Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Preached on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at The Episcopal Church of St. Paul, Chatham, NJ by Jim Mollo

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, be always acceptable in your sight, our Lord and Redeemer.
Amen.

Many of you know that I was once a postulant to the priesthood. For reasons that are a sermon for another day, I backed out. But there was one thing in particular that I grieved when I left the path of ordination. It was preaching. I love preaching.

One of the things that make preaching easy and fun for me is that I usually know at least a month ahead of time when I’ll be preaching. I have a great deal of time to prepare, to read the scripture, read companion texts, to pray and write. I’m blessed to be here at St. Paul’s with Elizabeth as our priest. She trusts me. I know that. And I trust her.

Elizabeth asked me a week ago to preach today. Not a month, but a week. My response was, “Fine, fine… sure, no problem. I mean, that’s how much time a real priest has, right? Anything for you.” “Wait,” I said. “This isn’t some crazy scripture passage, like ‘women be subject to your men’, is it?” “I have no idea.” was her response and she was out the door. Uh oh.

I have no idea indeed.

“Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"…”

The Lord will provide. The Lord will provide. What is amazing to me, if not more than a little horrifying, is that Abraham did not expect God to do anything else. But God did. The Lord provided. When Abraham was about to do the unthinkable, the Lord provided another solution. Now, I could spend hours talking about what this passage really means to me, or wonder aloud if God would really expect a homicidal sacrifice from us. But at this point in my life, I am most drawn to two things in this reading.

First, Abraham listened and responded when he was called. When the Angel of the Lord called to him, he responded, “Here I am.” And second, I am drawn to the thought that God may provide what you need when you least expect it. And God may provide WHAT you least expect.

There is a John Lennon song that gets me choked up every time I hear it. I want to share some of the lyrics with you, (I’ll read them because I don’t sing – even when Brandon asks). It is titled, Beautiful Boy, (Darling Boy).

Out on the ocean
Sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we’ll both just have to be patient
cause it’s a long way to go
A hard row to hoe
Yes, it’s a long way to go
But in the meantime

Before you cross the street
Take my hand
Life is what happens to you
While you’re busy making other plans

It is a lullaby and love story – a song by a father to his son – from John Lennon to Sean. It is meaningful to me simply for its beauty. But also because it speaks to the losses we’ve all suffered, for childhoods lost and family relationships ended too soon.

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Yes. Yes, it is.

Kim is going to curse me for divulging the family business, but most of you know I am a painful extrovert. I share intimately personal information, even when I shouldn’t.

So. Let’s just say we had a really hard time having Olivia. We went through lots of problems conceiving, lots of issues concerning Kim’s health during the pregnancy and we had lots of tests gone wrong. About a year after O was born we started talking about another child.

We bought a bigger house and moved in.
We painted a nursery – yellow and green.
And, well….we tried.
Fertility drugs, we tried, nothing.
The nursery has sat empty for three years.

About six months ago, we agreed it was over. We cleaned out the nursery and I started to pull up the rug to check out the hardwood floors underneath. We picked out paint samples for our new office. We’d moved on. Transitioned. We’re a one precious child family – and we’re ok with that. We decided this meant that God wanted us to go back to Europe on holiday with our soon-to-be five year old and we were happy to oblige.

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

One lazy Saturday afternoon in May I was getting ready to cook dinner and began to mix a little inspiration in the form of a gin and tonic. I asked Kim if she wanted a cocktail.

She said she’d be right back. We had recently discussed the thought that she might be undergoing some peri-menopause. I was sure she was going to reinforce that this was the case and that she wasn’t pregnant. Because, well, that just wasn’t a possibility for us.

She came back with the stick and said, “Well, I guess we’re not converting the nursery into an office.”

She handed me the stick. “What? What does this plus mean? Is this a joke? Did you draw that? Seriously, this isn’t funny. Did you draw that extra line?”

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

And, at first, we didn’t feel what we thought we should feel. We were upset. We were done. We had moved on. We had transitioned.

