The Saturday Stoke #21
Listen to The Saturday Stoke
Welcome to this week’s Saturday Stoke, a short inspirational podcast designed to encourage and challenge you on the path ahead—it’s a place where, if I’m doing my job right, I’m spurring us all on toward love and good deeds. It’s a podcast that feels like a hug from an old friend, and sounds like an owl at midnight.
So thankful for everyone who tuned in this past week as we talked a little bit about simplicity. If you want to hear more thoughts on simplicity, be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter affectionately called “Further Up.” We’ve been discussing spiritual minimalism lately, and we’d love for you to join us.
This week’s stoke is all about being together. So, let’s get to it.
A few years back, when our family lived in Oxford, England, my wife and I enjoyed a date night with some dear friends. My wife and I often walked to The Bear and the Ragged Staff pub with our girls, for dinner or a snack but this time, we walked in the grey light of the winter dusk with Jason and his wife, Tamy. We sat in the bear-like couches and chairs in front of the Viking-mantled fireplace and talked for hours. It was amazing. We talked about our families, dreams, our fears, and loves. We laughed and sipped on our soup.
The ancient stone and chunky beams, the popping fire and smell of food worked their spell on us and we lingered, as anyone would in such a setting.
Finally, we headed home. We walked and laughed our way back to our house—it was only about a mile or so.
And then, the magic.
Half-dollar-sized snowflakes fell from the midnight sky. They blanketed our coats and scarfs. We bellowed out Narnia references and exclamations about our good fortune. Then, as we approached the house, we saw a tall messy-haired college student standing at the bus stop, holding—get this—a black umbrella.
“You look like Mr. Tumnus,” I said, jarred by the strange sight before me.
“Well, I’m not a faun, if that’s what you mean,” retorted the semi-annoyed undergrad.
This encouraged more laughter from our merry band of snowflake chasing wonderseekers. The faun—or, um, undergrad let a smile curl up under his cheeks, as we crossed the road.
We parted ways as the 4b bus picked up our friends—and the faun—and carried them back to St. John Street. My wife and I walk into the house and went to bed.
The beautiful in this world invites participation. Beauty possesses a cadence, a rhythm. And that rhythm brings life to the eyes. Isn’t it true when we see a beautiful object, we somehow want to possess it? And wonderful moments spent together are beautiful. How many times have you said, “I just want to bottle up this moment forever”?
The French philosopher Simone Weil said, “We are drawn to it without knowing what to ask of it. … We want to get behind beauty … We should like to feed upon it.” C.S. Lewis said nearly the same thing in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory.”
Is this not also true for our gathering places, like parks and pubs, churches and homes? Their charm invites us to gather, to sit, to eat and drink, to be together. And we crave these moments, don’t we?
—Are not some of my most memorable and most beautiful memories the ones layered with the beauty of relationships? I think to myself.
Think of that word, together. What does that mean?
It means not letting words go unsaid.
It means not living so caught up in ourselves that we forget about the young fourteen-year-old girl who steps off the bus each day, walks into her home, shuts her bedroom door behind her and sits on her bed thinking of how to kill herself.
Together, more than jus a word.
And what of its synonyms: with each other, side by side, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowl. In chorus, one accord, in unison.
That’s how we should live. Each day as a song. But not to the world—some vague and unrepresented thing. But to each other.
A song rings out.
It carries forth.
It resonates.
It reverberates.
A song catches our fancy. We hum it under our breath while we work. We sing it in the shower. We can’t get away from it. It seers itself into our subconscious.
Songs require voices.
And voices carry wherever there is air. In the back alley. In the suburb. Out on the farm. When we breathe, we inhale the voices of the world.
And a voice brings magic; powerful magic. Like the voices of a thousand angels singing somewhere on high. Voices bring that goosebump feeling from another world.
A chorus heralds something great coming from somewhere special. And we are the chorus. In unison we sing the notes of life, heralding the beauty of our humanity, proclaiming the wonder of our Creator.
Together.
The term is also an adverb.
