Hands of the Shepherd

The Text for this week is John 10:22-30--

To be the king of understatement, it's been a pretty crazy week.  And it light of the craziness that has unfolded, I thought it important to look at some specific portions of the text this week that relate to our identity.  We may be inclined to focus on fear or hatred or pride or a need for vengeance disguised at justice when things happen like what happened this week.  But our identity is so much more than those emotions; out identity is so much more than a specific geography or nationality or ideology.  So today I zero in on verses 27-30:

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

There are other manuscripts with translations of verse 29 which say, “What the Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”

We belong to Christ.  We belong to God.  Jesus is saying, either, “We are so great a treasure to God that he would never, ever let us get snatched away” or he is saying, “There is nothing so powerful, not even death, that can snatch us from our Abba’s hand.”  Good news no matter what, don’t you think?

One song writer pens these words: 

Save your sermons for someone that's afraid to love.

If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.

I'll be right here lying in the hands of God.
I am in love with nothing less.

Tear drops of joy runs off my face,

I will rise for someone that's afraid to love.

If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.

I'll be right here lying in the hands of God. 

What might it mean for us to live out of the confidence and trust that we are in the hands of Christ and cannot be snatched away?

And if you think that’s old knowledge, if you want to say, “Tell me something I don’t know, Chaps,” then I have to wonder if you’ve let that little nugget crawl up inside your heart and really change you the way God wants it to change you.

One author says:

“When I become so sophisticated that ‘Abba’ is old hat, then the Father has been had, Jesus has been tamed, the Spirit has been domesticated, and the Pentecostal fire has been extinguished. Evangelical faith is the antithesis of cozy, comfortable piety. Faith means you want growing intimacy with Jesus Christ. Cost what it may, you want nothing else. The moment I conclude that I can now cope with the awesome love of God, I am dead.”

What might it mean for us to live like we can’t be snatched away from our Daddy’s hands?  Maybe it means that we want nothing more than to stay there in his embrace; maybe it means that being in the presence of Jesus gives us more joy than anything else; maybe in means that we want to be in his presence the way an addict wants a fix.

I quit smoking in July of 1996, tossed the better part of a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes into a trash can at a rest stop in Mendocino County on my way to a new life in Eureka.  1996 is the year I quit smoking.  For whatever reason, a few weeks ago, in the year 2013, I felt like it had been less than 24 hours since I quit smoking.  I was literally pacing the floor, figuratively climbing the walls of my office.  In the years since I gave up smoking, I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.

A few days later, I found myself craving the presence of Christ more than I was craving that cigarette and it was such an awesome feeling.  David in the psalms writes about longing for God like a deer longs for streams, and I have experienced that in the area of spiritual thirst from the dry and desert place, probably you have too, but in the midst of plenty there I was yearning to have Jesus with me in every moment, or to be with him in every moment.  I wanted to ponder him, more than just in a mystical or contemplative sense, but to find out how I could make him as real to those around me as he was to me in that specific moment.

Maybe you’ve noticed that we have a very particular tradition and liturgy with the children.  It involves the Bible and this phrase, “I believe I can be everything it says I can be; I’ll never be the same in Jesus’ name.”

Look at Romans 8:14 and following and I’ll show you why we say this; Paul says, “All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. But if we are children, we are also heirs.”

So we have them say, “I believe I can be the adopted Son or Daughter of God.”  I believe I can be in the hand of Jesus’ Abba and my Abba, and never, ever be snatched away.

This isn’t just a navel gazing way of life, or a pie in the sky in the sweet by and by understanding of the Gospel.  It means something right now, today, and applies every single day.  You want the gospel to be relevant? It can’t get any more relevant than our core identity as Abba’s Child.

I may be going out on a limb, but I bet everyone here has made some kind of decision, some sort of mistake, that—even if you don’t explicitly regret it—you would seriously reconsider if you had the chance to do it all over again.  Everybody makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes impact our lives and the lives of those around us.  Depending of the gravity of the impact, we may be inclined to carry the weight of that mistake around with us day after day after day.  The worst mistake we could ever make is to be owned by our sins instead of by our Abba.

