We have a pear tree in our back yard. Phil planted it some years ago…. and this was the year it really matured enough to bear a full harvest of fruit.  The tree was covered with these lovely little greeny-gold pears, some with just a bit of a red blush. Phil harvested them and brought them inside to ripen, and we’ve been eating them happily for many weeks now. 

That’s our view of the pear tree situation. There are other perspectives.

Our dog, for example, also thinks of it as our pear tree, in our yard, with the our definitely including him. He likes to eat the fallen pears, and will sometimes bring them inside and leisurely eat one on the living room floor.

The local raccoons, on the other hand, question the whole concept of private property. Your yard? Your tree? Says who? Our pear tree is a destination, a point on their map of the neighborhood that’s worth a nightly visit. They seem to appreciate the pears just as much as the Hassetts, human and canine, do. 

If you predict that the canine and raccoon perspectives, the territorial predator versus the anarchic foragers, may have come into conflict, you’d be correct…  though fortunately everyone has emerged from those encounters unscathed. 

Perspective. It’s an interesting word.

Per-spect means see through. The word evokes an imaginary lens, through which you view the world. Photographers and other artists use the word literally; but it’s also used figuratively, all the time. We talk about getting perspective on a problem – meaning, to see it in context and in proportion. We talk about getting a new perspective on something – coming to understand it in a fresh way, maybe a broader way. 

Perspective is an interesting concept to bring to the Book of Job. 

The Book of Job spends two chapters dropping Job into the depths of human misery, and 35 chapters of Job demanding that God heed his suffering and give him some explanation, while his so-called friends tell him he must have had it coming somehow. 

Now, in chapter 38, God answers. And God’s answer… is complicated. 

God’s words emphasize the gulf between Job – a human being with the usual human limitations – and God, all-seeing, all-knowing, and eternal. Again and again, God asks Job questions which can only be answered, “Of course not!” – Is the wild ox willing to work for you?Did you give the horse its might, or clothe its neck with mane? Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars?  Can you catch a sea-monster with a fish-hook? 

It’s hard not to read it as mocking. God is putting Job in his place. Telling him that there’s a whole lot that he should not expect to understand. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman describes this as a massive failure of pastoral sensitivity on God’s part: “After Job relates in great detail his anguish and pain and bewilderment, [God] responds, ‘Let me tell you about my crocodile.’ Any pastoral supervisor evaluating this act of ministry would say to [God], ‘You couldn’t stand the pain and you changed the subject.’”

Fair. And yet: I love these chapters. Many people do.  

For one thing, it’s just wonderful poetry about the beauty and power and strangeness of the natural world. The passage about the ostrich is a great example: 

“The ostrich’s wings flap wildly,
though its pinions lack plumage.
For it leaves its eggs to the earth,
and lets them be warmed on the ground,
forgetting that a foot may crush them,
and that a wild animal may trample them.
It deals cruelly with its young, as if they were not its own;
though its labour should be in vain, yet it has no fear;
because God has made it forget wisdom,
and given it no share in understanding.
Yet when it spreads its plumes aloft,
it laughs at the horse and its rider.”  (Job 39:13-18)

The text holds up the absurdity, the idiocy of the ostrich – and its breathtaking speed. 

Leviathan is another favorite – God spends a whole chapter talking about this wonderful sea-monster!

“Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook? 

Will you play with it as with a bird,
or will you put it on a leash for your little daughters?… 

I will not keep silence concerning its limbs,
or its mighty strength, or its splendid frame… 

Out of its nostrils comes smoke,
as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
Its breath kindles coals,
and a flame comes out of its mouth.
In its neck abides strength,
and terror dances before it.”  (Job 41:2, 5, 12, 20-22)

These texts are great fun to read. But it’s more than that.  There is – somehow – a strange comfort here. Perhaps – a new perspective. 

Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis writes that it’s easy to see God’s answer to Job as no answer at all: “God… mows Job down with a stream of non sequiturs that have nothing to do with what is really at stake. If Job finally stops talking altogether, … [it’s only] because there is no point in arguing with a bully.”

But, she says, that reading misses the sense in which God is answering Job’s complaint. God offers Job “a God’s-eye view of the world” – starting with the mysteries of seas, stars, and seasons, then moving on to God’s delight in wild creatures. 