But God had other plans.

And we grieved. Yes, we even grieved. We grieved the life we thought we were about to live, for a new life. We were entering into what seemed – the impossible. I know people have healthy children every day – but we for all intents and purposes couldn’t have another child.

I’ve been reading Madeleine L’Engle’s, Walking on Water. L’Engle writes that, “God is always calling on us to do the impossible. It helps me to remember that anything Jesus did during his life here on Earth is something we should be able to do, too.”

She writes about going to a pond and sitting on the rocks and remembering Peter walking across the water to meet Jesus. She said, “As long as he didn’t remember that we human beings have forgotten how to walk on water, he was able to do it.”

“If Jesus of Nazareth was God become truly man for us, as I believe he was, then we should be able to walk on water, to heal the sick, even to accept the Father’s answer to our prayers when it is not the answer that we had hoped for…” (pg 11).

I believe this deeply. It is why I feel so passionately about the laying on of hands. I am certain we have the power to heal one another – perhaps just not in the ways we think. There are deep and mystical powers that swirl around this giant cavern of a Church. I believe our prayers and the prayers of those before us are forever in this place. Sometimes, our prayers get answered just as we’d thought. Other times we see that the opposite of what we hoped was actually the answer. Sometimes, the answer to a prayer is “no.” Particularly after those answers come to us, we’re forced to transition, into a place or a role we had not necessarily anticipated.

And so, Kim and I have moved, slowly, into acceptance and joy. We have transitioned once again. We’ve come to accept God’s answer to our prayers when it is not the answer we expected. We’ve transitioned to getting a new nursery in order, to disagreeing over baby names (I like Lulu), and anticipating bringing a new daughter before you for Baptism. It took time to surrender our own plans to what God had in store for us. Thank God, pregnancies take nine months and we have time to process all of this.

Like Abraham not expecting an alternative solution from God, we didn’t expect anything different either. But God did. The Lord provided. When we were busy making other plans, God provided a different path.

It’s hard to give up your expectations and your plans. But it’s even harder to fight where you are supposed to be.

Where is God calling you – in your relationships, in your work, in the Church? I’m not suggesting you be controlled, but I suggest checking in with God every now and then. Close your eyes and listen. Where is that place that God wants you – are you where you are supposed to be? I don’t mean physically – are you doing what God would have you do? Are you where you are supposed to be? Don’t fight it. At least don’t fight it too hard. When that voice calls you - answer like Abraham. “Here I am. Here I am.” And then listen.

God may provide when you least expect it. And God may provide WHAT you least expect. Be open to it and listen for that voice speaking to your soul.

Amen.

Celebrate a Life

Kim and I have a tradition that we get to pick what we want to do to celebrate our birthdays. I mean, more than just cake and family. We get to go somewhere for the day. Since my birthday is in June, I almost always pick the beach. This year was no different. I love the beach. We all do, actually.

O had a blast. The water was still cold, but much more tolerable than our trip two weeks ago.

The air was warm and beautiful. O got to play some games and ride on the amusement park rides. We spent about $40 to win $5 worth of stuffed animals.

Kim and I spent the day thinking about a friend of ours from Church who died this morning. She was a strong woman who lived life by her own terms. I have great respect for how she lived and died.

I hope that we instill values in O like the ones Gail had.

I'm certain at least that O is happy. Just watch the video. She'll confirm it.

Face Painters for Obama!

O's Recital

Just a brief clip of the show...

On Death and Haunting

Several weeks ago I purchased Kurt Vonnegut's Armageddon in Retrospect. It is a collection of previously unpublished short stories collected by his son, Mark. I spent the last couple weekends reading some of the stories. In Wailing Shall Be in All Streets he wrote about his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. America bombed the city and killed 100,000 civilians. Vonnegut argues that the destruction of that city was not important to our victory.

