Why Do You Care
Passing shoeless and happy through Eastertide
Yesterday, the third Sunday of Eastertide, it rained. Budding maples, blooming forsythia, tulips still closed up tight. I left a pair of boots out. Rivulets ran past the barn, pooling at the base of the dying apple tree I refuse to cut down.
So far as I can tell, weather happens. It does not do as I ask. Picnics are rained out; snow falls heavily on travel days. When it’s cold I wear a hat; when it’s hot I go for a swim. I adapt to the weather; it doesn’t seem to care what I need or want.
I fasted over Lent and have retained a portion of the fast for Eastertide. From six p.m. Saturday through six p.m. Sunday I do not eat. Sundays are slow and less full anyway but yesterday’s rain made it more so.
Yet Jesus came as he sometimes does, and his coming was not peaceful but disturbing. I’ve been working on nonviolence for a while now, but he’s changing the stakes. Previously I negotiated and bargained my way through conflict. Armed detentes aren’t great but they’re better than open hostilities, right?
But now Jesus insists that I simply disarm - give up all my defenses and all my justifications. No more negotiating, no more bargaining. He doesn’t want me to manage conflict; he wants me to become defenseless in it. Trust others. Be honest and transparent. Turn the other cheek. Go two miles instead of one.
Worse, he makes this unilateral disarmament a condition of following him. Follow me or don’t, he says - and so far as I can tell he means this - but if you do follow me, then this is the way.
It is, for me, a step too far. I’ll consider disarming if you disarm first, and I might consider disarming if we do it at the same time, but I will not - I will not - disarm first, unilaterally. That’s just nuts.
I try to explain to him. I’ll get walked on and be humiliated. I’ll lose my job and family. I’ll die alone on the street or in some windowless room. I have to protect myself. I have to at least be ready to.
Jesus is unmoved by the drama and escalation. The boots, he says. The boots.
It’s late afternoon and we’re sitting on the porch. I’ve gotten better at the Sunday fast but this one is hard. I feel hollow and sad. I’m trying to get through to him, help him understand my point. What is he saying about the boots?
They were as wet as they were going to get and you still went out in the rain to get them, Jesus says. He pauses a moment then asks, why do you care?
The rain falls heavier. A pair of crows pass overhead; an orange barn cat from the other side of the river slinks through the Spirea.
I want to please him but I can’t. More and more the old patterns and tricks don’t work any longer. I want to walk the walk but the trail keeps getting narrower. I can’t not care, I say at last. It just happens. Deeper than the fear - older than fear - is care. Defenselessness is a form of care?
Yes, he says quietly, almost proudly, as if I have just solved a haunting problem. Dusk falls and a gate opens. I follow him through it, shoeless and happy, like in the beginning.
You come, too.
Love,
Sean
I love the honesty of your struggle, Sean. It does feel so vulnerable to do these things.
For me, defenselessness has so much power - it says I am so well-loved and protected from harm that there is nothing I need to go to war with. Of course, what I must come to terms with is that the eternal me can never be harmed - even if the physical me, the body, can. And yet, I find great peace in the idea of taking a position of defenselessness. It takes so much effort to try to protect myself from every danger my fearful mind perceives.
The monks have a teaching to start each day, before picking up my phone or leaving my bed, by writing and saying aloud Today is my Peaceful Day. Claiming it. Feeling it. I've been doing this lately and I'm amazed at how differently my days are going. I'm less reactive. I feel more free. I feel less fearful. Maybe that's what defenselessness also gives us. Freedom from fear. ❤️
I have been having a hard time with Jesus lately too. I wonder if it's a global thing. Last week I received the message that he has been disappointed. This does not seem like him at all. I asked, "What does that mean?" He answered that I had disappointed him as my guide and reappointed the ego. He then asked to be reappointed as my guide. He has a way with words. But I knew what he meant. I was letting life frustrate me and had been indulging in feelings of anger.
When I was waking up today, I heard the word "poppies" at the tail end of a dream. I googled it to see what it represented and I was eventually led to the poem, "In Flanders Fields" which is the origin of this flower as a remembrance of those who died in war. All day I've been thinking about the thin line between defending myself and attacking out of fear or retribution. Justified violence, like all wars, big or small. The poem talked about the rows upon rows of gravesites from the battles there during WWI. There was a photo alongside the website I came across, and there is a sea of white crosses stretching for miles, it seems. It was incredibly eye opening.
Which all led to your post, Sean. You've perfectly summed up the dilemma I am facing as well.
With love,
Shawna