Evolutionary ecological cycles

It has been fun experiencing the shifting seasons in Oregon. A few days ago it was summer and very hot; all of a sudden yesterday it got cool and started raining. The light has shifted with the temperature. The cool damp, of course, is critical for the ecological cycle that makes this a place full of trees and green everywhere. The cycle evolves, things change, and because of the cycle of change, life grows and is abundant. Change, this evolutionary cycle, it seems, is critical in all parts of creation.

It also has been comforting to feel more at home than I have in quite awhile. The difference between knowing that you belong and feeling like an outsider can be subtle. For lgbtq people the difference often falls somewhere between knowing you are just being “tolerated” (put up with) to feeling loved and accepted. Somewhere along that line lie the points in between where you know you are not really equal.

Once early in our time in Wisconsin I had to get a simple medical procedure taken care of; Brad was along mostly for moral support but he got bored and went out to find food. When it was all over I asked whether the nurse knew where my husband had gone and she pointedly replied that my “friend” was out in the seating area. I don’t remember the entire conversation any longer (mercifully) but I do remember the third time she said “friend” I said something along the lines of “we’re married, he’s my husband, it’s the law, you had better get used to it.” Oh well. It’s never nice to be snarky, but then again, it’s never nice to have to be snarky to demand equality that ought to already be yours by nature.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the nice lady at DMV who took good care of our little family. This week I took my house guest to the gym with me, and instead of asking me a zillion questions about why I had him along they smiled and gave him a guest pass. Someone asked me how I perceived life in Oregon to be more amenable and I said it boils down to all of these little things. Even just things like Brad and me buying groceries together, which seemed often to discomfit cashiers in Wisconsin.

When the simple things go well you have more energy for giving love as you go.

Of course there is always hope because there is always the process of growth and change, evolution even. Here is where I like the image of the potter at the wheel in Jeremiah 18. Sure you can make a pot and feel like you are done with it. But Jeremiah uses the metaphor to prophesy about how God always is recasting us in the same way a malformed pot can be returned to clay and recast in a better shape. It works both ways too—it isn’t just the “other” who is being constantly recast, it is us too, you and me, changing and growing as we experience life, especially growing in love as we experience equality—the power of the evolutionary cycle.

Love evolves and we grow.

There is a clear parallel between this metaphor of the potter and the “radical self denial”* that Jesus demands of his followers in Luke 14. To live fully in God’s kingdom requires setting aside of self to the point where love can emerge. When love can emerge the shift is radical, the kingdom appears, equality becomes a matter of knowing in your soul that you are loved and accepted because you know in your soul that you love and accept too.

 

*The term “radical self denial” comes from: Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke. The Anchor Bible. (New York: Doubleday 1985), p. 1062.

Proper 18 (Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21: Luke 14:25-33)

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.