Monday, March 8, 2021

Monday in the Second Week of Lent

Lily Greenberg

The Collect of the Day

Look upon the heart-felt desires of your humble servants, Almighty God, and stretch forth the right hand of your majesty to be our defense against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1–15b, Luke 4:23–30 & Psalm 42:1–7

What strikes me about Naaman is not so much that he wants to be healed, but that he has an idea in mind for how he wants to be healed. He wants to buy the healing. Then he wants to bathe in his own Syrian waters rather than the foreign Jordan River.

But what happens is far beyond what Naaman could have predicted. He is healed specifically by going beyond the borders of his assumptions.

I need this reminder. So often, I think I know exactly the right solution to some puzzle in my life. However, almost never has what I had in mind been the best option. And maybe the real problem is that I stay within my assumptions. I dream too small.

When I first started graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I came in without funding. I was scrapping together scholarships, waiting tables, and editing grant proposals on top of a full workload. I went to any event for graduate students that had free food because I was too busy to cook for myself. I wanted a teaching assistantship—what all of my peers had. I kept applying, and there just were not enough openings for me. I was so sure that this was the path for me, but the door stayed closed.

Well, it turned out that all of those graduate student free food events were great networking opportunities—I met the deans of the Graduate School, and they said that they could sure use a writer to help in their office. I’m now in my final semester of grad school (earning an MFA in poetry), and I have had 5 semesters of funding from doing background communications. I have absolutely loved this job, and I’m now applying to jobs in this role.

I hope that we can all remain open to what healing or solutions can come to us outside of our assumptions. I hope that we can all stay in touch with the longing that will take us there.

Here are a few lines from a Jean Valentine poem that I think are relevant:

“Open for me! I slam against the gate

dumber than any sheep. I want, I want.

I want to become round like you there: like God: reality:

not flat like here, all oil, all pleasantness and heat.”