Winning

You will not always win. 

You are a wonderful, wondrous person, fully worthy of love and affection and kindness, and you will not always win. 

It's important that you know that both of these things are true. You are beloved simply because you are, loved with the deep love that spills from the foundations of everything, but the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. No matter how good or bad you think you are, no matter what you think you've earned or deserve, this world will be what it is. It is full of joy and wonder and delight and hatred and pettiness and deep sadness and you do not get to choose which visits you and when. You are beautiful and you shine with the light of the cosmos and you will not always win. 

Some days, some years, it will be the world that wins. Maybe the money won't be there. Maybe the support won't show up. Maybe everything that can go wrong does go wrong, all at the same time, and there is no way on earth to fix it. It is a fact that all those big sweeping events and systems and powers that we pretend to understand and control can and will take and take and take from you. Sometimes the world will knock you flat and leave you empty. 

Some days, some seasons, it'll be the worst parts of you that win. Those sneaky little voices that sleep curled up in the back corners of your mind will wake up when the alarm clocks of stress and self-doubt ring and they will not be silenced even after the alarms are off. They will tell you horrible lies and exaggerations and you'll listen to them, because you know they've always been a part of you and maybe that means they're right. Their noises will pull you down, drag you to your bed, lash you to the couch, and you will not be able to get your fingers to the knots to let yourself free. 

Some days, many days, it'll be other people that win, and win at your expense. Those unmanageable systems are set up and maintained by people whose interest does not extend to your wellbeing. Sure, other humans are capable of everyday unkindness, dozens of little insults and injuries that peck at your soul like a flock of so many hateful little black birds, but we all know our problems are bigger than that. Sometimes the people in charge, and the people influencing the people in charge, will display their apathy for your existence in astounding ways and you will be left breathless and insecure. 

But none of this changes anything about you. You are unique. You are glorious. You are a miracle, just by the very fact that you exist. When you lose, when you're hurt, when your strength fails and your hope falters and the world takes advantage of that, you still remain this awesome thing, this amazing combination of brains and body and spirit and being. No matter what the world visits on you, you are still marvelous. 

And so is everyone else. 

In this new year, let's act like that's true. 

Falling

The first time I fell down the stairs at work, there was a moment of absolute freedom. It happened right after the sole of my right shoe failed to lift off the step, refusing to follow the rest of my body downward. Its stutter, rubber on rubber unwilling to move, caused my body to twist in a way it hadn't before and that I hope will never happen again. During that twist, I felt a pop in my lower back. That pop was the freedom, a release of years of tension as a problematic muscle finally gave up its struggle to hold the weight around it and tore. The two seconds before I hit the ground were memorably peaceful. 

Of course, on the ground, not being able to move my legs because of the searing pain that exploded in my back every time I tried to use that muscle, that peace was replaced by panic. Well, occasional waves of panic that I talked myself out of. "Okay okay okay," I said to myself and to the empty back staircase to the basement on which I had fallen. "You can lay here for ten more minutes but then we've got to get up and go home." I pictured myself driving back with my left foot on the pedals, taking back roads so as to avoid causing danger to other drivers, and collapsing on my mattress with a heating pad and some ibuprofen. I didn't worry that no one would find me and I honestly didn't really worry about my responsibilities for that day--my walkie had flown out of my hand in the fall, as had my phone, so I couldn't tell if my absence was missed, but summer camp was a well-oiled machine with plenty of replacement parts. It would go on without me. What I needed to do was to summon the grit to stand up and maybe find someone to drive me home. 

I told the IT guy who found me, laying flat on my back with my legs at an awkward angle, that I would be fine in a few minutes, and if he could tell my boss where I was, that'd be great, since I couldn't reach my walkie. I think I actually asked him if he had enough room to walk by or if he needed me to move, though that was more of a courtesy than anything else. I most certainly could not have moved. Luckily, he, and the subsequent six staff members who waited with me for the ambulance to arrive, realized that I was probably in shock and that there was the potential for some spinal damage and that I couldn't just go home with this kind of injury. They all winced when I screamed as the EMT moved my legs and again when the pair of them got me onto the stretcher. 

