulated something that sits as the very beating heart of our faith; that for some reason, in this existence, inherent in the experience of love is pain… and yet, in the end, love prevails.

The archetypal visual imprint of this reality in the Christian psyche is the cross.

Whether Mitch and Sydney “knew Christ” in the traditional sense is largely semantics. That they knew the enduring power of Love is apparent and their lives – both this one and the next – are the better for it.

If someone you know is facing a cancer diagnosis you might want to check out Mitch Lortz’s blog at www.seriouslycancer.com  

I Am or Not

Moses once asked God “Who are you?” God said “I Am Who I Am” or translated better yet “I Am Who Am”.

The Human Being created in I Am Who Am’s image at first knew pure subjectivity and could say with God “I Too Am Who Am.”

The writer of Genesis imagined such unitive consciousness as dwelling in a beatific garden.

At some point a split emerged in human consciousness between the self and others; be that God, creation, or other people. Among the consequences, they came to believe that Who They Were was not granted them in grace by I Am Who Am but had to be established over and against Who They Were Not.

As a result, they became I Am Separate.

The writer of Genesis imagined it as a terrible banishment from the beatific garden, replete with a fiery sword-wielding angel barring the way back.

The spiritual journey of a lifetime then involves the passage back from I Am Separate to I Am Who Am.

Compassion and care for others as oneself, human and non-human alike, is one path that can get us back there: another’s hurt is my hurt, another’s people my people.

Community building and commitment is another: my separate I Am becomes a much broader I Am.

Silence and stillness, yet another: I relinquish all thoughts and identifiers and desires – even if just for 20 minutes a day – and I Simply Am Who Am.

A combination of the three is a spiritual exercise routine necessary to challenge the fiery sword-wielding angel that keeps us from the beatific garden where ultimately we belong.

The political right stands against abortion saying a woman’s right to choose cannot be valued over the life of a fetus/baby. In response, the political left says “government laws should protect not infringe upon my inalienable rights.”

The Christian right has little trouble reconciling their Christian faith with a gun-rights stance. The Christian left is baffled if not angered by what seems so obviously inconsistent with the faith.

To the question – WWJD? The Christian right is clear – Jesus absolutely stands on our side!

The Christian left has little trouble reconciling their Christian faith with a woman’s-right-to-choose stance. The Christian right is baffled if not angered by what seems so obviously inconsistent with the faith.

To the question – WWJD? The Christian left is clear – Jesus absolutely stands on our side!

Neither side is correct. Jesus doesn’t stand on sides at all. Jesus hangs. He hangs crucified between our polarized positions, pinned down and stretched out by our righteous certainties.

The only absolute that we should be claiming from our relationship with Jesus is our absolute need to approach it all with humility, assuming that God’s truth lies somewhere beneath.

The best way to try and discern that truth is to do so together.

– Rev. Will