In Need of Allies

We are all in need of allies.

To be an ally requires sacrifice, thoughtfulness, awareness, intention.

To have an ally – what does that require?  Humility enough to ask for the help, I suspect.  Willingness to match our pace to the one we’ve asked to walk with us, perhaps.  Ability to recognize our own need for such, a certainty.

In the world of nations just now, the United States needs Turkey as an ally, but it is not at all clear whether Turkey needs the United States.

And to be an ally always seems to involve a cost-benefit analysis, at least in the world of nations.

But what of the world of individual relationships?

Where then is the cost?  Is it fair, right, appropriate, to count the cost?

Well, Jesus tells those who would follow him to count the cost before taking even the first step – his point being, as I would gather, that there is always a cost.

Knowing, then, that there is a cost to the other in walking alongside, in being an ally, how can I ask anyone to take on such a role for me?  Is it ‘fair’ to ask for help knowing in advance that the help will be costly to the other?

But are we not made to walk in tandem?  To help as, where and when we can?

Bonhoeffer speaks of Christian fellowship as burden bearing.

That rings so true to me.  It also rings true that all of we Christians – not just the professionals among us – are to be burden bearers, each with the other.

Does this change my understanding of burden bearing?  Perhaps.  Perhaps it is just taking turns the way we did when we were kids.  Sometimes I’ll follow you, sometimes you’ll follow me.  Sometimes I’ll help you and sometimes you’ll help me.

But allies do more than simply help or provide succor.  Allies are advocates of a sort – the ones who do not stand silently by when bad stuff comes to town.  Allies walk alongside, provide practical aid, raise their voices in protest.

There, surely, is the greater cost, given the great resistance of humankind to such activity in all but the rarest of occasions.

Which brings us back to the beginning – allies – where to find them?  How to ask them?  How to be one?  If these were easy questions, one suspects, there wouldn’t be much need for allies in the first place.

So I am left to wonder – who have been your allies?  Did you ask them for help or did they merely appear at the needed time?  Have you been an ally?  How did you know you were needed?  What prompted you to act this time when you had not, perhaps, acted before?  What did it cost you to be an ally?  What did you gain from having an ally?

Those are the questions I’m asking today.

Preacher Love: Some Days It’s Harder Than Others

It’s easy to love the loveable.  That’s as true for preacher-people as it is for anyone else.  The hard part is to love the unloveable.  And that’s harder, sometimes, for the preacher-person than other folk.

Why would I say that?  Aren’t preacher-people in the loving business?

Yes.

And that, I think, is what makes it so much harder.  Because it’s a supposed to thing for us.

So when someone is weird or jerky to me, there’s an unspoken assumption by everyone (me included) that somehow I’m supposed to be above it all, impervious to the slings and arrows.

Turns out I’m not.

And sometimes, because of that unspoken assumption, people give themselves permission to behave in ways towards me that they would no one else on earth.

That stinks.

So with all the shoulds swirling around my head, I sometimes (often) forget the basics:

1. Loving is a get to, not a have to, thing.

2. Allies are essential in the loving business and should be chosen wisely and well.

3. Sometimes I’ll get it wrong.  It’s not the end of the world.

4. A preacher is not another order of being.  I am as flawed and inspired as the next person.  That’s as it should be.

5. Some people need loving, but they don’t need it from me.  I am not anyone’s savior and sometimes, I’m not even the one to be that person’s friend or confidant.  Sometimes the need must be met elsewhere.  And that too is as it should be.

6. Letting go is not saying the problem is insoluable.  Letting go is saying not me, not today.