My boss went with me to the ER and read to me as we waited for me to be seen. Just a note: if possible, don't suffer a catastrophic injury on a Monday. Everyone who doesn't want to pay the weekend fees saves up their pain for business hours, so the line for morphine and an x-ray was long on that afternoon. The line was long enough that we got through several chapters of Game of Thrones (a reading choice which not my best, not my worst for this particular situation) and through a phone call to my parents in which I again dropped my phone and started screaming in pain. My mother had asked if I wanted them to come up, and it suddenly didn't matter that I was a strong, independent twenty-two-year-old with her own job and her own insurance and her own apartment two and a half hours from her parents. It was my first time in an ER and I wanted my mommy. I started to cry and I started to stop myself from crying, but that required me to use the very muscle that had brought me to this place and I dropped the phone in my pain. My boss picked it up and explained what was happening to my mom. My parents were there the next day. 

After the morphine, the doctors figured out that it was just a muscle tear and my friend Pamela came and got me. We picked up the pain med prescription and went home. Now, I have spent years of my life dealing with parents in chronic pain, so I know that in situations like these, you have to stay ahead of the pain and not wait until it hurts to take the next round of pills. I did not set an alarm, though, and so the worst part of this ordeal was probably after the morphine wore off and before the prednisone kicked in, when I laid on my mattress on the floor of my first post-college apartment in the worst pain of my life, trying and failing to stifle moans because I couldn't suck it up anymore. Pamela, who spent the night with me trying to sleep on the couch, still tells me that she remembers what it sounded like to hear me in pain, both of us unable to do anything more to help me. 

There's more to this story. I could talk about how I had to have a traumatic injury before I let anyone help me, or about how vulnerable missing a week of work made me as an intern and temporary employee. I could talk about how this fall almost cost me my next job. I could talk about the ambulance bill, the physical therapy, or the weird detached bit of my spine that's floating around inside my body and is apparently fine. It's all there, avenues to be explored as I think about the couple seconds that were oddly formative in my life. 

My mind flashed through this story and its extraneous bits as I fell down the stairs for the second time at work on Monday, the sole of my right shoe again failing to move, rubber stuck on stone. It was just skinned knees and a bruised shoulder, so I could just pick myself up after a few minutes with a few, "You're okay, you're okay"s, whispered to myself in the same tone I use for the kid I nanny when he tumbles down in his learning attempts at walking. It was an hour or so before my DCOM meeting to get my candidacy for ministry approved, so I'm lucky that I was just shaken and not actually injured this time. Candidacy is apparently difficult to reschedule. 

The fall made me think, though. I've spent the past year and a half learning to live in my body. Or, better, learning to love and listen to my body, learning how my mind cares for and challenges my body and learning how my body can help heal my mind and keep it accountable for my wellbeing. Take, for example, the hug from a friend that taught me what a good hug could be; the half-marathon training and running that showed me what I could really do; hours of holding and carrying and rocking the part-time baby in my life to sleep, which somehow conspires to use more strength and affection than I knew I had; a class on doing liturgy that had me thinking about my shoulders and my feet and my hands and my face as I pray and sing and lead and be. In these and other ways, thinking about my body has been inescapable. 

Life has brought me into my body over the past months. And the scary thing is, I like it here. I like the newfound awareness in my stretching in the morning. I like being able to identify the tension in my shoulders and neck instead of assuming that they had always been one gigantic knot of stress. I like letting my body feel things. I think about how my body felt free for a few seconds as my muscle tore five years ago and I wonder at all the years before that led to that feeling of bliss in detachment. I don't want that anymore. I want to be here, even with the pain. It is frightening to have to so much to lose. 

Here's the other thing about getting to know my body: it makes me incapable of not caring about what happens to yours, no matter who that "you" is. Caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, the sick, the imprisoned, wherever you are and however I can, is a direct consequence of knowing my body and what I need to live in it. The things I consume, the things I throw away, how I regard people with bodies different and more vulnerable than mine, my perspective on all of these things shifts when I live in my body and I think about others in theirs. We are such fragile, precious things, with only each other for help. What we do to each other matters immensely.