All the animals God praises in these chapters have something in common: they completely untamable. From a human point of view, they are useless at best, and terrifying at worst. If there had been raccoons in the ancient Near East, maybe God would have held forth about their dexterity and resourcefulness. The one exception – the war horse – proves the rule; it serves human purposes, yes, but the text stresses its fierce power:  “It laughs at fear and is not dismayed; it does not turn back from the sword; it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.” 

Davis writes, “This God’s-eye view of the world plays havoc with Job’s notion of the way things ought to be – which is to say, sensible, well-adapted to human purposes, and above all, predictable.”

Remember how when Job’s children would get together for a party, Job would go make sacrifices just in case they had sinned? There’s so much about control – about the human illusion of control – in that single detail.  Job was invested in a model of the world in which if you checked all the boxes, everything would be OK.  Like the sons of Zebedee in today’s Gospel, Job’s relationship with God was founded on what God could do for him. 

And in these mocking, glorious chapters, God tells Job: That’s not how any of this works. Davis writes, “God’s involvement with the world expresses itself in huge, unapologetic delight in a creation whose outstanding quality is quite simply magnificence: power and freedom on a scale that is bewildering and terrifying.” She quotes spiritual writer Annie Dillard:  “Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap; and the creator loves pizzazz.” 

God’s answer to Job is that the world – that life – is bigger and stranger, riskier and more beautiful than he has ever imagined. Davis says, “God calls this man of integrity to take his place in a ravishing but dangerous world where only those who relinquish their personal expectations can live in peace.” 

God asks Job – perhaps asks every human: Can you love what you do not control? Can you love what you can’t own? What you can’t protect? 

The world is not sensible, not well-adapted to human purposes, and certainly not predictable; can you learn to tolerate that truth? Could you learn to love it? 

I don’t think all this is answer Job was looking for. But it satisfies him. Perhaps it even changes him – heals him. Davis argues that the end of Job’s story – which we’ll hear next week – hints that Job learns to live and love more like God. 

And I think part of the lasting power of the Book of Job is that people continue to discover that same strange comfort. Holding pain, or loss, or anxiety, many of us find some peace in sitting near big water, or walking in the woods, or seeing a storm roll across the sky. In watching squirrels squabble, or gazing at the stars. Even the affection or demands of a familiar pet can take us out of ourselves just a little – into a perspective in which what’s really important is dinner and a warm lap.

Why does it comfort us, sometimes, to remember that we are simply one creature among billions on this big, old, wild world? That we are not the center of it all, but dust and ashes? 

I don’t know – but, sometimes, it does. 

And the witness of the book of Job is that it always has. 

Those raccoons stealing – sharing! – our pears – the bears who sit and gaze at scenic vistas – even the seagulls hanging around the Burger King – they remind us, quite simply, that our perspective is always limited. That there’s a bigger picture and a longer view.  Thanks be to God. 

Sources

Ellen Davis, “The Sufferer’s Wisdom: The Book of Job,” in Getting Involved with God, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 

The Annie Dillard quotation is from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

The Walter Brueggeman quotation comes from Brueggemann’s CHRISTIAN CENTURY lecture given in Chicago in September of 2005.

Today the lectionary introduces us to Michal, first wife of King David. This is the end of Michal’s story; she is not mentioned again. And if this is all you knew, you might think of her as jealous and judgmental. 

But we know more about Michal, daughter of King Saul. That’s the richness of the books of Samuel and Kings: with many of these characters, we learn enough to see, at least a little, who they are, and how their experiences shape them.

So to do Michal justice, let’s go back to when the *text* first introduces her, back in First Samuel chapter 18. 

Michal’s relationship with David begins with hero-worship. David has just killed Goliath, the Philistine giant, and then joined her father’s household. Sometimes he plays music for Saul when Saul’s dark moods seize him. But more often he’s leading Saul’s army into battle – successfully! The women of the land sing, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” 

Michal’s brother Jonathan has sworn fealty to David, offering him his armor and sword as a gesture of loyalty and love – for Jonathan loved David as his own soul. It wasn’t just Jonathan; the text tells us, “All Israel and Judah loved David.” And Michal, too, loves David – this handsome young warrior poet. 