If you are in a place where you are carrying around the guilt or the shame or the spiritual and emotional burden of having messed up somewhere along the line, please, please forgive yourself.  And by forgive yourself, I mean know that nothing can snatch your from the hand of the Shepherd; nothing can snatch you from your Abba’s hand; you are too precious of a treasure, and God is too powerful for anything to stand between you and Him.  You are Beloved and you are forgiven, so let it go and let yourself be loved.  

I counsel too many people who cannot forgive themselves, or who cannot believe that God will forgive them for this mistake or for that mistake, because that’s what it means to not forgive ourselves.  To not forgive yourself means you don’t trust that God forgives you, and if there is one thing my past has taught me it is the Truth that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that God won’t forgive. Or as Paul says, “For I am convinced that (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So let me end where I began; with the words of Jesus: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Loaded Questions

I am not a fan of loaded questions.  More specifically, I am not a fan of being on the receiving end of loaded questions; I know for a fact that I am incredibly guilty of asking loaded questions of my children, but that doesn’t make me a fan of them.  I don’t like loaded questions because the one who asks the question already knows the answer: “Where did the last bagel go?” The child looks at the floor, pokes at it with her toe and says, “Umm, I ate it.”  I know you ate it because you have cream cheese all around your mouth and little bits of chocolate from the chocolate chips in the bagel.  “So why did you ask me?”  Because you needed to know that I knew so that you could apologize for eating the last bagel. I really don’t like loaded questions.

So this week I’ve been pondering the loaded question that Jesus asks.  I had written a completely different sermon on how the Church, like Peter, so easily defaults to life as usual after the resurrection.  But this passage isn’t about Peter; this passage isn’t about the Church; this passage isn’t about our comfort zones or our love of the familiar.  This passage is about Jesus and his loaded question: “Do you love me?”

Jesus is waiting on the shore for the disciples.  After he gave them a miraculous catch of fish after a fruitless night of labor, he’s standing on the shore with breakfast, and a loaded question: “Do you love me?”

I may be wrong, but I don’t get the impression that Jesus took Peter aside to ask this question.  I don’t think he asked it in front of the others because he wanted to shame Peter;  I think he asked it in front of the other disciples, because he wanted them to think about that question too.  They all left, they all jumped on the bandwagon of the familiar, they all need to dig deep and answer this question: “Do you love me?”

It’s a choice that we all get to make; much like Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue pill, Jesus asks us a question that carries similar consequences: keep on living life as we know it, or go into the resurrection rabbit hole and never look back.

But Jesus asks not because he already knows the answer, but because he wants us know what lies behind his asking of the question.

Do you love me?  Do you love me more than these?  Do you love me more than your boats, more than your nets, more than your 153 fish, more than your friends?  Peter, do you love me?  The choice is yours but you need to know something; the truth of the matter is I am crazy about you.

That’s what makes Jesus’ question a loaded question.  “Do you love me? Because I am crazy about you!”

One of my favorite authors and pastors died on Friday. I cannot begin to say how great of an influence he had on me.  I have read very few words that were as permeated with grace as the writings of Brennan Manning.  The man was radically in love with Christ. He had a saying, “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” 

This is why we need to know what lies behind the question that Jesus asks.  He wants to know if we love him because he is deeply, deeply in love with us.  Like John Cusack’s character in Say Anything, Jesus is standing at the end of our driveways with a radio over his head, blaring Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, all because of his love for us.  And he asks us, “Do you love me?” Because I am crazy about you.

And here’s the thing I hope somebody out there understands.  Peter didn’t understand the Romans Road to Salvation; he didn’t get any particular theory of atonement; he didn’t understand the mystery of the resurrection…all Peter knew was Jesus.  And Jesus was standing there looking Peter in the eyes asking this question: Do you love me? 

And I guess that’s where we fit in, too.  We don’t have to “get it” to get Jesus or to receive his grace.  We don’t have to have complete knowledge or fullness of faith—all we need to do is trust that we are loved by him; more deeply than we could possibly imagine, we are loved by Jesus and he desires nothing more than for us to love him back.

