 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
"MENDING DAY" | James 2.14-17 | August 31, 2003 |
She was also a mender of hearts and souls as well. She could take the pieces of my disjointed day and make something fun out of them. She could pull the threads around a hole in my heart or mind in order to close the aching gap with a soothing word of comfort or a hearty laugh. She could laugh at herself, and she taught me to do the same, and that has become a way of mending an otherwise too-serious world that rips and tears at the fabric of life.
As people of faith, every day is mending day. Not only for ourselves but for those around us as well. Every day it behooves us to carry the emotional needle and thread in our words and actions that offer to help patch up the little wounds and the gaping holes that come from living.
Toward the end of Toni Morrison's book Beloved, a powerful novel about slavery and its aftermath, one of the characters reflects on the impact one woman had on his life: "She is a friend of my mind,"he says. "She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
We all long to have a friend of our mind. Such friends are menders of tattered pieces of our selves, quilting them into a redemptive patchwork pattern that makes sense of things. There are too many people in our world who do the opposite: they carve us into pieces, or take the pieces already there and break them into even smaller fragments. Their sense of self-worth is found in direct proportion to their success at tearing someone else apart.
L. Gregory Jones tells a story of tearing and mending as it is found in the life of Pat Conroy's book My Losing Season. The story is that of Conroy's senior year as point guard on the Citadel's basketball team and what he learned from losing. It is also a memoir that describes people who smashed Conroy to pieces and one man who became a key friend of his mind. ('Mending Lives' The Christian Century, July 26, 2003)
Conroy's father was a master at demeaning, attacking and undermining his son. He did it verbally and emotionally as well as physically.
Conroy writes:
"There was nothing my father could not teach me about the architecture of despair. I knew all its shapes and its blueprints, the shadows of all its columns and archways. My father could send me reeling down its hallways and screaming into its bat-spliced attics with a curl of his thin-lipped mouth. He brought madness home every time he entered the many houses of my overlong childhood. His cruelty baffled me, shamed me, and I promised myself I would never be anything like him."
Pat Conroy's life is marked by the persistent and severe ways in which his father tore him apart-and ways in which he returned to irritate the most severe wounds so that they never mended. "My father possessed a genius for...zeroing in on that tenderest spot of the psyche where healing was most difficult, exposing the rawness of the wound again and again."
Conroy's psyche was tested further by his coach. Harsh words and a loathing attitude beat down Conroy and his teammates with such phrases as "You're just mediocre" and "Conroy, don't shoot." This coach reduced the team to pieces, a place of despair with no windows or exits, a futility that made hope vain and the future unthinkable. And all of this has affected self-image and relationships. As he says "We beaten boys have trouble liking the faces our fathers tore apart with their fists."
The good news in his life came in the person of an English professor who befriended him and encouraged him to become a writer. John Doyle guided Conroy as he discovered the constructive potential of words and began to write. It was mending day for Conroy when he began to write poetry for Doyle's class, finding a whole new world opening up to him in words and this person who became a friend of his mind. Doyle had an unshakable faith in Conroy's ability and that made all the difference to a man who had been told all his life that he was a worthless.
L. Gregory Jones of Duke Divinity School reminds us we all emerge in pieces out of complex factors that include our own misdirection and the people who tear us apart. Too many people are scarred for life and rendered virtually worthless because of the verbal and all too often the physical abuse that demeans and debilitates. All of us search for friends of our mind, people who mediate God's grace to us in ways that give us back the pieces of our lives in the right order, people who mend the tattered corners of our dispirited soul with patches of love and caring that allow us to continue to function as valued human beings. (The Christian Century, July 26, 2003)
Because the world is so broken, and our own lives so often shattered, it often takes a lifetime to live into the right ordering of the pieces, and to discover the wholeness for which we were created. We can all name people like John Doyle who, by believing in us and encouraging us, have the power to mend our lives.
And as we reflect on those people who have been friends of our minds and give thanks for the healing balm of friendship they offer us, the question and the challenge to people of faith is this: To whom are we called to be holy friends? Who around us needs a friend of their mind? For my grandmother, one day a week was devoted to mending clothes; for people of faith, every day is mending day. Who needs us to give them back the pieces of their lives in the right order? Amen.
-Gary L. McCann
James 2
What good is it, brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save that person? Suppose someone is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well-fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith without actions, is dead.
Tao Te Ching 49
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
The master has no mind of her own.
She works with the mind of the people.
She is good to people who are good.
She is also good to people who aren't good.
This is true goodness.
She trusts people who are trustworthy.
She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.
This is true trust.
The master's mind is like space.
People don't understand her.
They look to her and wait.
She treats them like her own children.
| Copyright © 2003 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |