The painful bright

Romans 13:11

The hour has come for you to wake up.

It is the first Sunday of Advent. We begin our vigil, waiting for the light.

Sometimes I feel ambivalent about the coming of the light. When the light comes, justice will come; when justice comes, I might be found on the wrong side of the equation. In what ways do I oppress others with hardly a conscious thought? In what ways do I need to wake up to my own subtle ways of using and injuring others?

Today I have a new thought about the coming of the light and another reason to feel ambivalent: Not all of us want to be in the light at all, and it's not because we purchase clothes made in sweat shops, or whatever else I was alluding to in the paragraph above. Much closer to home, in our emotional lives and our relationships and our everyday behavior, some of us don't want to wake up. We don't want to be conscious of painful realities.

There's a further complication: We help each other stay asleep. People in group X don't want to wake up, and people in group Y are desperately trying to help group X stay asleep at any cost. Meaning that the helpful assistants who make up group Y are also asleep.

The system breaks down with the coming of light, and it hurts like hell. Nobody, including me, a recovering member of group Y, wants that painful bright thing shining on everybody's private business.

But alas:

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
—Rom 13:12

Only God's money

Matthew 25:16

Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master's investment.

This morning at St. Cuthbert's, Pamela offered each household a fifty dollar bill from the church's discretionary fund. Is she insane? Instructions: This is God's fifty dollars. Use it to invest in God's kingdom. In ninety days, tell the church what you made of it.

This is a poor church. A small church. But that fifty-dollar bill began to enrich and enlarge my ideas about God the moment I touched it. My first thought was an earnest desire to make something of it and come back next week with a hundred-dollar bill to put in the offering plate. So far so good.

I left church and drove downtown to the YMCA. I packed my wallet in my gym bag to take into the building with me, where I planned to spend a quarter to store the wallet in a locked box during my workout. But I nearly left behind the fifty, which I had stashed in the glove compartment. I caught myself thinking a dark, quiet thought: Well, if it's stolen ... it's only God's money.

Perplexed, I slipped the fifty into my wallet—my wallet—and took it inside with me.

My wallet. Inside which my credit cards and my cash and my insurance cards have shifted to make room for this stranger, God's fifty-dollar bill, which is only here on holiday.

Though I am generous with my money, this fifty-dollar bill is illuminating a fixed stinginess in me. I believe the theory that my whole wallet belongs to God. It is a beautiful theory. But how does my belief hold up in practice? In my unguarded moments?

What would happen if I was carrying around God's wallet, containing God's credit cards? What if my ATM card gave me access to God's checking account?

But that's crazy talk for another day. What will I do with the fifty dollars? I'm still thinking. If you have a great idea, post a comment, or email me at momently@gmail.com.

For her part, our cat Rosie does not see the thing having any value whatsoever.