Christmas message

I wonder what it would have been like if Harry hadn’t followed Hagrid to Hogwarts. Maybe he would have hung the invitation on the wall beside his bed under the stairs. He would have been no less a wizard. But he would have never known that he could have friends, family, and a home that felt like his real place in the world. That he could face bad guys, dragons, evil. That he could overcome the worst thing in life: someone who would destroy love, and then find out that that wasn’t so different from the trouble he faced under the stairs. It wouldn’t mean he wasn’t a wizard. But it would mean that he would have remained a kid in a house full of unkind people, struggling, disconnected, and alone, with abilities he didn’t understand.

In one of my classes this term, I learned about a concept that made me feel a little bit like I’d been carrying around a letter to Hogwarts without ever opening it. That’s the story I want to tell this Christmas.

God, directly and indirectly, has been explained to me all my life. I’ve heard, from both church and culture, about who God is, what God’s like, and how a relationship with God should look. The church messaging of my childhood in the 80s and 90s runs deep. If I could change something about what I took away from that experience, it would be for my understanding to have gone well out beyond salvation. I wish I had not just received the good news in a thousand different letters swirling around me all the time, but that someone had explained how to finally open one and discover what it said. This Christmas, I would like to submit that salvation isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.

Back in the 80s and 90s, and perhaps now too, after saying a certain prayer at a concert or retreat or revival, you now had a package, often called “the gift of salvation,” to carry around. You were told that you had the answers to life’s mysteries, and as a bonus, you wouldn’t go to hell. That sounded like a good plan. But without knowing what else to do with the gift, in time, the package tended to become heavy. One could easily forget why she was carrying it, what the circumstances of picking it up had been, and what promises had been attached to it. Whatever the thing was before, it wasn’t that any more. It was just in the way.

In Bible story terms, it’s like if the disciples were called by Jesus, and they were like, “Yeah, I believe that,” but then carried on doing what they were doing without following to learn more. In the actual story, they dropped the nets, got out of the boat, and followed. They got to know the man. They grew closer over time. Asked questions. Misunderstood. Tried again. They had a growing relationship. But without that process, for me at least, the package may as well have been empty. I got tired of carrying it and put the gift away as a kind of memento. I can’t be alone in having had this experience of Christianity. And I also know that a countless number did not have this experience. They knew what was inside the package. I just wasn’t one of them.

Instead, I had the experience of being told a story, really strongly believing it, and then having limited follow up on what to do about that belief beyond spreading the word to others. I got good at that part, thinking that must be the way to understand it all in the end. But for me it wasn’t. So eventually, though I felt very connected to the community, I did not feel connected to God. Not only did everything about my original commitment start to die, but it began to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. The repeated requests over the years from leadership who were dialed in on salvation as a ticket did not help matters. We were prompted continually to make sure we were really “saved.” The word itself became so elusive and so connected to an emotional feeling that it was like a little bird that came and went as it pleased. Offers of new packages were continual, and I began to think, look, I’ve got a collection of these covered in dust on the shelf already. What more is there to this? Be nice to people? We can do that without the letter. What more IS there? Good people wanted to help their community find the truth, but in some cases, it instead became a process of delivering stunted hope to those left confused after the music ended. In my case, separate from the community, God didn't exist, and so I dropped the whole thing.

One day, long after all of that had happened and I had emotionally processed it and moved on, I began hearing from God through parenting and in the garden. I heard from God like I had as a child. Without any attachments. Without any community rules. Without doctrine or theology. Then I had a dream. When I woke up, there sat my old letter on the table. I stared at it a while. It trembled a bit. Light shined out from the cracks like it held a sun. Still, it sat unopened, but the rumbling got louder by the day. I was determined to figure it out. My way of doing that? I’m Robin, so I went back to school of course.

In class, I learned a phrase that is related to the idea of developing an ongoing relationship with God. It’s kind of related to the word "discipleship," which I heard thrown around for years back in the day but never understood. The phrase is “spiritual formation.” It’s a fancy way of saying you don’t just receive the gift, you open it up, and inside you find a journey, and the journey is more like a relationship than a trip. I didn’t understand what the instructor was talking about at first. Over the weeks, I listened. I tried some exercises we were taught. I read what a bunch of people have written on the topic. I started to understand.

