ISBC 14 - Hope Holds Things Loosely

Imago Scriptura Book Club 14 - Chapter 14 of Hope: A User's Manual

Hopefully you are reading along with the book as you take in these reflections. We’re on to chapter 14 today… here’s one of the quotes from that chapter that spoke deeply to me…

I’m heartened when I see how openly my kids’ generation talks about mental health, how openly they accept racial diversity, LGBTQ diversity, religious diversity, and the like. That’s loose tolerance. In his book, Savage extols the benefits and joys of what he calls mistake tolerance: the willingness to be kind to ourselves when our efforts fall short, and to try again and again. What he’s describing is grace. And hope is rigid and false without it.¹

“Don’t lock your knees” and “the little wobbles keep you there.”

That first quote comes from what I heard during a wedding rehearsal the first time I was part of a wedding party.  The pastor was sharing about how we were to stand up front during the service and that we should allow a bit of flexibility in our legs because locking our knees can reduce some of the bloodflow and that’s how people can pass out during a wedding.  In the years since I’ve been a pastor, I have shared that in virtually every wedding rehearsal and so far I’ve had only one wedding party member pass out, so I’d say that’s a good thing.

This echoes something that one of the video yoga instructors I follow says quite often, “the little wobbles keep you there.”   As we are doing balance poses, it isn’t about staying perfectly still but about staying balanced and to stay balanced, flexibility is necessary.  I am grateful that, even at 50+ years old, I have a very flexible body.  To this day, I still usually sit crosslegged on chairs or even with my legs even further crossed.  Or even as this photo shares, sitting very strangely at my credenza in my office.

But flexibility in a non-literal sense is one of my growing edges.  My family can tell you stories of my fairly rigid habits (of which there are a few...) and I am learning to hold ideas and practices much more loosely but it doesn’t come as naturally to me as sitting in my chair and pulling my legs up crossed under me.  I have to really be aware of the times when my inflexibility, my locking of knees, my disallowing of the little wobbles, comes into play and affects my relationships, my ministry, my own self.  And that is the grace that MaryAnn speaks of and that we read of in the words and actions of Jesus.

In a word of rigid understandings and practices, Jesus came in and messed with that system.  He brought some flexing of knees and little (and sometimes big) wobbles to allow grace to sneak in and by doing so...hope.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

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1. McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (pp. 69-70). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.