The Electric Moment

Ed Burns lost his wife just a year ago. He told me of the time when they first met. He saw her across the room one night when he was out for dinner with friends. The moment that he laid eyes on her, there was this electricity. “Who is that woman with the beautiful blue eyes?” he asked his friend. He insisted that they were introduced and he asked her out on a date. That was the beginning of relationship that would last a lifetime. That was the night that he met his soul mate, the night that changed everything.

When I met my husband, it was love at second sight. The first time I met him, he hadn’t slept the night before. He had dark circles under his eyes and he hadn’t shaved. I passed him over and felt nothing. But then he came to see my in an opera and I spoke to him after the performance. There was this electric moment. I looked at him, and I thought, “Is this the one?”

Love often begins with electric moments and love often alters both parties. Love changes you. When I met my husband, everyone called me Katherine. He started calling me Kate. Even my name changed! I became a better person, because I wanted to be worthy of him. I wanted to me the person that he saw in me. I became more myself and so much stronger.

In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nickolson gives this stunning performance as a man who is nuts, eccentric, obsessive-compulsive and selfish. This man falls in love with a waitress and in order to be with her, he realizes that he is going to have to get healthy. She simply will not tolerate his craziness. One night, they are sitting at dinner and he is rattling on about something nuts and she says to him, “Can’t you just say one nice thing to me?” And this is what he comes up with:

You make me a better man.

At the end of the movie, he proceeds to explain to her why she must be with him. “I may be crazy,” he says, “But I am the only man who knows that you are the most amazing person on this planet, that everything you say is straight and honest and true. I’m proud of myself, because I see you.”

When John the Baptist meets Jesus in the River Jordan, it is an electric moment. They are both so in love with God and both know that something is about to happen. Both seem to know that this encounter will change their lives. You can feel the electricity. John finds himself face to face with the One, the One who he has been waiting for, the man who will change everything, the Messiah. In this moment, John is the first person to actually see Jesus, to recognize who he really is. It is a moment of truth, a moment of recognition. John finds himself tongue-tied. This loud man who has been screaming about repentance finds himself unsure of what to do. Even though he has been baptizing people like crazy, suddenly he is not so sure if he is supposed to do this. “Shouldn’t you be baptizing me?” he asks. And Jesus assures him that no, this is the way that it is supposed to go. John is to baptize Jesus.

And in that moment as they bend down towards the water together, God is present, just as God was present when Ed Burns first saw his wife, just as God was present when I spoke to my husband. God came in that electric moment of recognition and God told the truth about Jesus.

This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

If you and I want to discover the fullness of who we really are, we need to fall in love with God. Romantic love between persons is just a reflection of that, the greatest love, the love of God. When we are baptized, a love story begins between God and each one of us. Whenever I see a child or adult come up out of those waters, I think to myself, “What is God going to do with this person?” and “What is this person going to do with God?”

You are a child of God. To be fully known, you must fall in love the Maker of all. Only then will you find the purpose for which you were created.

Wise

There must be hundreds of books published just this year that focus on visionary leadership. How exactly does one determine the future? How can we anticipate the needs of the public before our competitors? How can we see ahead, or at least create a vision that compels others to follow us?

We seem to think that the idea of visioning is a modern concept. There were no greater visionaries than the Wise Men. Those fellows were able to travel a great distance to anticipate the birth of a Messiah and, miracle of miracles, they actually found him.

What did the Wise Men do to anticipate the future? I believe that they did a few, quite simple things: they watched, they listened and they looked. They must have been watching the stars for years, reading about faith traditions beyond their own, and most definitely spending time in prayer and meditation. You can’t follow stars unless you are tuned into the Universe. They must have been listening.

When they heard about something incredible, about the rise of a Messiah who would change the world, they did not run and hide, they went out to meet that child. They were not afraid of change, they sought it out. They went out to meet that Messiah. They traveled great distances to find him, and they when they arrived, they worshiped him.

Peter M. Senge, in The Fifth Discipline, speaks of a great team as a group of people who function together in an extraordinary way, who trust one another and are able to listen with a level of intensity, to discover new possibilities together. I like to think of the Wise Men this way, like an ancient Think Tank, full of great minds who learned to listen to possibility together.

