Show up, fall down, love: a redemption

Tis true, tis true, O Caroline,

the fault ascribed--alas!--is mine,

Though my honor may now be wholly spent,

In dust (and ashes) I repent

and do your trust again beseech,

begging forgiveness for my grievous breech.

Though now at risk of being thrice the liar,

I promise you what you require

By this night's end. 

And if not by midnight then by one,

until the blaggard blog be done.

Till then, my long-forsaken dear,

though my verse be deadly...queer (?)

I importune your patience,

as you await your recompense,

And I await the restoration

of my once great reputation.

Most penitently yours,

Nicholas

-Nicholas Hayes, 6:05p.m., Sunday July 18 2010 to LifeTogether blog administrator in pursuit of his six-month-overdue post

The writing of this blog entry is something of a miracle. I’ve been committed to doing
a blog entry for LifeTogether since, I believe, the second week of January, and though reminded
regularly—at monthly intervals, at least—of my failure to make good on it, still I have
managed to evade my duty. At last, however, in the concluding week of the program,
conscience—and the concerted forces of Caroline, Waetie, and public shame—has
caught up with me. It may also be that as the program ends, I feel a natural need to
record some of my reactions. So, here I am.

Closing in on the final week of the program, many things—emotions, thoughts, regrets,
reminiscences—are coming up for me. (Since I’m an Enneagram 4, they’re all of course
of the utmost intensity, and all thoroughly tinged with melancholia). At moments I feel
overwhelmed by feelings of one kind or other, at other moments, almost frighteningly
numb. Within the cacophony, however, I’m surprised at persistent leitmotif, refusing
to stop trumpeting at me. I’m starting to think it may be the most important lesson
I’ve learned this year. Simply put, it reduces to this: love means not running away.

I was reminded of that on Tuesday, at our final SLAM Tuesday prayer meeting, as all of
us-- the SLAM house, Arrington, and John deBeer—sat gathered around our improvised
table made from a neglected door, spread with a wonderful, incongruous half-consumed
banquet of quiches and fruit salads, pastries and redundant yogurt. As the inevitable
food coma set in, John DeBeer broke the complacently falling silence to ask our house
whether we’d learned anything about the relationship between falling in love and loving.
Though I didn’t express it exactly in those words, the answer which came to me, with
surprising speed and certainty, was: love means not running away.

There were so many times this year when I wanted to run away. Some of them took
place right in those Tuesday morning prayer meetings, after the nice thrill of the “honey
moon” with intentional community was over. There were the mornings when I woke
up anticipating a conflict that I didn’t want to deal with, or those when I woke up afraid
(more deeply than I would have admitted) of being called out for not doing the dishes, or
those when I was just tired of showing up to these same people, so agonizingly different
from me at times, and plumbing the dwindling reserves of sympathy and attentiveness
week after week. The urge to run was intense, and often that meant running into my
head, into the future—or my imagination of it: checking out mentally. Why should I
have to care so much? I would sometimes wonder. “We’re not even together for a year.
We’re not family. Once this program ends, I’ll have no obligations. At the end of the
day, I don’t have to deal with this—what does it really matter to me? I can just move
on."

Yet I showed up to those meetings, and kept showing up. My housemates did too.
Showing up became our habit—our habitual choice—and we grew (mostly) to trust it,
even when we didn’t feel like it or want to, because at the end of the day there was
really no other genuine option, not if we cared for each other. And we did. So we didn’t
run away from each other: we showed up. That I wonder at, and will, I think, for a long
while.

There was also the urge to run from work. Man was that strong at times, particularly
around April 10th. There too I think of reluctant mornings, the mornings I’d wake up to
with a desire to simply stay in bed and forget—forget all the importuning emails and
meetings and phone calls. There was too much to do and too much to get wrong and
final failure seemed to be waiting for me just around the corner, grinning expectantly,
waiting to unveil to the world the rot underneath all my masks and fine performances.
Sometimes I did stay in bed, longer than I should have. But getting out became a habit.
Caring for my work, and the people I’d drawn into it, proved stronger than fear. So I
didn’t run away: I showed up.

I keep coming back to that as we prepare to take our leave of each other this week. In
spite of all the temptations to zone out, or begin forgetting prematurely, or to try and
convince ourselves that somehow this experience wasn’t as meaningful as we once
were so sure it was—we have to resist the urge to run away. We have to show up. I
have to show up.

