In the twinkling of an eye*

I’m winding up my Epiphany break in Amsterdam. That’s a fancy way of saying I love coming to Amsterdam in early January because it is so quiet here then. There are few tourists, and because it is cold and rainy even the locals stay inside, so it is just very peaceful. And of course, charming, especially at night with the inky sky studded with stars (Venus is visible in early evening to the southwest from my window) and the lights on the bridges glistening off the gently flowing water in the canals. Sounds dreamy doesn’t it?

The other evening after dinner I got interested in what was on television (rare, because Dutch television is, ahem, let’s say … ummm sparse). My left leg “went to sleep” and when I tried to get up I almost toppled over. I had to plop back down and pound on my leg to get it to “wake up” and then hobble to the kitchen muttering as I went. Interesting to think about God knowing my leg was asleep, about God knowing what I was muttering (ahem, again) and even to wonder whether God put my leg to sleep to make me sit still. Psalm 139:1 “LORD, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up ….”

Of course God is aware and involved, because we are in God and God is in us. God isn’t Santa Claus, I like to remind folks—God doesn’t need to make lists and check them twice, because God occupies us and we occupy God. It is only a matter of dimension that keeps us from always perceiving this truth. Unity already exists, God is our unity, if only we could manage to remember it, to see it, always instead of just once in awhile. Psalm 139:2-3 “You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O LORD, know it altogether.”

Amsterdam is well known, I know, for some eccentric behaviors. I always chuckle about that too, because I have been visiting here for many years and I have many gay friends here. They are all very sweet people, and would be horrified by the idea of such eccentricity. They like their biertjes and boyfriends, but apart from that they have a kind of sweetness in their nature that is very appealing. It is almost as though they are so well-adjusted in their gayness that they have seen their own unity with God, as though they already dwell in that different dimension. Their eyes twinkle sometimes just enough to make me think they know something I don’t know. Psalm 139: 5 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it.”

The Gospel reading for today includes the second part of Jesus’ search for disciples (John 1: 43-51). This is one of my favorite stories to bring up in gay circles. We tend to think of Jesus in big bold letters, yet here is this young man, long hair, a little disheveled, wandering around the seashore chatting up scantily-clad young men (they were fishing, after all) and telling them to follow him. Sounds like the first gay bar I ever went to. I remember, I was terrified, even with my friends sitting right there a couple of feet away. And when the first real honest to goodness gay man made eye contact with me I was really frightened and ran back to my friends and put my head down. A little like Nathanael today, who reacts to Philip’s call by saying something nasty about Jesus’ home town. Now, see, it really sounds like a gay bar. And, like me when I first encountered that which God had prepared for me for all eternity, Nathanael’s first impulse is to hide, to make a rude remark. When Jesus addresses him directly he challenges him—“where did you get to know me?”

Never thought about Jesus and a gay bar in the same way before? Maybe it’s time to begin. Maybe the way to find that sweet other dimension, the one where we know we are of God and God is always one with us, the one where even our eyes twinkle, is to look for God right where we are. As Jesus says to his future disciples, “Come, and see.”

*1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Open the Eyes of Your Heart*

This week’s scripture brings us one of my favorite passages from Paul, where he writes that we should come to know the hope to which God has called us through the eyes of our hearts.

Wow. The eyes of our hearts. And yes, of course it is a metaphor for learning to see the world from within the center of your soul. Which is rather a different way of looking at the world than what most of us do, which is to look at it from behind the ramparts.

It reminds me of my first week in seminary, which is—trust me—an eye-opening experience. You arrive, together with a bunch of other dewy-eyed people, full of hope, full of your own knowledge of the Holy Spirit, ready to dive into the job of becoming a priest. You mustn’t think, reading this, that there is any naïvete about these people. Like me, all of them had been through a “process” as “aspirants” and through the process of opening up and telling their spiritual histories to huge groups of total strangers over and over. That’s the first step toward becoming a “postulant” for holy orders. It is, frankly, an emotionally brutal process at best. But it teaches you to think with your heart as well as your brain.

The first day or two of seminary involve a lot of eating and singing, and then everyone gets down to work and before long the politics show up. And pretty soon, there you are walking around with your walls all down, because that’s how everybody else is, and then comes the zinger that hurts to the quick. And then you see, with the eyes of your heart , just how easy it is to hurt someone, even without really meaning it. And then, if you are to become a priest, you have to keep learning this lesson better and better … because Christ asks us to tear our walls down and walk together in love—as it says “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”

It is not just a lesson for the clergy, of course. It is a lesson for everyone. Christ was born a baby, dangerously in a stable, not in a shiny hospital or an elegant home, but in a barn with animals and filth, it could hardly have been more real or more human. Our God became like us, to show us, that we can be like God, if we can tear down our walls.

GLBT folks live behind lots of walls. I’ve always thought it humorous that the first carpentry I ever did was to build a pantry—a closet—and in fact, in this present home, which is my third house, the only real carpentry I’ve done is to rebuild the pantries—closets. Building closets is the only thing at which I excel. Ha ha … We are all good at protecting ourselves from each other. But, the cost of that is that we wind up separating ourselves from each other. Thus, the power of the Christmas message is the power that tells us to tear down those walls, to open the closet doors, and to learn to see with the eyes of our hearts.

Will it hurt? Yes, certainly, and without question. Will the hurt be worth the gain? Yes, certainly and without question. Because if you can learn to live openly, as who God made you to be, and in full union with those around you, no walls up to separate your hearts … if you can do that, then you will indeed be enlightened to the hope to which Christ calls us in his humble birth.

What should we make of this odd story in Matthew’s Gospel? More dreams—poor Joseph is being jerked around by angels who come to him in dreams, and yet, they are the dreams that open the eyes of his heart to enlightenment, which ultimately fulfills the prophecy. You see, if you are going to be all that God has made you to be, then you must be open to the messages of angels in your dreams. Sounds weird doesn’t it? It means, open the eyes of your heart to see what God is calling you to do and to be. Learn to see with your heart, or listen with your soul. (Maybe I’m being too obtuse here—it means, set your five natural senses aside if you want to hear what God is showing you, or see what God is saying to you.) Or maybe I should just say, don’t overthink it.

There is a persistent theme in this scripture, about a garden full of water in a desolate valley, a place of springs, a place that nourishes, a place that is ordained by God. Not a desolate closet, but an enriching garden of friends and loved ones, whose hearts are opened by the enlightenment you bring. It reminds me of the first Christmas potluck I went to after I came out. There were about 40 guys there, and it was the warmest, most spiritual Christmas I had ever experienced to that point in my life.  I had found my real family, or perhaps I should say, with the eyes of my heart open, my family had found me.

This, then, is the responsibility of Christmastide. Open the eyes of your hearts my friends, and live!

*2nd Sunday after Christmas (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.