I really hope to be wise someday; I really want to "know stuff". I like to analyze and to understand things. Don’t get me wrong--there are many, many subjects of which I know very little. I don’t know how to bake, how to play basketball, or how to park my car straight between the lines in a parking lot. I don’t know why my kids’ socks disappear and I don’t understand why people like to watch football. However, the things that I do know, I want to REALLY know. I want to understand them deeply, to let that understanding spill over into other aspects of my life, and (yes, although it’s hard to admit) be recognized for the fact that I understand them. I become indignant when people underestimate my few areas of expertise: horse training, teaching children with disabilities, Seinfeld references, and the English language. Oh, and Christianity. I am a somewhat-newly converted, dedicated learner of Christianity.
The thing with learning Christ, is that it’s not a straight ahead process. I can’t follow a scope and sequence and assess my understanding. I can’t progress up the levels and reflect back on the areas in which I need to improve. No one gives grades in the work of building the Kingdom. I cannot earn extra credit in Christ. As a matter of fact, Christ confounds our understanding and confuses our wisdom--and then we learn.
St. Paul tells us (1 Corinthians 1:20-25): "Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, he world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of god and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength."
The other day, God showed how his foolishness was wiser than my perceived wisdom; Christ made me stumble. I know a thing or two about stumbling--it happens to me all the time. I’m wandering around, lost in space, and I trip over something in plain sight or walk into a wall. I often find random bruises on my shins. My father used to say, “We should have named you Grace, because you don’t have much of it.” So, I am an experienced stumbler. I stumble when I am in a hurry and when I'm not noticing things in the way; I stumble, curse, and right my path again. There is always a lesson to learn when I lose my balance: Pay Attention! Look! Christ made me stumble recently, over an argument about grammar, no less.
My discussion group at church is reading Peter Rollins’s excellent book, How (Not) to Speak of God, which, of course elicits much speaking of God. My priest and I were hypothesizing whether God was a verb--an action--the love we do, or God was the subject--the ground from which we exist--the place from which we love. He said, “Maybe God is both the subject and the verb.” “What!” was my indignant response, “That doesn’t make ANY sense! The same word CANNOT be a subject AND a verb!” He was now messing around in my wheelhouse, as an English teacher and lover of grammar. Never mind that he was a priest and had earned a PhD in theology--don’t start talking loosely about sentence structure. Don’t make some bald statement just for effect that was so clearly inaccurate. I was just a little bit hot about it! I mean, debate theology all you want, but leave diagramming sentences to me! Luckily for us, our friend, Joy, jumped in to change the subject back to the actual question at hand and the conversation continued on more appropriate topics.
Later that night, I continued to chew it over. How could the same word be subject and verb? Was it a true statement that Fr. Tim made? Or was he just saying something impossible for effect? I imagined all the diagrams of possible sentences in my mind, over and over again. Then, Bam! I stumbled over it. God’s foolishness trumped my perceived wisdom, again, as always. Love loves! We often use love as a noun, for example, “Love wins. Love hurts. Love heals.” We often use love as a verb, “I love you. We love each other.” So, love can love. Love, the subject, can act in love, the verb. To take the concept further, love loves the loved. Subject, verb, object--Holy Trinity! God is love, which loves the loved one. What the hell? The grammar of God!
Love| loves | loved
I texted my priest the message: “I see it! Love loves. Love loves the beloved. Trinity! Duh!” He responded, “It is the Trinity. The Trinity makes our grammar illogical.” Normally, I don’t like illogical things. They bug me. I tend to stumble on them and bang my shin. I like things to fit into the spreadsheet and calendar of my life, into the diagram of my sentence. I like to understand them. This moment tripped me up and jarred me out of my logical thought, thanks be to God! Even in the midst of an epiphany, I didn’t really understand it, but I saw it was true. My analytical, grammatically correct mind was pulled into seeing things differently, into allowing the possibility of the impossible. God made foolish my knowledge, and I, when I let go of it, I saw God.
Love this!
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