"The Liberating Call to an Unheroic Life"

  If you read this post then you might be interested in this one below too- Thankful for a wise man that addresses the very thoughts in my previous post....


....If you don't have time to read the whole thing then just read the highlighted paragraphs (which were the ones that struck me the most...which I realized I highlighted almost the whole thing..oops). Hope it encourages you as it did me...it's long but worth the read. 

The LIberating call to an unheroic life (April 23, 2012) by Allen Levi

Today marks nine months since my dear brother/best friend/hero/mentor was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Based on the initial diagnosis and a seemingly precipitous decline early on, i don’t think any of us expected that he would still be with us now. But he is, and his family and friends are deeply grateful for the lighthearted, hopeful, loving presence that he continues to be. 

When he got sick, i cancelled almost all of my work so that i could spend as much time as possible with him.  Some call it caregiving. i choose to call it ‘friendship’ or, more honestly, ‘selfish indulgence.’ How fortunate and blessed i am to have this season with him. 

The time at home has given me occasion, and at times has forced me, to sit, to think, to reflect a lot. And some of that reflection has lead to what, at present, is an ongoing but very incomplete conversation that i’m having with myself. 

It struck me recently that there has been a common theme, even if only implied, in many of the books that i’ve read in the past two or three years. The idea seems to go something like this: we are, as never before, all members of a global community due, in large part, to the fact that information about everything everywhere is readily available to us all the time via the internet. There are very significant, very real needs in the world today -- hunger, lack of clean water, human trafficking and slavery, environmental concerns, racial strife, nuclear threats, and so forth --  needs about which we can be thoroughly informed and toward which we, the church in particular, should be marshaling our most intense efforts.  The books encourage us, sometimes overtly and sometimes by suggestion, to take heroic steps to address the problems, to do things that are visible, newsworthy, and significant. Words like reckless, radical, passionate, extreme and crazy seem like the new template for what constitutes a genuinely Christian, biblically-oriented life. ... Big solutions to big problems. 

Now, before i go any further, let me say that i’ve been challenged, gratefully and deeply so, by the books i have in mind. They were and are thought-provoking and benefically irritating to me. And i do believe, if somewhat unconventionally, that ones who know and love and seek to follow Christ should be passionate (without being ostentatious), will be radical (but not because we intend to be), and might be deemed reckless or crazy (by those who don’t ascribe to the kingdom ethic). And i do wholeheartedly agree that it is part of the church’s mission, not just now but since the start, to be a voice, maybethe voice, for a compassionate and civil society. 

But let me make this confession: the books, whrther meaning to or not, leave me with a strong sense of guilt in me that i’m not doing what i should be doing to serve the King and the Kingdom. i find myself asking myself, as if faith is a competitive sport, if i am radical enough, or reckless or crazy or passionate enough. The question often leads to a mild embarrassment, or worse - contempt and ingratitude - for my quiet life in a small rural town. “Surely,” i tell myself, “i could be/should be doing more than i’m doing. All of the good Christians are doing momentous and dangerous and newsworthy things, like my brother has done for most of his adult life. Perhaps i should go far away, or move to the inner city, or do something worthy of a book.” The weight of those thoughts seems hardly encouraging or productive.

Some, of course, are called to bring down fire from heaven and slay giants and walk on water, and they are given courage and skill adequate to those tasks. But most of us, or so it appears to me, are called to live lives that are hardly heroic in the traditional sense of the word. Rather than courage for a short season, we are given perseverance for a long one. Instead of white hot passion, we are given devotion that burns with a slow, steady flame. Rather than a moment’s excitement about some burning cause of the day, we are given a lifetime’s commitment to THE Great Cause of eternity, which of course includes the here and now. 

One writer, after noting that Peter found it relatively easy to walk on water for a few seconds but difficult to follow Jesus on dry land week after week, notes that “It (requires) the supernatural grace of God to live twenty four hours in everyday as a saint, to go through the drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God, but we have not. We have (only) to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, (and to be loving) among mean people.”

