We are continuing our reading and examination of Ecclesiastes that we started last week. The first chapter and a half led me to talk about Feeling Before Healing – that it is important for us to stand in the pain of whatever, face it, and take care of it. We need to embrace our pain and love it because it is part of who we are. All of that is still what I believe.
This week, in the reading, there is still pain and frustration evident in the words of the character of Solomon. He has come to a new place – a new decision about how to deal with it all. He says that the best thing to do, and what God has given us to do, is to eat, drink, and enjoy your work. Some translations say, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” We are to nourish ourselves, and enjoy our toil. That’s what I want to talk about first. Second, I want to talk briefly about the poem at the beginning of chapter 3 … For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. Third, I want to talk about this being June – Pride month.
It is important to me that we not diminish this teaching of “eat, drink, and be merry,” by creating an either/or scenario – EITHER we feel our pain OR we eat, drink, and be merry. Instead I believe this is a both/and teaching. We need to feel our pain while we nourish ourselves and enjoy what it is we have to do in this life. That’s the challenge – feeling the pain, acknowledging the frustration and anger, nourishing ourselves, and enjoying life. When Philippians 4 teaches us to, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” I believe it is repeating this lesson. Can it be done?
Can we get to that place of overarching joy or happiness or satisfaction or whatever it may be, while we are suffering some kind of pain, sorrow, frustration, or anger? Can we totally live in the moment? What does it take to do this? Isn’t this what almost every self-help book claims to have the secret to? I am not making that kind of claim. I am saying that I believe it is possible to live such a life. I think that Jesus is one of the known teachers who accomplished this kind of life. And I believe that the character of Solomon is striving for this kind of balance, wisdom, and harmony. I am also saying that I am willing to struggle with you through this book to see if we can find points of balance, wisdom, and harmony for ourselves – both individually and as a community.
So, what might it take to live integrated without our joy and our pain – with being contented and yet being frustrated? Usually we put these emotions at opposite ends of each other. We chart or rate how we feel on a scale of happy to sad or content with discontent. How does what Ecclesiastes is suggesting change that paradigm? How does it shift our expectations?
Maybe there are multiple scales. There might be an overarching scale or a foundation and then offshoot scales like job, relationship, nuclear family, alone time … stuff like that. Is one overlaid on top of another and which ever feels strongest is how we end up feeling? Or maybe we have a default scale that overrides the others unless one of the others breaks or is extremely intense. Are these linear scales or are the cyclical?
I don’t know. There are lots of theories out there. Tons of theories. I favor cyclical theories over linear ones, but I don’t know. I think we can examine these things and expound on them for as long as we have breath and while there may be some benefit to be had from such exercises, I think mostly they are just exercises. Ecclesiastes is saying, “Things are not right! There are a lot of things that I can’t control and it ticks me off! The best that I can do is to find work that I enjoy and do it, eat, and drink.”
I want you all to know that I have found work that I enjoy. Being your interim pastor fills my heart with good things. I want to walk this journey of discernment with you. Not all of us are fortunate to have work that we like. Sometimes we have to make the best of a situation and find something fulfilling – some work that maybe our capitalist society would call a hobby – and enjoy ourselves there. I don’t believe we can count on the analysis or the understanding of how it works or why it is thus and such. We need to simply live it and feel it and breathe it.
It is difficult to hold on to your pain and hold on to your joy at the same time. We tend to feel guilty if we experience joy while we are in a painful situation. The truth is, I think, that we need to breathe, and joy and happiness give us breathing room. There are people who live their lives bitter and angry. Some of them don’t even know that at their core they have a pain that has festered into bitterness. These things come out in all sorts of ways, but if they don’t come out intentionally then they are just festering. The character of Solomon, through holy Wisdom, is intentionally speaking out what is causing him pain and working on how to live in a way that is pleasing to God. Verses 24 and 25 say, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This, also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from God who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
Here is a poem that has meant a lot to me over the years. It was written by a woman named Oriah.
“The Invitation.”
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts’ longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
I doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
I’m going to let that stand on its own and move on to the last two things I want to touch on briefly – “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven,” and Pride month.
For years I held this poetic section of Ecclesiastes about there being a time for everything close to my heart. It was the way that I made sense of life. If there was one thing in the Bible that I could count on, it was this poem. Then one day I was talking to a friend about this and she kind of burst my bubble. She said something like, “I don’t think there is ever a time for a woman or a child to be raped, or for people to starve. I think there are lots of things there isn’t a time for.” Well crud, I thought. She’s right. I wanted some kind of formula, and I wasn’t going to have one. That was about three years ago, and I still don’t have a formula. I’m ok with that now. This poem does offer a lot of latitude in the way we can perceive things though. It isn’t the formula that I once thought it to be, but it is a good way to frame many many ways of being and thinking. It’s a beautiful poem that gives us permission to be fully ourselves – to dance and to mourn; to keep and to throw away; to speak and to be silent; to love and to hate – and the list goes on.
There is another way to consider this poem. What if this poem isn’t about saying that to everything there is a “right time” … but instead maybe it is acknowledging that all these things do exist and have their time, even if they take it by force. We have to divorce ourselves from the popular song, Turn, Turn, Turn to see it this way. The emphasis in the Pete Seger song is for world peace; for an end to war. But right in the poem there says that there is a time for war. What if this poem is only pointing out that all these things co-exist, and no value is being placed on any of these things? While it is true that verse 11 says, “God has made everything suitable for its time,” I have to wonder if that is truly the value the author believes or if it is a way to try to make sense of his world. In other worlds, the author, like myself a few years ago, wanted something to hang on to … a formula. The idea that God made everything suitable is quickly followed by more talk of justice and wickedness not being in their proper or expected places, and that we mortals should just try to find some enjoyment in our lives.
Finally, it is Pride Month here in Chicagoland. What is it to be proud? What is it to be queer? We each have our definitions. Mostly I want to encourage everyone to think about what makes you proud and what makes you queer; whoever you are, even if you are in the majority regarding your sexual orientation or gender identity.
Regarding Ecclesiastes and queerness I want to say this – what the author of this book does is turn the conventional wisdom of his time on its head. The author is constantly saying that what they thought they knew no longer makes sense. As queer people of faith – and I count heterosexual gender normative allies in the queer mix – we turn the conventional wisdom of our time on its head too. There are many who say that we can’t possible be children of The Holy, and yet we can testify how The Holy is living and breathing in wonderful positive ways through us. Even if the only testimony that we can muster right now is that we still have our community of Grace Baptist Church that, I believe, is a powerful testimony.
There are other ways that Ecclesiastes speaks to queerness, and over the next few weeks they will come up. But for this week let us remember that it isn’t the analysis alone that helps us become integrated. This week let’s live intentionally at the intersections of our lives. Let’s try to eat, drink, and enjoy what we do. Let’s be proud of who we are and above all let’s remember that we, like the character of Solomon, turn conventional wisdom on its head. We embody the truth of The Holy.
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