Freely Circulating

"Freely Circulating"

Somebody's work, somebody's sweat, sacrifice, suffering smuggled in every good gift, everything but the Beginning coming from something, everything present in all Creation since origin; Where else would anything come from? Where else would anything go? When we say we "throw something away," where is "away?" There is no "away," everything's here to stay, somewhere, somehow, now and forever; nothing from nothing, nothing new under the sun.

How to become, like Jesus, ever more recyclable, more recycling? What it means to be "saved" today? "Savored?' Nothing and no one wasted? Tasted? No waste but holy? Regaling, cajoling, extravagant grace, enjoyed without emptying, well-used without over-wringing; Jesus soothing multitudinous hunger on minuscule supply: "and when they had eaten enough" -- There eventually is an "enough!" Point of fullness beyond which it hurts us to go! Beyond which lies more than our Share of the Whole! Yet pieces left over, people left out, to be gathered up, and in!

All that there is we are given to share! Protection, possession, property, profit, all have to be carefully taught? Communion form of learning by imbibing, gifts circulating, passing through, passing on, nothing at last to show for ourselves but ourselves, everyone, ultimately right where we are, being us! Playing in pent-up proportion our indispensable parts, fully recycled, nothing withheld.

Coming from kindness of strangers, responded to even before we respond, Source of Compassion in motion toward us; like Samaritan toward one left at roadside, no rhetoric, no abstraction, only litany of Direct Action -- Approach! Anoint! Apply bandage! Assume every cost, every consequence, advancing whatever it takes! Jesus alerting the lawyer in us, lost in our looking out for limits of our liabilities, at all costs protecting our giant clients: polluting as if simply performing, natural, personal bodily function?

Samaritan part of us "didn't stop to think; the oil and the wine poured themselves, the wound bound itself." (Stephen Mitchell) Miracle of just doing, justly, whatever needs doing, not asking, Who is my neighbor, as if to determine how worthy, of how much help, but only, Who am I, how am I made? From, there BUT for grace, to, there BOUND by grace go I - and there! -- and there! And everywhere, in everyone. "'You got to,' she said." (John Steinbeck)

The people, yes the people live on. The learning and blundering people will live on . . . The people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food while reaching out when it comes their way for lights beyond the prison of the five senses, for the keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death. This reaching is alive. (Carl Sandburg)

Reaching beyond what is for what is yet to be, refusing to be divided, conquered, our Marys from our Marthas; Pioneer Woman Jeanette Rankin, in apron throughout "A Single Woman," adroitly aligning kitchen table with speaker's podium, cautiously confessing, history inspiring advocacy; scandalously as Mary, Martha in concert confronting imperial systems, undermining with "needful" things, fitting occasions while remaining true; hospitality heartening all gospel practice, beginning with, "No room in the inn!" Ending with, "Tarry here a while!" Jesus and followers living to be "taken in" -- more ways than one!

Vulnerability displacing purity, messy work, loving each other, no longer hidden behind own integrity; no way to be Martha, world-serving, without white-staining -- "It is the Samaritan, the outsider, who proves neighbor, not anxiously keeping apart from one he is supposed to despise . . . Christianity not a principle to follow with utter clarity or precision . . . an experiment in living together -- with certain flexible ability, differences into account without being divided." (Krister Stendahl)

Jesus, to Paul, Cosmic Glue, holding together in spite of, because of, every divergency, nothing created, nothing about us, any more, if ever, alien to, One "pleased to be reconciled in all things . . . making peace."