Detachment

Gospel reading: Luke 14.1,7-14
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

I knew a boy once - I'll call him Alan (his name has been changed to protect his innocence) - who said, "Mom, I wish I was a girl. Because then I might not like weapons so much."

Now I'm steering clear of debates over gender stereotypes, nurture vs. nature, or the pros and cons of the total disarmament of children (the banishing of all guns from squirt to BB). What that five-year-old boy was really expressing was a desire for detachment, and there's not much difference between the longing behind his words and those of a sixth century monk named Dorotheus of Gaza. He described detachment as "being free from [wanting] certain things to happen," and remaining so trusting of God that "what is happening will be the thing you want, and you will be at peace with all." (quoted in Amazing Grace, p. 32)

Christianity has a long and varied past with regards to its teaching about wants. Fringe sects like the Shakers distrusted desire so much that they forbade sexual intercourse. This placed rather too much burden on the evangelism committee, and they've all but died out. But detachment is not really about avoidance of desire itself. It's about a proper distance from a desire. It's about finding life giving ways of wanting.

If peace has something to do with an alignment between "what is happening" and "the thing you want" then it seems there are two strategies we might employ. We can work on our wants. Or we can work on the rest of the universe. If you have one marginally significant relationship in your life, you know well enough how difficult a task it is to bring a single human will into alignment with your set of priorities, preferences, and pet peeves. Multiply that will by several billion, add in the rest of the animal kingdom (the pets and the pests), and as you can see, the project gets rather unwieldy long before we other relevant concerns...like weather, for instance.

As impossible as attending to my wants can seem, the alternative is only more hopeless.

On Sunday we read one of Jesus' wedding banquet parables. In it he warned about seating ourselves at the prestigious end of the table, because we may be asked to make way for someone more important. Sitting in the lowest place is parablese for humility. But I wonder if Jesus' story is helpfully considered as a teaching about wants. The further up the table we seat ourselves the more hardened our wants have become.

So maybe taking that lower seat is really about detachment. Maybe it's really about a distance from our wants that becomes an openness to the future. The good news in this is that it's always better to be open to the blessing that actually comes our way rather than obsessed about the blessing we think we need or deserve. The universe is terribly uncooperative, and the chances are good that the seat we want most is already taken.

Kathleen Norris has a very straightforward strategy for detachment. She prays the psalms. In them we find the most shocking an irreligious wants spoken right out loud to God. In them we find the most elegant thanksgivings for the unexpected blessings and moments of grace we are given. Maybe we 'want' better by speaking the truth to God, and listening to what we say. And maybe over time we find ourselves a little detached, freed from what might be in order to enjoy what is.

Alan's parent had the wits not to recommend a sex change operation as a solution to his dilemma. But he spoke the truth about his wants, and maybe it was a form of prayer even though he hadn't addressed his thoughts to God directly. I'd like to think the wants didn't go away, but loosened their grip a little.

I guess Alan came through it alright. He didn't head to the hills to join a militia, but he didn't lose a child's large imagination that is so powerfully in touch with the risk and adventure inherent to life in this world. The best stories tell us of such risk. And the best stories tell us we might just need a few weapons for such an adventure. Maybe not swords and revolvers so much as a little detachment and a practice of prayer. With these we might just find our seat at the table is better than we could have imagined.