Day 75
Autonomic
Porpoises have been characterized as “voluntary breathers.” Porpoises don’t breathe when they’re unconscious. When a Porpoise becomes entangled in a net, they lose consciousness, and die from asphyxiation. [i] What a way to go.
For us humans, we breathe without even thinking about it, most the time. Our hearts beat without having to consciously command them to do so. Our blood vessels expand and contract without a thought. We can breathe when we’re unconscious (just ask my wife about my snoring).
When I was in high school, I went to the drive-in movie with a couple of other guys (Yes, I realize this dates me). As we munched our popcorn and drank soda pop, the conversation turned to a particular guy at school. We decided we had the perfect alibi. We would go get some eggs, pelt his house and return to the drive-in movie place. We did just that.
I felt horrible that night. I tossed and turned in bed. I felt rotten for all the wrong reasons; I was afraid of somehow being caught. Hey, I admit I was ashamed about actually getting caught up in what we did. However, I was a full-fledged, willing participant.
The next morning my mom woke me up and said there was a Policeman at the door who wanted to talk to me. He questioned me about the egging of Mr. And Mrs. Wannamaker’s home the night before. I went to my room and brought out my pants. I dug into the pocket of my jeans and proudly displayed my ticket for the movie we attended. The Police Officer was not looking at my ticket stub. He was looking at the dried egg stains on the left leg of my jeans. I was busted! My mom burst into tears. Her son was an admitted juvenile delinquent. No matter what the movies suggest about the Mafia’s code of honor and loyalty (“Nobody rats”), I rolled on both my buddies in a matter of something less than three seconds. I wasn’t goin down for this all by myself! It was akin to an autonomic response—I didn’t even have to think about it.
The next school day, I was in high school purgatory. Everybody at school seemed to know I was a rat. I was no longer acceptable to any visible group in high school. My two buddies made absolutely certain I was excommunicated from the in-crowd. The nerds wouldn’t have me either. I was forced to do high school incognito. It was hell.
I was invited by a guy named Jim to go to a party at his house during the week. It wasn’t what I expected. There were about a dozen teens my age. We ate some munchies and Jim introduced me to the group members. There was a college age guy there who pulled out a guitar. He said a prayer and then started strumming the damn thing and the whole group started singing! I wanted to curl up and die. (They didn’t even pass out the words to the songs. They just assumed you knew them I guess.). I sat there paralyzed with terror, mouthing the words without making a sound. There was something really weird about these people though…they were really happy. I was miserable. I was the first one out the door when it was over.
I felt so crummy I decided to attend the neighborhood church of my childhood that I hadn’t attended for several years. I wasn’t looking for anything particular. I hurt. Life hurt. I was attempting to escape from the pain of it all. I met a student at church who had attended the meeting of the teens singing Cum-by-ya the week before. He was hurting too. After the service, we talked for a while. I felt better. He said he did too. One author characterizes what I experienced in the following: “When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.” [ii]
After several months, the pastor at our church asked me and the other student to share our experience with the congregation. I reluctantly agreed. The other student was ecstatic about the opportunity. The big day came and I was selected to go first. I boldly hopped to the podium, unraveled my notes and looked out toward the congregation. Halfway through pontificating about how my life had done a 180 with Jesus in less than 90 days, I started to stutter and quickly ended my schpeel.
Seated a dozen rows back on the left hand side of the congregation, I recognized Mr. & Mrs. Wannamaker and their two high school age sons. They were looking right through me, all four of them. The disgust and disdain in their facial expressions required no explanation whatsoever. They hated my guts. Their eyes said, “You lousy hypocrite! How dare you even consider entering this hallowed hall of saints, let alone have the gall to get up in front of us and suggest God loves you and has changed you! You pathetic piece of garbage!”
After the service, I wanted to run out the back door to avoid the congregation. Unfortunately, we were required to escort Pastor Flumacher’s wife out of the chapel and greet the congregants as they departed. My heart was pounding so hard I had to remind myself to breathe so I wouldn’t explode from heart palpitations. As the Wannamaker family approached, I tried to find some way to hide or escape the oncoming inevitability. After Mr. Wannamaker shook hands and greeted the pastor and his wife, he slid his arm around my shoulder and escorted me down the steps of the chapel. When we were out of earshot from the crowd, he let me have it. “Liar! Phony! Hypocrite! There’s no way I’m buying the crap you’re selling you miserable little” — you get the picture. I have never been back to that church.
As I read the history of people of faith, judgment and condemnation seem to be almost autonomic. We do it without even thinking about it. I’ve done it, too many times to count, just as the story above indicates. I’ve found myself blaming Christians, the church, Christianity and God for the difficulties I encounter in life, including those I’ve created for myself. I confess I’ve used my faith in God to fix life.
I’m still learning about life, God, faith, relationships and a whole bunch of other stuff. I’m beginning to appreciate the fact that my relationship with Jesus has little to do with “fixing life.” It has a whole lot more to do with transforming me. Condemnation and judgment aren’t autonomic. They’re learned behaviors. Grace, compassion, kindness and forgiveness aren’t autonomic either. I’ve come to understand that I require God to develop more of these capacities within me. Sometimes He uses the nets I become entangled in swimming through life as moments to point out the hypocrisy of my own self-righteousness.
For me, transformation is not autonomic, something that simply occurs without surrendering to the power of a loving God who knows that I am capable of becoming a better equipped participant in the dispensing of His grace, mercy, forgiveness and love than I have become content with. I have found that He also wants me to appreciate the fact that He is the God of the broken one’s. His Church is that glimmer of hope for His creations to latch onto when they lose sight of the surface, cannot fathom sinking any lower, and are losing the ability to breathe, tangled in the nets of life.
Most people leave church, just as I did in this story, not because of the music, the sermon, the pastor, other Christians, or the liturgy. Most of us leave church because we can’t stand the thought of ever having to confront the hypocrisy of our own stuff, particularly when we see it in the lives of others. Frankly, I think it’s also part of dilemma the Church finds itself entangled in today. The Church is dieing from asphyxiation not because it’s exhaling existing members but because it has lost the conscious awareness of the need to inhale broken folks, just the way they arrive. As Jim Palmer writes, “Perhaps many more people would be open to what Jesus offers if his followers weren’t so bent on requiring you to clean up your act as a prerequisite for receiving it.”[iii] Now that’d be a breath of fresh air wouldn’t it?
Can the Church breathe when it’s unconscious?
NOTES
[i] Read, Andrew Porpoises Voyageur Press, Inc. Vancouver, B.C. Canada © 1999 by Andrew Read, p. 49.
[ii] Nouwen, Henri J.M. The Wounded Healer- Ministry in Contemporary Society, IMAGE BOOKS DOUBLEDAY, NY Copyright 1972 by Henri J.M. Nouwen, p.93.
[iii] Palmer, Jim Divine Nobodies – Shedding Religion To Find God (and the unlikely people who help you). W Publishing Group – A Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Copyright © 2006 by Jim Palmer, p. 24.
