Stumbling and Grumbling Towards Love – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Our readings this morning had a lot of complaining. We heard the saga of the ancient Israelites complaining to Moses and Aaron about their hunger in the wilderness (Exodus 16:2-15). We heard the parable of the workers in the vineyard complaining about their coworkers getting equal pay for less work (Matthew 20:1-16). Food, money, and coworkers – I’m guessing everyone here has complained about these things at some point in their lives, maybe even this morning.
When I was a child, I had a golden retriever named Bailey. We got Bailey the summer I was going into fifth grade, buying her from a firefighter in Keene, New Hampshire. Bailey lived from the time I was in fifth grade all the way through my early twenties.
Now if anyone ever tells you that dogs can’t tell time, that means they’ve never owned a dog before. We fed Bailey her supper promptly at 4:30 p.m. every day. At about 4:15 every day, Bailey would inevitably shuffle into the kitchen and stand there, making eye contact with whoever was in there. By 4:25, Bailey would start exhaling loudly and making little grumbles, barks, and whines.
For fifty-one weeks out of the year, our 4:30 p.m. supper covenant with Bailey worked fine. However, every fall, when daylight saving time ended, all hell would break loose. With the clocks turned back an hour, Bailey would begin her routine at 3:15 p.m., dumbfounded that no one was paying attention to her. Bailey’s confusion would turn to fear and then to anger. Hell hath no fury like a hungry dog.
I always remember as a child the look Bailey would give me that first Sunday when the clocks turned back. It was a look of utter betrayal, pain, confusion, and raw anger. I remember thinking I wished I could put my head against her head and communicate to her what was going on. Perhaps God feels the same way about us when we grumble.
I’m thirty-eight years old now, and this all happened a quarter of a century ago, but I still remember my dear Bailey’s whines. The point I’m trying to make here is that these matters of complaining and grumbling stay with us. They lodge themselves deep in our psyche and can stay there like a dormant virus, waiting for a trigger to pull them into our days.
You may have noticed that I have barely mentioned God yet in this sermon. In my experience, that’s often what happens in a state of complaining. We edge out God. We form a wedge between ourselves and God, directing our attention with fear and anger toward our complaints. We think we don’t have the luxury, the time, or the energy to bring God into the situation.
The great irony is that oftentimes in a state of complaining, we verbally call for God. We say things like “Jesus Christ” or “Oh my God.” We often also use violent imagery, saying things like “My coworkers are killing me” or “That sermon was so boring, I just wanted to die.” When it comes to complaining, we quickly take things to the extreme.
So the great question becomes: how do we come back from all this grumbling? How do we find ourselves in God’s good grace when we’ve blown our top or been on the receiving end of a nasty interaction? How do we reconcile the complaints of our lives with the fruits of the Holy Spirit?
First, examine your fears. Behind every complaint, there is fear. Fear is what gives complaints their power. It is an annoying power, but it is powerful. Fear can drive us to do and say things we normally would never even think of. Fear is what caused my beloved golden retriever to look me in the eye with anger and bark in my face. Fear is what caused the ancient Israelites to turn against their beloved leader Moses. Fear is what caused a group of powerful men in Jerusalem to crucify one man rather than risk running afoul of the empire.
After you have examined your fears in the face of your complaints, don’t just sit there. Do not marinate in your complaints; they do not age like wine. Express your grievances with an even heart and a cool mind. Don’t hold back; tell the truth, but do it with love. If you decide to do the opposite, to hold in your grumblings, in my experience, bad things happen. Unexpressed grumblings come out in passive-aggressive ways or, worse, they can ruin our health and our sanity.
One mistake often made in the religious life is confusing stoicism with repression. If you are not able to express your complaints verbally, you will communicate them through other means – or perhaps I should say your complaints will communicate themselves through you. I once had a spiritual director tell me that what you don’t communicate verbally comes out through your body, and those closest to you will know it.
Then, after you have grumbled, move on. Move on, move on, move on, and move on. Let that stuff go. Reliving past grumbles is like cutting open a scar to see if it has healed. I’m not saying you have to forget the past or shun your memories. What I’m saying is, for the good of the order, are you willing to see your grumbles as learning experiences? Are you willing to share how you have healed, how you have come back from tragedy, and how you have reentered day-to-day life with a fresh understanding of things?
If you are ever tempted to stay stuck in your grumbles – and I know I have been – consider if there has ever been a time that Jesus healed someone and told them to keep doing what they had been doing and to keep complaining. No. Most of the time, Jesus emphasized returning to life after healing, not to do the same old thing, but to integrate one’s woundedness and healing into daily life.
Finally, after the storm has cleared, give thanks to God. Even if the only thank you that you can manage is between gritted teeth, it’s much better than nothing. The movement from grumbling to gratitude is like waking a sleeping bear; no one really wants to do it. Yet somewhere in our souls there is always that desire to be reunited with God, even after the grumblings of our souls have torn us apart. Stay on speaking terms with that desire, and know that God looks at us with that same unconditional love a parent has for their child. If you feel too shy or ashamed to return that love, at least open your heart to it and say thank you.
In my experience, our walk with God is a lot more childlike than we care to admit. There’s a lot more crawling and falling than we’d like others to know. There are a lot more hidden moments of confusion and sudden understanding than we can ever express. Our walk with God is not a neatly timed waltz; it’s got its own tempo. Yet somewhere in the chaos of that rhythm of life, there’s a whole lot of beauty to be danced with. If we stay grumbling, we’re going to miss the whole dance.
My dear golden retriever Bailey lived to be nearly a hundred years old in dog years. Toward the end of her life, every time I came home to visit my parents, I knew there was a chance it was the last time I was going to see her. So I had this tradition of taking a moment before I left and putting my forehead against her forehead and putting my hands on her shoulders while I kneeled. I would pause there for a moment, feeling her breath come out of her snout onto the bottom of my throat, and I would tell her how thankful I was for all the years we had together and how I wished her the best on whatever came next. The funny thing is, Bailey was one of those dogs that just kept living, and we did this ceremony probably half a dozen times.
All these years later I can still remember the smell of her fur against my nose and the feeling of my chin on her head. There’s a love there that’s unbeatable. A love that can survive any grumble. Find that love and let it rest in your heart.