Somehow, in spite of all the urges to act against it, feeling that sense of obligation alive
within myself is deeply joyful.

For the witness of my work, and the witness of my fellow interns in giving it to me--
Praise God.

~Nicholas

BOOM! We are Christ's Body

Below is a sermon given by Micah intern Tyler Bridge at The Crossing. It was written in response to Luke 4:14-21. 

Luke 4:14-21

Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."


Initially when I hear this story I want to say, “Boom! That’s my Jesus!”  I want to run around proclaiming to everyone how awesome Jesus is. I want to say, “Did you hear that? Christ is the Messiah. He’s going to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, restore sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free.” But then I begin to dig deeper. I remember that as Christians we are called to not only admire and follow Jesus, but we are called to be like Christ; we are called to be Christ’s body.


       I hear that a lot these days. “We are Christ’s body.” And I find myself asking, “What the heck does that mean?” And it wasn’t until recently that I was able to answer this question for myself.


       I am a small-town West-Texas boy working for the Diocese of Massachusetts in an internship program that holds intentional community living as a key component. I have been thrust into a house with 6 other interns, and we are expected share our space, our time, and our emotions with one another. (Does this sound like Episcopal Church reality TV show to anyone else?)  Every Tuesday morning, rain or shine, happy or sad, awake or asleep, we have a meeting to discuss our community. What is going on, what is going well, what is not going so well, who is overcome with joy, who is angry, who can’t stop laughing, and who is steeped in sadness? (You know the questions one usually gets asked on Tuesday mornings.)

       One Tuesday I had had a particularly difficult week both as an individual and as a member of the community. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and I had just returned from the rather difficult funeral of my grandmother, Memaw is what we called her. My Memaw played no small part in my development both as a person and most importantly as a Christian, and dealing with her death and funeral was enough to inundate me with sadness. But going home to Texas is also something that brings me a lot of pain, and on this trip not only did I have to endure an alter call at the funeral service of my beloved grandmother, but also my mother and the pastor of her church telling me that I should really take a “serious look at my faith, and that I should reevaluate my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” These weren’t words of encouragement. Quite the opposed in fact, they said all this because they fear that the way I choose to practice my Christianity is a perversion, and they think I am missing the mark because I don’t have in their eyes a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”

      And that’s where I was sitting on a plane, flying back to Boston, questioning my faith, and realizing that the person that had been my spiritual guide for the past 25 years was not longer on this Earth. I came into our community meeting that Tuesday feeling detached, lonely, and broken, and our time together reflected that struggle. As I looked around the room, it was like the members of my community had each been facing similar challenges of individual and community life as well. We needed a sign, we needed love, we needed healing, we needed Jesus, and we got it. We gave voice to our pain, we sat together, we cried together, and with the help of each other we were able to overcome our fear, our loneliness, our brokenness, and at the close of our meeting, as I sat with tears in my eyes, feeling totally reconciled both with my community and with God, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I ceased see specific individuals within my community, but I realized that all I saw in their faces was the face of Jesus. That’s what it means to have a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” and that’s what it means to be Christ’s body.

       I see Christ here in the life of this diocese as well. I hear Christ’s voice when Jamie leads us in the full-bodied worship experience of song. I feel Christ’s footsteps when we gather together hundreds of youth from all over eastern Massachusetts at the Barbra C. Harris camp and conference center for the High School Youth and the Pre-Confirmation retreats to learn about and explore our faith, and we spread out over the entire Jack Dorian Center and dance to our hearts content, I see Christ’s hands in the work of the Hope in Action campaign, a campaign lead by the young adults of the Diomass intern program, and I feel Christ’s open heartbeat in this community today. A community that is willing to throw open your doors to me and Jamie and Rev. Steph to live and share and expand our faith through our common bond of Jesus Christ our Savior. I recognize Christ in all of these things because I recognize Christ in all of you.

       In this story Christ is the one who is going to change the world, but do we just sit at home and let him do it alone? I think the answer is a resounding, no. We are Christ’s body, and if we expect him to reconcile this broken world then we are going to have to mobilize his hands and feet. We are the ones called to bring good news to the poor,  we are the ones called to release the captives, restore sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free.

       We are Christ’s body. We are the ones called to do God’s work on Earth, because we are called to be like Christ in everything we do, everyway we do it. So imagine you are Jesus in this story, you are handed the scroll, you get up to read, and when you are finished you sit down with all eyes fixed upon you, and you say “I am like Christ, and I will fulfill scripture with my life.”