(not) Normal

Perhaps is it because I have fallen woefully behind in my working through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that my friend’s words on Facebook hit me like a punch to the gut yesterday.

While I joined in with much of the world celebrating the joy of Easter Sunday this weekend, I dropped right back into “Week Three” of the Exercises Monday morning where Jesus is still in the process of dying. Slow, deliberate reflections on the painful suffering of our Lord each morning. I can point to the Zoom meetings, girls’ volleyball games and hosting guests all I want, but bottom line, I didn’t keep up the pace with my reading schedule, so now I get the whiplash of moving from the angels and Empty Tomb right back to Roman soldiers and the Cross this week. I don’t think Ignatius meant for this point of the Exercises to be pastels and roses, but I must admit, it’s feeling especially heavy.

Maybe that’s why my friend’s post, tucked between college friend’s family pictures and TikTok nonsense, struck a chord with me. It said this:

“Jesus – a Palestinian executed by a European empire colonizing his land two thousand years ago – is resurrected in the 200,000+ souls murdered in Palestine by another European empire. To believe in God and stay silent in the face of genocide is to crucify him all over again.”

Whew. Good morning, Monday.

***

This past week we hosted some guests from the US. They were deeply lovely people. Generous, thoughtful, and curious. But I realized it’ been a hot minute since I have been around wealthy American Christians outside of wealthy Christian America. And I was really struck by this word “normal”. Whether explicitly spoken, or merely implied, it seemed to me that everything was held up to a standard of “normal”.    

Wow, this cup of coffee is so much smaller than normal.

It’s crazy how mattresses here are so much harder than normal.

Why is this fish served with its head on? (Is that normal?).

It helped me see again this curious temptation that we all face at some level: how we see it is normal.

Now, let me point out, as a firstborn daughter Enneagram 9 third culture kid, normal is my jam. My life is one long fake it ‘til you make it or die hard trying pursuit of normal (or its closest attainable replica). Middle of the road is my very favorite part of the way we’re going, be it tarmac, dirt or mud.     

And living cross culturally has only given me more opportunities than the average person to confront my own assumptions of normal, of which I continue to have plenty (I may or may not have cried walking down a mile-long couscous aisle when we first moved here crying “Dear God, where is all the rice?”). It’s just that at this point I have a rolodex of “normals” to scroll through when confronted with new perplexities. And somehow, I keep needing to add to it.

Because, friends, there’s no such thing as normal.  

Somehow, at least in my mind and heart today, there is a thread here that ties back to my friend’s Facebook post.

Where I live, to be a person of faith, a person with any kind of moral sensibility, means you passionately advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people and are horrified at the Zionist Israeli government. It’s not an issue people are debating. It’s the assumed perspective of any good person. You might say it’s normal. (And by the way, that’s Christians and Muslims alike.)

I have deeply beloved friends that believe to be passionately anti-abortion is the normal response of any follower of Jesus. It’s not even a question that gets discussed as much as a factory setting of faith and moral conviction. I know you love God, so I know what you must believe about this.

Maybe normal isn’t the best word for it. It’s more like the default assumptions of whatever circle you are in. Or litmus tests, the answers to which tell me just about all I need to know about where you stand with God.

Perspectives that make us feel normal and right and safe.

The trick is, those litmus tests are always changing. In the early church it wasn’t whether or not you could be gay and be a Christian but whether or not you could be a soldier and be a Christian (and the general consensus was, no). Not so long ago, it wasn’t whether you could genuinely love Jesus and be in the Make America Great Again camp but whether or not you could read the Bible in any language other than Latin (especially if you were wary of the stake). Do you own slaves? Do you believe in evolution? Do you have to be circumcised? Can women preach?

On and on Love is pouring itself out in time and space and culture and people (because, that’s the only way it comes) and we have had to figure out what to do with it. And thank goodness, because these things matter. Please don’t hear me saying that they don’t.

Truth and goodness and justice and the things that deeply delight God and the things that deeply offend God are real.

But if you are looking around our world today and easily feeling a sense of righteous contentment about everything you believe, there is a decent chance you are not paying close enough attention.

Normal isn’t America. Normal faith isn’t American Evangelical Christianity. Ours is not the standard to which the world is compared. In ways that are both beautiful and horrifying, we are a blip on the radar of history. Celebrate what is good in that. Grieve over what is simply awful. But don’t be seduced by the allusion of normalcy. Don’t too quickly assume ours (whoever “us” is) is a timeless orthodoxy.  

We are not the center or the beginning or the end but rather those who briefly pass the baton from the great cloud of witnesses behind us to the epochs of unwritten generations still ahead of us who have journeys we can’t yet imagine. Be courageous and faithful as you wrestle out this life. But by gosh, be humble as you do it.             

Because this Spirit of Love that breaths through the ages is stepping across all of our lines like it’s a hopscotch board drawn in sand. And he continues to gently roar through every place and people and controversy –

You are beloved.

You are beloved.

You are beloved.

It’s all bigger and truer and more terrifyingly beautiful than all the small beliefs we’d rather cling to in order to feel safe.

***

Jesus is still hanging on the cross in my readings this week. And it feels like a lot to sit with him there through it all.

But I know he’s not going to stay there. He rises again and again, pulling Timelessness into our time, Word into our words, Spirit into our bodies.

Whatever resurrection he is calling you to, keep running towards it with grit and humility. Whatever meal he is invited you to taste, eat with curiosity and faith. What is outside of our scope may yet nourish and delight. Even if it has a head on it.