Walkers and Broken Lenses

It's been a difficult couple of years for my extended family.  My cousin in particular has had an extremely difficult time as she has lost her sister, her dad and her daughter in a short amount of time.  It is a difficult thing to see people you love go through suffering as you yourself have experienced the losses just at a different intensity.  The last of those losses for my cousin was the most difficult on the family.  Jamie was my cousin's daughter and like a little sister to me.  I would always go on family vacations with them and spent much of the road trip as a spectator to some of the best fights that have ever occurred.  My second cousins would fight over who read the most, who had hair like an astronaut, who was sitting with their toes pointed at the other and whether or not this was done intentionally.  Hair was pulled, slaps were thrown and even all out wrestling matches took place (the center seat of the van was taken out to provide a perfect wrestling ring).  When Jamie passed, I saw a sadness settle on my cousin that I had never seen before.  We were always the family that would sit by the lake, laughing for hours and hours, taking paddle boat trips to "The Paddle-Boat Island" where Doritos would keep us alive and other nonsense.  We were the loudest and most obnoxious people walking through the mall in Pensacola Florida and there was never a dull moment.  But my cousin lost her daughter and the distance between us seems further in some ways, partly because knowing how much space to give a person going through something like that is impossible.  Not to mention that every time we see or speak to each other we think more of Jamie and how she won't walk into the room holding the most embarrassing photo of you that you thought and hoped had magically disappeared but is now sitting in front of you ready for the whole family to laugh and reminisce about your teenage goofiness. I tell that story because it helps explain a story about my mother's latest silly bout with misinformation.  My cousin had visited a while back and they had a great time laughing, story telling and just reconnecting.  It was good healing for my mom and I hope for my cousin as well.  My Aunt, who was also suffering the loss of her husband and her grand daughter through all of this was there as well and they both spoke with my mom about something having to do with my grandpa Archie.  A few days after that visit, my mom got a text about my grandpa again.  My mom excitedly told me how my cousin had just texted her about grandpa.  I was happy for my mom because I could tell she was happy to hear from her niece again and that they were still talking about grandpa together.  A few texts went back and forth about the crazy names my grandpa used to give himself and how other people in the community were just reminiscing about it as well.  A few weeks went by and my mom was planning for a trip to Mackinac Island with my sisters and my sister Liz was going to need a walker for the time on the island.  She remembered that my cousin had a walker and she thought she would just give her a text to see if they could pick it up.  She got a text back that it would be fine but that they would be out of town for a birthday and they would leave it on the porch if they wanted to swing by and pick it up.  Well, my parents went to pick it up a week or so later and thought they would swing past my Aunt's house to visit as they hadn't seen her new house since she moved.  They were driving down the street, unsure of the house number of my Aunt's home but pretty sure of the part of the street she was on.  They saw a walker sitting out on the front porch of a house and all joked with each other how they could just pick up that walker and run but decided to not get in trouble with the law in Plainwell, at least for this trip.

They continued on their trip to my cousins house and were surprised to see cars in the driveway and no walker on the porch.  My mom started walking around the house to see if maybe it was around the back when my cousin's husband came out to greet them and see what was up.  "I thought you guys were out of town" my mom said with confusion.  He answered that no, they were indeed both at home.  My mom wasn't too troubled with this and continued with her questioning, "we were looking for the walker that you guys were going to leave out for us".  He was unaware of a plan to get a walker for them but said he would go check with my cousin.  When my cousin came out she told my mom that she had no memory of any conversation about a walker.  My mom boldly said "we texted about it".  My cousin even checked her phone to see if any conversation had taken place and of course she found no evidence of it because, wait for it, my mom had been texting her sister all along.  After all of the laughter had started to slow, and considering my family that must have been close to an hour, they discussed all of the things my mom had to ignore in order to come to the conclusion that it was her niece that would provide the walker.

First, the text that my mom had received from her sister that she thought was from her niece, (from a number not programmed on my mom's phone because she has like three numbers programmed and that is all) even referred to grandpa Archie as "our dad".  Now my cousin would not refer to her grandpa as dad but my aunt would.  Secondly, the walker sitting in front of a house on my aunt's street.  Granted they weren't sure which specific house was my aunt's and they couldn't find my aunt's car so they couldn't know which house it was.  The car wasn't in my aunt's driveway because she was OUT OF TOWN FOR HER BIRTHDAY just like the mystery person who had been texting my mom.  Third, when my parents got to my cousins house and saw that they were not out of town and were quite confused as to why my mom would think they WERE out of town.  I don't know when the point was that my mom lost her confidence about the way that she was understanding things but once she did, it all started making sense.  It was like the rewind in the Sixth Sense where we have now been let in on the secret and the way we experience those past scenes has now changed in light of this new information.

