Elijah & the SAT, excerpt 3 (one last big sample)

Elijah the Tishbite never had any kids. He was a child of God, a prophet from the town of Tishbe in the region of Gilead in the early part of the 8th century, BCE. He’s referred to in bible study lingo as a “minor prophet” because he takes up so little space in the narrative; his resume is buried in a stack of two sequential books in the Old Testament, neither of which is even named after him. And yet, his days were a relentless stream of singular accomplishments, rare acts of bravado and wit, miraculous moments of healing and provision, stunning seasons of prayer and silence, and divine revelations that poured out from his life in the form of living proof so profound no willing heart could remain untouched by his presence. His story is shared by Jews and Christians and Muslims alike, who recount how, throughout biblical history, every generation that followed would approach potential messiahs to ask breathlessly, “Are you Elijah?” Prophets came and went, saints and kings, rabbis and scholars, judges and warriors, wise and faithful men and women who fleshed out the story of God, but it would be none other than Elijah who would reappear on the mountain top at the Transfiguration, taking his rightful place beside the two greatest figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Moses and Jesus Christ.

Why him? Elijah was not a worldly man. He was not charming or gracious or multi-talented. We have no indication that he was especially attractive or athletic or intelligent. He did not play well with others or mix with the right crowd—in fact, if he’d needed a letter of recommendation to get a meeting with a king, he wouldn’t have known a single person to ask. Yet, so great was his impact on the world that today, 3000 years later, the Jewish faithful still hold an empty seat for him at the table in the hopes that he will return.

What did his parents do to raise a son like that? What special secrets did they know about nurturing kids who’d go on to be living legends? The evidence is scant. On the day he was born his mother and father named him Elijah—“my God is the LORD.” At first glance, this may seem perfectly ordinary—a nice Jewish name for a nice Jewish boy—but it was a fist-pumping act of pure and defiant faith. Israel was no longer a nation devoted solely to the God who had given them life. Seduced by Jezebel and her blinged-out pantheon, the children of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had started to forget about the God who had brought them out of slavery, blessed them with fertile land and all the commandments they’d ever need to ensure they’d live long in it and prosper. They’d become dabblers. They wanted their big old-fashioned sea-parting God and their sexy, new palm-reading gods, too. In the house of Elijah there was only one God: Yahweh, the covenant name God spoke to Moses. Yahweh comes from the Hebrew word to be, and is translated as “I AM WHO I AM” or “I am the One who is” (Exodus 3:14). In Hebrew scripture it is written as YHWH—in English, LORD. Yahweh. Not one of many. Yahweh. Not interchangeable with whatever bright, shiny new gods come along. Yahweh. The ONE who IS. “This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.” (Exodus 3:15). This is what Elijah’s parents taught their son—not with flashcards, but with their very lives: Yahweh is the LORD. Pray. Listen. Obey.

In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—well, not even the young anymore—need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.” It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners. I don’t think a year goes by when I’m not faced with some perturbed adult shouting, “You’re not listening to me!!!” After I’ve checked myself carefully to make sure that this is not the case, that I am in fact listening, that I could repeat back both the spirit and the truth of what was conveyed, I realize I am looking at a prime example of what we have come to view as listening. Listening means I told you what I thought was the right thing to do and it is so obviously the superior solution that the very fact that you have not reversed your position and implemented mine would indicate that there is only one other explanation.

Come to think of it, we don’t have a problem with the concept of obeying at all, just as long as we get to play God. And let’s face it: we’re pretty sure we could do a better job.

In His absence, we have raised up a new “G” word: Gifts. We parents use it a lot to describe our extraordinary children. Athletic trainers and drama coaches and others who make their living off enriching the lives of short people have learned to toss the word around like confetti at parades in our young prodigies’ honor. In reverent hushes they inform us, “your child has a gift,” and we nod, buttons bursting in the silence.

“Hermione has a gift,” we share with our friends, humbly, incessantly. “They say she could go on to clog dance internationally.”