Saul likes the idea of binding David to him through a strategic marriage… but he also kind of likes the idea of having David be killed by the Philistines, Israel’s enemies. So Saul lets it be known that he’d be very glad for David to marry his daughter, if David can bring him 100 Philistine foreskins. He hopes this challenge might get David out of his hair for good… but of course David, being David, simply goes and does it. 

This only deeps Saul’s fear and hatred, and he makes up his mind to get rid of David. But Jonathan and Michal are determined to save their beloved. Jonathan pleads with Saul to have mercy on David, and Saul relents – but later, in a dark mood, he changes his mind again, and sends killers to David’s home. 

This time it’s Michal who saves David; she helps him escape out the window, then creates a “dummy” David in the bed, the classic pillow-under-the-covers, plus some goatskin for hair. She used the “dummy” to put off the assassins – claiming David couldn’t come out because he was sick. It delays them long enough for David to get well away. When her father asked why she helped David, choosing her husband over her father, she claimed that David had threatened to kill her. 

The Bible tells us far more about the love between David and Jonathan than David and Michal. The text tells us twice that she loved him; it never claims that he loved her. He flees their home apparently without a backward glance, though he has a heart-wrenching farewell scene with Jonathan before escaping to the wilderness.  

David flees to one neighboring land, then another; and as he travels, he gathers followers. And Saul takes poor abandoned Michal and gives her as a wife to another man, named Palti. 

Here’s how David finally becomes king, years later: Saul and Israel’s army are fighting the Philistines, again. And the Philistines win. Most of Saul’s sons are killed – including Jonathan. Saul throws himself on his own sword to avoid the shame of being killed by the enemy. 

David and his little personal army aren’t at this battle; they’re busy chasing down some raiders who had attacked their village. When David hears of Saul and Jonathan’s deaths, he sings a great song of grief about the death of these valiant warriors. Soon thereafter, the people of Judah,  the southern part of the land of God’s people, anoint David as their king. 

But the last of Saul’s sons, Ishbaal, survives the battle and becomes king of Israel, the northern part of the land.  More years of war follow, with David’s house growing stronger and Saul’s house growing weaker. Sometime during those years, in a moment of tentative peace, David asks Ishbaal to give him back Michal as his wife. 

I can imagine a couple of reasons for the request. Maybe David rankled at the dishonor of having his wife – one of his wives; he’s collected several more – given to another man. Maybe for the possibility of a son who would combine Saul and David’s lines, and be the next king of a united nation. Sadly, it probably wasn’t because he loved her or missed her. 

Ishbaal agrees to David’s demand, and Michal is taken from her second husband, Palti. The text tells us, “Her husband went with her, weeping as he walked behind her,” until Ishbaal’s general ordered Palti to go home. So Michal is given away a third time, taken from a husband who apparently loved her, and given – again – to David, who, like her father, sees her only as a pawn. 

Finally, a couple of enterprising warriors assassinate King Ishbaal. This is a pattern with David: People conveniently kill his enemies for him, and he has the luxury of keeping his hands clean and being outraged and grief-stricken, while still reaping the benefits of their actions. David has the assassins publicly executed… and then when the tribes of Israel come to him and say, “Now you can be our King too,” he says, Well, OK. 

So the kingdoms of Judah and Israel are united, with David as their great King. A great King who takes more and more wives and concubines, and begets a great many children. 

And as kind of a gesture of national pride and unity, David and his army set out to bring the Ark of the Covenant to his new capital city, Jerusalem. This isn’t the ark Noah built, though it’s the same word in Hebrew. This ark was built during the wilderness years, by Israel’s finest craftsman, to hold the stone tablets on which Moses had received the Law of God. A holy box to hold the world’s holiest treasure. A box so holy that if someone has not prepared themselves to approach it, and simply reaches out a hand to steady it on uneven ground – that person might get zapped to ashes. 

And as they enter Jerusalem in triumphal procession with the Ark, David and those with him are so filled with holy joy that they dance wildly to the music of lyres and harps, tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And David danced and leaped the most wildly, the most fervently of them all, dressed only in a simple linen skirt. 

I think we can take it that the linen skirt was pretty skimpy, and that David was putting on quite a show – and probably really didn’t care. After all, if being King doesn’t mean you can dance naked in the streets, what’s the point?… 

Michal daughter of Saul looks out of the window, and sees David leaping and dancing before the Lord. The New Revised Standard translation says, she despised him in her heart. The Common English Bible says, she lost all respect for him. Either translation gets the idea across. 