An adverb expresses a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause or degree.
So think about it like this: together - how we live during this time and circumstance.
This time of life; a hard time; a slow time; a blessed time. This circumstance; the moment right now; the decision about to be made; a consequence about to be experienced.
And how do I live it, this experience? Apart?
Or, together?
Together: the manner in which we live in relation to one another.
Not apart. Not alone. Not exiled. Not hidden or lost.
Together, so as to touch or combine. Is not life the very picture of a touch, a combination.
We kiss, hold hands, embrace, tickle, caress. Actions universal to every human being. The ubiquitous language of humanity.
Who doesn’t understand the words of an embrace? Who doesn’t realize the intimate surrender of a kiss?
“But Tim,” you say, “where is all this talk togetherness leading. I mean, it seems a bit in appropriate to talk of kisses and embraces and all gloobidyglop.”
“Ah yes,” I reply, “the famous argument appropriateness. But did St. Paul not encourage us to greet one another with a holy kiss. Does not Christ himself plow through the Gospel of Mark touching people, rubbing mud on their eyes, and letting his feet be washed with a woman’s hair. Yes, inappropriate indeed.”
You and I were made to be together.
But do we stand together today?
Or do we care more for being on certain sides or within certain inner-rings of influence and popularity or shouting our own activism?
Do we lock up our souls and cling to our sedatives, bingeing in the dark while suffering from the fear of missing out.
“We need drugs, apparently,” writes Wendell Berry, “because we have lost each other.”
And why? For what?
A screen?
A binge?
A view?
An opinion?
Something other than the “you” I’m here on this earth to care for?
Sherry Turkle is right. Or is she? “Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.”
Together.
A heritage of faith.
God—the together-One. Three-in-one. His power to us emerges through together-ness. He speaks, and the world comes alive. Sudden abundance and joy of being alive, together with the Creator.
But the holy act of creation was not the act of a solitary god. But the Three-in-One, God.
Father and the Logos-son-Jesus take the scene. But even before the life-giving words come from God, the Holy Ghost hovered. The first scenes of life erupt with life-giving, with Adam naming the living creatures, then finding, Eve. He sees her and sings the lyrics of every marriage forever after: “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” Not only together, but from one another. We fit.
And the life-chorus of togetherness begins, heralding the love and beauty of God.
We come from the Holy Community, to form our own.
Emerson wrote, “… every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
You and I live as the sayings of the ancients. Imagine; we, the quotations of God, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
And it is the pursuit of reunion that conquers separation.
For when the Christ blistered into this world through the virgin womb, through innocence, through anonymity, through servile means, he gathered us to himself.
Vagabonds, failures, head strong loud-mouths, swindlers, zealots. And he continued to gather.
He drew all people unto himself through the blackness of the tree. Such is the beauty of Holy pursuit. Such is the wonder of reunion.
Then the Christ whispered for the Ghost to come, and he came; with fire and wonder he came. And hearts again came alive and broke at the same time.
A new community was formed. Re-creation.
And they broke bread and gathered, together.
They sang songs and hymns and spiritual songs.
The world knew them, but not by their loud words. Not by their witty tweets. Not by their hubris in the public square. Not by their “intentional” engagement” or their “influence” with and on culture.
No!
The world knew them by their quiet acts of service. By their absence in the obscene. By their willingness to pass into anonymity. Their willingness to eschew acclaim. Their willingness to burn as garden lights for Nero. Their unnerving existence in the wilderness.
And the world saw them, out there, in the wilderness. And came out to them and asked, “What are you doing out here? Why do you help so many, yet ask for so little? Why do you take the jeers and not shout back? How can you invite shame, and care not?”
And the wilderness glowed bright with the light of the saints. An incongruent people took over the world in the shadows of obscurity.
This is the history of the called-out-ones. The cave-gatherers. The cross-bearers.
Do you know them?
This is the history of togetherness. From Adam to Christ to the Church. This is the history of the greatest family love story ever told: a god running, undistinguished, down the road to meet his estranged son and daughter.
Why?
To be back together.
