Gary N. McCluskey
It was an American Indian chief (Seattle?) who was quoted as saying, “We spend too much time learning about things and too little time learning from them.” Indeed. How much time, lately, and energy have you put into learning all about COVID 19 and racial injustice?
It is good and necessary to learn about things. This is especially so in our current times. To learn can be to prevent. To learn can be to heal. To learn can be to have more success in the future.
Yet, how much time have we invested in trying to learn from these things? What lessons have they to teach us? It seems to me we have learned appreciation. We have learned appreciation for things and people we now miss and ways of life we currently cannot enjoy. We have learned to appreciate various electronic means that help us communicate with family, worship, shop, keep informed, and, ….yes….learn about things.
We have learned how dependent we are upon others, yet how independent we can become and continue to go on. We have learned how connected we are to those we know and to those who serve us in grocery stores, drug stores and so many places deemed “essential.” We have learned how connected and dependent we are to others around the globe. We are all in this together means “we all”.
What have we learned about cries and hurts of those who protest racial injustice? I who have invested much reading time and many conversations over the years have learned a great deal more from colleagues, students, and various media coverage. Perhaps what I have learned most is that I have yet a lot to learn.
What have we learned about the way we care for our institutionalized elderly? What have we learned about both those we imprison and the care of those in prison? What have we learned about the way we care for health care workers, first responders, and prison guards? What have we learned about how most any difficulty that confronts our nation disproportionately affects the poor and people of color?
Maybe the most important question underlying these questions and more which need to be asked is this: Do we try and learn from events and times such as these or do we retreat to time worn ideas and phrases to prevent thinking, change, and growth?
Martin Luther said the ultimate idol is security. We have learned once more about our illusions regarding security. Have we learned also from our recent experiences of vulnerability?
Jesus helped us learn about. Jesus very much taught us also to learn from. In parables Jesus used people, plants, coins, and animals that you and I can learn from. Yet it is the very life, death and resurrection of Jesus that you and I primarily learn from.
The most frightening, most upsetting and most profound things that life hurls our way…what can we learn from them? What change in ourselves and our life assumptions can we learn from these? Where do we see God at work in all this? Don’t be afraid to ask these kinds of questions to yourself and to each other. We have Jesus with us as we do. We have one from whom we have discovered time and again that learning from can be a way to be open to new life bursting forth from certain ways of thinking and living that need to die.
We can and ought to continue to learn about things. Yet, let us go deeper and learn as well from things. It is this learning that has the most potential to bring us new life.
Gary N. McCluskey, Pastor