And when they found something extraordinary out there, they went out to meet it.

And when they arrived, they gave the very best of what they had.

And what happened after they left the manger? How did the rest of their lives go? We will never know. But I believe that they were changed, and that, from then on, everything else that happened to them was impacted by the peace that they felt that day, they day that they came face to face with Christ. I imagine that nothing was ever the same again. I believe that they were marked as Christ’s own forever.

About the Holy Spirit

I want to tell you all things, but you cannot bear them now…
John


People ask me why-questions all the time.

Why did God let my son die? Why do I have cancer? Did I do something wrong? Why does God allow the world to be such a mess? Why doesn’t God come and solve some of our problems? Why can’t I understand?

I sit there in my office like a bump on a log. I listen. And I cannot give these people the answers that they deserve. I wonder if God wants them to understand, or if it’s just not possible. God is more real to me than the chair in which I sit, but I cannot explain why God does anything. I simply do not understand. And I can’t help but wonder, does God want us to understand?

Jesus once told us that he wanted to explain everything. He wanted to let us in on it all, but he couldn’t because we could not tolerate the entirety of God’s presence. We could not bear to witness too much of God. It was simply too much for us: too bright, to brilliant, too good, too much. God does not answer all of our questions, that is true. But it is not because God withholds from us. Our questions are left unanswered because we are unable to tolerate the answers.

Moses could not look at God because God was too bright. He had to look at the backside of God, or more literally, at where God just was. Even the most devout person cannot tolerate that much of God. It is simply too much: too much holiness, too much goodness, too much truth. It is like looking directly at the sun.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is a way to titrate God’s presence. It is God’s attempt to give us glimpses slowly, and only when we are ready. The Holy Spirit is a gift, a gift of infinite patience and understanding. All will be revealed to us, but only when we are ready.

When I was a little girl, my parents went through a rough patch in their marriage. They fought loudly and often, breaking dishes and hollering. I remember their fights.

One day, at nursery school, I decided to hide in my cubby. I remember what it felt like. I had put my jacket and my lunch box inside the cubby. I looked inside. It looked so quiet, so safe in there. I hid inside, thinking that maybe the world could go on without me. I liked it in there, it felt safe. I could hear myself breathe. The fighting couldn’t fit in there, just me, me and the quiet, and the cramped smell of my lunch box.

My nursery school teacher couldn’t get me to come out that day. Evidently, she called my parents. She recommended that I see a child psychologist. My parents diligently obeyed. The psychologist’s name was Dr. Wolfe.

I remember that there was a large banister going up to Dr. Wolfe’s room. She was a gentle, older woman with dark hair. I remember that she played with me and listened to me. We drew pictures. She smiled. And when I was done with my sessions, she gave me a cupcake. I still remember the cupcake.

Dr. Wolfe did not describe the nature of anxiety to my four-year-old self. She did not explain to me about the fear of abandonment. She just played and she listened. She followed my lead, letting me play games. If I wanted to be the princess, I got to be the princess and she dutifully played the monster bad-guy. We drew pictures. And all the time, while we were playing, she was gently asking me questions, nudging me into new ways of thinking. She was my friend. She met me where I was, in my four year old world of fear, and she showed me the way out of the cubby hole, into something bigger.

The Holy Spirit is a lot like Dr. Wolfe. I believe that the Spirit listens to us a great deal. The Spirit meets us where we are, and then gently nudges us in the right direction. The Spirit is always inviting us to play, but we are often so busy and self-consumed that we do not respond. And so the Spirit waits, until we can listen a little better. The Spirit nudges and listens, waits and plays.

I do not believe that God is in a hurry. But I do believe that God wants us to know everything, and God waits patiently for us to become ready to receive the truth.
We begin the journey by admitting what we do not know. We begin by realizing that we are small children in the eyes of God, trapped in boxes of routine and self-definition, pattern and neurosis. We begin by admitting that we do not understand much at all.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the religious leaders of the world could begin to discuss what we don’t know as opposed to fighting over what we do know? Could we have more peace if we admitted that we all are like lost children before the magnificence of God? If you do not understand much, that is a good place to begin. It is your own limitations that prevent you from understanding God, not God’s refusal to communicate. There is nothing that God wants more than to communicate with you.