Tag Archives: story

Disrupt the System, Applaud Early

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Applause: public approval or praise expressed by clapping hands together.

Some fifteen years ago, I stood while applauding after a Distinguished Faculty Lecture at my alma mater. Is it a standing ovation if only one person stands? I stood, exuberant about the depth of understanding and connection I experienced during the lecture. But as my peripheral vision told me that no one else stood, self-consciousness bubbled up. Why am I the only one deeply affected? Does everyone else already have a depth of experience such that the lecture was run-of-the-mill for them? My pulse quickened and I lowered into my seat, certain everyone must be giving me the side-eye, judging my way of being in the world.

Looking back, I am proud of that moment. I know now that many of us who speak or write or reveal ourselves in some way, need only one person to stand. Only one person to send a note letting us know our words created connection.

Late last July, I attended “heART on display,” an event featuring artwork by incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals. Cedar Rain Spirits, a distillery and BBQ in downtown Walla Walla, hosted the event, curated by Devon Player, whom I met through the Walla Walla Community Change Team. Outside the narrow storefront, a sandwich board on the sidewalk announced the event. Inside, people mingled, music blared, and art lined much of the two long walls that extended to the back of the venue.

For the next hour, I perused art, snacked on free hors d’oeuvres, asked a few questions, and flattened myself into tables and walls to avoid bumping into fellow guests. As I chose art to purchase—proceeds to benefit Running Waters Equity Fund and the Black Prisoners Caucus—Devon took the mic and introduced a guest speaker, Anthony Covert. We all quieted where we sat or stood, and turned to listen.

Anthony was sentenced to 432 months (36 years) in prison at the age of 18. He served 16 of those, and walked free on June 10, 2024. As he talked about sitting in prison, alone with himself, I stumbled into sudden affinity with him. We “outside” (unincarcerated) folks have so much available to distract ourselves; it is a rare and excruciating experience to be alone with ourselves. “ But when you’re sitting in that prison cell and all you got is those four walls—sometimes with a celly, sometimes not—you have to sit with yourself.” And, he says, you have to ask yourself questions, about how you came to be in this place, and what your purpose is now that you’re here. 

My own season of being alone with myself and asking hard questions transpired during stay-at-home momming. I recognized that singular agony of sitting with oneself, and the subsequent decision to engage with tricky, heavy questions. As an incarcerated, black young man, Anthony felt it in the isolation of prison. As a middle class, white mother of an infant and toddler, I felt it in the isolation of motherhood. Although our experiences differed, Anthony’s words connected intimately with my inner world as a stay-at-home mom. Because he exposed his pain, I felt seen in mine. Our stories held hands for a just a moment. 

I wanted to applaud, but other listeners were intent, soaking up the story, not ready to respond. Anthony continued, and when he shared the completion of a college degree, while incarcerated, with a 3.98 GPA, everyone applauded, including me. Later, when he talked about his clemency hearing and the unanimous vote to grant him clemency, we applauded again. It was then that I noticed my moments of connection were not the same as the moments of applause. Before Anthony’s clemency hearing, when anxiety was high, Anthony’s friend Demar told him, “Go in there and show them who you are.” That moment connected. That moment I wanted to clap or sigh, or give the man a hug. Show them who you are.

Why the dissonance between my moments of kinship with the speaker, and our collective moments of applause? Could it be that as a society we are quick to applaud measurable achievement, but not moments of quiet strength? What about times of agonizing surrender—to our brokenness, and simultaneously to our wholeness? 

Anthony described us on the “outside” as an invisible army that stands with those on the “inside.” Because our worlds are disconnected, there is a wall isolating our compassion and assistance from the insiders’ knowledge, and/or response. Knowing this, may we be courageous to continue engaging—despite the lack of testimonials, catchy postcards, and fundraising galas that feed the selfish side of our generosity. 

“ There’s no fixing the system. It is what it is,” Anthony said. “But what you can do is disrupt it in certain areas, right? To give people opportunities to come home.”

What if applause—public approval or praise—happened earlier in the story, and it served to recognize nothing more than our humanity, the intrinsic dignity of our existence? What if clapping said, “you got this,” more than, “you did something big and measurable”? Better yet, what if approval and praise showed up in the process and in the conclusion? What if it gave people opportunities to come home—to themselves, to their families, to their communities? I need this. I suspect we all do.

I want to applaud early—for my children, my spouse, my friends, my community. A healer is “someone who can see the movement toward wholeness in you more clearly than you can at any given moment,” wrote Rachel Naomi Remen. Let’s open our eyes to see. Put your hands together for humanity. 

Let’s applaud smallness. Clap for the courage it takes to engage with our own selves and our messy stories. Cheer at the thin places in our stories, where pain and intention form a bond and point us in a new direction. Celebrate wholeness even as it lingers in the wings. Disrupt the narrative in ways that invite belonging. 

