2024-12-24 A Meditation on Togetherness

“7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” (Mark 6:7-13 ESV)

Concrete action items, the brush-up with life reminds us that sailing according to our own enthusiasm and forgiveness, leaves us high and dry. We need Outlet. We need some means of moving beyond what can be learnt and what can be modified, what can be Mastered: we are complicit in a vast sleepwalk, it can at times seem. And such precious as these, those the Lord has given us, these mirror, echo, and reflect as much as we can muster: mercy, a gladsome message, an escape from so much Judgment and Disapproval.

Is that our message? Fine time, the present hour, to discover tangibles: work items, plans, to-do lists, and ebb-and-flow of Man and his or her tools. But those tools mock us. Those tools are a brush-up with hard and concrete Destiny. Those tools… the setting aside of all Ambition, and the embrace of all Sympathy: this marks a God-sent breath of freshness, God is bigger than our errors. God is not only bigger, but Determined. That we know, such precious as these, were calling us unequivocally, simply to shepherd the easier variety of Encounter. The Encounter with two friends leaning in on each other, as Plans and Diversions and Choices are chattered through. The Encounter with self-made Destiny, rather, hopes that one of Us can fill that high and mighty Role: to be Patience to the despondent; to be Coach to the escape artist of the soul; to be Testament to the witnesses gathered. We try. We are Owners of a possession called Togetherness, together Mercy, together unspoken Gestation and Birth. We know that Man’s toolset is a broad avenue of opportunity and a vast wilderness of delight.

Somehow, the Action Items today are calling for that kind of service. They are calling for a Wealth known only elusively as Mercy, as Blanket opportunity and gladsome times Together. The Unspoken… the scarcely studied Undercurrent… the Tone and intonation spectacular, is of a lawlessness that goes well beyond even the preacher’s safe toolkit: we are odd and spectacular as miscreants, as style-mavens for whom a garment is a do-or-die Vote and Alignment. We know also that nothing is off limits—that sounds odd or too licensing—but all things… we are somehow Safer as the unknowingly religious than as those properly suited up as Religious. Our religion is that we were once but Children who dreamt, who stayed within Big Brother’s lines perhaps, but who never thought of it all in terms of rules, but rather in terms of a wide Oxygen deriving from Urgent Commiseration. Dinner together at a restaurant: what a memory. Striding down the fashionable street: what a broad victory. Edging near to the opposite sex, or to someone we like: what a matter-of-fact memory. Some things came naturally, and some were a fortress and bulwark against all opportunism. We coped, with whatever life dished out our way. And that not as a conscious sermon to ourselves, but as a winnowing loneliness come day’s end. Going home to the family unit. Not knowing when our next Experience of Grace might be, except that after all the missed homeworks and unattended-to duties, we would share a bit more time… Together.