First Monday after Lent I-- March 2, 2009

Standing in the Tragic Gap--Looking inside

Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Mark 1:14

As we enter the first full week of Lent, the movement of spiritual inquiry leads inward to self. As Lent progresses, we begin to look outwards into our community and world. However, we start with ourselves. In yesterday's sermon, I spoke about "standing in the tragic gap." This phrase is the brainchild of Parker Palmer. In his article in the recent Weavings magazine, Parker gives us a definition of what this means:

To live in this world, we must learn how to stand in the tragic gap with faith and hope. By "the tragic gap" I mean the gap between what is and what could and should be, the gap between the reality of a given situation and an alternative reality we know to be possible because we have experienced it." (Parker Palmer, the Borken-Open Heart: Living with Faith and Hope in the Tragic Gap) in Weavings, Volume XXIV, Number 2, March/April 2009)

When we talk about the tragic gap, the first place to start is with ourselves. There is always the self we hope to be and the self that we are. Most days, when we get that uncomfortable feeling that we are not living into the life to which we were called, we do anything and everything to ignore that feeling. We get busy---we watch tv, we read the paper, we do some busywork, we clean house. Some of us reach for a drink or a bowl of ice cream. Some of us look for the answer in another person's body or life. All these movements are for naught for the answer lies within.

This is the step that most of us don't want to take in Lent--the step into the darkness of self. In his classic Let Your Life Speak, Palmer talks about his lifelong struggle and judgment of institutional academia. Of this struggle he says this:

My fear of failing as a scholar contained the energy I needed to catapult myself out of the academy and free myself for another kind of educational mission. But because I could not acknowledge my fear, I had to disguise that energy as the white horse of judgment and self-righteousness. It is an awkward face, but it is true--and once I could acknowledge that truth and understand its role in the dynamics of my life, I found myself no longer embarassed by it. eventually, I was able to get off that white horse and take an unblinking look at myself and my liabilities. This was the step into darkness that I had been trying to avoid--the darkness of seeing myself more honestly that I really wanted to.....Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations---projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves--and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits." (Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, pp. 28-29, emphasis supplied)

That's the first movement of Lent. To look inside at our own darkness, acknowledge it, and so move forward with a clearer understanding of who we are as a child of God. Beloved, limited as a human being in some way, but glorious in particular gifts. We make this movement continually as we grow in Christ. One of the major times that I made this movement was in my struggle with the law (see earlier blogs!). The best clue to finding that darkness in self is to look where you are most judgmental of other people or situations. Palmer found it in his frustration and anger at the politics of academia. I found it in my attitude towards those on Law Review and big corporate firms. Where do you find you are the most judgmental? Start there and go deeper.