“I desire mercy”

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Judge Not

I’ve memorized three fourths of the Sermon on the Mount, twice. In retrospect, I could have saved time and memorized two verses: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgement you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”1 God’s Spirit has brought these verses to my mind hundreds of times (and none of the other 100+ verses). I think this means I have a propensity to judge.

To “judge not,” Jesus adds this: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”2 In other words, start with my laundry list of brokenness. There’s approximately a 100% chance that I will not get all the planks out of my eyes before I die. “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone,”3 Jesus said. I may as well give away my rock collection. (On second thought, given my embarrassment over its magnitude, I’m heading out to secretly bury it in the back yard.)

The beauty of putting on gloves and taking hold of the plank in my own eye is this: when I work with God on my laundry list of brokenness I have a story to tell. It is a story of impatience, dishonesty, distrust, pride, blame, anger, fear, self-loathing, self-righteousness, and desperation on my side, and a story of faithfulness, strength, beauty, power, grace, companionship, desire and intimacy on His side. It is an improbable love story. It is a true story.

When was the last time you were inspired by someone telling you their opinion?

When was the last time you were inspired by someone telling you their story?

Getting on a soapbox rarely changes a life for the better. As much as I want to fix the world (or the person next to me) with what I know, I must bite my tongue – hard – and take my soapbox issues to God. Whether it’s a big issue (vaccination, LGBTQ rights) or a small issue (diet, clothing), I will heal myself and bless others by bringing all my opinions, knowledge, arrogance, anger, determination, self-righteousness, good will, and certainty and sitting with God in all of that. He sees through the things I’m hiding behind and He is the only one able to clean the dirt out of my filters. Chances are if I want to stand up tall and shout, that is my cue to sit down small and listen. And maybe while I’m listening I’ll notice more of what Jesus says to people (like me) who struggle with judgement.

You Would Not Have Condemned The Guiltless

Sometime after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is getting in trouble for socializing with low-lifes. The religious elite want to know why he would do such a thing?! Jesus told them, “Those who think they are healthy don’t recognize their need for a doctor, but those who know they are sick do recognize their need. Rather than critiquing others, your time would be better spent exploring what the Scripture means when it says, ‘I want mercy, not ritual sacrifice.’ For I haven’t come to call those who are right and healthy in heart and mind, but those who are sick and in need of restoration to God’s original ideal.”4 The Scripture Jesus quotes here is Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”5

Jesus quoted this verse a second time when the Pharisees lambasted Him for allowing His disciples to pluck grain and eat it on the Sabbath. He responded, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”6

“If you had known what this means,” Jesus said, “you would not have condemned the guiltless.” Could I find a way out of my judgmental spirit by learning the meaning of Hosea 6:6? On a mission for answers, I hefted open Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and began looking up verses on mercy. One of the first verses was really sweet but became disturbing when I read the whole passage. This was rather deflating, so I moved on. I looked up the Hebrew word used here for mercy:

“checed kheh’-sed; kindness; by implication (towards God) piety: rarely (by opposition) reproof, or (subject.) beauty:–favour, good deed (-liness, -ness), kindly, (loving-)kindness, merciful (kindness), mercy, pity, reproach, wicked thing.”7

This was less than insightful. It goes from “kindness” to “wicked thing” in one breath (maybe two). At this point I gave up and called on my sister, who happens to have a doctoral degree in ancient near-eastern languages. I said I felt like someone vomited on me when I read this definition. She laughed. Then she proceeded to say that this word hesed usually refers to the covenant loyalty of God. Thank goodness for sisters.

The covenant loyalty of God actually means something to me. It means faithfulness. It means that God is in a relationship with humans, and when it turned out humans were grossly incapable of being in relationship with God, Jesus came to be the human-in-love-with-God that we had failed to be. In doing so, He gifted that relationship – brilliantly alive with love – to each of us. In other words, He is faithful to us, and – given the rigor mortis settling into our hearts – He is also faithful for us.

Now with some idea of the meaning of mercy, I moved on to examine sacrifice. I gave up on my concordance and googled the definition: “the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.”8 God does not desire sacrifice, which means He does not desire appeasement, guilt gifts, lip service, or rote prayers. I get it. It would be both insulting and irritating (not to mention intimacy-killing) if my husband Michael related to me primarily with a posture of appeasement, gave me gifts (but didn’t listen) when he hurt my feelings, told people “I am lucky to be married to Tobi” in a superior tone as if I was a trophy, or repeated the same loving words to me every morning in a monotone while he got dressed. Um, no thanks.

Bold Compassion

Hosea 6:6 finishes like this: “I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.”9 In other words, God wants a relationship with you more than He wants you to behave well. Or, as I have said before, God wants me more than anything I can do for Him. When God says He desires mercy rather than sacrifice, He means we can sit down hard – like a nurse after a 12-hour shift – on His covenant faithfulness, His mercy (hesed). We sit in mercy rather than trying to be good. We allow situations and people (beginning with ourselves) to not always be above reproof.

