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Twinbrook Baptist Church Rockville, MD Ordinary Time August 26, 2007 Pastor: Kip Ingram Kip@TwinbrookBaptist.com |
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I have a space in my office for personal pictures of my family in different settings which I gaze at from time to time. I recently added a new one. It is a twin frame, with two pictures side by side. On the left is a picture of me and my father riding the Sky Lift in Gatlinburg, TN. A number of you have been to this resort town in the Smokey Mountains, and perhaps you have even ridden the Sky Lift which enables two people to ascend in a chairlift to the top of a mountain overlooking Gatlinburg and the surrounding area. As you get to the top, an automated camera will snap your picture, which you can purchase. My family went to Gatlinburg for several summer vacations when I was growing up, and I have a picture taken of me and my father when I was a senior in high school. This picture is on the left side of my twin frame. On the other side of the frame, there is a picture of me and my oldest daughter Callie. We went to Gatlinburg this summer on our way back from vacation. We could barely stand how commercial it had become, but we stayed long enough to ride the Sky Lift, and Callie and I rode it together. These twin pictures are special to me because they come full circle in my life. The eighteen year old sitting next to his father has become the father sitting next to his high school daughter. When I look at this twin frame, it becomes a focus of contentment for me, evoking feelings of joy and gratitude for the journey of my life, remembering and integrating the things that have happened to me between the two pictures. Looking and thinking helps me with being content Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians while he was in imprisoned, probably in Rome. He had lived a long time for those days and was getting up in years. His letter has the feel of a mature perspective in it-the wisdom of experience, gratitude for good gifts and concern for friends, well-honed insight into the deep purposes of God. In our passage today from the fourth chapter, Paul gives thanks to his Philippian friends for the gift of support they have sent to him, probably a gift of money or valued supplies. This gift has brought him joy, and he expresses it, but at the same time he wants them to know that his ultimate joy is not dependent gifts. He writes: ”I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Paul wants his partners in the faith to understand that he is content. He has learned this way of being in different kinds of circumstances, and he holds himself up as an inspiration and example for others. His words raise for us the issue of the place of contentment in a life of faith. Just what would it mean for us to be content, to know the experience of contentment, in our living? I don't think the way many people live these days is very conducive to contentment. The pace of life seems faster than it has ever been. Several months ago, I was riding an escalator between floors, when a gentleman came up quickly behind me, brushing past me and even bumping me a little as he shot past, bounding up the escalator two steps at a time. I could understand if he was in a hurry at a hospital or something like that, but this was a bookstore, and I'm pretty sure the letters weren't going anywhere. Did he really need to save a few seconds by running past people up the escalator? In my mind at least, he was a symbol of a society that moves ever more quickly. Added to this, life is also filled with more and more alternatives, elements of innumerable events and experiences and opinions, voices which seek to fill up our every moment. And so life feels more complicated, more problematic, more hurried, larger and less settled than in previous centuries. We are like the stereotypical shopper who is rushing along yet cannot carry everything, and keeps dropping items and trying to pick them up while still holding onto all the others. Ours does not feel like a content society. But what is contentment really? It may help if we start with what contentment is not. First of all, it is not being passive. Contentment is not necessarily retreating to a mountaintop in meditation or sleeping lazily in a porch swing. There is nothing wrong with either one of these things, but if they are just a passive, mindless escape from life, then they are not about being content. Second, contentment is not about being naive and turning away from the difficult things in life. The stereotype about contentment is that it overlooks or ignores the things in life that are not right, that it gives up on life in favor of an easy lifestyle. But this is not contentment as Paul sees it. In just a chapter earlier, Paul had written some moving words about forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward toward new possibilities for faith. So contentment for Paul is not some kind of passive retreat from life's challenges. Third, being content is not merely a gift to be received, it is also a task to be achieved. Paul writes: ”I have learned to be content . . . .” It was not something that dropped from heaven without any effort of his own. It was something that he worked on and brought to focus in his life. If it was a gift, it was a gift that came along with regular effort on his part. Being content involves two things, two interrelated movements of thought and feelingi. First, it comes as we savor life's good circumstances and experiences. No matter how difficult things may be, if we take the time to consider and focus, there are always things we can savor, good things God places in our lives and in our world, things we can cherish and find pleasure in, things we can feel deeply grateful for, things we can feel good about. We can savor them like we would the taste of a good meal which brings us both pleasure and nourishment. And savoring good things in our lives can put us in touch with the good God who has given them. It is one of the ways God can renew and strengthen us. Paul could write: ”I can do all things through the One who strengthens me,” because he could look in his life and experiences and find those things he could savor and draw upon, things he could cherish and give