We come 'round right

Two things are true. The first is that I have many conversion stories, some of them taking place within days of each other. The other is that my entire life’s journey is a conversion story. 

Conversion – from the Latin, “with” and “turn” – “turning with”. And, implicitly, turning from and turning towards. But it’s this “with” that is the hinge of all my turnings. I wonder if that’s true for you as well. 

As Adam and Eve leave the garden, as a cherub with a flaming sword stands to remind them that there is no going back, only going forward (and not easily), what we might not notice is that God does not stay in the garden, relishing a calm Eden like a grandmother tidying a quiet house after the mayhem of grandchildren has departed. God appears to have decided, in chapter two, to become what we will hear a name for, many books and chapters later, “Emmauel” – “God [is] with us”. God turns and goes with our first ancestors from paradise to the danger and promise of whatever is next. 

It is this turning of God that I breathed in somewhere early in my life, quite possible singing “Tell me the Stories of Jesus”. I mostly paid little attention to it for a long time, inventing myself in a number of ways that were more accessible, measurable: student, athlete, leader, even, I think, priest and pastor. I don’t think seeking ordination was a conversion, though I do think it laid the table for a number of turnings. I could perform the role and do the work, and the Mystery could keep spritzing the air I was breathing with the scent of something else, something more. 

Though I often give the impression that I resented getting up early on Sunday morning, it is about the early service, at 8:00 or 8:30 that I have the clearest recollection of that scent. Maybe because we were all still a bit sleepy, and maybe because the gathering was a bit aimless, there was enough stillness that the spritz of Mystery could hang in the air. I say “aimless” and think of by high school basketball coach: “Stop aiming your shot and just take it.” 

Midweek services, moving from phone call to sacristy to altar, had some of that ease and aimlessness. One Thursday, as I prepared to preach the brief homily required, I heard the reader pronounce the words of Jesus from the Fourth Gospel: “Greater love has no-one than this, that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” 

It was as if I had never heard those words before. We live, or I do, at least, as if there were a way to hang on to our lives instead of laying them down. (We often describe the end of life as “losing a battle”, as if it were a battle we could win.) Until that moment on that Thursday morning, I had always imagined that the choice was between laying down my life or not laying it down. But we lay down our lives moment by moment, choice by choice, or just drifting along. God turns to us and invites us to consider, “What for?” 

For what do I lay down my life? Some examples: A good meal, a round of applause, a kiss, the birth of a child, holding on for dear life to the hand of a dying friend, watching the Super Bowl. A bad meal, too many potato chips, getting my way. Feeding the hungry, putting food on the family table, feeding the dog. Being better than. The 1992 World Series, the 1967 (really?) Stanley Cup. Driving through a blizzard to be with my dying mother. Checking my investments. A kiss. Company in the Calgary airport lounge. Aeroplan points. Listening to sleepy breathing. Bringing coffee. Grumping about traffic, drivers, lineups, about grumps. The sun on my father’s face. The sun on my face. Praying with a household as a beloved life enters into eternity and closes the door of the world behind it. The colour of the winter sky a half-hour after sunset. Regretting any number of wrong words. Feeling the power of the right word. Singing. 

That Thursday morning, I invited the little congregation to consider with me what it might mean to be more deliberate about what we lay down our lives for, how to make our one-and-only journey across the face of history with a sense of intention and purpose. 

It's no steady journey we make. As Bruce Cockburn sings, “We stumble through history, so humanly lame.” And when we are adrift, or our choices serve other gods – some Caesar or other who has our attention or our fear – God turns to us, and turns with us, and we find ourselves moving in a new direction, and with an unexpectedly light step. 

Sometimes I turn with God and sometimes I just keep pulling, stubborn, or blind, or proud. Always God waits and plots a course to the next turning. And again a spritz of Mystery in the air to remind me that I am not performing this, but living it. 

I have learned this. God is not something I add to my life to make it More. God is something that contradicts my life to make it Other. And when my life consents to be Other, it is more truly mine. This does not happen once. It happens at every turning, every healing, every forgiving, every mercy, every upsetting of business-as-usual, every watering of the desert of my soul. 

There is a stone rolled away from the tomb of our lives, and an angel who speaks of Resurrection, of Other, of Us, of something loose in the universe that can contradict what seems inevitable, in our lives and in their endings. It can be frightening to let that contradiction turn our story. It is all we have. What if it doesn’t work? What if it does? 

        ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, 

        ‘tis the gift to come round where we ought to be, 

         and when we are in the place just right, 

        ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight. 

        When true simplicity is gained, 

        to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed: 

        To turn, to turn, ‘twill be our delight, ‘til by turning, turning, 

        we come round right. 

         “Simple Gifts”, Shaker song