Fearless Faith

Deconstruction is nearly over with Holy Week in full camber, arcing across our lives. Grace that began the Lenten season has encircled us, and through its work we find ourselves on better paths, with better guides and deeper friends to keep us company. The ultimately redeeming self-examination of Lent becomes opportunity for fresh starts and clarity of vision. In reconstructing our faith leading up to this season of Easter, there results a new-found sense of equilibrium, a wholeness that comes about in no other manner. When do we know when it is just right? It is a place of inner peace that comes from experiencing divine love and acceptance, not to mention deep and abiding forgiveness without reservation.

An ancient Chinese tradition, feng shui, represents a recognition of the energy that inhabits spaces, including those within us, and movement within those spaces that makes overall sense to us. We’ve all practiced it in some moment or another when we arrange, then rearrange, our thoughts or assumptions or even the furniture in the front room. Often, through trial and effort, we move and scootch the furniture around until it looks right and feels right. Some persons are very good at it, able to quickly reconcile inhospitable space with something more open, restful and pleasing. As circumstances in our lives change, that balance of things — our space — also changes. Just when we believe to have gotten things right, we often find ourselves having to begin anew. It is always a work in progress.

Each Lent we are called to evaluate that place within us that we depend on, our go to place when things get rough. As we make our own entries into Jerusalem for Holy Week, we might discover that as circumstances change, we are called to reexamine our place and role within. The comfortable living room arrangement that has been our norm for decades could use some serious rearranging and updating. That is the hard part. If we cannot find the energy to do it ourselves, are there others that could aid in that renovation?

Jesus was adept at arranging things into something productive and whole. He remains unwilling to let us off the hook by allowing us to claim our inheritance merely by going through the motions. Anyone can show up at the party, but what comes next when all that is left is confetti and streamers to clean up? Holy Week represents an ongoing saga and never a once and done mentality. It takes us to the edge of who we are and invites us to seek balance in our lives to restructure priorities and imagine a different way of living, one that builds up rather than tears down. It sounds serious because it is.

Feng shui at a theological level is a study in patience and determination, but also of letting go. Testing faith within community, both religious and secular, is less burdensome when we approach it together. It helps us to see and experience a wider grace than we might have considered possible and to not be caught up in the extremism of today. Christian nationalism, filled with falsity and misapplication, should be the first item on the list to clean out and haul off. It is time for a little balance. I can’t imagine Jesus would see it any other way.