Vonnegut and many of his peers survived because they were housed deep in a meatlocker in a slaughterhouse. This experience would become the beginning of his famous text, Slaughterhouse-Five.

His experiences as a prisoner of war, and his perspective on the effects of war on all involved greatly influenced his work. In this text he tried to convey what he felt after they saw the destruction of Dresden. "I cannot describe the desolation properly, but I can give an idea of how it made us feel, in the words of a delirious British soldier in a makeshift P.W. hospital: "It's frigtenin', I tell you. I would walk down one of them bloody streets and feel a thousand eyes on the back of me 'ead. I would 'ear 'em whisperin' behind me. I would turn around to look at 'em and there wouldn't be a bloomin' soul in sight. You can feel 'em and you can 'ear 'em but there's never anybody there." We knew what he said was so." (pg. 39).

It is the struggle that many of us feel with war. We watch wars safely from behind our television sets. While military men and women put their lives at risk every day, technological advances also allow bombs to be dropped from miles away. Those bombs, at times, fall precariously close to civilian targets, and sometimes kill the innocents. I have seen too many images of blood soaked streets from terrorists bombing shopping centers.

The dead haunt me.

Someone whom I greatly respect shared a reading with me. It is a reading from Chief Seattle's response to a government official's offer to purchase the remaining Seattle Land in 1845.

"We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children."

"Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. "

"And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude."

"At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land."

"The White Man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds."

Deal kindly with all people. May the dead haunt us all.

Dancers Preparing for an Audition (add in Degas and google it)

Kim wasn't feeling well on Friday so I took the day off and brought O to dance class. They tried on their costumes for the June 14th Dance Recital. We watched a preview of their dance routine. Thought you might enjoy a few pictures!

It could have been a Degas painting.

I Love This!

I was looking for an old sermon I preached for a reflection I'm working on and I stumbled across this. I have no idea who wrote it, or where I got it from. If anyone knows let me know - I'd love to give the earthly author a little credit too. I think it was from an email someone sent me back in 2001. Or maybe it was simply slipped into my computer by God. It's long, but well worth the read.
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Date: Eternity
From: GOD
To: My Children On Earth

Re: Idiotic Religious Rivalries

My Dear Children (and believe me, that's all of you),

I consider myself a pretty patient Guy. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get it right. And how about evolution? Boy, nothing is slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to take place, cell by cell and gene by gene. I've even been patient through your fashions, civilizations, wars and schemes, and the countless ways you take Me for granted until you get yourselves into big trouble again and again.

But today, I want to let you know about some things that are starting to tick Me off.

First of all, your religious rivalries are driving Me up a wall. Enough already! Let's get one thing straight: These are your religions, not Mine. I'm the Whole Enchilada; I'm beyond them all. Every one of your religions claims there's only one of Me. But in the very next breath, each religion claims it's My favorite one. And each claims I wrote its Bible personally, and that all the other Bibles are man-made. Oh, Me. How do I even begin to put a stop to such complicated nonsense?

Okay, listen up now: I'm your Father and Mother, and I don't play favorites among My Children. Also, I hate to break it to you, but I didn't write that stuff. I've always been more of a "doer" anyway. So all your books, including the bibles, were written by men and women. They were inspired, remarkable people, but they also made mistakes here and there. I made sure of that, so that you would never trust a written word more than your own living Heart.

You see, one Human Being to me -- even a Bum on the street -- is worth more than all the holy books in the world. That's just the kind of Guy I Am. My Spirit is not an historical thing, It's alive right here, right now, as fresh as your next breath. Holy books and religious rites are sacred and powerful, but not more so than the least of You. They were only meant to steer you in the right direction, not to keep you arguing with each other, and certainly not to keep you from trusting your own personal connection with Me.

Which brings Me to My next point about your nonsense: You act like I need you and your religions to stick up for Me or "win souls" for My Sake. Please, don't do Me any favors. I can stand quite well on my own, thank you. I don't need you to defend Me, and I don't need constant credit. I just want you to be good to each other.

