On
the Road to Jericho
“…May
you find yourself surprised by your very own heart. May you sense it hurting
for people you don’t even like very much. May you feel it loving something
entirely unlikely. And when your heart is full, may you not miss it all by
wondering when it will be broken again…”
Nadia
Bolz-Weber (from podcast “Panic on the Road to Jericho” The Confessional, 2015)
In this
podcast Nadia Bolz-Weber speaks about her full-blown panic attack on the road
to Jericho. She was one of twenty Lutheran clergy on a tour bus on a very steep
and narrow road, filled with hairpin turns. She endeavored to keep herself
separate from the others on this trip to the Holy Land, to the point that she didn’t
even learn their names. But when the bus went sideways on that road and was
teetering on the brink of falling over the edge, she was ever so grateful when
one woman, Sharon, helped her remember how to breathe. She had judged her fellow
clergy as corny, boring Midwesterners without ever knowing them. It was a life
lesson for her to understand that there is goodness at the heart of most people if you can get past your own judgements.
We are
so quick to judge—at least I am. We sort and categorize and pass judgement as
though we had godly powers of observation. We all choose who we love, and how
we should behave in what my friend Anna, calls “polite company.” Mostly, we go through the devaluing process because
we want to cover our own weaknesses. Bolz-Weber didn’t want her fellow travelers
to know she had an anxiety disorder involving high, mountain roads, so she didn’t
even try to talk to them. She devised a plan to take care of herself, but it
backfired when the circumstances changed and at that point, she had to accept
help from the very people she had rejected.
We all
have our Jericho-road experiences. We pass judgement, and when it pans out, we
feel righteous. But when it doesn’t, we usually look for someone else to blame. In
her blessing, Bolz-Weber recognizes that she needs others and they, in turn,
need her. No one is perfect, and no one has all the answers. We need others to
expand our way of life and to feel safe living it. We are, after all, pack
animals by nature. Jericho-road moments are the ones we must
experience if we’re ever to recognize that our vulnerabilities are the doors
and windows to our souls. We must open them even when we are afraid of what they
may let in.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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