Purposeful Peace

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Before I get started: I want to take a quick sidebar and clarify what John means with his term “the Jews.” This phrase comes up with regularity in the fourth gospel and what John means with this term is the religious authorities, not the entirety of the Jewish people.  It may seem obvious to state this but just to be clear: John was a Jew; Jesus was a Jew; all of the eleven are Jewish people.  They weren’t in hiding from their kin or from themselves, they were hiding from the religious authorities and specific people who were responsible for the death of Jesus.  Certain folks, historically and even today, want to use John’s phrase as a way to indict the Jewish people, and since this evening begins Yom HaShoah, the commemoration of the Jewish Holocaust, I wanted to take a time out to clarify that phrase.

I spent a lot of time in trouble as a kid.  Not in school or in juvenile systems, but at home, I spent a lot of time in my room thinking about what I’d done.  I also spent a lot of time in my room waiting for my father to get home.  You know what I mean: “Just you wait until your father gets home.”  It’s not that Mom was unable or unwilling to give discipline; no, she gave plenty.  But that particular phrase was the one that let me know I was seriously in for it.  It was a phrase that is perfectly designed to strike fear in the hearts of children.

So when I read that the eleven were locked in the room for fear of the Jews—the religious authorities, I understand what John means.  They are in the house waiting for what they feel is the inevitable; their arrest, their mock trial and their deaths. 

This is still the day of the resurrection in John’s timeline.  None of the eleven have met with Jesus; Peter and John have seen the empty tomb, the whole group has heard Magdalene’s testimony of having seen the Lord, but they themselves have not yet encountered the risen Christ and they are paralyzed with fear;  life has become frozen in a moment; they are imprisoned by what may be if they show their faces to the community.

One author writes: “On each birthday, the women of a certain caste in India add four rings of heavy brass, one on each ankle and one on each arm. By the time they reach middle age, they walk with difficulty under this senseless burden. But this is no more senseless than weighing one’s self down with inward fears of failure, of the future, of sickness, of being dependent, of the opinions of people and so on.” (E. Stanley Jones—The Way)

Into their fear-driven imprisonment and paralysis walks Jesus with these words, “Peace be with you.”  The same word that Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves which calmed them in a single moment, he speaks to those who are frozen in fear, “Peace be with you…Peace! Be Still!”  

Maybe the challenge that we face with these words is that we can choose to block their power.  The wind and the waves they respond.  We fearful humans, we hold on to questions, we wonder whether or not the peace of Jesus can truly calm the troubled waters of our souls.

But for the eleven, the word of peace sticks with them and they can see Jesus for who he is.  He shows his wounds, proof that God can transform any horror, proof that death has lost its power and they rejoice.  

But it seems that Jesus knows how susceptible we are to fear because he speaks those words again: “Peace be with you.”  But this peace isn’t about the disciples’ fear of what has been; this peace is to calm the fears of what may be.  Because Jesus follows this instruction of peace with words of commissioning: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

I’ve mentioned before, I think, the way in which my call to ordained ministry began.  I was sitting with my friend Mark and we were talking about Church and I blurted out, “I think it would be kind of cool to be a priest.”  Those words hung there between us for a few moments, and as their seriousness and their gravity sank in, I mentally began trying to pull them back.  The idea that we are called and sent to continue the ministry of reconciliation that God offers in Jesus is seriousness business.  We need to know that we have the peace of Jesus with us as we set about this work, because the peace is for us AND this peace is for others.

Jesus continues by breathing the Holy Spirit onto and into the disciples and he tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Please let those words, and their implications, sink in.  If we forgive people their sins, they are set free; if we don’t, they remain in bondage.  We have been given, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power to set people free from the rooms they are locked in.  And that freedom comes from the words: “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”

And so here I am today carrying the blessed burden of needing all of you to know the Peace of Christ; needing all of you to hear those freeing words, “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”  Because it is in the community where those words, exchanged between those who have encountered the risen Christ, that transformation happens and people are set free.  

Empty Tombs and Meeting Face to Face

There are two distinct parts, two distinct movements, two distinct encounters to this morning’s passage from John.  I think those two encounters also have a great deal to say to the church on Easter Sunday as well.

In the first movement of this passage Mary, Peter, and John have an encounter with an empty tomb.  

Mary goes to the tomb and discovers that there is no body.  She reports to Peter and the “Beloved Disciple” this fact: “The tomb is empty;” more specifically she says, “They have taken the body of Jesus.”