What’s going on here for Michal, as her heart turns against a man whom she once loved? She has been through years of coldness, betrayal, loss, and never having what she actually wanted. Of course she’s jealous – the remark about the servant girls hints at how much she minds all David’s dalliances. She’s also contrasting her husband with her father, Saul’s dignity with David’s extravagance. David is one of those people who is just – very. He has great big feelings: those flares of anger, joy, grief, desire. He has great big ambitions. He has great big piety, devotion to God.  Michal just wishes he would act like a king. And David says, Deal with it. I am who I am, and God likes it. 

The text says that from that time on, Michal had no children. I think what we are to understand is that their relationship – never strong – is irrevocably broken, in this moment. Maybe this is the last time David and Michal speak to each other. Maybe Michal lives out the rest of her lonely life unloved and untouched in some corner of David’s household, watching the rest of his wives and concubines talk and laugh and fight and nurse their children. 

So why tell Michal’s story?… Well, at the most superficial level: to fix the lectionary. If you only hear the Sunday texts, Michal comes off pretty badly. If you know her whole story, it’s different. 

Let’s go a little deeper and wonder why the Bible tells us Michal’s story. If all that mattered was the end of Saul’s royal line, the text could have told us much less about Michal. But instead it gives us enough to trace the contours of her life and the ache of her heart. I think that’s because the larger story that this part of the Bible is telling is about how people lose control of their own lives, suffer and struggle, because those with power, and those seeking power, don’t count the costs – or don’t care. About the way that ordinary people, and even not so ordinary people, get caught up – and ground up – in the machinations of the powerful and the ambitious. 

So why do I tell Michal’s story? Why make space on a Sunday, every few years when it rolls around in the lectionary, for this ultimately rather sad story? There are a couple of reasons I think it’s important. For one thing, often people look at the awful stuff that happens in the Bible and they are put off, because they think that if it’s in the Bible, that means the Bible – and those whose faith is grounded in the Bible – think that awful stuff is OK. 

But the voice of the text doesn’t think that stuff is OK. I think the Biblical text pities Michal, just as we do. That’s a really really important point for our engagement with the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular: Yes, there is some terrible stuff in there: senseless violence and bitter injustice and cruel betrayal and so on. The thing is, the text KNOWS that stuff is terrible. The Bible has much more complexity and narrative sophistication than a lot of folks realize. Michal’s story is a good example. 

For another thing: Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis says that there are two kinds of Christians. One kind sees us as profoundly separated from the Old Testament. In this view, the Old Testament is interesting but also quite strange, and not really relevant to Christian faith or life. Lots of folks take that view, consciously or unconsciously – including many Episcopalians. 

The other kind of Christians, says Davis, see the Old Testament as “an urgent and speaking presence”, a compendium of stories of human and divine relationships that have never lost their power and relevance. From this perspective: The reason Michal’s story is compelling is that it’s not so strange or unthinkable. The stories of women who get to make few of their own choices, controlled by the men around them – those stories still happen. The machinations of those seeking political power, and those victimized by their ambition – those stories still happen. The stories of relationships that start out sweet, then turn first sour, then bitter – those stories still happen. 

The Bible tells the story of Michal, among so many others, to show us that kings aren’t the only people that matter – to history or to God. To call us to pay attention to those struggling in the brutal currents of human history, and to care what happens to their lives and their hearts. And that, beloveds, is deeply congruent with the life and witness of Jesus Christ – who taught us to seek God and serve God among those the world sees as unimportant.

What was the Jerusalem Temple and why was it a big deal?

In Jesus’ time many people would have gathered regularly for Scripture study and prayer in local synagogues. But if you needed to *do* something in your relationship with God – make an offering to atone for a wrong action, or give thanks for a blessing – you would go to the Great Temple, if you could. We saw that a few weeks ago with the story of Jesus’ parents going to the Temple to make an offering to present their firstborn son to God, and to restore Mary to ritual purity after childbirth. 

I was going to say, It’s hard for us to imagine doing the regular teaching and prayer of the community in one place, and ritual and sacramental actions in another – but maybe it isn’t. Maybe this year we can understand that in a way we couldn’t in other years.  The Temple was where you’d do the kinds of things we can’t do very well, or at all, over Zoom. Things that involve fire and water and bread and blood and movement and mess. 

