They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2: 42-45)

“You bit off more than you can chew” (idiom from the 1870s)

“When God closes a door, He opens a window” (Rogers and Hammerstein, from ‘the Sound of Music’)

“God helps those who help themselves” (Ben Franklin and Algernon Sidney)

“Comme on faist son lict, on le treuve”.  You made this bed, you lie in it.  (French proverb presumed dated from the 1590s)

“God will never give you more than you can handle” (Popular idiom, source unknown)

All week I have been kicking myself because I’m overwhelmed with all of what I see are my responsibilities.  I am a busy person.  I do like being a busy person; but this week, the busy-ness was over-the-top and some of the proverbial balls that I have in the air dropped, like a ton of bricks.  And I have paid for it in spades.   But true to my usual form, I didn’t let anyone know that I was overwrought until I hit the wall, over a broken dishwasher of all things. 

And really, the broken dishwasher wasn’t the issue; its still broken; but I have full capacity to do dishes by hand, and most of the time its just me and Hugh so the dishes are pretty manageable.  No, the broken dishwasher was just emblematic that I had reached my capacity of coping.  Because that’s what I do, right!  I just cope with what’s given to me.  Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.   You’re supposed to “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”. “Or “lie in the bed that you made”, because you may have “bitten off more than you can chew”, but “God helps those who help themselves” and “When God closes a door, He opens up a window”.  You know what I mean.  We are repeatedly told that we are the makers of our own capacity and that managing all of life’s twists and tuns, and responsibilities, are up to us individually.   We have all these lovely sayings to emphasize this point, and like other slogans in life, they crop up automatically in our head, and often are used to beat ourselves up over our perceived inadequacies. 

I hope all of you noticed that the quotes I put up above, apart from the first quote from the Book of Acts, are not biblical.  They aren’t biblical but they’ve made it so firmly into our social stories that they’re more quotable than the opposite biblical truth.  I knew they weren’t biblical when I started writing them out, but they’ve just so sneakily made it into our faithful life that I had to look them up just to make sure.   The sound like they should be biblical.  They sound like they are faithful, and true, and right and good and all that churchy kind of stuff. 

My rhetorical questions of the day:  Why have we believed more in the ideas of rugged individualism and that people can be ‘self-made’ over the ideas that community, commonality and care that are modeled for us repeatedly in our scriptures?  Why have we decided that its ‘up to us’ alone to create value and life, rather than a communal responsibility to create God’s life on earth?

I read an article this morning that suggested that the ideas of individualism and acquisition of goods came about mostly in the 1970s in response to corporatizing of our society.  I think, based on the dates of the quotes I have about individual responsibility, that it came much earlier than that.  But the article did say that participation in civic engagement; in activities like Unions, clubs, or religious organizations had declined significantly since 1970.  (Interestingly, participation in Unions declined the most; 60%.  Whereas, the decline in church adherence between 1960 and the 2020 was quoted as only 35% (https://sojo.net/articles/culture-opinion/joining-church-or-knitting-club-could-end-loneliness-epidemic)) .  And yet, this same article describes ‘civic engagement’ as an antidote to the most common of mental heath issues, loneliness. 

We’ve set ourselves up to be a bunch of lonely individuals, and have packaged it all up as ‘good’. 

But I think we’re called to something far more than that.  In fact I think we’re called to a radical sense of belonging and community.  All of us.  We were never meant to be living life alone, and trying to juggle all the balls we have in the air.  We were always meant to participate in this awesome, integrated, game of catch so that what needed to be done was done together, and that all of us were supported and cared for.  In community. 

And so, I’m off to go ask for some help from my community.   You all. 

Blessings today, and remember that all of us are loved.  Together. 

~Rev. Lynne