Insult has been added to injury: we can’t even give Jesus a proper burial.

Then John tells of a dramatic footrace to the tomb.  I see it in my mind as similar to the final moments of the 1999 Super Bowl between the Rams and the Titans, Peter’s hand is reaching out for the goal line of tomb, but the Beloved Disciple beats him to it, winning the foot race.  

At the tomb the beloved disciple looks in, sees the wrappings, but does not enter.  Peter arrives shortly after John, and enters the tomb.  He sees the wrappings used to cover the body of Jesus.  The beloved disciple then enters the tomb and together they see that the Body of Jesus is no where inside.  Then John says, “They saw and believed.”

Let’s stop for a moment and consider what did he/they see and believe?  There is no body: it has been taken/moved.  This is what they believe.  They believe that the tomb is empty.  John makes a point of saying, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture…”  They don’t yet believe, know, or understand that the empty tomb means Jesus is alive and that he has been raised.

For them, in this moment, Jesus is like Moses; his body is in a place that no one knows.  The tomb is empty. Happy Easter.  And they go home, perhaps making up their minds to go back to life as they had known it.

And maybe there are a few people like this in the Church, maybe some here this morning.  People who believe that there was an actual empty tomb on Easter morning, but they’ve walked away before meeting with the Risen One.  They’re going back to life as they have known it, they believe in the forgiveness of sins, but they haven’t met the Resurrected Jesus.  If it’s you, wait a while; Jesus is here.

In the second major part of this passage we have Mary waiting alone and weeping.  She’s been robbed of her chance at closure.  She cannot complete the rituals of lamentation.

And almost, like she can’t believe it, or maybe because she thinks that if she looks in the same place one more time he’ll be there.  (You know, like when you lose something and you look in the same place over and over and over again?)  That’s what Mary does. She looks into the tomb one more time.  Maybe as a way of saying good-bye.

And as she looks in she sees to angels.  Sitting there among the wrappings that held Jesus’ dead body are two messengers there to attend to her in her grief.

And their question seems so obvious, but it’s an important question: “Why are you weeping?”

We’re taught to pay attention to the body language of people.  To look for signs of distress, not so that we can refer them to professionals, but so that we can be present with them in whatever moment of pain they are experiencing.  Aloneness in grief, makes grief that much harder to bear.  We’re invited to become messengers of hope for others, just as these angels are for Mary.

“Why are you weeping?”  They give her a place to name her pain and she takes it.

“They’ve moved the body of Jesus and I don’t know where it is!”  And she turns as if to gesture to them the barrenness of the tomb, the emptiness of the garden, and there he is.  There is Jesus.  But to her he is just the gardener; she is blind with greif.

“Where have you taken him?”  she cries.  “If you show me where he is, I will take him and tend to his body!”  To Mary he is just a gardener, and she is so blinded by grief and pain she can’t see him…until he speaks her name:  “Mary!”

I imagine like a parent comforting a child saying their name, rocking them back and forth, trying to get them to calm down.  “Mary!”

And in hearing the Risen Christ speak her name, she knows him for who he is.  And she falls to her feet in front of him.  

This is why I said to wait a while.  Jesus is here and he speaks our names: Daniel, Kristen, Alex, Matteo, Grace, Abbey, Elliot, Hajnal, Troy, Jay, Matt, Steve, Chris… He speaks our names so that we will know him for who he is.

There are lots of studies about newborns recognizing the voices of mothers and fathers based on learning their voice patters in utero.  It may not necessarily create stronger bonds, but our children know who we are.

Mary knows Jesus because he speaks her name.  Jesus speaks her name because he knows she will recognize him and know that she belongs to him.  And he speaks our names this morning so that we will know to whom we belong and so that with our words, with our actions, with our lives we will testify to his risenness.

“I have seen the Lord,” Mary told the eleven.  “I have seen the Lord…and it is so much better than just seeing an empty tomb.” 

2013 Maundy Thoughts

The more I think I understand this day, the more I realize I have so much to learn.  

One pastor says, “Jesus saves his best teaching, not for a sermon in the synagogue or inside the Temple at a high-ritual moment, but rather for an evening meal among friends.” (Another pastor pointed out that this teaching is only 32 words long and I couldn’t help thinking, “Don’t you wish that was true for all great teaching?”)

