Things Left Undone

I walk out and the soybeans are fattening from patches barely turning yellow, to  big swathes of  yellow  that remind me of the slow changing color where gray horses fade from dark steel to white. One day the corn is green and the next it’s withered, drying rapidly on these dry days. A few leaves are turning.

The door between seasons is swinging open. I wake up to ominous darkness like there’s a storm on the move, but it’s only the dark before the dawn. Bruce and I walk the dog after the evening news and already the sun is dropping behind the distant woods, slowly moving south. Liminal. These are supposed to be the moments when heaven draws near.

My walks have become a cue to be still and let my senses bless the Lord. Even my aching legs offer thanks. My footsteps on gravel, right foot–thanks. Left foot thanks. And my eyes looking at the distant trees that farmers left, that spread their shadows underneath them, their seeing says thank you. My ears hear the neighbor’s dog barking sometimes even before we come out. When she runs the fence, her gallop looks like waves on a lake. The fields are loud with August field bugs, a noise I touch when I pick at a locust smashed on the road.

There’s Omalola looking up at me or stopping with that look which says I want to go sniff. She sings praise as she trots alongside me, eyes up begging for a kibble. She glares because it’s her turn to sniff. She has not been an easy dog. I’ve learned that when she barks and pulls on the leash and makes a ruckus and it’s time to stop, it’s best I glare at her until she turns her head. I try not to yell. Like Mrs. Horse who nips at me, the ruckus spring up when I am distracted, my nose buried in my phone.

When I’ve lost control, hurt flashed in her eyes, a thud hits my gut and she withdraws. This dog is breaking through the scar tissue that has built up since Tessie died. You can say goodbye too many times. I feel so vulnerable I wonder if we should get another dog to keep her company and to carry the load of my affection. But a puppy sounds like a lot of work and the possibility of overwhelm by adding some chaos might not be a good idea.

Doesn’t it say, “Let all that has breath praise the Lord?” (Ps 150:6).  I’ve only just now started to learn how to praise the Lord, how to switch out of “Lord be merciful to me a sinner,” or “Lord bring healing or peace or comfort to someone else”, to “Glory be to the Father and to the son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning. Is now and ever shall be. World Without End.”

Even the dreadful Psalm that begins “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” also notes that God is enthroned on the praises of Isreal.” Seems to me, we unlock God’s power when we offer praise and thanksgiving.

I walk and sometimes find silence, and that’s supposed to help us find God’s presence. Sometimes I think silence comes easily because of I have mild cognitive impairment, my brain is emptying. When I hear stories about how the saints turn on like light bulbs and birds land on their shoulders and bears come for a peaceful visit, I think how cool it would be to be a saint, but I am nowhere near being a saint because I am not conscious of how deeply sinful I am.

I’m told the saints who are close to God are the ones close to being knocked into “Woe is me for I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips and I come from a people of unclean lips.” I was closer as a girl who wept for her sins daily. I’m not sure I can bear that awareness these days. Wasn’t the holy of holies full of incense to protect the priest from burning up in God in the raw, glory brighter, hotter than lightning?  Don’t we see through a glass darkly? Might that protect our eyes, our mortal flesh?

Our Lutheran church says, “Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean.” Well, I can no longer confess “by nature I am sinful and unclean.” That kind of shame drills down not to humility but something else, a denial of  who we are as God’s image. And not only that but God himself became incarnate—fully one of us.

After calling us to “rejoice in the Lord,” Psalm 100 says, “it is he who made us, and we are his, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Since he made us, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  

So during the confession, if I’m paying attention, I close my mouth for those words. Later it says, “We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment.” Well, I’ve come to believe something different. Jesus didn’t come to punish us. He came to rescue us from our sins, which stick to us like stinging nettles. He rescued us from death by plunging into it, so that we will never be separated from him, not even when we die. I’ve heard God pleading in the Old Testament to his people to return to him the fountain of living water. But we don’t. Human wickedness is obvious. But so is human goodness. And Lord knows I need his help to “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

 “I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done.” It’s genius to spell out where we have turned away from life. Wasn’t it Moses in Deuteronomy that begs his people to choose life? But we don’t. We choose outrage and rage, justifying ourselves.

Pastor Richard, just this week, says in his Connected in the Word blog:

“True healing can only begin when we can confess the Truth that Paul confesses in the verse above – Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief!…Until you can look in the mirror and see a sinner – You will never know peace, never know healing, and never know joy.”   

It hurts to see myself in the mirror. I can’t bear that kind of self-hatred, which in itself can be a sort of pride. “I’ve done badly” has run too many times through my head when I have been pushing hard at “doing God’s work.”

Though Pastor Richard and Paul’s words do carry life, I wonder when we get to the peace part, the healing part and the joy part.

No I’m not a saint. Though I have caught a halo in the grass when the sun catches the dew just right. Check it out for yourself. Everyone catches the light just so. Those wet mornings are glorious but if we walk up the gravel road into the sun, Omalola’s paws become coated in ag lime. I have to haul her to the bathtub, turn on the water, and rinse her paws.

Last week the following aired on our local NPR station, WNIJ:

I confess I have sinned against you by what I have done…and by what I have left undone. These are words that are spoken every Sunday. I have a good idea of the things I have done, but undone? Not so much.

Things undone fly through our minds. They are ways we could help. But the resistance can look like “I don’t have the time. I don’t want to intrude. What will they think? I can’t afford it. I can just send a text.” Then they fade. We don’t even know to confess them.