Although we’re usually overestimating the size and the scope and the magnitude of the ability, we’re not wrong. Our children do have gifts. Us, too. Mine include, in no particular order, writing, teaching, leadership, administration, shepherding, and prophecy. When I consider these gifts, I thank God for them. When I say that my children, Graham and Remy, have gifts, I know where they came from and I know who knows best what they’re for. I can’t hear God’s voice for my kids, but I can watch and listen and pray and adjust and try not to screw up whatever He has planned for their lives. And although I can’t make them listen to God, or even want to, I can plant enough seeds to swing the world in their favor. That said, as I navigate my day surrounded by the parents of gifted children (did you notice there aren’t any average kids anymore—only Gifted and Disposable), here’s where I get confused: if a person believes in gifts but not in God, then where—as they stand in daily admiration of their child’s emergent uniqueness, their heart swelling with pride and joy and, yes, gratitude —where, then, do they send the thank-you note?

ElijahCoverFINAL
Available on Amazon, Feb. 1 2014, Stewart Press

Elijah & the SAT, excerpt 2

I’m not what you’d call a Harry Potter fanatic. It’s not a religious issue for me— I read the first book and loved it; I just didn’t feel a need to keep going. My husband Lon, on the other hand, was one of those who couldn’t get enough, pre-ordering each new release. Graham stopped after three or four of them. His sister, Remy, listened to one or two. But Lon, he read them all and even bought the entire series on audiotape for family road trips, a fact that I shared with a Benedictine monk friend of mine at lunch one day.

“Really?” Father Luke said, betraying a boyish enthusiasm. “Could I borrow them?” This is a man who is an MD, an M. Div., an ordained priest, and an Oxford-educated Ph.D. He spends his days driving back and forth between a monastery and a seminary where he teaches mystical theology, medical ethics, the wisdom of the early Desert Fathers, and lectio divina, the ancient prayer practice of listening for God’s word in daily scripture readings. “I could listen to them in the car while I’m driving,” he said, an image which gave me as much delight as a Christmas stocking.

There are three things from Harry Potter I’ll never forget. One was little closet that Harry was forced to live in under the stairs, and how his seclusion and rejection and utter lack of extra-curricular anything could somehow only lead to greatness. The second was the train that whisked them all off to Hogwarts. I love any story with a train. Secretly I’m hoping there’s a plan to let me make my final exit on some celestial version of the Orient Express. For all my talk of the joys of solitude and prayer closets, I’m still a sucker for a man in uniform saying, “Will there be anything else, Madame?”

But the idea that I loved most profoundly from Harry Potter is the concept of the Sorting Hat. What could be cooler than a supernatural body of wisdom far greater than our own—a force that knows who we are and what we can do and which House we need to be in for all of that to unfold—and just like that, it speaks the Word aloud and our one, true life begins? The moment we hear it we know that any other House would have been folly because there can be no greater life for us than stepping moment to moment along our own wholly-customized path. I think we love the Sorting Hat because each one of us is, to varying degrees, afraid that we’ll get it wrong, this thing; life. But most of all, I think we long for a Sorting Hat because despite all our bluster about charting our own course and seizing the day and being the masters of our own destiny, deep down we suspect that, much like our One True Love, there is actually such a thing as a Life we were Meant to Lead and, wish from the bottom of our drifting souls, that someone would tell us what it is.

ElijahCoverFINAL
Available on Amazon, Feb. 1, 2014, Stewart Press.

Elijah & the SAT, excerpt 1

The story never changes. As it was in 885 BCE so it is today. So it was in 1873, when a bright, eager 16-year old Massachusetts girl set out to conquer the demands of her junior year. Her parents, both staunch advocates of higher education, expected their daughter to go to college—an important college—but that dream came to an abrupt end when Fannie Merrit Farmer had a severe and inexplicable stroke. Her prime young adult years were spent instead confined to a bed where she could do little more than reflect on her daily readings and prayers. Her physical healing was incomplete, but her strength and her spirit and her will to move on with her life returned in full measure and, as it did, she began to cook. Before long, the Farmer family boarding house had earned a reputation throughout New England for its delicious fare. At the age of 30, Fannie enrolled in the Boston Cooking School where she developed her gifts even further. She became the dean of the Boston Cooking School and later opened an institute of her own, Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, where she not only taught and created recipes, but wrote papers on nutrition, sanitation, diet, cooking techniques, household management, and the specific dietary and nutritional needs of convalescents, subjects she was invited to lecture about at the Harvard Medical School. Her greatest legacy, however—one that still impacts every person who picks up a recipe today—is in the area of measurement. It was Fannie Farmer who first recognized that the use of haphazard measuring tools—a teacup or a soup spoon or a few fat fingers—led to less than optimal and sometimes disastrous results. If we wanted to control the outcome of a fine fig pudding, we needed to know the difference between a heaping and level teaspoon, and what constituted a teaspoon in the first place.

