Lent 2012 – Day 6 (Monday)

I awakened this morning with a low grade headache.  It’s a headache of the sinus variety, I’m thinking.  The kind that makes any degree of higher-level thought unwelcome.  It’s the kind of headache that entices me to seek out an “off-the-radar” kind of day.  Does that make sense?  If I were home today, I’d nap, and then if the headache were still present, I’d probabaly spend the remainder of the day watching TV (at low volume), the only effort expended being the effort not to drool.

Instead, of course, I came to work and have spent the day  hoping against hope that my servers would all behave themselves, and not require me to diagnose problems.  I was certain that if everything went smoothly I’d be able to avoid over-taxing my brain, and might even be able to come up with an awesome post on the topic of my lenten journey.  Not to be the case, I fear.  The procedure I wrote on Wednesday last week, worked fine on Thursday, and fine on Friday, and then on Saturday worked in a less than desireable fashion.  So it had to be reworked.  That meant using my head.  And my head does NOT appreciate being used today.  But, enough of headaches.

The majority of you who read this blog are Christians.  And I think it is probably true to say, then, that you might understand me when I say that there are times, and those times are not anywhere NEAR as infrequent as I would like them to be, when God “convicts me” of the need to repent of a thought pattern.  Back in the day, and here I refer to that far off golden time known as “The Seventies”, when Mom & Dad & I were active in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which is how I met Kathy, there was a comedian by the name of Mike Warnke (wow, I just discovered he’s still in an active ministry!)  He refered to such moments of conviction as God’s reaching down and BAM! hitting him with a 2 by 4… “He touched me…”.  I guess you’d have to be there.  It’s funny, trust me.

Today, for me, is one such time.  I think I’ve probably made it clear to the point of nuisance, that I have issues with people who identify as Christians, and probably especially with clergy, in spite of the fact I consider myself Christian, and one of my best friends is clergy, along with several other friends who might not quite qualify as CLOSE friends.  It’s easy to get into a trap of thinking a particular way.  Heck I’ll even confess that maybe it took on a comforting effect “Well, wouldn’t you know _______ displayed <insert offensive, bad behavior here>.  What do you expect from a Christian/minister/whatever.”

It’s true that I have come to expect bigotry and hatred from people I shouldn’t expect it from.

But today’s conviction of truth came about as I realized that perhaps one such comment may have been misconstrued by a friend as a reference to him.  And then, as I attempted to clarify that it was not, I became worried that I was just digging that hole deeper.

And then I realized that I know so many wonderful Christians and Christian clergy and how dare I… yes, HOW DARE I… conflate that evil that I have seen spewed by a tiny number of Christians with that which can be expected from ALL Christians?  And even if that “tiny number” is far, far larger than it should be in my opinion, I still have no right “paint in such large strokes” my opinions.

In my heart, I know what I believe God wants from each of us… to walk upright in God’s sight, to love one’s neighbor, and to acknowledge what Jesus said of our neighbor… they’re ALL my neighbor… and to love God with my whole heart and soul and mind and strength.  I can only control my own efforts, how ridiculous of me to worry about what others do.

So, to all my Christian clergy friends, and to all my Christian family & friends, while I’ve always been careful in my own mind to distinguis YOU from… those OTHER people… I am sorry.  And I’ll try to remember this little lesson today, and to paint with finer lines, and more delicate hues.