Tares and Tears

I have been finding myself in the midst of one of my favorite parables of Jesus, the one Matthew tells about "the wheat and the tares" (13:24f). I'm finding it helpful to me on a number of different levels.

First, it has been helpful for me to be able to say, "An enemy has done this." It is more than true to say that my termination was a very intended consequence of the actions of a person whom I thought was a friend, but who made herself my enemy. She acted in a way that brought calamity upon me--like the enemy who comes in the night when everyone is asleep and sows weeds among the wheat-- and then goes away! This is not the action of an adversary, where there can be conversation, perhaps mediation, and another level of understanding reached. This was the action of an enemy, acting under the cover of darkness, in a manner destructive to myself and others.

To say this is a step forward for me. I am not one to think of myself as someone who has, or makes, enemies. I like to think of myself as someone who trusts and who inspires trust, and with whom disagreements and hurts can be worked out, without malice and hate. My present experience is a helpful reminder that one can have enemies in this world, and that I certainly have at least one!

But we also live in the age of psychology, so we may be more aware of our internal enemies than our external ones. And certainly we do not live reflectively in this world without at some point or another realizing that all of us have the capacity to be our own worst enemy! I know I do, especially at this point! So I go through my life thinking that I am sowing only good seed, and then it comes to light that as my own worst enemy I have indeed sown among the good, some weeds.

In some respects, this realization is even more dismaying than the first one. For we might find ways to protect ourselves from external enemies when they present themselves, but how do we protect ourselves from the worst in ourselves? I mean, there are ways (awareness, mindfulness, conscience), but too many of my life lessons have been learned after the fact, after I've faultered, and then have been faulted. In my anguish I wonder whether I am always to be learning things the hard way?!

There are two other lessons for this parable to teach me, and if I didn't learn how to protect the good I would do from my enemies, then at least I can learn these lessons now that it is clear to everyone that I have many weeds among my wheat.

The first lesson surely has to do with the gift of patience. The farmer comes to the realization that his wheat and his enemy's weeds are growing together. If he panics and rips out the weeds, the wheat will be destroyed as well. So he waits. He does nothing. He neither reacts to the enemy's efforts by going after the enemy... Nor does he attempt to weed things out from his own fields, from himself. He simply waits until the harvest, that is, until the right time when wheat and weed can be separated, and the good preserved and the useless destroyed.

Now like the song goes, "waiting is the hardest part!" It is difficult not to be reactive when we see the effects of ugliness and malevolence in our lives. It is difficult to live with the pain and disappointment, the puzzlement, the asking "why did this happen to me?"-- the agony of self-blame and the anger of blaming the other. I mean, I have this "conversation" that spools over and over in my mind! Why did I do what I did? Why did my enemy do what she did? It is very difficult to come to a place where I can accept what is, and live with it, as a "what's done is done." I keep wanting to undo somehow! But that, of course, cannot be. Maybe it goes without saying that painful realities are very difficult to live with...

But if I can, at all, live with what has happened, as I must, and have that not mean a further condemnation of dwelling in pain and stewing in shame, then it is because of the very first line of the parable. Jesus says, "The kingdom of heaven is like..."

Now I ask myself: Do I feel like I am living in the midst of the "kingdom of heaven"? Far from it! Most of my days feel more like exercises in not losing more than I already have, and most nights I wake in sweat and terror for what has happened and dread of what lies ahead. So what is so "heavenly" about this experience, anyway?

Well, here's where I have to remind myself that when Jesus spoke of the "kingdom of heaven," he didn't have in mind our "three story universe" with heaven above and hell below and us living on the middle plane of earth, preparing to go up or down! Rather, what Jesus meant by the "kingdom of heaven" was more like opportunities for us to experience the Presence of God. One way to understand what he is saying here is that: When we can be patient in the midst of hostility and adversity, and live with what is, trusting that, at the right time, things will sort themselves out appropriately, then, in that interim time, we can experience God-with-us.

So I am trying to experience my life at this time as a moment of the "in-breaking" of God's Kingdom. My aim is to live with that assurance, that calm, that perspective, that peace.

An enemy has done this to me. Now I am resolved to "let both grow together, until the harvest," in order that I might not come apart! God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...

Blessings!