thanks to God for, and this brought him a source of strength to face his life. We did just this kind of thing last week when we watched and enjoyed the Habitat video, with its pictures that evoked our gratitude and helped us to savor the good moments of our mission effort. We do this kind of thing when we pause to notice and enjoy the pictures in hallway bulletin board, when we keep mementos around our homes, when we share stories or moments with others, when we take the time to savor a beautiful flower or an interesting bird, when we lose ourselves in an enjoyable song, when we read a good book, when we cherish a meaningful Bible verse or story. If you were putting together a book of contentment, of things you savor, what would you put in it? Savoring life's good experiences and circumstances is the first part or movement of contentment. The second related part is integrating events and experiences in our lives. When we are being content, we are not only savoring the good things, we are also opening ourselves up and coming to terms with the many different parts of our lives. We do it in such a way that we become okay with them. We find a place for them in our inner world. Being content enables us to be more receptive of the things that have happened to us, finding a way to integrate even our most challenging experiences. It doesn't mean that we are completely okay with them or that they don't remain challenges in some way. It just means that we begin to find a place for them, a space to integrate them and work them out. When we are being content, our sense of self becomes less hard and rigid, our thinking becomes less reactive. We find ourselves more open and flexible and spacious, our thinking becomes more inclusive and gentle as we take in our experiences, relate them to one another and to a larger sense of purpose and joy in life. This is why Paul could write: ”I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” In being content, Paul could integrate, come to terms with, whatever experiences come his way. Actually, this element of integration appears when you look at the origin of the word ”content.” In any dictionary, it will tell you that the word ”content” comes from the word ”contain.” To contain is to hold together, so a container has the capacity to include things and hold them in relation together. In this sense, being content is our capacity to bring and hold things together in our lives, not rigidly and tightly, but with the space to do it meaningfully. So the opposite of being content is not misery or unhappiness but being overwhelmed, feeling like we can't hold together or make a place for the many experiences in our lives. To go back to an earlier image, it's the emotional equivalent of the person in the grocery store, with an arm full of items too numerous he or she cannot carry them all, bending over trying to pick up the ones dropped, while dropping others in the process. Being content would be like slowing down, finding the space needed, and gently retrieving each and every item, finding the best place for it. Being content, far from being passive, is actually a creative act. I mentioned the work of Barbara Frederickson last week, who several years ago won the prestigious Templeton Prize for pioneering work in the field of positive emotions. She writes that contentment can actually create ”a new sense of self and a new world view.” When we savor the good and integrate our experiences, we are actually changing our lives by creating a kind of mindfulness which enables us to see the world and ourselves a little differently. In being content, we create a new way of looking at ourselves and others. We find positive strength and resources to move forward as people of faith. But it doesn't happen automatically. We've heard a lot about the lottery in the last few days. The total prize is now into the hundreds of millions, and news reports show people standing in line, dreaming of what their lives could be if they win the money. However, studies actually show that winners, even with all that money, after a certain period of time, return to their same basic level of happiness or unhappiness that they had before winningii. You see, external events, for the most part, don't determine our base level of happiness and contentment. Extremely rich celebrities can find themselves miserable and people of modest or low income can find themselves content. It comes from what we do with our inner world of attitudes and habits and feelings and purposes. The good news is that change is possible, we can lift our base line of happiness and contentment, if we are willing to do the work to create habits and disciplines which will nurture it. For example, Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches a popular class on happiness and positive psychology at Harvard, shares that everyday he takes time to write down 5 things in his life for which he is thankfuliii. Everyday. And he takes the time to let himself really feel it as he does so. It has become a discipline and a habit for him now. Well, this is one of many things we as people of faith can do to learn and build and nurture contentment into our lives. One thing about being content is that it enables us to move beyond seeing ourselves as victims. We are not dictated to or controlled or shaped completely by what happens around us. We are not passive victims moving through this world, wringing our hands at all the terrible things we see and encounter. We are good creations of God, with potential and possibilities which God can use to make our world better and to bring good purposes into our living. There was a certain kind of independence Paul knew from his surroundings. He knew how to have plenty and how to have little, yet to be content in the midst of things. May we also find ways to be content, to savor and integrate the things we experience, to nurture the resources which will enable us to live better, more faithful, lives. i. For this insight, I am indebted Barbara Frederickson, "What Good Are Positive Emotions?" Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, 1998, 300-319. ii. Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 68. iii. Carey Goldberg, "Harvard's Crowded Class to Happiness," Boston Globe, March 10, 2006 |
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