And another thing: I don't get all worked up over money or politics, so stop dragging My name into your dramas. For example, I swear to Me that I never threatened Oral Roberts. I never rode in any of Rajneesh's Rolls Royces. I never told Pat Robertson to run for president, and I've never ever had a conversation with Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, or Jimmy Swaggart! Of course, come Judgment Day, I certainly intend to...

The thing is, I want you to stop thinking of religion as some sort of loyalty pledge to Me. The true purpose of your religions is so that you can become more aware of Me, not the other way around. Believe Me, I know you already. I know what's in each of your hearts, and I love you with no strings attached. Lighten up and enjoy Me. That's what religion is best for.

What you seem to forget is how mysterious I Am. You look at the petty little differences in your scriptures and say, "Well, if this is the Truth, then that can't be!" But instead of trying to figure out My Paradoxes and Unfathomable Nature -- which, by the way, you never will -- why not open your hearts to the simple common threads in every religion?

You know what I'm talking about:
a.. Love and respect everyone.
b.. Be kind. Even when life is scary or confusing, take courage and be of good cheer, for I Am always with you.
c.. Learn how to be quiet, so you can hear My Still, Small Voice (I don't like to shout).
d.. Leave the world a better place by living your life with dignity and gracefulness, for you are My Own Child.
e.. Hold back nothing from life, for the parts of you that can die will surely die, and the parts that can't, won't.
f.. So don't worry, be happy (I stole that last line from Bobby McFerrin, but he stole it from Meher Baba in the first place.)

Simple stuff. Why do you keep making it so complicated? It's like you're always looking for an excuse to be upset. And I'm very tired of being your main excuse. Do you think I care whether you call me Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, Wakantonka, Brahma, Father, Mother, or even The Void or Nirvana? Do you think I care which of My Special Children you feel closest to -- Moses, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed or any of the others? You can call Me and My Special Ones any name you choose, if only you would go about My business of loving one another as I love you. How can you keep neglecting
something so simple?

I'm not telling you to abandon your religions. Enjoy your religions, honor them, learn from them, just as you should enjoy, honor, and learn from your parents. But do you walk around telling everyone that your parents are better than theirs? Your religion, like your parents, may always have the most special place in your heart; I don't mind that at all. And I don't want you to combine all the Great Traditions into One Big Mess. Each religion is unique for a reason. Each has a unique style so that people can find the
best path for themselves.

But My Special Children -- the ones your religions revolve around – all live in the same place (My Heart) and they get along perfectly, I assure you. The clergy must stop creating a myth of sibling rivalry where there is none.
My Blessed Children of Earth, the world has grown too small for your pervasive religious bigotry and confusion. The whole planet is connected by air travel, satellite dishes, telephones, fax machines, rock concerts, diseases, and mutual needs and concerns. Get with the program! If you really want to help Me celebrate life, commit yourselves to figuring out how to feed your hungry, clothe your naked, protect your abused, and shelter your poor. And just as importantly, make your own everyday life a shining example of kindness and good humor. I've given you all the resources you need, if only you abandon your fear of each other and begin living, loving, and laughing together.

Finally, I'm not really ticked off, I just wanted to grab your attention because I hate to see you suffer. But I gave you Free Will, so what can I do now other than to try to influence you through reason, persuasion, and a little old-fashioned guilt and manipulation? After all, I Am the original Jewish Mother. I just want you to be happy, and I'll sit in The Dark. I really Am, indeed, I swear, with you always. Always. Trust In Me.

Your One and Only,

You Know Who
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Peace, balance & harmony.


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I found a website http://www.rerip.com/ that allows individuals to sell their used surfboards, skateboards and skis. It's really quite an interesting concept. It's the epitome of going green. The (eco)mantra on their webpage is "REDUCE, REUSE, RERIDE."

Keep in mind that my birthday is coming up and I'm going surfing this summer in Ptown. Yes, 29 again.

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Shake Your Money Maker

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