Untethered…
I don’t speak English as my first language, so I don’t know really until you tell me what 'untethered' means to you. Only over the last weekend, I learned that “untethered” could mean different things to different people.
You might be thinking these….
I was thinking of "a grain of wheat." Why?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Imagine that you hold a grain of wheat in your palm - look at it. See how small it is. It is small, yet it has everything it needs in its tiny self. The outer shell, the ‘bran’, protects the seed. Its main function is to protect what it envelops: the endosperm which provides energy and protein, and the germ which is the nutrient storehouse, containing Vitamin E and healthy fats. That outermost layer’s main function is protection, yet the bran itself has essential minerals, too. That’s why we’re encouraged to eat whole-grain food.
The bran, the outermost part of the kernel, is an essential part of the grain. However, for a grain to be transformed in the soil and grow and bear fruit, this outer shell must open up in the earth. I think of it as being the same process that has to happen in our spiritual growth as an individual and as a church. The cycle of life is a mystery; dying is a part of our growth.
The shell is like our mind. Our mind does its job like a tool or a computer. It can be used to ponder great thoughts, solve scientific problems and serve humanity. It is where our identity lies - the belief about who we are and what we do. This analytical mind is also engaged in the process of risk assessment - protecting ourselves from perceived threat or danger. We want to make everything okay - we want to feel safe, comforted and in control. That’s one of the principal jobs of our mind - our mind is constantly telling us what to do. It tells us to go here, but not there, and to say this, but not that. It tells us what to wear and what not to wear – when you put on a warm coat in winter, thank your mind. Very often, that function of protection makes it challenging for us to engage in the mystery of dying and resurrection.
Underneath that layer of protection, deep within us, there’s the sea of energy. The energy moves, flows, vibrates, communicates. Deep emotions, memories, the deeper sense of life are stored in there. Mostly, they are fluid, like waves. And when they flow, they are the signs of humanity, the signs of vitality. Most of us have stored ‘spiritual blockage’, too, such as pain or fear. Pain and fear are hidden by the layers of our thoughts and emotions, so for most of us, learning, acknowledging and embracing our own deep sources of pain and fear takes life experience, courage, reflection or even a spiritual journey.
Our personality is like building a house. We build it with our God-given gifts. At the same time, pain and fear, our weakness and vulnerability also play a big part when we build this house of ourselves. It happens to any individual, any organization, and any church, too. We build a church not only with bricks and mortar, but with culture and norms (For example, what may be the culture or norms we, Immanuel, may have as a United Church, but haven’t noticed yet? What does our worship tell you about us? I agree to Stan McKay. He said, when we had a conversation a few weeks ago, that United Church attempts to be monocultural. Our worship resources tends to be the through the eyes of middle Canada.)
Our Mission Statement at Immanuel says that we seek continually to be formed as servants of God by “Reaching out beyond our walls.” What does that mean? Walls are solid. Walls are for protection. The rationale for any wall’s existence is that nothing is allowed to shake those walls. Culture, norms, identity, individual personality…. These are what constitute the “bran” in our grain. Bill Millar, (some of you may have known him), who was retired at Knox United Church, in Winnipeg, just last year, came to me after Linda Murray’s service and said, “Let’s have coffee.” We met at a tea house. He’s now very widely known in the United Church for his intercultural ministry at Knox. During our conversation, Bill took up the word, “dying”. When he began his ministry at Knox, at 400 Edmonton St. in the heart of Central Park, downtown Winnipeg, he looked around the neighbourhood and decided, “I will need to let go of all I have known in my life about how to do ministry” as a white person, in the white churches. And he did. That’s how Knox began to change its identity as a mainline-white-middle-class-Canadian church to become a community that welcomes people from all over the world. Even though the church is at the heart of Central Park, it wasn’t the church’s location that opened the doors. It didn’t open the bran – location alone cannot do that. What opens the church is trusting in mystery, open to the heart, open to the earth, open to what Jesus says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I wonder what would happen if we, Immanuel, opened fully to Reconciliation, embracing diversity. What change would we celebrate? What ‘dying’ would be part of our story?
Last week, while I was having a conversation with a friend, I suddenly understood that some patterns of my particular experiences for the last five and a half years have been traumatizing me. (Anything that can occur like what the pairs of a boy and a girl in this video discover - marginalization due to racism, sexism, patriarchy, white privilege, etc, can deeply disturb my soul.) The result is I have come to build the layers of my own interpretation to understand things. My mind worked hard through the years. It made lots of temporary theories and analyses to protect me, prepare me and help me to more efficiently resist that which I perceived as oppressive. It has deepened my understanding, certainly, yet I have also become an indoor dweller of my own house.
Even though it is very helpful to be resilient in certain situations, it would not be helpful if I hold the same or single “frame” or “model” or “expectation” or “box” wherever I go and whoever I meet, and still get the inner disturbance and suffer, when a situation or other person hits the edges of my upheld frame. I want to be a more relaxed, warm, safe presence, to invite others to rest with me and mutually build an important conversation that would change our lives. That means my passion for justice must be linked with an unfettered soul for the healing and wholeness of myself and the protection and love of others. I am beginning to explore the way to be transformational while untethered…
Even though the “bran” (bricks and mortar, culture, norms, identity…) is an essential part for protection and it has its own nutrients essential for our health, there’s a time when we need to plant it deep in the earth with a prayer for an Easter mystery. Bran is solidity, like walls. Our spiritual growth occurs when we allow fluidity in our lives, always moving in a direction beyond ourselves and beyond our walls. It is the beauty of the wisdom of being untethered, growing faith in resurrection. Our life, our shared life, is really mystery, not management.
%5EJ%202023.jpg)
