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My family did something very funny last week via the mail. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. My niece Lily sent me a sweet little note on half a piece of paper. The sweetness of the note didn’t surprise me. It was totally her. Even included a stick of Daniel the Tiger from Mr. Rogers. But the fact it was on half a piece of paper was puzzling. I thought that because she was in college and deeply involved in environmental efforts perhaps she was just trying to conserve paper.
Then, though, I received an oddly cut portion of a Hallmark card with one sock in it from a brother’s family. It was my sock mind you. One that I’d been looking for since last summer when I left it at their house. Okay. But then another card arrived from a sister with one earring inside. And all week since it has unfolded in this way. Turns out they were celebrating with me for making it half-way through my radiation / chemo treatment and wanting to send me positive energy for continuing to move forward with hope and good humor.
I have a pretty awesome family, don’t I? No debate there. They are by nature a very “pink Advent candle” sort of people.
But I was thinking more about all the halves of things this morning in light of what I wrote about last week regarding Advent and the prophetic call to embrace this season as a season of “coming to the river.” Like the people of John the Baptist’s time, we are being asked to see more clearly the world we live in and confess aloud not only our role in bringing it about but also our belief in a God who has the capacity to heal what we’ve wrought. Some of you liked that newsletter. Some of you probably didn’t. And some of you let me know that you felt like you’d only received half a newsletter.
It is not enough, you reminded me, to be aware alone. Not enough to acknowledge what one’s done by the river. Not even enough to trust in God’s goodness. The sacrament that accompanies this process in the Catholic tradition is officially called the Sacrament of “Penance”—highlighting the last part of the process which is actually doing something to show that we are now on a new path. I probably did not mention that last part quite enough last week.* Only gave you one sock. Today I’m putting the other one in the mail.
When we think about “doing penance” a lot of times we have in mind the kind of thing that was featured in the surprisingly good newest Knives Out mystery, Wake Up Dead Man—i.e. “two Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.” (Betting you’ve seen it now as well!) But even excellent actor Josh O’Connor seems to know that giving out the penance of recited prayers alone is a cheap sort of grace and does nothing to restore the “confessee” to any kind of right relationship or peace, even with himself. As the German martyr Bonhoeffer states, “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.” (For much fuller quote, click here. Worth the read.)
There is something we must do, but that isn’t meant to be understood as a punishment. I think about how many times I’ve talked about the process of reconciliation with children in the CGS atrium. We have four full cards that always get laid out in order, never in halves:
- Confronted with the Word – a moment of waking up to the fact that we are far from where God wants us to be;
- Confession – saying aloud what it is that we’ve come to and our belief that God is good enough and powerful enough to still heal us;
- Absolution – the announcement of God’s forgiveness toward us (done stunningly at the end of Wake Up Dead Man if you want a better picture of what it looks like);
- Penance – and here’s what we say to the children: Penance is a work given to us as a gift so that we can know what to do going forward to get ourselves on the right path again, the path the Good Shepherd wants us to walk in his footsteps.
There is a sort of penance that is made at the end of Wake Up Dead Man, but I don’t want to ruin the end of the movie for you. Instead, it seems way more important to think about where we might go from here as citizens of this country in demonstrating we really do want to walk a different sort of path than we have been walking.
One of the gifts of this past week for me has been hearing several of you tell me not only that I was missing the second half of the reconciliation journey, but also learning of what you are doing to try to make your relationships right again and come to greater peace. I’m sure there are many things that many of you are doing but here are a couple I became aware (or re-aware) of this week that might be of interest to a wider number of you:
- Participation in Braver Angels events and mailings – “the nation’s largest cross-partisan volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen the democratic republic.”
- Subscribing to an unbiased news source that honors quality journalism like Tangle News. (One of the things I am always guilty of is not paying for news.... thinking real journalism can be done for free and not be somehow impacted by my cheapness.)
- Supporting Migrant Christ / Cristo Migrante – “a Catholic and interfaith movement helping parishes and seekers live the Gospel through accompaniment—walking with migrant and mixed-status families in prayer, solidarity, and shared hope.”
- Participating in a Many Voices, One Spirit discussion – a six-week resource put out by RENEW International with the support of the USCCB for parishes or other faith communities to use toward training people to practice bridge-building in their own lives. Totally free resource.
- Supporting the One America Movement – a group that “partners with faith communities across religious, political, and racial divides to confront toxic polarization in our society”
- Reading Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century – Read this a while back and it has great tips for small things to do in one’s own life but had forgotten about it and I appreciate Heidi Schlumpf reminding me of his work and why it is so hopeful here.
Okay, there are lots of other places to turn and get ideas, to possibly get involved in a big or very small way. The most important thing, according to Snyder, is that we each find one that would make a difference and would demonstrate seriousness about moving forward together on a different sort of path than the one we are currently walking. It’s possible that “penance” will be the very best part of the story, just like in the movie.
(PS – Good news: I continue to turn more green only at a very mild rate. This week not much worse than last and only 10 more days to go at this point. Meanwhile, I want to do a shout out to one of our MAPS-CGS alum and great artist, Annette Witte, who shared with me her most recent drawing of the Advent wreath intermingling the mysteries of waiting and hope. It is the picture shared with this newsletter this week.)
*I did say a bit more about it in the accompanying Preach podcast if you didn’t get to listen to it yet. This time you are getting the You Tube version in which you'll see that surgery has left my ears, and hence my glasses, slightly lopsided. Have since worked on getting the glasses part of that problem fixed.