Welcome to a prayer practice.
I'm Kelly Weber and I'm a spiritual director.
What does it mean to be of service?
What does it mean to care for others?
I stumbled on an essay Eugene Peterson wrote 30 years ago titled,
Teach us to care and not to care in his book,
Subversive Spirituality.
Peterson is a pastor and the translator of The Message,
A modern and poetic translation of the Bible.
I'm going to try to economize and offer a bit of Peterson's wisdom and a prayer based on what he wrote.
But first,
I want to offer three quotes to put into context Peterson's teaching on service.
Bernie Brown has said that the most compassionate people are the most boundaried.
She says that we cannot be both empathetic and taken advantage of at the same time.
Empathy and resentment do not coexist.
So boundaries are necessary.
I would add wise and dynamic boundaries that shift as needed.
Second,
Richard Rohr,
Franciscan teacher says,
The pain you don't transform,
You transmit.
So the question becomes,
How does one transform pain in an authentic way that heals not just once,
But for generations?
And can we serve others in such a way as to help them in this transformation?
And finally,
Cynthia Borger,
Episcopal priest and teacher says,
And I'm paraphrasing a bit,
All relationships bear the stamp of cosmic servanthood of a suffering servant.
In other words,
We are created to be in relationship.
And part of the intrinsic nature of relationship is being of service.
And that whatever relationship we are in this service asks us to some way suffer to give up our own will for the sake of the other.
All of these pieces of wisdom challenge and inform each other.
Care must be transformative.
And yet,
To assist in this effort,
We need to acknowledge both our boundaries and our willingness to suffer with those for whom we care.
We must be taught to care and not to care,
Both and.
So it's not that we don't care and that we're not interested in the person.
It's that sometimes caring or tending to someone's needs isn't always in their best interest.
The phrase,
Teach us to care and not to care comes from T.
S.
Eliot's poem,
Ash Wednesday,
Which is known as his conversion poem.
In direct opposition to The Waste Land,
Eliot's most famous poem in which God does not exist and the world is a wasteland of hopelessness,
Ash Wednesday paints the world as a garden where God exists and humans have agency,
Which make the garden a beautiful but imperfect place.
The long poem ends this way.
Blessed sister,
Holy mother,
Spirit of the fountain,
Spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.
Teach us to care and not to care.
Teach us to sit still,
Even among these rocks.
Our peace is his will and even among these rocks,
Sister,
Mother,
And spirit of the river,
Spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated and let my cry come unto thee.
Peterson explains that the Latin word cura combines the words cure and care.
Cure is nurturing a person towards health and care is being a compassionate companion to that person in need.
To offer cura needs both knowledge and empathy.
Often he says what we call care in Christian communities is nothing more than pity,
Sentimentality,
Do-goodism,
Ecclesiastical colonialism,
Or religious imperialism.
These are strong words for sure.
He goes on to say that if we do not use occasions of need to teach people to pray,
We cave in to the pressure of care in which there is no cure.
Now this is hard to hear and probably not a popular notion,
But put it this way.
There are times when to solve someone's problem is to take away not only a person's agency,
But their opportunity for real growth.
Rather,
Caring might look like walking with someone in their problem so that the problem becomes the stimulus to embrace the fullness of who they are as God created,
Christ invaded human beings.
This is harder than volunteering on a Saturday afternoon or writing a check.
This is the hard work of being present to someone's suffering without feeling the need to immediately fix it.
To pray with,
To pray for,
And to teach someone to pray opens them out towards possibility and promise.
I'm not suggesting that when we see someone hungry on the street corner,
We refuse them food or help and just suggest they pray.
No,
Of course not.
But what if we bought them lunch and sat with them,
Talked to them,
Prayed silently over them as they ate,
Not to proselytize,
But to do the hard and holy work of being present.
Peterson says,
God is gracious and gives us responsible tasks to carry out in the garden.
But if we lose our sense of the holy,
If we lose perception of the sacred,
We will only contribute to the deterioration of care.
Let's pray.
Dear one,
Teach us to care.
Teach us to care by teaching us to pray.
Teach us to care so that we do not cosign on death.
So that we do not cosign on dysfunction,
But rather become a companion towards grace.
Teach us to be in wonder before the beauty of creation,
Especially the creation of your children who have come to think of themselves as less than.
Teach us to use each act of caring as an act of praying so that the person being cared for experiences dignity instead of condescension.
Dear one,
Teach us not to care.
Teach us to tread softly,
Aware that you were here long beforehand,
Creating,
Loving,
And wooing.
Teach us the humility of not jumping to solutions so that we do not use anyone's need as a workshop to cobble together makeshift messianic work that only inflates our own importance.
Teach us not to exhaust our resources so that we have the time and energy and space to realize that this work is done on holy ground and in your holy name.
That people and communities in need are not a wasteland where we feverishly and faithfully set up shop,
But a garden,
A rose garden in which we work contemplatively.
And in the words of Elliot,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.
Teach us to care and not to care.
Teach us to sit still even among these rocks.
Amen.
Be well,
Friends.
I'll see you next week as we continue our practice.