Only after my heart is swallowed up in God’s heart, and God’s heart is somehow – miraculously – beating in mine, does it become safe for me to speak. And (much to my annoyance) a prerequisite for changing how I speak to others is changing how I speak to myself. By God’s grace I learn to be merciful to myself first. Mercy means meeting humanness with compassion. Not trying to stamp out all flaws and brokenness. Not demanding that everything be fixed right away.

As I receive God’s ridiculous, abundant mercy as eye drops to my plank-filled eyes, I begin to see more clearly. I look on others with compassion. I get curious about their stories. And when I am tempted to get on a soapbox, mercy asks whether I can be more interested in dying for what I believe than in killing others for what they believe. There are many shades of death to my desires, opinions, certainty. Am I willing to examine what needs to die in me rather than what needs to die in others?

Chances are, when I remember the planks in my eyes and the rocks buried in my back yard I will be humbled, and from a place of humility I will see others as companions both in brokenness and in being recipients of lavish, lifesaving mercy. I will come to know that others are worthy of friendship and storytelling, and that both my good behavior and my judgements are insulting. Let me say that again. People are worthy of friendship and storytelling, and our good behavior (sacrifice) is insulting.

Mercy is not the alternative to confrontation; it is the confrontation: the statement, the interaction. If I am not trying so hard (sacrificing myself) to be good, then neither will I expect others to sacrifice themselves to my standards. Instead, my own attitude of repentance and my story of restored vision prepare the way for others to repent and to see. This is where it gets good. This is where life and freedom pour into the world and we all shout with joy at the goodness of God.

Preparing The Way

These lyrics from Caedmon’s Call put it into the larger perspective of the redemption narrative:

The Word of the Lord came one evening
Concerning His bride’s great sin
He’d send down His Word to renew her
To prepare for the Bridegroom again
The Word said repent
From seeking vain glories
While the gifts in the Lord’s name you give
Repent of all the first stones cast to kill
While your own self-righteousness lives

Prepare ye the way for the Lord
Prepare ye the way for the kingdom10

Both John the Baptist and Jesus preached these words: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.11 What is repentance? Repentance can include remorse, and saying “I’m sorry,” but that’s not all it is. Repentance is receiving new information and allowing it to change behavior. Repentance is also a postural change, a turning toward the great Teacher and away from the lies we have lived in. Repentance is releasing an old way and accepting a new one. Repentance happens all the time, in hundreds of moments, and will never stop until we die. It is a lifestyle, not a one-and-done step. And what’s astonishing is that repentance prepares the way for an explosion of life. Jesus did not come all the way down here to put a bandaid on us, and He did not go to hell and back on the cross to give us bragging rights about being good. He came to set us free and to make us alive, and we don’t even know what those words mean until we begin to explore them with Jesus.

The Truest Story

God is the greatest story-writer, hands-down. He is writing countless stories, and every one is a riveting tale of betrayal, mental illness, hopelessness and destruction, into which His mercy and compassion come, bearing gifts. He sees my propensity to judge, turned inward in self-loathing and outward in self-righteousness. He comes into my story as the counterpoint to every bit of ugly. There is nothing ugly in me for which He does not hold something beautiful to offer me in exchange. This love story is always worth telling, and it packs a punch no amount of opinion-touting ever could.

Jesus knows I want to be rescued even before I do. He’s ready with a message of mercy that rescues me from relating to myself and others with biting criticism. He gifts me His own life (yes, He is absolutely crazy), and gently refuses my filthy rags12 (“good” behavior). He scandalizes my good Christian life with the news that He desires mercy and not sacrifice. He invites me to abide with Him so I may speak to myself with compassion. He humbles me so I am more willing to die than to kill. He shows me the beauty of stories – both listening and telling.

Jesus confronts me with mercy and I am delivered to a posture of repentance. Repentance makes way for the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am a person who lived in a land of deep darkness, upon whom a great light has dawned.13 Are you with me?



Footnotes
1 New King James Version Bible. Matthew 7:1-2. https://www.biblegateway.com
2 New King James Version Bible. Matthew 7:3-5. https://www.biblegateway.com
3 see John 8:7, various translations
4 The Remedy paraphrase. Matthew 9:12-13. emphasis added
5 New King James Version Bible. Hosea 6:6. https://www.biblegateway.com
6 New King James Version Bible. Matthew 12:3-4,7-8. https://www.biblegateway.com. emphasis added
7 Strong, James. Strong’s New Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. World Bible Publishers, Inc., 1986
8 https://www.dictionary.com/
9 New Living Translation Bible. Hosea 6:6b. https://www.biblegateway.com
10 Caedmon’s Call. “Prepare Ye the Way.” Long Line of Leavers. Essential, 2000. Transcript of lyrics
11 see Matthew 3:2 and 4:17, various translations
12 New International Version Bible. Isaiah 64:6. https://www.biblegateway.com. This verse reads: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
13 see Isaiah 9:2, various translations

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