Sometimes the only truth I know is the love I see in your eyes. Like all frail people of all frail times, I have wrapped cold history with layers of meaning. I have worn causes like hats, theologies like mufflers, class like a coat, gender like an old sweater. But still the sharp wind cuts through, chills the center soul I try to keep hidden. I am naked beneath the layers, knowing only one truth to sustain me. Love, I was told, love is the command, love the answer and love the shelter against all alarms. I look to you. Like a light your eyes lead me home. Steven Charleston "Hope as Old as Fire"
I love the fact that this world is full of so many good people who work so hard. I really do. But, sometimes, I wonder if we work too hard. Even when it comes to trying to pray. I used to think I was terrible at praying. And so, I worked on it. I bent lower, prayed longer, I learned to use “just the right words,” I even learned to develop a “prayerful voice” that I turned on at just the right moment.
To be honest, none of it worked. In the end, my prayer life was as empty as a church sanctuary on the day after Christmas. You know why? I was working too hard. I was praying as if it all depended on me. And when it comes to prayer...that’s just not how it works.
The event that changed all this was something that happened in my life when I was 7 years old. Of course, being the quick learner that I am, it wasn’t until I was about 55 that I understood it.
When I was 7, I got over the fear I had of climbing trees. And the reason for that was I made a new friend...a girl named Laurie. I had probably had a crush on Laurie since Kindergarten. She lived just a block away, but because I had a crush on her, I didn’t talk to her until one day after school when I was trying to climb the cedar tree we had in our back yard, and all of the sudden I heard a voice behind me say, “want me to show you how?” It was Laurie. And before I could even respond, Laurie was at the top of the tree yelling, “come on up, scaredy cat!” And that’s all it took...well, actually it took me 15 minutes to get up there...but I made it. From that day on, Laurie was in my back yard up in our favorite spot...at the top of that cedar tree!
We loved that tree, especially in the winter. My mom, basically because I was kind of an “inside kid,” would actually order me out of the house and lock the door. Wasn’t she mean! (Actually, I asked her about this once and she said she only kept the door locked for 5 minutes. She said I’d come back and check it 3 times and then I was off playing with my friends. I just needed a push and then I was fine. Usually, I’d hang out there for 3 or 4 hours. “You were a slow starter, Brook, what can I say? Locking the door was my way of loving you!”) Thanks Mom!
We loved the cedar tree in the winter, because the wind and the snow in the Dakotas could get pretty rough, and that cedar tree was our hiding place...our sanctuary. I remember on a cold blustery winter day; Laurie and I were up in that cedar tree, and it was just magical! Birds were using it as a sanctuary as well. In fact, Laurie sat so still that day, that a little sparrow landed on her finger! But that same day I also remember Laurie starting to cry. Safe places do that to you, don’t they? They become so safe you feel like you can share your deepest secrets. And so that day Laurie, brimming with tears, did something I will never forget. She reached up to the top of her head and took her hair off! And then, braver than 10,000 soldiers, she told me that she had cancer. A bad cancer named Leukemia, and that she was taking treatments that made her hair fall out.
I’ll never forget that day, because when Laurie looked me in the eyes and told me her truth in love, I felt something between us that was greater than any crush. I felt a love I have come to know now as agape love. Laurie and I would be friends forever.
Laurie and I spent quite a few days in that tree that winter and spring, but one day it all stopped: the day Laurie’s mother came over and told me that Laurie had not been able to make it to her last doctor’s appointment. 3 days later she died.
I was devastated. I remember going to the funeral at our church, the church was right next to the parsonage. I was thinking our whole class might be there, but in the end, it was just me and a bunch of adults. After the service, I felt like my heart was going to explode, so I ran out of the church and sprinted to the only place I thought I could go...that cedar tree. Surely, there I would find peace! But as soon as I got to the top of that tree, a different kind of wind came upon me. Not the exterior wind of winter, but the interior wind of a feeling I had never had before...grief! Suddenly my whole body began to shake, and despite all of my powers I just could not get my tears to stop. What kind of a boy was I? I thought. Boys don’t cry! Boys make those kinds of tears stop! I was a failure! I was losing it.
It was just at that moment, when I heard a noise down at the foot of our cedar tree. At first, I thought it was Laurie, my friend. Maybe this was all a bad dream! But, when I looked down at the base of the tree I saw, instead, my mother. And I watched as she, in her funeral dress no less, climbed that tree faster than any squirrel in the neighborhood! And when she reached over and touched me...that “alone feeling of grief” went away, and I felt safe again. Safe enough to let the tears flow. Safe enough to know that boys could cry. Safe enough to know that although Laurie was gone, life wasn’t, and I would eventually live and laugh and love again.
Folks, that was the first time I really prayed in my life. Take a look at this moment. I wasn’t working at it. I wasn’t even saying anything! I wasn’t even bending! I was simply allowing love to be received.
The Advent/Christmas season is a time to bend, no doubt. It’s a time to join the shepherds and the magi and Mary and Joseph and bend our knee to love, but it is also a time to receive the love of a God who is not only bending down as low as low can go to gift us, but a God who is also willing to climb any tree to find us, and to gift us with Her presence, Her love, Her blanket...and wrap us in swaddling clothes. Don’t wait until your 55...learn to pray with me.
Your friend and pastor, learning to let God climb the tree sometimes, Brook
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