Tuesday Afternoon
Time. A simple word. Such a powerful presence in all.
I‘ve spent most of my life cheating time. In a race against deadlines, creative ever, often evading the demand of time for the play of time.
It is both the best quality in me, child-like play, openness to the taste, touch feel of a thing—when others are just doing their thing, like hamsters in a treadmill. It is that gift that allows me to shine in moments of unscripted theatre weather it’s a “What’s My Line” improv or a “so, give us your best 30 Seconds on that Bible passage, Terry.”
Yet such a gifting runs counter to what makes trains run on time or bills paid or Tax exemptions filed. Doing within time the very things that allow others to play in-time and not have to throw up into the air one of the many creative balls we keep spinning.
Looking back I see more clearly that my constant need to work, to create was a cheating of times best gift—to treasure, to experience, to reflect—which demands a kind of timelessness. Timeless in the moment but only because, like Mary—Jesus mom—we are fully present to Eternity inside each moment, precisely because we have a lifetime of practiced rhythms narrating our very purpose for being.
This gift of practiced timely rituals around our communal and national narrative is what is being lost in the right and left talking past one another. For the left it’s when woke-ism is compelled via cancel culture. For the right it is the counter political response to outlaw or silence the narrative debate. Both are newly aware of the power of Story and sadly want to control the narrative rather than engage the insights in ways that result in enlarged understanding and an even deeper appreciation for the human rights foundational to the American experience. Canceling and prohibition leads to power trips—all power—potentially corrupting. Listening allows for adjustment, truth telling, clarity of complex history and appreciation for the need for broad expirament at the center of federalism. Yet I digress.
The point is in ever finding ways to share time, reflecting and learning.
Even so, I would not trade the sheer delight of captured moments of experience for those who allow time to manage them; knowing a year ahead the vacation schedule, itinerary and experiences to watch “whatever“. Watching is not experiencing.
The downside of my play in time has been that, like Solomon of old, I could never walk away from sin until I tasted both it’s pleasure and death creating, empty, timeless repetition. The upside is “Tuesday Afternoon”.
I have the very pleasure of moments like “Tuesday Afternoon” precisely because, in all my successes and failures I have listened.
It has been in the rhythms of the church that I have discovered a universe beyond me. Even in my prejudicial western-centric, me-centered revivalism i have discovered “the other”. Samoans name ‘the other’ palagi. The tribe of Israel called ‘the other’ gentiles. America, unlike most nations and though owned by its original sin of slavery was/is an idea; all welcome who embrace it‘s central tenet, “All Created Equal” and the divided powers intended to preserve the union—so that the benefits of freedom flow to all. In the narrower unspoken though somehow learned meanings of the American Experience, ‘American‘ too often has meant ”of European, western descent“—even though we are all migrants, save First Nations People’s.
Yet in the largess and sin of the Church to universalize the Jesus message I have been enriched by so many cultures—Native American, African American, Samoan, Filipino, the poor, homeless, sex slaves, homosexual, lesbian, queer, trans-gender, to name a few. While in each case I saw each cultural, social group initially as “the other” needing what I have to give, I’ve become increasingly aware that to the very extent I begin my conversations as pronouncements instead of as a listener—I am “the other”, needing saved.
More than any time in my life I am convinced that within the limits of human language, Jesus of Nazareth, also the 2nd Eternal Person of the Communal God, was born, lived, taught, suffered and died—being resurrected on the Third day and literally saves every human—God embracing our sorrow and being fully reconciled to us as persons and restoration of Creation. We either enter inside God’s universal embrace or choose “the other” way of creating a religion, forming defining walls of separation and become like the elders of Israel, literally the only humans he was ever angry with.
If I’m privileged enough to live to see extra-terrestrials (should they exist) and if they are developed precisely because they have known love and wisdom I would fully expect that in their iconic imagery they know God as Communal and the 2nd Person of a triune God and the name given will be according to their cultural ethos with the sexual identity consistent with what gender or trans-gender expresses the Creative Word that literally holds all the universe together.
(An aside: If human or sentient sexual formation is formed in a curious binary person (Adam) as in our 2nd Story of Creation but who never felt lonely, unlike our 2nd Story of Creation, then the narrative story will expand to the pleasure of “the Adam” with both creation and God; chapters 3-6 of Genesis and the fall from creative purpose, gone as well.)
I’m sure many who need clear lines (Thank God for you) will be convinced that I’m simply writing with too much oxy in me, given at a hospital. The appropriate question might be, why do you work and live within a church tradition, Naz, of the ChristIan faith?
That’s simple. God told me to stay where I was planted. If ever challenged (and I won’t be as I have no influence to speak of), it is easy to show how everything I now hold as true and as possible derive from the same shared faith. I am a European Wesleyan theologically, which emphasized the communal human to human disciplines that lead to restorative salvation. I am deeply appreciative of the American holiness revivalism though my thinking has moved away from transactional salvation as central to growing up in Jesus and instead approximate the very Jewish grounded beliefs of the early Church—the rule of Love breaking into the earth and the ultimate restoration of all things. Transactional still? Yes, if by that you mean repentant—very much for believers, not as conditional but necessary for our human development. Here I stand
Stated differently, just because I discover that my American experience is both triumphant, built upon Godly principles of universal embrace, but also includes the narratives of those who struggle even yet to attain the full promise that is America and those whose lives and property were stole—I listen, grow, correct and as in the writings of many of our fore-bearers (women, men, slaves, Native American) I seek to enlarge the promise, remind us of the danger of power and need to reperate (where appropriate) and make legally and financially inclusive those communities of migrants once seen or still seen as ”the other”. I can do no less as one who believes in the American Dream.
In the same way, I will live inside the Church of Jesus and do the same. Why? I love her. More importantly I love the One whose way we follow.
How? By honoring time and making sure I regularly have Tuesday Afternoons.
Blessings! Terry 😊
The Moody Blies in Concert—Tuesday Afternoon
Lyrics:
Tuesday afternoon I'm just beginning to see Now I'm on my way It doesn't matter to me Chasing the clouds away
Something calls to me The trees are drawing me near I've got to find out why Those gentle voices I hear Explain it all with a sigh
I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind So gently swaying through the fairyland of love If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of Tuesday afternoon Tuesday afternoon
Tuesday afternoon I'm just beginning to see Now I'm on my way It doesn't matter to me Chasing the clouds away
Something calls to me The trees are drawing me near I've got to find out why Those gentle voices I hear Explain it all with a sigh
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