Jubilee Year

To my friends who are not fascinated by theological stuff, hang on and keep reading.  We get to talking about my birthday soon enough.

In Leviticus 25, God lays out his rule for what people are supposed to do on the year of Jubilee:

No, MCU fans.  Not THAT Jubilee.

"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.  A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession."

It goes on for a while...

The full text on Jubilee provides some cool insight into legal rules of land ownership, some disturbing attitudes towards slavery, and some weird differences between urban and rural living.

But at its heart, Jubilee represents a reset button in life.  If, during the past 7x7 years, your family fell on hard times, then in the following year your land gets returned.  If you had to sell yourself into indentured servitude, then you get your freedom.  Your land is to lie fallow, and you live off of what grows as a volunteer. (Or, maybe not... there is a verse there I don't understand).

There is also a bit of disagreement about whether it is completed time or progressive time (we celebrate a child's first birthday after the first completed year, but his first year starts at birth), but either way, it is a chance to start over.  My vote is for the fiftieth year to start at the beginning of year 50.

My 50th birthday is today.  And I have been thinking about my jubilee year for months in preparation, trying to get an answer to a single question.

How do you celebrate a weird milestone?

C'mon!  Let us back!

My first thought, based on the text, was that maybe it was a call for me to give back everything I had purchased. Land particularly, was supposed to go back to its owner.  Unfortunately, the mortgage I signed won't let me turn it back over to the previous occupant (who doesn't want it) without substantial penalties. (And don't get me started on usury laws...)  The guy who bought my house in New Orleans will be more than a little put out if I show up and reclaim the house I sold to him.

I guess that we'll just leave the real estate just the way it is.

Then I decided that I needed to give up all of my slaves.  Not much of a celebration, since I don't actively own any.  I mean, I get my shoes from southeast Asia, but that is not the same thing.  At least, that is what I tell myself.

A year's worth of carrots from my garden

There definitely seems to be a sense in the chapter that part of the 50-year cycle is to separate your identity from your stuff.  By giving back the stuff you have accumulated, and starting over again, you are forced to rely on God for your livelihood. Even more so by letting your land lie fallow.

But my garden doesn't feed me.  In fact, other than the peppers and a very few herbs, I am not sure that there is a measurable difference in my garden between it being cultivated and lying fallow.

But what about freeing myself from the things that I have carried from house to apartment to home?  Not just the physical stuff, but the emotional stuff I carry with me everywhere.

So what does the year of Jubilee look like to me?  How can turning 50 make a difference in my life?

I have made up my mind.  And I am marking my jubilee with the sound of the shofar, played this morning at 0600 hours (my neighbors love me - it's fine).

Here are the things that I am giving back to their owners.

Loooong blast on the shofar this morning.

1.   Grudges.
It is time for me to let it go.  The woman who emailed my boss and everyone else to complain about the job I was doing.  The guy who confronted me while I was walking the dog.  The bad experience I had at a convenience store that has resulted in my avoiding that place for 5 years.  The military guy who snarled at me with no provocation.  The  pastor who failed to keep a confidence.

I am working on the act of letting go.  Forgiving.

We have an injunction from the New Testament that never made sense to me.  Jesus told us to forgive.  Not once, not seven times, but seventy times seven.  Seventy times seven, repeating the act of giving up on holding onto grudges.  Yeah, sure - I have heard dozens of sermons on it.  It is a beautiful metaphor.

Or is it?

The more I see of my own self, I am beginning to understand that grudges don't go away with a single forgiveness.  They linger, don't they?  I forgave that bastard yesterday, and he didn't stay forgiven, did he?  Looks like I am going to have to do it again today.  And again, tomorrow.

490 times.

While I am at it, maybe one of those bastards I am working on forgiving will be me.  Maybe I can practice that forgiveness on myself a little bit.  Maybe I can stop holding that grudge against that younger man who did something that I just can't forgive. Even when that younger man was yesterday's version of me.

And maybe, just maybe, forgiving myself for past sins will make those 490 times I work on forgiving others a little easier.

After working on forgiving, maybe for my Jubilee year, I can work on...

