To Walk with Saints and Scholars

My father didn’t say much. He was a “crusty ole cowboy” from rural Louisiana and lived most of his life in a tiny Southeast Texas town. When he did speak, there was an impatience about it…as though he had waited long enough and now needed your full attention as quickly as possible. This was evident in his tone, but also in how he began most of what he had to say.

“Listen.” he would demand quietly. Stern, stoic, and singular – just one word with a meaningful pause after: “Listen.” And we did.

His one word “Listen” meant many things. It was an admonition to pay attention, it was a marker that the subject of the conversation was about to be changed, and it was a declaration that something was important enough to pause for and to (therefore) deeply know. Fast forward many years and cross the Atlantic, and I find myself in Ireland surrounded by people (not just men) who share my father’s proclivities if not his choice of words.

The first time I heard the phrase the Irish use to make the same meaning as my dad, I nearly fell over from shock. I completely misunderstood what was happening. Out of nowhere, the man who is now my husband said to a woman in our local (pub), “Come here to me!” Seriously. A man in his 70s said to a woman in her 40s: “Come here to me!”

I almost died; I objected instead. I didn’t yet know that this is a phrase used by men and women in conversation with anyone at all in order to say, in essence, “Listen”… just like my dad said. This Advent, I am struck by how often Jesus, too, said “Listen” …as well as how often what he really meant might have been closer to the Irish way. Jesus might well have meant (and maybe even said), “Come here to me.”

Because Jesus does it over and over! He says, “Listen!” to mean “pay attention.” He says, “Listen!” to mean, “This conversation needs to change.” He says, “Listen!” to declare that something is important enough to pause for and to (therefore) deeply know. And once he has our attention, he says the most complicated thing of all. Over and over, what Jesus says next is: “Love. No really. Start with yourself…and love everyone….everyone else. And also – love you. Because that is how the rest of it gets done.”

Honestly, that is a message I often don’t know how to hear…or to pay attention to…or to deeply know. Because that message means I love God best, and I love God’s people best, when I find and love me. That is a complicated love. It is complicated because I can’t just do or say the right things to and for others. I can’t just be part of the solutions or protest the situations. A complicated love means I have to also resist my heart and mind being taken completely by the doing and the saying, the fixing and the agitating. And when the darkness looms largest, when things feel the most imperceptible or impossible, I have to return to God. And that means I have to start by returning to me.

This Advent, I feel at a loss for how to listen and to heed, and I know I’m not alone. Many of us are reeling. We don’t really know how to move forward, backward or sideways, and yet we are still called to love. God says (always and now), “Come here to me!” And we are left to contend with what it means that returning to ourselves is our returning to God. Very often, we have been taught by culture and religion that we are not worthy. But we are always being taught by God that we are, indeed, worthy…and that we can be healed. And this Advent, Emmanuel (God-With-Us) is once again saying , “Come here to me!”

By that, I believe God means, “pay attention.” I believe God means, “The conversation needs to change.” And I believe God continues declaring that love – starting with self and radiating out – is important enough to pause for…and to deeply know. This Advent we return to God by returning to ourselves so that we can love others…a Complicated Love I have for you and you and you.

And so it is. Amen.