This is one of my favorite times of the year! For a lot of people when October rolls around there’s excitement about Halloween coming…a favorite holiday for many.
Some folks might scoff at the idea of Halloween being called a holiday, holy day, because of how it’s celebrated in our culture. But it does actually have to with hallow-ness, holiness, because it’s the eve of All Saints Day, which is on Nov. 1st.
I too get excited when October arrives, but not because of Halloween. Instead I get whipped up over Oct. 4th, which is the day we celebrate St. Francis of Assisi.
Francis is a well-known enough character that most folks know he loved animals and lived an simple life.
What you might not know is that Francis was actually born into a fairly wealthy family (his father was a successful cloth merchant), and in his early life Francis lived it up.
He loved wine and song and expensive clothes and spending dad’s money hosting party after party.
Francis also had a dream of being a chivalrous knight, a war hero. He went off to fight in the Crusades, but came back sick, hardly a hero.
Again he put on his armor to participate in regional skirmishes with rival towns, and it during his imprisonment when he again became very ill that his heart began to change.
His conversion continued to emerge once he was released and was nursed back to health at home.
An example of this emergence…Francis was disgusted with lepers. Pretty much everyone was, and this rich boy was no exception.
On this particular day after Francis was strong enough in his recovery to be out, he was riding his horse along the fields of Assisi came unexpectedly came upon a person with leprosy.
Immediately repulsed, he began to turn his horse in the other direction.
But then he stopped. He willed himself to get down off the horse and approach the person. Never in his life had he done such a thing.
He tentatively went to the diseased man, intending only to give him a few coins. But after doing so, feeling a surge of love, he embraced and kissed the man.
Nothing less that a full scale conversion had to be in the making for Francis to have done such a thing.
Probably the pinnacle to Francis’ conversion happened very publicly in Assisi’s town square. More and more it had been on Francis’s heart to help the poor. So on this occasion he had taken (without asking) a bunch of his father’s valuable cloths and sold them to give the money to the poor.
This enraged dad, who drug Francis down to the public square, and demanded that the Bishop (the final authority in all matters, civic and religious) exercise a penance on Francis.
This put the bishop in a tricky position, because here was this young man basically giving alms to the poor as instructed through the Gospels by Jesus himself, and an enraged and embarrassed pillar of the community.
But Francis took the bishop off the hook. He took matters into his own hands by denouncing his father and saying, “Until now I have called you my father on earth. But henceforth I can truly say: Our Father who art in heaven.”
And with that he stripped off all of his clothes, provided to him by his earthly father, and became a son of the Universe.
All of this happened in Francis’s 20’s, and he lived to be 46. And thus it was around the mid point of his life that he changed it, drastically.
This is the reason the poem “Half Life” was chosen for one of our readings…it reflects the life experience of St. Francis.
“The Half Life of Francis,” and would go like this….
He walked through half his life
as if it were a dream, a fairy tale,
barely touching true ground…
his eyes half open
his heart half closed.
Not half knowing who he was,
his ghost drifting
from party to party
through friends, song, and wine
never quite as real as advertised.
Not saying half of what he meant
or meaning half of what he said
seeking his true self.
Until his fever broke,
and his heart could not abide
a moment longer
the rest of him awakened,
summoned from the dream,
not half caring for anything but love.
We could talk on and on about Francis. And trust me, we’ll return to him again this time next year.
But for now, I want to turn our attention to us, and how this poem applies in our own individual lives.
Where are the spots, or even areas of your life where, if you take the time to look, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’re floating through it only half awake?
Now, I realize that, while it might have been closer to literal for Francis, most of us here are well past the half-life point in our lives.
But let’s not get derailed with such details.
We can call it corner-turning – call it whatever you like- but allow yourself to be called by the invitation to listen more deeply to the whispers of grace that beckon you to higher ground.
Maybe it’s a leap higher, an over-arching life-altering change as it was for Francis. Or maybe it’s just a tilt of the head around a corner that allows you to see more, that invites a some corner to be turned.
I had such an invitation this very weekend.
Since Friday Lisa has been hosting a reunion of some of a couple of her college buddies, so we’ve had the pleasure of spending some quality time with them…one named Sue, the other Susan.
At one point on the first evening Susan spoke of using profanity, and she shared that she didn’t, that it was something that she has mindfully decided to avoid.
The conversation went on, nobody has returned to the topic since. But it’s been rolling around in my mind and heart since.
In my life I have not made such a decision regarding profanity. In fact, for many years now, I kind of run with it. Not so much around those who employ in my current work in ministry because that’s rather unseemly, but otherwise…
I’ve taken a glimpse at this not-so-terrific habit a time or two through the years, because I know that there’s a course-ness to it that I don’t love. I notice that course-ness when I hear it from others, and remind myself that when I use it – a minister no less – that it sounds just as course to them.
And yet I’ve continued. A crummy habit, yes, but people know of my love, of my good-guy-ness, and it’s not that big a damn deal.
But when Susan said what she said the other night, it stuck. And I internally reviewed what I just shared with you about it being rather course, not really in keeping with the rest of my MO, how I see myself or want to be seen, and especially not how I want to present as a spiritual person, publicly and privately.
Is it the hugest of things? No. But do I love it about myself? No.
So I asked myself, “Why do you do it, then?”
And the answer came immediately, as if some other entity had responded. You do it because you’re angry.
It was crystal clear as soon as the insight came, as soon as the droplets of grace arrived once I chose to open my heart and mind in asking ‘Why?’
I carry a slow, low burn of deep disappointment, hurt, which manifests sometimes in folks as anger, because of marginalization in my otherwise very conservative family. Marginalization because of differences in my theology and my sexuality.
My relationships with everyone, generally, are good, and I feel love and connection in my family of origin. But when the rubber hits the road, when there’s a wedding or ordination to attend, or in the day-to-day, when an occasional conversation touches on it, I’m reminded.
A low, slow burn, and, for me, profanity has been a sideways venting of it, and I’ve never had clarity about this until the was a real openness to ask the question, a willingness to peek around that corner.
I suppose there’s a kind of nakedness in that opening, a vulnerability.
God doesn’t expect us to literally strip down like Francis did in the town square.
But we are invited, and invited again and yet again, to have transparency, authenticity, nakedness in our journey, in order to reach higher and holier ground.
It’s ours for the choosing. Had there not been internal openness after hearing Susan’s remark, there would be no insight, no fodder for movement.
The envelop with the invitation to the party of growth would still be lying there on the table, unopened.
Where in your life is there an invitation, lying on your table, still sealed?
Or, if you like this metaphor better, what corner is quietly begging you to look around it?
And are you willing to become naked in order to embrace the lands that await you around the corner?
If only we would fully appreciate the possibility of peace that awaits us when we do.
Am I here to pledge to you that I’ll never drop an F bomb again? No. But I can tell you of a grounding I feel because of the clarity and perspective I’ve gained from this not-yet-48-hours-old process, and I feel a certain release from it. And more peace.
And what I want, what all of us presumably want, as people of faith, is to not only have God’s peace, but then to share it, to be channels of it, as well.
May we all unseal the envelope through deep listening, and heed our invitation.
My friend Chris will sing about being channels of peace now.
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