So, why the livestock and money changers in the Temple courtyard? People visited the Temple from all over, bringing with them all kinds of currencies. They had to change their money into Jewish shekels to be able to make offerings at the Temple. And the animals were there for people to buy, to use as offerings and sacrifices. Like Jesus’ parents offering two doves. 

Of course there’d be a fee for the exchanging your money. And of course if you buy your goat at the Temple instead of in the normal marketplace, there’s probably a markup. Anyone who’s bought gum in an airport is familiar with how that works. 

So, functionally, the outer court of the Temple – a new-ish addition – was kind of a holy marketplace where people wanting to visit the Temple could get the things they felt they needed to approach God… for a price. 

It was one of those things where people say, “I know it’s not ideal but it just has to be that way”. There are a lot of things like that, right? 

But Jesus is not having it. 

The whip of cords is only in John’s version of this story and it caught my attention.  I did a little research. It’s a pretty standard, and ancient, type of whip used in driving livestock, made from leather cord elaborately braided into a tapering tube. 

It’s the sharp cracking sound made by the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier that actually gets the animals to move.  Out of curiosity, I looked for tutorials – which stressed that making such a whip is NOT a beginner project. I’d always sort of imagined Jesus just, I don’t know, twisting some stuff together. Now, instead, I’m picturing him buying the cords several days earlier…  or maybe someone just gave them to him, the way people just gave him what he needed. And he spent a few evenings quietly braiding them into this stock whip. His friends would ask him what he was doing and he’d just smile.

And then he uses the whip to drive the livestock out of the temple court. He does not – let’s be clear – use the whip on the people. But he absolutely does make a significant mess – not only with the animals, but also pouring out coins and turning over tables, and yelling at people.

Jesus is modeling non-violent protest here: making a ruckus and causing some property damage, but not actually harming people. He focuses on attacking the symbols of a religious system that has become commercial and exploitative. That distances people from God, instead of bringing them closer. 

Jesus does not seem to be a big fan of the Temple overall. When he says “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” it’s both a prediction of his execution and resurrection – and a de-centering, even a dismissing, of the actual Temple. People’s indignation at his remark highlights how important the Temple was, for many Jews. 

The first Great Temple, built in the time of King Solomon, David’s son, was the pride and joy of the people Israel. They saw Jerusalem as the heart of the world, and the Temple as the heart of Jerusalem. When Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, in 587 BCE, that heart was ripped out. It took a couple of generations in exile for the people to learn they could still be God’s people even without the Temple. And then when they were set free and sent back to their homeland, right away they built ANOTHER Temple. The temple Jesus visits, about five and a half centuries later… (Though there were some renovations underway during Jesus’ time – hence the laugh line: “This Temple has been under construction for forty-six years!…”)

That Temple – the Second Temple – is destroyed in 70 CE, about forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Romans crush and burn it, in the process of putting down a revolt in Judea. It’s a violent and tragic event; traces of that trauma can be seen all over the Gospels and Epistles. The Temple has not been rebuilt.

God’s people spent a number of generations seeing the Temple as the heart of their faith and practice. Let me be clear: As Episcopalians, we have zero grounds to question or criticize that mindset. We belong to a denomination that is struggling mightily against changing its established institutional and bureaucratic ways of being. We should have empathy aplenty for another way of faith that was deeply invested, to the point of myopia, in stability and grandeur. 

But Judaism survived the loss of the Temple. Not every kind of Judaism. Ways of being Jewish that were centered on the Temple fell by the wayside. Ways of being Jewish that were focused on learning and praying together in a synagogue, and on everyday faith practices, survived – and eventually became the many kinds of Judaism in the world today. 

Meanwhile, Christianity was taking shape and becoming its own way of faith, rooted in Judaism but increasingly distinct. One thing early Christians did was wonder: what is our Jewish faith heritage – beyond the Temple? Before the Temple? And one of the places they go is Abraham.

The Epistles talk about Abraham a lot. It makes sense. They were looking for a pre-Temple Judaism – a pre-Moses Judaism, before Exodus and Leviticus laid out a way of living as God’s people.  I think early Christians liked Abraham because he, too, was called to follow a God he didn’t fully know or understand… to respond to that call with faith and hope, even thought it meant walking away from everything he’d ever known. Both Jewish and Gentile Christians in the early generations could resonate with that. 

