Will & Grace

August 16, 2015

From Al-Anon’s One Day at a Time

Today's Reminder: If I live just this one day at a time, I will not so readily entertain fears of what might happen tomorrow. If I am concentrating on today's activities, there will be no room for fretting and worrying. I will fill every minute of this day with something good -- seen, heard, accomplished. Then when the day is ended, I can look back on it with satisfaction and serenity.

 

Ephesians 5:15-20

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Will is a funny notion: God’s will; my will; where do they diverge and what am I willing to do about the divergence of wills? As with so much of life, that such questions revolve around notions of call, vocation, discernment, and while that might, at first blush, seem to have precious little relation to One Day at a Time, I believe they are actually bound closely together, for we work out our callings – that is to say, our lives – moment by moment, day by day, sometimes, as Kierkegaard put it, in “fear and trembling,” and always in the tension between will and grace.

I’ve been at Camp Hanover for the past two weeks, so you should not be surprised that I want to begin with a story and a song.

I spent an afternoon last week with a young man I’ve know for a bit more than a decade now. When we first met, he was an undergraduate music major in his first summer as a counselor on the staff at Hanover and my first summer as pastor-in-residence. We connected immediately because the first time I saw him he was singing a song about his “trusty, wusty paperclip.” I am an absolute sucker for such clever silliness, especially when it comes from a smart, thoughtful, caring person. Aaron proved to be all that and then some, and over the years we grew a strong friendship.

Apparently at some point along the way, a couple of years later, I asked Aaron if he’d ever considered going to seminary. He told me last week that I was the first person who’d ever suggested that, and it apparently planted a seed because a few years later he did, and last week he was back at camp as a pastor.

God does amazing things in our lives when we set aside our fears and pay attention to the gifts we’ve been given.

Amazing grace, indeed.

From time to time I’ll get asked why I keep going back to camp. After all, I’m well into middle age, and I’ve been doing this camp gig for a week or two each summer for the past 11 years.

There is, of course, the matter of family for me. My uncle John was the founding director back in the late 1950s. Imagine the audacity of that: founding an intentionally, quite publically integrated summer camp right outside of Richmond in 1957 – at the height of “massive resistance” to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954.

I tell our kids often that Hanover is the only place in the world where the name “Ensign” has any particular meaning, so there is that legacy.

Though I’m certainly proud of that, way more significant, and powerful to me is the legacy of the ministry that began as a place for building intentional Christian community across lines of human division.

It is still such a place.

Last summer, there was a little boy named Will at camp. He was a sweet kid, trying to find a way in the world but clearly facing some challenges. This year she is a little girl named Grace, and is a much happier kid. Grace has been embraced by the staff at camp, and is beginning to find that way in the world.

Her parents know of our church – the only More Light Presbyterian Church in Virginia, and they hold on to that knowledge of us as a beacon of hope for their own family and their church.

We, too, have a legacy to live up to. What we do here matters far beyond our small corner of the world. It matters to Grace.

Amazing grace, indeed.

Friday was the last night of camp, and at the closing campfire I asked one of my favorite questions – quoting Mary Oliver – “what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?” I told them a story that Desmond Tutu told of his childhood in the depths of apartheid South Africa. At that time, if a black person encountered a white person on the sidewalk, the black person was expected to step off of the sidewalk into the gutter to make way for the white person to pass. Tutu and his mother were walking down the sidewalk of his hometown when a white man approached. He was a priest in clerical garb, and when he approached the Tutus, he stepped off the sidewalk and tipped his hat to Desmond’s mother, for he had been taught that all people are worthy of respect.

Tutu said that at that moment, he knew he wanted to be like that man when he grew up.

You never know when a simple gesture of kindness, grace, generosity will have a significant effect on someone else’s life, and you never know when that someone else might just change the world.

So, what are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?

We have all been given gifts – grace upon grace. But all too often we are too fearful to use the gifts we’ve been given. What if we mess up? What if someone laughs? What if the risk is too great or the cost too high? We are so often such fearful creatures, and, in our fear, we shut ourselves off to the presence of God for God is lord of the present moment. In our fear, we dwell in the realm of past hurts or future anxieties, and miss out on the gift of this moment in God’s presence.

Rocks: like pebbles in your shoe – fear; set it down, let it go, and pick up a ribbon – lighter to carry. On it – one of the gifts of the spirit, for God’s spirit of love is stronger than our fear.