2011.12.21 Every Day Salvation

Just the other day I was exiting my favorite bookstore Porter Square Books having bought my 1-millionth book, an activity tantamount to starting a fund to bring back dinosaurs, when I hear the familiar Christmas season tingle of bell.

I followed the sound and sure enough there were two old men dressed in red, looking Santa-ish and ringing little bells. They stood next to the Salvation Army kettle into which they hoped generous people would toss coins, maybe bills.

Moved by a force not quite my own I put a $20 bill into their kettle and said “The Salvation Army saved my nephew.” The old man bell ringer’s eyes filled up and so did mine.

There we stood on a crowded shopping street in the city of Cambridge MA. weeping for salvation and for my nephew Sam who had been brought back to strength and health and sobriety, not once but many times, by this gently militant crusading for Christ organization that has been “saving people in Christ’s name for over a century.

I moved on lugging my book cache and he resumed his bell ringing. Somehow it sounded different.

I told my sister of the encounter and I bet she cried too. Today is the Church’s calendar date for Thomas the apostle known by some as the one who doubted the resurrection good news. Neither my sister his mom or me his aunt have ever doubted Sam, the boy, now man, of countless life chances and countless salvations.

Tomorrow is also the Solstice, a day when the sun returns its face to give us a scintilla more daylight. Such a welcome gift as we enter the bleak of winter.

My sister told me that Sam had asked for the Bible on CD for Christmas. Too hard for him to read but not hard to listen to. At the Salvation Army shelter where Sam again is trying to chose life, he is steeped in recovery program and goes to church every day. He is Christ-soaked and Christ-doped,which is better than being alcohol-soaked or heroin-doped.

Sam had told his mom that there was some guy in the Bible, Zeph-something who told him God would give him a new heart and a new spirit.

That biblical guy was Ezekiel who, along with other prophets, delivered the divine promise: “A NEW HEART I WILL GIVE YOU, AND A NEW SPIRIT I WILL PUT WITHIN YOU; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezek. 36:26)

Sam heard words that articulated exactly what he needed, an entire full-body transplant—new heart, soul, flesh, mind body, the works. The odd irony of this connection the kind Spirit makes is that Ezekiel in his day, and to many biblical interpreters in modern day, was thought insane because of his strange images and visions.The ancients said possessed; moderns said schizophrenic or manic-depressive.

Yet Ezekiel became one of the major prophets in the Bible. You could die laughing. But that kind of thing happens often. It’s the work of the God of reversals. Sam is one of those reversals. Let it hold.

My sister and I decided to split the cost of the Bible on CD for Sam this Christmas. The rest is up to Sam, the Salvation Army, and God-in-Ezekiel.

Spiritual Coping

You think I’m going to say pray, pray and then pray some more. I am—sort of.

First agree to stop talking about the fact that you’re moving and you’ve now moved. You’re in. All your stuff is in with you but you can’t find any of it so you find one thing that make chaos seem orderly and focus on it. (Keep talking to yourself. Safer than talking to your spouse who will always listen, support and understand, then lovingly try to tell you things you already know, things only prayer, patience and the Godde within can remedy.))

I found two things.

The first was the eggs. They were where they were supposed to be, nestled in their cardboard carton on their very own designated shelf in the brand new still clean fridge.

Two of them fried would be delicious but where is their pan? Never mind. These aren’t just any old eggs.

They are laid by “the girls,” chickens parented by a beautiful lesbian couple who gave us the special eggs as a retirement gift. Each egg has a message on it neatly written in black indelible pen. Here are some of the messages: Enjoy retirement. We will miss you.Try me.Thanks for all you’ve given. Fry me. Feel ALL the feelings :) :( You will be forever in our hearts.

Now that’s prayer! You don’t need a pan now. You can’t eat these prayers just yet.

The second thing my traveling eye fell upon was a book we picked up in the best bookstore in the world
Porter Square Books. And it’s in our new ‘hood.

The book is called The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation It’s by Pamela Greenberg with a Foreword by Susannah Heschel.

In her introduction Greenberg writes that this translation was an "impulse of shiru l’Adonai shir chadash, the imperative to sing to God a new song." Just what I needed. I’m singing a new song every day now and the Psalter contains every song the human heart can sing—all of it soul-true and all of it offered to Godde.

So I sing a prayer one a day whether it meets my mood or not. That’s no matter because it is not for me but for Godde.

Heschel in her Foreword speaks of her father Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, great Jewish scholar and man of prayer who said: “The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. to worship is to join the cosmos in praising God."

The wise Rabbi also said: “To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul . . . To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”

Today the eye of my soul caught this phrase from Psalm 66: “Go and look at the works of the Creator.”

So I do. Then I look back at the chaotic surround of post moving and see that Lo! the coffee pot is perking away and the pot is full of the healthfully decaffeinated brew of coping—best with honey consumed in the sun’s morning light.