God invites Abraham into covenant – a new relationship between God and a people who are called to live in God’s ways. Today’s lesson from Genesis is one of several times when God has to re-affirm the Abrahamic covenant – there will be more! Abraham had a hard time fully believing – or keeping believing –  that God would fulfill God’s promises. 

The first statement of the covenant with Abraham is back in Genesis chapter 12. God says to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Follow me and I will bless you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That’s the heart of it, the deepest foundation stone of Judaism and Christianity alike. Respond to God’s call, commit to life as God’s people; and through you, God will bless all the peoples of the earth. 

But what does that mean? Blessing is one of those church words that’s hard to unpack, hard to define adequately with other words. Most of us are pretty good at naming the blessings in our lives – things that bring us joy or peace or clarity or connection. But it might be a little harder to get our heads and hearts around what it looks like to be a blessing to others. As a calling. As a way of life. 

A couple of weeks ago, On Being, an interview program focused on matters of spirituality and faith, featured Ariel Burger, a rabbi who studied extensively with Holocaust survivor, writer and teacher Elie Wiesel. Burger has also founded a program to train people to use the resources of faith and wisdom traditions to help build a more moral world. He believes that there are core ideas in our religious traditions that our society and world need, right now, to repair and renew. 

It’s a wonderful interview; I commend it to you. Burger and Krista Tippett, the interviewer, explore a number of big faith ideas. Bearing witness. Lamentation. Redemption. And blessing. 

Burger said, “… The fundamental principle, for me… of all of Jewish tradition, is three words: Be a blessing. Be a blessing… But what’s so fascinating is that the Hebrew language is very profound, and the word for “blessing” is related [to] the word … for the knees. The knees and the way that you bend your knees… There’s a way that a blessing is heavy to carry.”

Burger shared a story – about a friend of his son, whose grandparents had survived Auschwitz. The grandmother had been transferred to a rabbit farm on the outskirts of the camp. The Nazis were doing experiments on the rabbits, trying to find a cure for typhus. The farm was run by a Polish man who noticed that the rabbits were getting better food and care than the Jewish prisoners who were forced to work there. So he started to sneak in food for the workers. 

Then the grandmother cut her arm on barbed wire, and the cut became infected. That’s not dangerous if you have antibiotics – but an infected wound can kill you, without modern medicine. And the Nazis were not giving out antibiotics to the Jewish prisoners. They didn’t care. 

So the Polish man who ran the rabbit farm cut his own arm. He placed his wound on her wound so it would also get infected. Then he told the Nazis, “Look, I’m one of your best managers, you’d better get me some antibiotics if you want me to keep running this farm.” And they gave him antibiotics. And he shared them with the woman, who would survive and become Burger’s son’s friend’s grandmother. 

Burger said, “What does it take to be the kind of person who will share someone else’s wound, in spite of all the pressure to see them as less valuable than a rabbit? What does it take to push against all that pressure and do the right thing, with courage and moral clarity, and to see another person as a person, when everything around you is telling you not to?”

The covenant of Abraham is God’s first, foundational invitation to humanity to be in partnership with God. And it’s not about the temple or the cathedral. It’s not about grandeur and status or stability.  It’s about being blessed to be a blessing. Blessed to share other’s wounds. Blessed to bend our knees as we help bear the load. Blessed to love and serve. 

Burger concluded the interview this way: “We’re being asked to carry a lot right now. We’re being asked to carry our own lives; that’s heavy enough, with everything that we’re all going through as individuals, our families, our communities, … the suffering of the world and people around the world. We’re asked to carry all of that. It’s hard. It’s daunting…. But a blessing is something that’s heavy, and at the same time, it lifts us up. It’s liberating to live for something bigger than myself. It frees me of my own smallness, my self-consciousness, my anxieties. Compassion is the greatest medicine for anxiety, the greatest medicine for small-mindedness. And so there’s a way that we can be a blessing to each other… and really get in there with one another with a lot of openness. And that will lift us up. That’s what a blessing really is.”

Amen, amen. 

https://onbeing.org/programs/ariel-burger-be-a-blessing/