Games People Play

God did not create meetings on the first day, or the second day, or actually ever. There is evidence of the holiest and perhaps shortest meeting in Holy Scripture in Genesis where the heavenly court (or God and her/his multi-faceted personalities) decide to create humanity and then GASP! do it without a task force or another 12 committee meetings or a full text report of a blue ribbon gathering presented at convention, complete with scriptural references to make said document even more...useless.
So, meetings, conventions, task forces, or inane gatherings are not Biblically mandated, but we humans apparently have great need of them. Some do, anyway. But if you fall into the group that is not of the holiest inner circle that enjoys said events, here are some suggestions for your personal entertainment at aforementioned gatherings.
1. Jesus Bingo. Take a blank bingo square and fill in the areas with various and sundry words that are currently in vogue in your region, diocese, gathering. The middle square is Jesus, so it's the free one. Some suggestions for words: discernment, capacity, intentional, vocation, emergent church, and visioning. Each diocese, etc. has its own "special language" of words that make the speaker sound important and intelligent, but are full of sound and fury, though signifying nothing. The first person to get bingo has to work "Bingo" into his/her next public statement. Winner gets to feel smugly superior to others in the room.
2. Sermon Derby. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. The holy one has taken the pulpit. How long will s/he speak? Sixteen minutes (false optimism in most circles)? Thirty-seven (a good guess)? Seventy-two (a recent winner)? Twenty-five cents to five bucks to buy into the pool. Winner gets the cash.
3. Super Double Secret Probation. For the particularly daring. Notify your closest friends and reserve a room (closed door for extra paranoia) at the next convention. Announce at any microphone at the very end of a session that the meeting of the special task force will be at a certain time. Say no more and let angst and suspicion do their work. Gather in the room and watch Animal House. Last ordained priest brings the beer.
4. Shots. A more simple form of Jesus Bingo. Pick a word your fearless convention leader loves to use with relish and abandon. Bring your drink of choice and do a shot whenever said word is uttered. Use caution. I did this in college to The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with "Who." There are more occurrences of that word that I thought. The next morning was ugly.

Got ideas? Suggestions? Games you play? Share and share alike. Fun makes life more interesting.

Making Decisions Sucks!

No matter what anyone says, making decisions suck. I believe that as a culture we want to keep our options open, every moment. We do not want to make the wrong decision, and then deal with its horrible consequences. We want to avoid confrontation. We are afraid of the unknown. We say we want balance, but we end up exisiting in ennui.

I can tell you from personal experience that you can live a long time in ennui, but eventually you have to move out of that studio apartment and buy real furniture, not old milk crates. We must stand at that fork in the road and choose. God gave us free will to choose. So why don't we choose? Why don't we believe that no matter the choice, God will be right there.

The Spirituality of Idiocy

I am not a champion skier. I'm not even a marginally good skier. And lucky for me, neither was my skiing partner last Tuesday. We did go to the mountain with a couple of champion skiers who were supportive and helpful, mainly by not laughing hysterically when we took twenty minutes to move two feet to the ski lift. And in our ineptness, our lack of skill, even our idiocy at tackling a beginner run that seemed like the course for the Olympic finals in downhill-go-at-speeds-for-certain-death, we reveled in the spirituality of idiocy. Basically, doing something that invited us to remember we were indeed far from perfect and error-free.
Priests are not alone in the weight of supposed to know stuff. We often are invited into people's lives when all hell has descended. The diagnosis is terminal. The perfect child has a drug problem. My husband left me. My wife abuses me. I don't believe in God. Can you help me?
We can try, but we can't fix lives. We are mere humans with our own problems, humans who ski into snow banks and end up with skis in hawthorn bushes and have problems of our own. But too often, we can believe the hype - that we can fix things, that we do know all. Humility gets buried, and we forget to fall on the knees of our heart before God.
Not exactly a sin exclusive to priests, either. We human beings like to be smart, to know the answers, to get the gold star of approval because we are wise, intelligent, or reflective. But the truth is we aren't all that smart. We don't know it all. We make mistakes (though we aren't that willing to admit our mistakes). We, in fact, know very little in the vast realm of all time and space, which is a good thing. Admiting our unknowing should make us curious, inquisitive, even daring in our imaginations. So while we might dazzle some with brilliance, we do not baffle God with our bullshit. God knows we are loveable idiots, foolish and unwise. Loves us anyway, which is nice to know. So these weeks of Lent, do something, even one thing, that bubbles up the absolute beginner in you. Try something you are wholly and completely clueless about. Experience the joy in not knowing, of being oblivious. Enter into the spirituality of idiocy and laugh at yourself. Feel humble and unwise. It's a good place to find God.

Memento mori, sic transit Gloria mundi!

The King’s float passes along St. Charles’ Avenue, as the crowd cheers. He waves to the crowd, much like an ancient Roman general marching in triumph through the streets after a victorious battle. That Roman general hears the slave repeating behind him: “Memento mori, sic transit Gloria mundi!”
Memento mori, sic transit Gloria mundi! Memento mori, sic transit Gloria mundi! Remember your death, thus passes the glory of the world. Look around you, you see all this? It will be gone! Remember your death, it is coming!
The precious plastic pearls you yanked from the grip of that 97 year old grandmother will break. The crushed moon pie flung from the 14th float in Orpheus now sours in your stomach. The last sip of chardonnay swirls in the aching temple. The stolen kiss from a masked reveler reveals, well, disappointment.
Memento mori, sic transit Gloria mundi! Remember your death, thus passes the glory of the world! For a moment in Mardi Gras, we forget what will happen, what does happen. We seize the day, carpe diem, gathering our rosebuds while we may. We stuff every slice of King Cake into our mouths. We chase every passing float.
Then we awake. We find ourselves covered in dirty plastic beads with a case of terrible indigestion. Those beads, that food, those unusual moments seemed so important and so real. It seemed so important at the time and now we are left with a little disappointment.
Aren’t you left with a little disappointment? The beads are plastic, not gold. They will break. The rich, fatty foods did not fill you with nourishment. They sicken you at sight. These temporary joys, what we thought was joy, are not real. These temporary pleasures are temporary pleasures.
We are surrounded by temporary pleasures: food that will not nourish us, entertainment that will not uplift us. What we value most: family and friends can be temporary. We know that the strongest families can be broken apart. We know that friends can break our hearts. Even we can let ourselves down. We can disappoint ourselves when we fail at our expectations for ourselves.
So then, what remains? If moth and rust corrupt, what remains? What is true treasure? What bread will nourish us? What relationship will stand the test of time and withstand death itself? Is there hope? Is there a joy that will not end? Is there a love that will not disappoint?
We remember our death. We recognize that each day brings something new. What was popular and important once is now passé. We hear the voice of the slave remind us that all this will pass away, even us. What remains is a “peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” What remains is a cross and a testament to hope that is undaunted by death, confirmed in glorious resurrection.