The World is Too Loud

I am emerging out of a period of blogging silence.  For the last while I have been in an unplanned, unforced season of quiet. Some of that was due to my waiting for personal clarity on aspects of my vocational and spiritual life.  I was reflective, but just couldn’t write it down for some reason. Sometimes, it’s just good to be silent and sit – especially for those of us who like to comment on things, stir the pot, and challenge conventions.

It’s a pretty loud world out there. The planet is a cacophony of crises.  There’s constant competition for minds, hearts and money.  How about the loud cheering from the opposite poles of political ideologies?   I have tinnitus – but these sounds are even more annoying!

There’s another noise that aggravates me.

I am a follower of the Jesus Way, desiring to reflect and demonstrate how His way of life makes us more authentically human, and our world a healthier, more abundant place.  Yet the noise around Christianity-as-religion largely drowns out that message.  When I try to put myself in the place of an outside observer looking into whether Christianity ‘works’ or not, I don’t think I’d join up.  Public expressions of my faith/religion are too often issue-based, politically motivated and sometimes just outright hateful and exclusive. There’s a definite leaning toward ‘otherness’ rather than embrace, towards pointing out the darkness rather than shining a light into it, and towards outreach/mission to the world rather than a participating in and with the world to make it a better place.

Now in the US (and it’s bleeding into Canada), there is an unabashed political movement toward Christian nationalism that completely bypasses the Grand Story of God for humanity & the planet.  It is co-opting Christianity as a political platform for narrow and often distinctly un-Christ like ends.  The noise is deafening.

So what do we do – send out a louder, more positive message to counteract all this?? 

There’s a more powerful, more quiet way.   It’s Jesus’ way, and is more silent that you may have been led to believe if you are listening to public Christian rhetoric.  Jesus the Christ isn’t competing to be heard.  He is silently, quietly and powerfully present (in and through us as His representatives), to bring hope and change.  He brings justice and abundance to the world without raising His voice, without loud speeches & demonstrations.  Rather, He demonstrates persistent acts of gentle love and justice.  In a passage in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 12, verses 14-21, Jesus is described as one who is not quarrelsome, and whose voice is not heard yelling in the streets! He is one who will carefully handle a broken reed so that it isn’t further damaged, and will keep a smoldering wick going so its light doesn’t burn out.  This is a gentle, silent and truly transformative power, and we are to act in this Way.

I am a fan of Robert Service’s poem The Call of the Wild because it ‘places’ us humans in the context of Creation so that we humble ourselves in its magnificence.  One line in particular applies to what I have been saying here, and has implications for how real change happens in this world.  Change for the good is not ultimately reliant on government programs, grand social contracts & movements, public or private initiatives or religious efforts.  These are all helpful, but it’s “The simple things, the true things, the silent men (and women) who do things…” that is the unseen, underlying power for transformation.

Be quietly UN-noticeable.  It will truly change the world.

Harv Matchullis

The Passage

We all enter this passage. Until then, we peer at it, contemplate it, fear it.

Every one of us will observe people walking this way before we ever step foot on that path.  But when we do, it's a final walk.

I watched my father on this passage 44 years ago.  A painful walk.  Now I watch my mother.  Her journey is soon to end.

Death is so common. You would think that such a common experience among humanity would historically have elicited something different than grief. Since we ALL go through it and have done so during our entire history, would it not be more natural and sensible and evolutionary, to be more matter-of-fact about it? We are born, we live, we die. Repeat for every human. As far as losing someone, hey, there are plenty of human companions to take the place of one who walked that final passage.

Why is it then that we feel this gaping hole in our chest when we lose someone we love?  I can remember thinking for decades after my dads' death that perhaps he was just 'lost' and would walk through the door any moment.  What a bizarre hope.  Really I don't care what someone thinks. I am 60 and still miss him.  Now, it's my mother.  While my head understands the reality of death and in her case, the progression of cancer, my heart is being ripped open.

The reason death is ALWAYS so hard is because it was never designed into us.  I believe in a Divine Creator who made us for eternal life.  We were not made for death - and that is why death is so 'unnatural' to us. We grieve not just because of the loss of presence, we grieve because deep in our visceral soul, we face the most unnatural event of the human experience - its end.

You and I will walk this passage as my mother walks it now. It ends in death. No one escapes. But I say to you that there is another passage you can access on this side of life that will usher you back to the original plan of God.  The still living and very real Jesus Christ offers us a way of living that returns us to the original plan of God.

Talk to me if you want to know more.

For now, I'm helping my mom on the final part of her passage here.  And when she is done, she has a new passage to walk.  But it still hurts like hell.