Not to make a show of my good works, but this week, Bruce and I pushed against the resistance and swung by the hospital to visit a friend, whose husband was in the ICU, where visitors aren’t allowed. When we walked in my friend’s daughter thanked us because she could not bear to see her father so ill. It’s a gift to us to be a healing presence, to be where God wanted us to be, in a sacred place.

What would have happened if I’d given in to my hesitation about intruding? Nobody would have known differently, but there would have been a hollow like a dried river not filled with living water.

The other day we pulled up to our house and saw a jar with fresh flowers on our porch. A neighbor we don’t know well, had left it for us, with hopes they would brighten our day. They’ve brightened our weeks.

I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective. (If you want to hear my read it for WNIJ, click here.

The things left undone. Not packing up the extra clothes in my closet, the extra kitchen goods, books I bought that aren’t what I’d hoped, old books, my old bicycle and taking them to a thrift store. Some early church father or other, said it’s a sin to keep excess stuff that others could use. There’s no place in holding on for sentimental sake. I guess Dante placed people buying more things than you need at a lower level in hell.

The things left undone. Not inviting neighbors over for a sort of block party. Heck not inviting one over for dinner because my kitchen table is piled high.

Things left undone: Answering Mrs. Horse’s call to spend time with her. Bringing another horse to keep her company, which I cannot do. One horse is enough. Two is too many. (The vet assures me she is doing fine.)

The things left undone: People urge me to stand up to the people celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. There’s that hum of “You don’t want to be the person who was silent when Hitler took power.”  

Well, I guess I can name off some sins. (There’s an exercise called Examen that urges us to think through our thanksgivings and our confessions before we sleep at night. But I’d rather read a book to drop my eyelids.)

Thursday, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I walkout heartbroken, speaking my prayers today—prayers for Charlie Kirk’s widow and children, prayers of complaint, prayers for friends, prayers for the country. When I turned towards the sun, it blinded my eyes so badly, if it weren’t for the Ford F150’s headlights, I would have walked into his bumper. Overnight the corn has died. Bright patches of yellow are spreading through the beans.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination and people’s celebration of it, their naming conservatives they think should die, saddens me more than frightens me. I saw memes that took his words out of context, chewed down to something clever and awful. So what if anyone says things people don’t agree with, it doesn’t mean they deserve to be assassinated. I don’t have the mind or desire to argue or do anything more than weep for the people who are choosing death, choosing violence against people who see the world differently. I told Facebook not to show me these kinds of posts. It hasn’t.

Free speech how fragile. Kirk faced people, in person, and listened to their ideas, and offered well researched and well thought out responses. And was shot for it. And other Americans are celebrating his death.

Je suis Charlie Kirk.

Things left undone: the essay I mentioned last week, where, as a woman in grad school without boyfriends, writing about virginity, people thought I was a lesbian, including my mother. When no I am not. But how can I tell my story, which is complex when the cultural narrative pushes the idea if people think you’re gay, then you are. If it’s published what kind of hell will I catch? I might even lose some of you. Would this be something you’d care to read?

Things left undone: my political opinions because I don’t care for the ensuing drama and challenge that demands I support my view though it is just a comment, the harpy insults, and a brain that is no longer able to spout facts that are able to support my opinions. And there’s my own commitment to relationships with people more left sided than I am.

But are they committed to a relationship with me because I believe many of things Charlie Kirk stood for (the real things, not the sloppy memes taking his words out of context)? Of course there were things I see differently as well. Do they choose the depth and breadth of our friendship that allows us to see things differently, or do they want to kill me too?

As I was walking, a neighbor stopped his pick up. I should know the make but I don’t. We exchanged a few words, a rural version of talking over the fence. My tears welled up. We wonder if there’s a civil war coming. Later I listened to America This Week:

Matt Taibbi says, “I think for the people who are fans of Charlie Kirk, don’t go down that road. That’s what everybody wants.”

Walter Kirn responded, “You’re being herded into a net, by the way. All of your rhetoric, all of your words all of your institutions, have been pre-selected for persecution. If you’re on the right, I’m going to tell you something about my last 62 years on earth. You’re not very good at this game You’re better at the ballot box. You’re better in your church. You’re better at your school board. Right wing violence, right-wing fundamentalist, aggressive street behavior has not been successful in America.”

I fear we are in the verge of something like genocide. Perhaps the only way to pull back from the brink is to heed Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ words in Not in God’s Name:

“To be cured of potential violence towards the Other, I must be able to imagine myself as the other. The Hutu in Rwanda has to experience what it is like to be a Tutsi. The Serb has to imagine himself a Croat or a Muslim. The antisemite has to discover he is a Jew” (179).

I put my hand on the side of his truck before he drove off, a work truck from the Pipeliners breaking up our talk. I didn’t have the heart to finish my mile. I turned toward home.

Martin Shaw says a witch’s energy is cold, one that breaks relationships and drives us away from the community, sprouts loneliness. Maybe that’s why St Anthony had to fight his demons out there in the desert because he had chosen the four walls of his cell and the bright, sand with blank blue sky, no breaks for rain, day after day. 

I was finishing up chores in the barn, when Craig, another neighbor, called. He asked me to take his mother to get her hair done. I smiled and said,  “Of course,” to a chance to love my neighbor in a tiny way and break that witch curse of loneliness by our chats between her place and town and back. He asked me if I’d play chauffer for her during harvest. Of course.

The end of the confession says, “For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.”

That we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory.

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