For as long as we have recorded history, men and women have sought to bring order and control to the materials of their day through measurement. Ivory yardsticks have been found among the 5000-year old ruins of the Indus Valley civilization. The Ark and the Tabernacle were built to God’s specifications in cubits and cords. The Ancient Greeks and Egyptians joined best practices to form a reliable method of weights and measures. Time was contained by Julius Caesar, who helped create the first solar calendar, and then by a string of Europeans who developed, 1100 years later, the hourglass and the town clock. But that’s ancient history. We now live in era where we have total control of our physical realm (well, except for the occasional “Act of God”). We’ve moved on to measuring the realm of the mind and behavior and the technology that serve them. We have sexy, codified assessments for everything: intelligence, aptitude, risk, odds, and the ever-critical return on investment—or, as it’s more commonly referred to, ROI. Still, when it comes to understanding the measure of a life—a life well lived, a life of value, a wonderful life, even—statistics are about as useful as a good footnote.

According to the beloved holiday movie of the same name, a wonderful life is one in which you don’t get your heart’s desire, your dreams are thwarted, you are repeatedly on the brink of financial ruin, and none of it adds up to the life you envisioned. But step back from that ledge my friend and you’ll see that the role you’ve played has been a blessing to many people and that the universe is infinitely better for you being—well, you. In the season of love and forgiveness, when even rational souls are inclined to light a candle or look longingly at the night sky, we are granted a momentary reprieve from our fact-loving selves; we put down our armor and unclench our fists. No, our lives are not perfect, but we have a warm room to watch a movie in and leftover pie in the fridge and children who probably won’t make valedictorian but who nonetheless make us smile and give us hope and sometimes even rub our feet if we ask them nicely. Despite all our shortcomings, life is good and we can almost imagine, as the credits role, having the courage to believe in an angel who can point out how misguided we get with our grandiose ideas sometimes. But then vacation ends and—faster than you can say weighted GPA—we pack up our DVDs and our wishful thinking and get back to the business of earning and striving and pushing and forging exceptional kids out of the chaos of our overscheduled days. This is 21st century America, after all. Not even our children have time for fairy tales.

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ElijahCoverFINALAvailable on Amazon, Feb. 1, 2014, Stewart Press.

Elijah & the SAT

Available on Amazon, Feb. 1, 2014, Stewart Press.

ElijahCoverFINAL

Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 15

Vocation

Vocation, from the Latin vocatio, can mean several things: “the proclamation of the gospel, through which human beings are called to be children of God,” the call to the divine office of teaching and preaching, and the work each one of us is called to do in our daily lives. Luther emphasizes this third use, underscored by the passage from 1 Corinthians 7:20 that says, “each shall remain in the same vocation (klesis) in which he was called.” It is this understanding of vocation that will be the focus of this section.

Luther, and many others, view vocation as the way God “has chosen to work through human beings, who in their different capacities and according to their different talents, serve each other.” We serve each other as husband and wife, as mother and father, and neighbor and friend. We serve each other through our talents and professions, the fruits of our labors meeting the needs of others. Luther interprets Christ’s command against being anxious through the lens of vocation, expanding on the “trust” of the lilies and the birds:

‘He gives the wool, but not without our labor. If it is on the sheep, it makes no garment.’ God gives the wool, but it must be sheared, carded, spun, etc. In these vocations God’s creative work moves on, coming to its destination only with the neighbor who needs the clothing.”