The cancer season for me has been a sobering lesson in being small. But in the midst of it, even when i wrestle with my thoughts and guilt about how little i do for the Kingdom, i sense, from time to time, the quiet, humble, liberating invitation to an unheroic life. The quiet, humble, liberating invitation to an unheroic life. Liberating because it might just free me to genuinely love people -- individual souls up close rather than big causes from a distance -- and emancipate me from a slavish dependence on the praise and attention of others for my own sense of accomplishment.

The vocabulary for the present season is hardly glamorous. Passionate, extreme, crazy, radical - those words don’t seem to fit very well. Obscure, tedious, confining, tiring, unnoticed, but also, paradoxically, joyful, restful, real  -- those are the words that more honestly describe the landscape of my life these days or, for that matter, most of the days in my 55 years. And, unless i am sadly mistaken, those same words might well apply to the most significant of our human endeavors and to the most valued of human relationships. 

What, after all, are marriage and parenting but the unheroic call to lives of daily self-denial and attentiveness to the needs of another? What is it but a million small decisions made over a lifetime to view one’s life in reference to that of others, to the end that our loved ones will be poised to know the presence and blessing of God. It seems to me, from the outside looking in, that the love of spouse for spouse, or that of parent for child, can, at times and often for long seasons, be draining and unrewarded and, heaven forbid, unfulfilling. It is hard work. But what kind of world will it be when the humbling work of making family is altogether lost to our insistent call for individual happiness and self-fulfillment?   

What, after all, is friendship, rightly lived, but the unheroic call to a thousand small conversations, and a hundred thousand prayers, and a myriad of encouraging words from one person to another? What is it but the bearing of burdens, the sharing of resources, the asking of uncomfortable questions and the possible discomfort of necessary confrontation? 

What is citizenship but the unheroic call to dwell in a fallen world with an awareness that every small, infinitesimal life, lived with integrity or not, has potential bearing on every other small, infinitesimal in the body politic. What is it but the call to work ethically in the marketplace, to be a wise and generous steward of whatever wealth, property or giftedness God entrusts to us, and to live with kindness, compassion, and an understanding of right and wrong toward others? 

Please don’t misunderstand me. i am grateful for the heroic and inspiring among us. And i am very ware that all followers of Christ, heroic or not, are to be lights on a hill, to win the respect of outsiders, and to be courageous witnesses to truth. But maybe the way we best do all of those things is by accepting at the outset that our call is to be servants, not heroes; to be storytellers and not necessarily story subjects, and to “decrease so that (Christ) might increase.”  

My brother’s role at present it to be sick. My role at present is to be present. His is to be weak and forgetful. Mine is to be available and remembering. His is to be needy. Mine is to serve. For both of us, it is to be brothers, to be friends, to be alive, to show forth the love of God through “little, nameless, urnremembered acts of kindness and love.” It is small stuff. But it is the only stuff that matters, whether anyone else sees it or not. The One Who needs to see it, does see and does validate its acceptability. Otherwise, how could we possibly be so thankful, laugh so deeply, or sense such gladness in the very midst of it all? 

Unheroic Life  

(April 10, 2010) 

Capo I, standard tuning

i wake up early, say my prayers,

one more day I’ll not be going anywhere

no agenda, got no plans

but to be right here to help him any little way i can

in this humble, unheroic life

this humble, unheroic life

it feels so small, but i know it’s right (m’sweet brother’s keeper)

this humble, unheroic life

we go out walking a time or two

a hundred yards might be the best that he can do

read all his letters, try to read his mind

we might have one conversation maybe 10 or 15 times

you make no headlines, and you get no praise

no badge of honor, that’s quite OK

cause in the kingdom of the Lord

the chance to love (help/serve) someone you love is love’s reward

At times it’s heavy, i can’t lie

everyday is one step closer in this very long goodbye

but it’s an honor, even if it’s hard

the chance to be a servant to one precious child of God

OR

(Sometimes he tells me, “perhaps today”

i will finally cross on over where i’ll be at home to stay

in time you’ll join me and we will dwell

with the saints in all their glory and the Christ Who taught us well ... of this ....)

in this humble unheroic life

this humble, unheroic life

cold cups of water and the widow’s mite

this humble, unheroic life