But I have to agree, this is most likely Jesus’ best teaching; Maundy Thursday and this passage from John 13 ranks among my favorites.  But…is the teaching the sign, or the grace that lies behind it?  Is the teaching the words, or the grace that lies behind them?

Jesus washes feet and says we should love as he has loved. And I frequently find myself wondering what exactly that means. 

But tonight I am thinking of humility.  To wash the feet of another is to embrace humility.  To love as Jesus has loved, is to embrace humility.  Forgiveness given to one who has done us harm, or to those who seek to do us harm, is to live in humility, to embrace humility, and to love as Jesus has loved us.

Jesus gives the Church a sign act in the Eucharistic meal of his body and his blood, broken and shed for the sake of forgiveness, and he tells us “when you do this, remember me.”

If we take what Jesus says with any amount of seriousness, then this meal cannot be just a memorial that invites us to remember his sacrifice on our behalf—then the meal becomes about us and not about him. 

If we want to be serious in our remembrance, we have to think of this passage from John’s gospel where Jesus tells his friends and followers to love as he has loved.  In this way the holy meal calls us to a living remembrance of his life in our lives, loving the ones who don’t love us back.

Look at the people at this meal:  Judas: the Betrayer.  Peter: the Denier.  And they are just the famous (or infamous) players in this drama.  All of them scattered and most of them hid for the sake of their own safety while Jesus was dragged away to be mocked and crucified.

And yet he loved them to the end.  I want to point that out.  Verse 1 of John 13: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” And in verse 5: “Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash (their) feet.”

I recently had a conversation with someone regarding Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies.  We both agreed that it is much easier to intellectually assent to this teaching when our enemy is a distant, abstract someone we will never see face-to-face.  But when our enemy is someone at the table with us, breaking bread with us, when the enemy is known, that’s when it gets difficult.  Is it easier to forgive the one time great big “oops” of a betrayal, or to forgive the repeated tiny betrayals that erode our trust day after day after day?  Some days I’m not so sure. But in either case, the command is to love and forgive.

Having loved his own—the betrayer, the denier, the self-servers—he loved them to the end and says to them (us):

 “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (John’s gospel) or “When you do this, remember me.” (the synoptic gospels)

So then, isn’t John 13 really about loving with reckless abandon? Isn’t that what grace really ends up being about? Grace and forgiveness, through the lens of this passage, becomes less about calling us to a life of pharisaical sin management and more of a call to love like Jesus, which is a life given to loving with reckless abandon.  Since we know that forgiveness is always ours, why not pursue God’s will, why not offer God’s grace and radical hospitality, with reckless abandon.

So maybe when Jesus says, “Do what I do. Love like I love. Follow my example.” It’s not so much about the actual washing of feet.  It’s about giving the grace behind it.  Jesus takes on the willingness to deal with our dirt so that we will follow his example and deal with the dirt of others.  He gives us grace, not for our sake, but so that we’ll give it to others.

The more I think I understand this day, the more I realize I have so much to learn.

"He Looks So Normal"

A few weeks ago, I shared a link on my various social network sites to an article written by Russell Brand on the topic of addiction (if we aren’t connected on the ‘book, the ‘+, or the T’verse you can find the article here).  I shared the article because it struck a chord with me.

What struck me most about this article was the raw honesty that can only come from someone who has personally been in the throes of addiction.  If you have never suffered from addiction or seen someone you love suffer in their addiction consider yourself blessed, and also know that you can never “know” or “understand” how hard it is to break free from the substance of choice which has you ensnared.

I recently preached a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, a version of which is also part of this blog, (below, above, or somewhere else in the ‘verse) in which I said that I know all too well the guilt, shame, and embarrassment of being in the far country.  What I rarely talk about is the allure of the far country for those of us who have been addicted to any variety of substances.  It may seem strange (or, to use Brand’s term, “irrational”) to talk about allure, but the voice of some substances is incredibly sweet, even though you know that beneath that siren song is something that is inherently evil. And I don’t use that particular word lightly.

