MAKE IT WORK! (Or Finding Life in Exile: A Study of Jeremiah, the Chilean Miners and Project Runway)

Okay I admit it. I enjoy reality television. What can I say? After a long day of pastoral care, property and facility disputes and sermon crafting, I come home with just enough energy to press "power" on the remote and tune in to my personal favorite: "Project Runway."

There is something very feeding about watching the creative work of others in a different discipline. The contestants are all young designers trying to create the best look for the weekly runway show. The center point of the program is Tim Gunn of the Parsons School of Design, who guides the contestants through their design and crafting of the garments. In almost every show, he offers the same line to frustrated contestants whose garment is not developing as they had hoped: "Make it work!"

I was reminded of his famous line when I was wrestling with the scripture from Jeremiah 29:4-7 this week. To the Israelites in captivity, God offers a surprising voice; one with the uncanny ring of Tom Gunn. "Make it work!" God says. In this place of exile, you should "build homes, plant gardens, have families."

I think we can all imagine the shock of the Israelites at these words. Most all of us have experienced exile at some point in our lives, whether geographic, psychological or spiritual. Exile is not a place you immediately think to build a home or family, or continue your work.

I struggled with this idea all week until finally, last Saturday, I saw something that changed the way I came at this scripture. As I was reading the morning paper, I saw an article about those thirty-three men trapped in the Chilean mine. Truly, they are experiencing the ultimate exile-separated from not just home and family, but air and sunlight for over two months. Yet, they are surviving, even thriving, because they are following the very advice given in Jeremiah.

In their place of exile, they built homes. No, technically, they didn't construct a walled dwelling, but they began to create living conditions that protected and strengthened them. After being discovered, the first thing rescue workers did was to find a way to simulate night and day so that the miners could regain a predictable pattern rest. They also began to deliver hot food. Doctors reported that within days, the health and strength of the miners began to improve drastically. In any place of exile, you must strengthen and protect yourself; you must build yourself a home.

They also tended their families. Twenty-three hundred feet above ground, families of the miners have gathered, living in tents now deemed "camp hope." Each miner is allowed a periodic one minute phone call with family members. NASA experts trained in addressing the psychological strain from isolation on the space station, helped coordinate this effort. "Human connection to family or one's support system is critical for psychological wellbeing," explained one expert, "especially in times of prolonged separation."

Paralleling the commandments found in Jeremiah, the miners also followed the third instruction: plant gardens and eat what they reap. In short, continue with your work. In the past two months, the miners have divided themselves into groups of eleven, working eight-hour shifts on clearing debris, measuring oxygen levels and reinforcing the walls of the mine. Even in a place of exile, there is work to be done. And the miners are dutifully going about doing it.

For over two months, the miners have worked to strengthen themselves and their place of exile. And to date, they have survived. I couldn't help but remember the last line of our Jeremiah passage: "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile...for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

As we all watch and wait for their ultimate rescue, let us pray that the miners' lessons in survival - of finding life in exile - will be honored and celebrated by us all. For no matter where you find yourself in life, no matter how isolated or exiled you may feel, if you tend your families, build your homes and do your work, you can survive-even thrive-and ultimately "make it work."

This message was also offered as a sermon on Sunday, October 10th at Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City. http://www.mabcnyc.org/mabc-audio.htm

STANDUP COMEDY AT UNION SEMINARY

Recently, I was invited to teach a for-credit class at Union Theological Seminary in NYC on "Humor and Ministry."   And check it out!  Our class got featured in the New York Times!

THE MULCH PILE

This summer I spent a few days in our beautiful little cabin in Chetek, Wisconsin. (Find Madison on a map and go about two hundred miles north). The first morning, as is our usual routine, we made a huge breakfast, complete with cheese eggs (hey, it's Wisconsin), blueberry muffins and fried sunfish caught right off our dock.

