The Chaplain Chatters

The beloved Cecil Turtle!

I was thinking about spiritual discernment this morning and a wonderful insight shared by some good friends about how sometimes we don’t see or hear things quite accurately, like thinking that a voice is coming from behind us rather than in front.

This picture is from one of my all-time favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, Tortoise Beats Hare. Bugs’ most insightful director, the incomparable Chuck Jones,  is one of the great spiritual geniuses of our time 🙂 and I find it rather amusing that he reportedly hated this particular episode directed by Tex Avery because he thought it made Bugs unrecognizable. But ain’t that the truth about our own spiritual condition sometimes– it happens that we see something rather different or even unrecognizable about ourselves when we look in the spiritual mirror of prayer (James 1:22-26)? Perhaps we are, as Paul puts it, being made new!

Anyway, watching this classic again  reminds me of how sometimes when we see certain objects in the distance they appear to be moving very slowly but in fact they’re moving much more quickly than we can anticipate. And of course the vice versa is also true. It’s only when we get closer to the point of meeting that we see things are moving very differently than we had imagined. Like Desperados waiting for a train,  we find we may not be able to catch on to the fast moving boxcar like we had thought. Best to regroup and wait for another to come by that is moving our speed. 

Discernment is like this, and it means we must stick with it until the moment things come into focus and we sense the scene has reached a fitting resolution at least for the time being. Because our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, nor our spiritual eyes and ears perfectly keen, we can expect misrecognition to happen. This is rarely anyone’s fault as I often need to remind folks I am working with in spiritual direction. And we do not always know ourselves, never mind others, as well as we thought, and God can be doing something deep in our hearts about which we may at the moment be only dimly aware. 

At Brewster House every night, the West crew has dinner at the dining room table. Often our eldest, Cecilia, will request that we play a little game Sarah brought back from Mount Saviour Monastery in Elmira.

It’s a card game where we read a card from a deck with a conversation prompt. Last night the card pictured here was the one chosen. Cecilia went first and said she would be an artist and would draw as many beautiful paintings as she could in the one day she had artists gift. That way, her gift would last well beyond that one magical day and would give others enjoyment for years to come. Wow! Cecilia sets the bar high.

Her adoring brother Amos listened carefully to his sister’s choice and then quickly re-calibrated. He had been thinking of choosing the talent of basketball but decided that wouldn’t give much lasting joy to others, so he chose instead to have the talent of a great writer and write as many wonderful books as possible on his magic day. Given his recent success with his book The Talking Hot Dog and the Mean Yellow Stick, we all approved.

Sarah went next and shared her desire to be the world’s greatest ballet dancer so that her entire body and soul would be giving glory to God and joy to others. This was indeed good!

Annie went next and picked singing and added that she would record her songs as music videos that could inspire others for years to come after her one day of talent was gone. Our budding you-tuber had chosen well. Amen.

Cecilia then noticed that I had not gone and insisted it was my turn. World’s best farter? (That was Bear’s inappropriate suggestion). No! Best priest ever? asked one of the kids. Nope, already am came some braggadocious bumblehead’s retort. World’s best comedian? Maybe. Best singer songwriter? Oh, that would be cool to write a song like Masters of War or Blowing in the Wind that would inspire for years to come. But finally my answer came: World’s greatest children’s book writer. That would be my choice. The table was pleased. Dessert and dish washing then commenced.

This sermon was preached on Sunday, April 30, 2017.

The biblical word that is often translated as obedience is hypakoē in the Greek, a word whose root is from the verb which means to listen attentively.

This is what makes discernment so crucial, because we hear many voices and many words and it is not always easy to know which are God’s. Some of these words are our own, others those we inherit from our culture, still others from our personal stories, wounds, past traumas. And God’s word may speak through these words, but God can also issue forth a new song previously unheard, at the periphery of our spiritual-auditory landscape.. So we sift through all of this slowly-in God’s time, not our own.

Photo by George Cannon Images

My daughter Annie was in her first production of this remarkable local youth theater group. Here are a few thoughts of mine from a recent Facebook post:

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is truly a wonderful work of pastoral theology–the story of Joseph is read as a story of how our gifts are often also our afflictions–in Joseph’s case his gift of dreams and dream interpretation–leading him to isolation and ostracization at the beginning of the show–but at the pivotal moment when he is thrown in jail and everything seems dark and he feels utterly isolated (Close Every Door), the chorus comes to tell him no, we’ve read the book, Joseph and you come out on top. This is a remarkable affirmation of the importance of faith, and for those of us who are biblical people, a reminder of how important it is to read the scriptures as our story, not just that of ancient history.

They then sing Go Go Go Joseph and tell him that the way forward is to realize that this gift is to be affirmed, understood, and used for the good of others–which he does for the starving people of Egypt and then his brothers.

And in the end, the coat of many colors is taken off his shoulders–he is only special when he shares that gift. It is meant for the good of others, not self-adulation, as the good book says.

In R2P’s remarkable staging, as the coat is taken off Joseph’s shoulders the lighting on stage becomes technicolor; now the community is technicolor–showing that the gift that was the affliction and isolating can, with work and group discernment, become a gift for the whole community in its great diversity of gifts and dreams.

When Jasper as Joseph raised his hands up at the end, the whole community did too and we see the power of love and mutual recognition of our gifts. The joy and redemption and release were palpable and I for one was moved to tears of great joy and gratitude.

This is truly a remarkable work. Thank you Jeremy Pletter and Joey Steinhagen and R2P. I look forward to coming to many more of these wonderful productions!