I don’t even know how to adequately put words to the visceral response I had to this particular article, because I have been there.  And I think I feel a need to say something after all these years because there is still a stigma: socially we continue to have no problems calling addiction a choice instead of a disease, and as a result people (our friends and our family) are not reaching out because they are afraid of the shame that comes with admitting they need help.

You may not like Russell Brand at all or you may never have heard of him before reading this, but he says a few things that anyone who is addicted needs to hear. And more than just speaking to addicts, he speaks to those who are not, but may know those who are.

1. Brand says: “Don't pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn't easy: it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.” 

One day at a time.  One dose, one drink, one fix at a time.  The concept is simple but it isn’t easy, and if you haven’t been there, please--please--don’t judge those who stumble.  You have no idea how hard it is to get from day one to day two; or from skipping the first drink, dose, or fix to skipping the second and the third.  Give them grace. And just to clarify, grace is not enabling; grace only helps them know they are worth giving it one more chance.  If you know someone who is struggling, remind them that they are worth giving it one more chance.  Offer encouragement and support because they will need it.

   2. Brand says: “Even as I spin this beautifully dreaded web, I am reaching for my phone. I call someone: not a doctor or a sage, not a mystic or a physician, just a bloke like me, another alcoholic, who I know knows how I feel. The phone rings and I half hope he'll just let it ring out. It's 4am in London.”  

As I read this part of his article, I remembered my own confessional phone call, ironically, it was also to London.  It wasn’t another bloke like me, but it was to someone who was my lifeline to reality.  My best friend.  And this friend loved me in all of my messiness and asked me about my plan to get clean.  

That was perhaps the most important phone call anyone could have answered.  My friend was the “Father” on the road meeting the prodigal with a robe, sandals, and an embrace.  My friend is the one who made me realize that I was worth so much more than the whispering evil substance in my head would have be believe. 

This is one of the reasons I will always err on the side of grace over judgement.  I have been in the varied places of brokenness and what brought me to sanity was not judgement, it was unconditional love.

It’s been a long time since I danced to the sirens’ song; but from time to time I still hear them singing because we’re all just in various stages of recovery.  

These are the things you may not know about people you work with, people you pass on the street, people you share your life with.  Some days are easy; others not so much.

There’s a praise song I have been known to sing and play from time to time in worship; it says, “Everyone needs compassion, a love that’s never failing, let mercy fall on me.”  I have learned that Truth from experience, and I have that reality enforced every day that I hear the real struggles of men and women, wives and husbands, daughters and sons.  I see them in the stores on base, in the coffee shop out in town.  I see them where they work and we sweat together at morning PT.  We’re all broken in one form or another, and rather than look at them, or treat them in ways that reinforce guilt and shame, I smile, I wave, I offer them love.  In part because I know how much it sucks to be in the far country; in part because I know that I need the return smile as much as they need mine.

Comfortable in Alone-ness

Many many moons ago, my wife made me read a Shel Silverstein book called The Missing Piece Meets the Big O.  It's a book about the importance of recognizing your own wholeness when it comes to being in relationships with other people; a very deep topic for the guy responsible for Where the Sidewalk Ends and Light in the Attic.  

I am thinking about making this book required reading for anyone who wants pre-marital counseling, or even marriage counseling. (Heck, I think it should be read by anyone who needs counseling, period!) 

It's amazing how our language around being "in love" points out how much individual wholeness we lack as people.  "I feel complete," we say.  "You make me whole," we say. "I hate being alone," we say. (On that last one I often want to ask, "Then why would anyone else want to be around you?")

The best relationships we can ever have will stem from being around people we want to be with because of who they are, not because of what they do for us.  And this is especially true in terms of wholeness.  Because I am comfortable with who I am, because I don't need anyone to complete me, I can enjoy people for who they are.

I love spending days with my soul mate and life partner, and my heart hurts when we are forced to be away from each other; I cannot imagine life without her by my side.  But she is a complete person, and so am I.   We have both endured more than our fair share of life's hard knocks, but we are still whole people.  Our need for each other is rooted in our want for each other, not the other way around. (And, by the way, the difference between the two is profound.)

Of course deep and abiding love is what makes all of this stick to the bones.  We have to learn to love even when the infatuation goes away, but that's a topic for a different time.