After lingering over breakfast, we cleared the table, put the left over egg shells and fish carcasses in the trash and left to run errands for the day. Two critical pieces of information: (1) It was 92 that day, and 2) there is no AC in the cabin. When we returned, the smell from the baking fish carcasses and egg shells almost knocked us flat. In an emergency rescue effort, I quickly donned a "gas mask" made from paper towels, took the smelly trash and threw it on the mulch pile.

God bless mulch piles. For any of you gardeners out there, you know the magic of a mulch pile: a place where smelly fish carcasses and egg shells transform into rich, dark dirt; dirt that gives life to things like aromatic lavender and brilliantly colored day lilies.

After fumigating the house, I sat down to read the lectionary scripture for the week to prepare for the sermon and saw our scripture in Colossians 3. Who knew there was a parallel in mulch piles and the words of the Apostle Paul? Perhaps he was a gardener? "Get rid of all such things -- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth (the "trash") and cloth yourself in the new self."

Two thousand years later, Paul reaches out and asks us all:
-What trash (anger, fear, shame, jealousy) do you need to throw on the mulch pile?
-And what beautiful new things will you grow in its place?

If you really think about it, the mulch pile metaphor makes a lot of sense. For example, think of an emotion with which you are struggling. Given my fiery Scotch-Irish genes, I vote for anger. What do you do with anger? How do you work through it? You throw it on the mulch pile, of course!

First, you take out the trash. You get it out of your house. You get away from it. You get some distance from it. Maybe that means taking a walk around the blog, or meditating, or journaling, or calling a friend, or watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Whatever it is -- you need to get the trash out of your house.

Then you throw it on the mulch pile. It's trash for goodness sakes. Realize it is trash and let it go. It's that moment you let go, that greater forces take over. Like the egg shells and fish carcasses that decompose and become rich dirt, when you hand over your anger or fear or pain to a greater power, it fades and begins to change.

Ultimately, you begin to grow something beautiful in its place (or as Paul says "cloth yourself in something new.") On the mulch pile, anger can become empathy, fear can become insight, pain can become strength.

The mulch pile metaphor works not only on a personal level, but also works on a political level. Consider the recent controversy over Park 51, the proposed Muslim community center near Ground Zero. There have been numerous protests, judgmental blogs and hateful radio and news commentaries bashing this idea. It will be a "Mega-Mosque," some say, "a Muslim extremist site."

As someone who was in NYC on 9/11, smelled the smoke from the crash, saw the second tower fall, I feel quite comfortable saying: "people -- PEOPLE -- throw it on the mulch pile!" This is nothing but fear talking; fear and ignorance that are stinking up our house. Take out the trash. Throw it on the mulch pile. Maybe then something beautiful will grow; something beautiful like an interfaith community center and worship space to honor the memory of 9/11.

This is a powerful message Paul shares. Of course many of us love to listen to a message like this, nod, mumble "um hum" and then turn around and offer every excuse in the book why we can't do it:

"Oh, I can't give up my anger. I was wronged. I was abandoned. I was mistreated."

"Oh, I can't let go of my fear because it might happen again and I need to protect myself."

"I can't release my pain because it still hurts..."

If there is any lesson from our scripture today it is this: STOP with the excuses! If you leave this stuff in your life too long, it will stink up your house. And the longer you leave it there, the worse it will get.

NOW HEAR THIS: This is your house now-- not your parents' or your siblings' or your friends or your partner's or spouse's. It's not their job to take out your trash, even if they brought it in! It's your house now.

One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, wrote: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" If you care about this "wild and precious life," then you have to ask yourself:

-What trash do I need to throw on the mulch pile
-And what beautiful things will I grow in its place?

Whatever you do, don't waste this life on trash that brings you down and stinks up your house. As Paul says, get rid of these things; take out the trash, throw it on the mulch pile and cloth yourself in something healing and wonderful and new.

Based on a sermon given on Sunday, August 1st at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York. Get the podcast at: http://www.mabcnyc.org/mabc-audio.htm