Everyone has their little pet peeves, which tend to speed to the forefront of the mind when we’re in a living situation with someone who does things very differently than we do. Or to put it positively, we all have fascinating particularities that we may not even be aware of until they’re thrown into contrast by a spouse, roommate or sibling who doesn’t share our idiosyncrasy. I had a mentor once who called these kinds of preferences “quirky loves” and he loved to gather two or three people around a dinner table where he’d ask everyone to share at least three quirky loves.  

One of my quirky loves is for things in a house to have a place. Coffee mugs have a place. Plates have a plate place. Yogurt goes on the same shelf in the same spot every time. It gives me special delight to go to the place where something should be and find it waiting there for me. Now, one of the most mystifying and frustrating realizations for me over the last six or seven years of living with my brother has been that he does not share this quirky love of mine. In fact, it’s nowhere on his radar. For Sam, things in the kitchen go, for the most part, almost anywhere they happen to randomly wind up. Coffee cups where the glasses go, a lone pepper shaker all the way across the room from the spice cabinet in the pantry with the canned goods! Can you believe it? Absolute chaos! 

A wise man once passed on to me something he learned from a counselor about expectations in marriage; he said, “No expectation is valid unless it is communicated and agreed upon by both parties.” You can’t get mad at someone for failing to read your mind about where the pepper shaker ought or ought not be. I must admit I harbored some secret resentment toward my brother that first year or two, because my quirky love of “thing placement” was an uncommunicated and unmet expectation. A time or two I even thought the randomness of his placement was just to get my goat. But it wasn’t, of course. Over time, I’ve learned to relax, move the coffee cup to its proper place and go about my day.

That’s a bit of a fun story to set up a more serious conversation. That is, what happens when things aren’t where they’re supposed to be? One of the glories of the opening chapters of the Scriptures is that we find God ordering chaos into cosmos; God is giving everything a place, a proper context and habitat. Creation is not haphazardly thrown together; it is very carefully crafted through the infinite care and intention of God. There’s a logic to it, later described by St. John in the prologue to his Gospel in personal terms – Jesus himself is the very logic or Logos of Creation. That means the second person of the Trinity holds in himself the rationale for all things. The wisdom about the right placement of any given thing within creation in relation to all the other things is in Christ. 

This order is what makes wisdom possible, since wisdom is getting good information that enables good decisions. The Father, through his Son in Creation and Incarnation, has made good information available. The expectations have been communicated – we don’t have to read God’s mind; Paul says, through the Spirit, the mind of Christ has been revealed. Truth is knowable, because God has opened his mouth and sent forth the Word himself. That’s great news, because it means we have a reliable basis for decision-making in this world. Reality is accessible, so we can make an informed response to it as we go about our lives. We can participate in reality or not.  

Let’s try all this out in a musical analogy. We have been given the sheet music so we can learn the tune. Once you learn the tune, you can sit in with the band. Once you know the tune and have done the work to learn the logic of your instrument well enough, something really amazing can happen – you can get inside the music, so to speak, you’re set free to improvise. Improvisation is all about practicing wisdom by entering into a relationship of love and attentiveness to the rationale of the song, which leads to mutual submission with the other players and the life of the music itself. The joy is made complete when everyone is ‘in the pocket’ together. God has composed a vast and elaborate music, each one of us is an instrument, and our very lives are an opportunity to learn the tune and grow wise enough to sit in with the Band and jam with the Original Jazz Trio, the Holy Trinity. Or as Peter puts it, to “participate in the divine nature.” You may even think of this whole universe as the long-play record and result of an epic jam session, and the Big Bang itself as the first cymbal crash of God’s Big Band careening across an ever-expanding dance floor where stars and planets learned to swing.

Let’s take the music analogy and switch over to a story analogy. This world has an Author with a capital “A”. Hebrews says, Jesus is the Author and the Perfecter of the story. He started this whole narrative project, and he’ll have the final word as to how it all winds up. That means all this is truly going somewhere, and that we have a place and living role in a Great Tale. The more we can familiarize ourselves with the Story God is telling, the more we’ll be able to participate as little collaborators in its telling. The Church is a great book club I recommend joining. 

Let me move the analogy once more. This time imagine you’re standing on the prow of a great ship. The salty ocean air is tossing your hair. You have set sail expecting adventure. But the seas will be treacherous and it will be many days before you are likely to see land. Still, your heart beats confidently and joyfully to a rhythm that seems to be grounded not in yourself, but in some distant country yet to be revealed. In fact, you set sail because you sensed that music calling you. As the sun sets the stars are revealed, and you raise your eyes to admire their beauty and fixity. You can navigate by these immovable celestial lights. Though the earth itself moves through the heavens, and though the undulating waters surrounding you offer no orienting points of reference, you have what you need to make your destination. If you know where to look, the path is, in fact, marked out for you. The path is ancient as the stars and true. 

But what if the very stars wander? What if the Song ceases to be sung, and it’s tune is rewritten, obscured, lost? What if the Story goes untold or the details are changed? How can we be wise? How can we follow the narrative to its glorious end? How can we navigate through lies and half-truths to our homeland? Friends, this is an age of great anxiety, and you can see why, can’t you? Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. Proverbs warns us not to move the ancient boundary stones, because they were set there to help us discern Reality and our placement within it. 

But there’s a brawl in the jazz club and no one can hear the band over the ruckus. Pages are torn out of the book, whole sections rewritten. Great fixities that we once could rest easy about have become shifty, so that our bearings are constantly being thrown off and we despair of ever seeing our homeland appear on the horizon. We’re going in circles. It’s enough to drown in – a whelming flood of disorientation, a boiling mob of anxious anger. 

Here, at the outset of the third season of this podcast, I am praying this may be a little place where we can remember the fixities – the stars that don’t wander. That we can search for the Song God is singing amidst the noise. That these episodes might be like little threads that re-weave the raveled fabric of God’s story around us. And even if we are pilgrims in rags traveling the ancient ways toward the Joy set before us, we will be clothed in goodness, truth, and the beauty of holiness, which readies our hands to work peace and opens our eyes to see God. 

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and
light riseth up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all
our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what thou
wouldest have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save
us from all false choices, and that in thy light we may see
light, and in thy straight path may not stumble; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Prayer for Guidance, Book of Common Prayer