And so we see that trust in God and trust in neighbor—as well as reliance on God and on neighbor to use their talents rightly—are essential to the great economy of vocation. “Whether we want to accept it or not, self-sufficiency is an illusion. We do depend on other people—the farmer, the plumber who puts in our water system, the doctor, our parents—for our very lives.” As we have turned away from God, we have turned away from the gift of vocation, which orients us in particular relations to others and their needs. We have thrown ourselves into work that was not intended for us in pursuit of greater wealth and power. We have grown bitter about daily tasks because we have forgotten that God is working through them. We have lost our trust in our fellow man, who is as self-absorbed as we are. This social trust—not just “trust in a particular neighbor who happens to be your friend, but a generalized expectation that the people around you will do the right thing” —is the raw material that makes community possible. In America’s Fishtowns, social trust has been so greatly diminished that it may well be irreparable. And although America’s upscale Belmonts do have a higher degree of trust, it is only within their own sphere: since interaction between the upper and lower classes is rapidly decreasing, so, too, is trust. This disrupts vocation’s ability to make good on the promise that “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” (Luke 12:48 NSRV). This may well be what the wealthy are afraid of—that the blessings of a mixed community all move in one direction. This fear ignores the fact that the well-off financially will, in their lifetime, be just as likely to suffer illness, brokenness, abandonment, helplessness, or loss of stature or purpose, and that wisdom in these areas are just as likely to come from a plumber as a fellow investment broker.

When we are in right relation to God and neighbor, and we have a proper understanding of vocation, we can see that our callings change throughout our lives: A young man working his way through college may get a job in a fast-food restaurant. For the time being, that’s his vocation, and he is to love and serve his customers and his shift manager by flipping hamburgers. If he is fortunate enough to be going to college, he also has the vocation of being a student, which has specific obligations of its own (study!). Eventually he may get that computer degree, and he may go into his lifework. That will be his vocation then. And if his dot.com company goes bankrupt, and he goes from vast wealth back to flipping burgers, he has a new vocation. At every stage his calling is not something that will wait until he graduates, or even until he gets that big promotion. Vocation is in the here and now. (Gene Veith, God at Work)

In contrast, a secular notion of “vocation” as some ultimate level of success and comfort that we aspire to earn and keep, and to which we are entitled—as well as the skewed view of manual labor as a lesser call—has exacerbated our disordered view of work in the scope of our daily lives. Reverend Timothy Keller, author of Every Good Endeavor, offers new insight into our current American predicament. Surveying the United States’ privileged “knowledge classes,” Dr. Keller describes

A population that is “work obsessed,” holding their jobs to be the fount of “self-fulfillment and self-realization,” seeing leisure as merely “work stoppage for bodily repair” and allowing office principles like “efficiency, value and speed” to infuse and overwhelm their personal lives. In this world, where work becomes the chief source of identity and meaning, families ache and—from Wall Street to elite sports to political office— dishonesty abounds, because professional loss can sink a person’s sense of being. . . . At the other end of the class spectrum [is an] equal and opposite pathology: a common perception of work as miserable toil, inherently ‘frustrating and exhausting,’ to be ‘avoided or simply endured … Keller argues for a centrist understanding of work as calling—work that lends life meaning but doesn’t monopolize it, work that is performed not for personal glory but in service of others. He challenges the idea . . . that ‘work is a curse and that something else (leisure, family, or even ‘spiritual’ pursuits) is the only way to find meaning in life’; and he criticizes ‘the opposite mistake, namely, that work is the only important human activity and that rest is a necessary evil—something we do strictly to ‘recharge our batteries’ in order to continue to work. (Keller, Every Good Endeavor)

Even those without religious faith or an informed view on vocation would recognize the truth in Dr. Keller’s words. But taking action on them is something else entirely. For this people need God. Without a worldview of life as blessing, in which “darkness and light are all the same” (Psalm 139:12) and one lives and breathes in full confidence that salvation has already been secured—and there is nothing left of value to earn—there is no way to understand that flipping burgers and running a successful dot.com are equal endeavors. Even with a Christian worldview, it is hard for Americans to shake their “return on investment” mentality. Our ever-anxious selves continue to assert that every ounce of effort must pay rich dividends in a determined ascent to the top—some fictional heaven where one’s social standing and financial security seem sufficient to cushion one from earthly suffering. They, too, it seems, forget that God’s notion of “return on investment” for each one of our lives was spelled out in Isaiah 55:10:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving see to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

From RECLAIMING THE WISDOM OF HOMO INCURVATUS IN SE: “MAN TURNED IN ON HIMSELF” AS AN ENTRY POINT FOR THE DISCUSSION OF SIN IN 21ST-CENTURY AMERICA by Heather Choate Davis