Rector's Blog: Turning Toward Love

In the Spring of 1997 Bob Dylan went into the hospital and it wasn't at all clear he'd come out alive. After suffering from intense chest pains, the then 56-year-old was diagnosed with an infection in the sack around his heart brought on by histoplasmosis. He did, of course, survive, but seemed to recognize the fragility of his own life, quipping that for a minute there he thought he'd be seeing Elvis soon.

For the year following this incident, everyone who interviewed Dylan wanted his hospitalization to be significant: They wanted it to mean something. One of the great prophetic voices of American culture was aging and had been near death – surely, he would emerge with a newfound understanding of what it means to be alive. Surely, he used this time to pause and rethink things?

"I really didn’t, you know,” Dylan responded, “because it wasn’t something that I brought on myself. It’s not like I even needed the time to slow down and re-examine my life. It was just one of those things, I was down for about six weeks, but I don’t remember particularly having any kind of great illumination at that time.” When pushed by reporters to make the moment profound he’d often respond with a variation of, “Mostly I was in a lot of pain."

We are about six weeks into a stay-at-home order, quarantining ourselves in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. And while most of us are not sick or near death, we are in a lot of pain. We are experiencing a tremendous loss, undergoing the trauma of watching our society shut down – however temporarily. It’s not clear who among us will come out of this alive, and for those who do, it’s not obvious when, or what our shared life will look like. You and I don’t have reporters beating down our door asking us to philosophize the moment, but we do feel a great pressure to emerge from this moment with a newfound understanding of what it means to be alive. Some of us are tempted to proclaim that this pandemic was brought upon by God with the specific intention of making us all examine ourselves: A big divine Time Out for the whole world – go to your room and think about what you’ve done.

Of course, when Dylan got sick, many were tempted to think the same thing: That this rock star had partied too hard, and lived too fast a life, and now was his Judgment Day. There was no poetic justice for the bard – just a random case of histoplasmosis (a lung infection) that got out of control and laid him low for a couple months. He didn’t need to become a better person. He needed to survive.

At Church of the Redeemer we are focusing this Easter season on The Way of Love - a set of seven Jesus-centered practices that comprise an Episcopal rule of life. These seven practices are titled: Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, Rest. We believe that a faithful engagement with these seven practices define the Episcopal experience of the Christian faith. Over the next few weeks, I will be writing blogs, and Anny Stevens-Gleason will be recording our Interrupting Grace podcasts that focus directly on the seven practices of this rule of life, and understanding how we can live into them right here and now – within the limitations of our current context. Because we believe that, while our lives have been interrupted, our faith has not been.

This week we are focusing on “Turn”. The Way of Love defines “Turn” as “Pause, listen, and choose to follow Jesus.” The more religious word for this kind of turning is “repentance”. There’s a lot of ways we could talk about repentance, about turning towards God during this quarantine. We could insist that this is a perfect time for you to examine your whole life, to figure out what you need to improve, that God put you in a divine Time Out and now is the time for you to embrace change so that you can experience faith the way you’ve always wanted to.

I don’t think that’s a fair burden for you or for any of us. I don’t think The Way of Love is meant to take a bunch of people who are wanting to survive and tell them to become better people. Pressuring someone who is enduring trauma to rethink their lives is not Love. You and I are in a situation we cannot control, and one that we did not bring upon ourselves. What does repentance look like for us? What does it mean for us to Turn?

Right now, in this moment, you are loved, magnificently loved, extravagantly loved by the God who made you. You are of great value to the Creator of the world. Your heart and your life are precious. And right now, in this moment, you have the capacity to forget that. Just as sure as you’re tempted to make everything about right now “significant”, you’re also tempted to think that you’re inessential or useless – that you’re forgotten, that you’re insignificant. For you, for us, repentance is turning towards the truth of your belovedness, your utter belonging to God in Jesus Christ.

In our pain we are capable of catastrophizing. Right now, turning is likely not about a sickbed revelation or the blinding flash that causes us to live a whole new life, it’s a day by day practice of remembering who we are and to whom we belong in unthinkable times. The practice of Turning is just that – a practice, and practice is not about the grand gesture, the big thought, the significant moment: Practice is a simple, unassuming, repetitive act.

You were born for Love. You can forget that and make your life about a lot of things that aren’t Love. When I invite you to the practice of turning towards God, I’m not saying use these unprecedented times to re-evaluate and change everything about yourself: I’m saying today, on this day, when you are tempted to forget your beauty, when you are tempted to believe you don’t matter and that this world is dying – in the pain of that deadly moment, pause, listen, and choose to follow Jesus into the place of remembering your true identity. Practice turning toward Love today. Find yourself and allow yourself to love what you find. This is a way you can live today.