Maybe that's why Jesus came into all our fragility, the Word of God shrunk into the form of a precious baby. Being God, he knew that one day his story would reach across the centuries to people who had forgotten their bodies and ignored their pain and, in so doing, forgotten and ignored those around them. He knew that it would speak to the people who, having fallen or having been pushed to the ground, needed to get back up again. He knew it would be with all of them, challenging and comforting. He knows us. He knows what we need.

We never get back up alone. 

Sheep and Goats

Gather around. Let me tell you a story. 

You see, when the Son of Man (that's Jesus) comes in all his glory (to this mess of despair that we've made of the planet), and all the angels with him (and that's the scary kind of angels, you know, the ones with flaming swords and like eight heads and eyes just, like, everywhere, not the cute ones with, like, blonde curls and ish), then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 

All the nations (like, everyone, everywhere, without exception) will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Do you have the mental image in place? Jesus, throne, scary angels, and literally everyone else in the world, and he's going to split everyone up, like apparently shepherds used to do. Sheep on the right, goats on the left. Not literal sheep and goats. That's just an image. He's going to split the people up and put some on the right and some on the left. His right and left, not ours. We there? Perfect. 

So then the king (also Jesus, the Son of Man, from before) will say to those at his right hand (the sheep, remember?), "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

See, that's how you get to be a metaphorical sheep, the people on the right hand, the ones that go on to the good place prepared since before the Earth began: you feed the hungry and you give water to the thirsty and you welcome strangers and you give clothes to those who need them and you take care of the sick and you visit those in prison. These are the things that you do. 

But see, the metaphorical sheep are a little confused, because they ask him, "Lord (Jesus again), when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?" 

See, they didn't understand what they were doing when they were feeding and watering and welcoming and clothing and caring and visiting. They didn't know that in the way they were living their life, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. So Jesus breaks it down. He says, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." 

And now he turns to the rest of the people, the goats, those at his left hand, and he says, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (so, you know, hell); for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."

So what Jesus and all his scary righteous angels is saying here is that the goats Jesus are going to hell. So the goats panic. They start making a case for themselves. "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?" Jesus, if I had seen you, I certainly wouldn't have treated you like that. I know that you are worthy of my attention and care. You're Jesus. The Lord. The King. I know how to treat people in positions of power and authority and I unquestionably wouldn't have ignored your needs. Here. Have a tax break. 

Jesus is having none of this. He says to the goats, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." 

So, you know, when you let food assistance programs for low-income children expire, or when you do not fix drinking water crises, or when you turn away refugees and immigrants, or when you let people sleep out on the streets, or when you limit access to medical care, or when you turn a blind eye to overcrowded prisons and mass incarceration, or worse, profit off of it, you go to hell. 

Which is what happens. The goats go away to eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.

Now, what do we take away from this story?

Because we do treat it like a story, like some over-the-top thing Jesus said that we get to gloss past because we don't really believe in hell anymore. We don't believe in angels and the eschaton, so Jesus is just telling us that we should be nice to people, but, like, on an individual level, because we don't think that the nations are actually going to be brought before the throne. We don't think we're going to be judged on the systems we create and participate in.

But if you visit the poor and sick, or even the semi-rich and sick, how can you not want to tear apart the heath care system and fix it? If you visit the imprisoned, how can you not want to reform the prison system and the justice system? When you see the hungry and those that die from lack of water to drink, how is it that you can go back to your homes and sleep in comfort? 

And I think that's part of the point. How can we, as people who ignore the deep pain of the world, pretend to have hearts that could abide being in the presence of the living God? Of course we would be sent away from the throne. We couldn't stand it. When we see what actual goodness looks like, our apathy toward those who suffer would infinitely torment us. Our regret and shame would tear us into pieces. When we really understand the pain our selfishness causes and the pain we could have stopped if we ever looked outside of ourselves, our only response will be to cry and grind our teeth. Being measured and found wanting? That's hell to me. Knowing I caused another pain and that my heart was so hardened that I didn't even care? That's torture. That's eternal punishment. I think we can take Jesus at his word on this one.

So go. Be sheep. Be the righteous one who feeds the stranger on the street and the hungry in your community. Be the righteous one who fights for housing programs and potable water initiatives and health care and criminal justice reform. Meet needs. Do not allow injustice to stand in your presence. This is more than enough work for a lifetime, but we have to do it.

It's the work that Jesus tells us to do.