To be fair, I think my mom thought it was my cousin and not her sister that had been texting her because she really hoped that's who it was.  It's amazing what our minds can do when we want something to be true.  Once that desire had changed the way that she saw the text, she was able to easily dismiss some of the other signs that may have been pointing to a different reality.  Now she sees my cousin refer to grandpa as dad just as a texting error.  She must have forgotten to say "your dad" instead of just "dad".  Now the walker on the front porch of the a house near where my aunt lives is coincidence.  When they show to pick up the walker and the house isn't empty, they must have just gotten the weeks confused and they traveled the week before.  Our minds have a way of closing, and eliminating information that is trying to change our understanding.  I think this is why it is so difficult for us to come to new understandings.

Obstructed Revelation

It is because of the fact that our minds behave in this way that it is so difficult for the Spirit to reveal anything "new" to us.  I think Jesus is the best example of this in scripture.  The people of God had an understanding of the character of God through their understanding of the law and the prophets and Jesus comes and says "I am the image of the invisible God" the way that you understand God can come to full completion in looking upon the incarnation, life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.  The people who had followed the full law and the schedule of sacrifice are then told that it is really mercy and not sacrifice that God is concerned with.  Jesus tells them their "eye for an eye" version of justice was not sufficient and in fact was broken; that they should love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.  What Jesus was doing was asking them to see the world in a completely new way.  The people, both Roman and Jewish, were so challenged with this new way of understanding that they needed to eliminate the thing that was asking them to change their mind.  Just as our minds are willing to do mental gymnastics to make new information fit in our old ways of understandings, cultures do the same thing.  Jesus was acting outside of the accepted ways of politics and religion and the quickest way to deal with that tension is to remove the disruptor.  For those of us who know the gospel, we see that that way of trying to do away with the way of Jesus was actually the thing that proved the power of the way of the cross and is the reason that we too take up our cross and follow the way of Jesus.

We see the example of what it looks like when revelation goes against our understanding, in Peter.  Peter has a vision where he learns that the food they once called unclean is in fact clean because God had made it so.  Peter, through the Holy Spirit and some wrestling with it, then is able to take the jump that this "making clean" applies to Gentiles as well.  Peter has to go and see evidence of it in Cornelius and he is then willing to change his prior understanding.  Before he would then defend this stance to others, he first had supernatural revelation in a vision and then confirmation from the Spirit of God and the witnesses who accompanied him.  Maybe Peter was more willing to trust this revelation because he had distrusted a prior message from Jesus before and was rebuked for it.  Jesus was talking to those closest to him and told them of the death that he must experience.  Peter, and probably all of those closest to Jesus, were still waiting for Jesus to take the throne and return the land to Israel and what Jesus was telling him flew in the face of that understanding.  Peter said "God forbid" such a thing taking place and Jesus responded "get behind me Satan".  The information that Peter received was so troubling to his understanding of things that he thought it was more likely that Jesus was wrong than that HE was wrong about the way that Jesus would indeed take a throne.

Knowing With Wonder

The danger when we come to this understanding that we are always one piece of information away from seeing everything in a totally new way is the reflex to just say that we never can know anything or on the other side, that we know everything.  Because of this we see some people who dig their feet in the ground and refuse to learn new information or meet new kinds of people because they are afraid that they may learn something that will change their mind.  We see other people who see everything and change their mind every day and are often tossed side to side by every passing wave.  They are always one wave away from going under.  I think the middle way is what Moltmann calls "knowing with wonder".  It is good to say that we know something but to admit that it is with wonder that we hold that understanding.  It is Moltmann who says that when we say we know something we in a sense are claiming that we own it.  We often even use terminology like "I can grasp that" as if we have it in our hands to be controlled and moved at our will and I would say that is a dangerous business.  To know with wonder means that it may be in our hands today but we are always observing it and not losing heart when it seems to change texture and form within our light grip.  That is knowing with wonder.  We don't have to feel a certain way when we realize we have been looking at a thing from the completely wrong angle.  I think we could have no other response but one of wonder because the thing we are observing is not one sided, it is like a brilliant diamond that glistens and glimmers under different light and from all of its beautiful angles and dimensions.  I think God is big enough that we will never take all of that brilliance in from one vantage point.  I hope we can respond much in the way that my mom responded to her somewhat embarrassing misunderstanding.  We laughed and joked with her for a while but in the long run she was grateful that it created another opportunity to laugh with my cousin.  Gratitude is always better than shame embarrassment and regret.