In time, the analogy of the unopened gift started to form in my mind. As soon as I realized, I picked it up, tugged at the paper, and looked inside.

“Oh,” I said. “OH…”

And I saw that within there weren’t any sides and there wasn’t a bottom, just a road with a signpost that read: Follow me. The way. The path to start down. The journey. It was an invitation to start a relationship that wouldn’t follow the usual rules and had no borders.

Over the years, there have been a handful of people who broke my expectations about what being a follower of Christ was about. There were a couple in childhood, one in the church days of my youth, there were a couple during undergrad, there are many now, who seemed to be walking to some different sort of beat when it came to Christianity. They stood out to me because whatever they had seemed to be different. I’m not referring to some silly notion about how “christiany” one person or another is. I am talking about a few really clever, really kind, often intensely honest, intensely loving and generous people who carried the cross in a different sort of way that made me think, “Man. They really believe this stuff. They believe all of it.” So that even when I had packed my gift away, they stood out as giant question marks. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what was different. How was it that they were so genuine about it without pretending? Were they crazy? Were they tricked? Had they become so deeply embedded in the stories and ideas and church culture that their brains were simply washed in it? Or was there something to it? I didn’t have an answer then.

I think now I do. I think those people have a relationship with God. They have not just been informed that they’re wizards, so to speak. They got out of the boat. Or off the train. Look, the analogy doesn’t work in all areas. What I’m saying is, they have an ongoing, growing relationship with God like we have relationships with regular human people. They did read the words in the letter: “Follow me.” Not, “Congrats. You found a get out of jail free card. Catch as many as you can!” Just: “Follow me.” And they had the gall to actually do it, which led them to discover things that people and places and life and existence and circumstances and time can’t change. So they’re different.

It would be handy at this point to be able to prescribe some future action for myself or someone else in order to grow or deepen a relationship with God, but I can’t. I didn’t write the letter. It’s probably not a bad idea to start by spending time where/when you have most often felt a connection with God. Or to spend time pondering the story of Jesus' life and what all he said "following" meant. There are actionable steps, but I don’t know what yours could be.

I can tell you what happened with me that sort of started me in what feels like a good direction. It was the realization that this isn’t the first relationship that I’ve tried to grow, and it's not one-sided. If it is, it's empty. So logically I need to spend time and energy on it, like any other relationship. Then it dawned on me that all the Bible stories I knew, Old and New Testament, pointed to God trying over and over to establish relationship or make it possible. So I started where I most often hear God. That's out in my yard. When I’m working in the yard with my plants, I hear God. I’ve learned lesson after lesson about life by weeding, growing, caring, neglecting, seeing the seasons change, seeing the cycle of the plants. I have never heard God as much as in the garden. So I pay close attention there, listen, and watch. For me, that is time spent on the relationship. I learn more about what God’s about, and I can hear there.

Or when I parent. I get the really hard lessons then. In fact, there are times when I’m like, “Could we stop with the parenting lessons?” It’s exhausting. But there is some way in which, if I stop and recognize that the lesson is from God, we connect in that moment, and the relationship grows.

Where do you most often connect or feel like you’re connecting? I have a friend who hears during things like taking communion or saying communal prayers. One seems to connect most clearly while creating art. One most definitely hears at the ocean and the other while hiking. Or reading. Or listening to music. Or all of those. And that could be a nice place to start if you’ve felt like I have over the years.

I want to say a lot more, but you’re busy, and it’s Christmas, and as usual, I’ve already said too much. The point of this story is that I opened my gift 38 years after receiving it, and that’s just as soon as I could, and I think that’s okay, and now I’m walking along seeing where it takes me. So if you find me out in the yard staring hard at the veins of a leaf magnified by a raindrop, I’m not just taking pretty pictures: I’m listening. If I burst into tears at the sight of my kid happily smiling down at his cat while cradling her in his arms, I'm not just hormonal: I'm listening. If I look like I'm in a trance while listening to someone make a violin sing, I'm not high: I'm listening. If you see me struggle: I'm listening. If you see me mourn: I'm listening. If you see me stumble: I'm listening. And I think if I listen long enough, maybe by the time they're old enough, if grace allows, I can hope to be someone my kids look at and think, "Man. She really believes this stuff. She believes all of it."