2.  Prejudices
I’m not talking about black and white.  Yes, I have more work to do there, and will be working on it all my life.  But many of my prejudices lay beyond the simple racial prejudices I knew about when I was growing up.

This past week we had some tribal interactions at work that we had to deal with.  In working through discussions, I have been amazed at how replete our language is with references to Indians as the enemy.

We need to circle the wagons. Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. Hold down the fort. They’re on the warpath.  We need a pow wow.  I am just low man on the totem pole.  He went off the reservation.

And, of course, a friend of mine at the regional archaeology conference was mistaken for another woman, who looks a lot like her. And when she was mistakenly given a present... that then had to be taken back.

Yeah, that term, too.

Our language has such frequent references that we don’t even notice when our conversations have words that underlie prejudices.  How can we not take time to try and figure out where our prejudices lie?

Where is it in my life that I pre-judge people before loving them?  Before even knowing them?

Homeless folk.  Drug user.  Prostitute.  Guy in a turban.  Woman in a headscarf.  Yarmulke, dishdash, ushnisha, urna, even accented English (are you REALLY from Jersey?).... so many ways in which I make snap judgement about my safety, my expectations, my knowledge of what THOSE people are like,

The story of the Good Samaritan tells this same story - of prejudice so innate that kind actions are completely unexpected.

Jews and Samaritans had the the worst enmity imaginable.  First Century Fox (The True News) news reporter Josephus wrote down about the unrest between the two groups.  Samaritans harass Jewish pilgrims traveling through Samaria between Galilee and Judea, Samaritans scatter human bones in the Jerusalem sanctuary, and Jews in turn burn down Samaritan villages....

We see the Samaritan through the rose-colored lenses of a lot of time.  But the story is as much about prejudice as it is about anything else.  "See?" the rabbi seems to say.  "You thought that nothing good could come from a Samaritan."

By changing my expectations in this my 50th year, I am opening myself to seeing miracles that I might have missed.... because they came from people I didn't expect to be miracle workers.

See, I think that what I am giving back to others is possibility.  By removing my pre-judging, I allow myself to be surprised and filled with wonder at how amazing people can be.  Yeah, some people are gonna be jerks.  But when I go into every interactions assured that they will be, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

3.  My regrets.

Very few of my regrets are the result of actions.  Even the stupid stuff I did, the wrong actions I took, the people I hurt, had its place in making me who I am today.  I own it, and for all of it, I am working on that forgiveness stuff.

But most of my regrets are about missed opportunities.

Weddings I did not attend.  Bruce, Jack, Roxana.  Guys, you are top of my list.  There were solid financial reasons not to go, but there is no amount of money that can get me the chance to do it again.

Family members that I do not know.  This one is tough.  I grew up in the bosom of a huge extended family, seeing them every single week at Sunday dinner.  And when I moved away, I found it harder to keep connected to the people that I love.  I have now family members that I know only through social media.  On the rare occasions when I travel to my home state, there is simply not enough time to see everyone.  A continual source of regret. 

Visiting friends.  I have regrets about people who have come to the area and I have been too busy to meet.  Windi, Suzanne, I look back at those missed opportunities with sadness.  Andrew, how is it possible?  And others that I miss when I travel (sorry, Suz!). 

But giving up the regrets is more than just forgiving myself for what is past.  It is making sure that I don't regret missed opportunities now.  That means that my job is important, but less so than the relationships I have.

Giving up my regrets means that I make time for the people I love.  That is ground that has lain fallow for far too long.  It is time to work that ground, add a bunch of mulch, and (yes, I said it) manure. 

That means I HAVE to make the time bullshit in the living room with you.  That I take time to play the banjo with John on the porch.  Weekly.  Come by and join.

"And ye shall return every man unto his family."  Y'all are my family.  No regerts.

I might even let you blow on the shofar.  Once the neighbors are awake, mind you.

Finally, 

Looking back at the list, it feels an awful lot like a list of New Year's resolutions.  This will be the year that I get in shape.  First a 5k, then a 10k, working up to a half marathon.  I will eat right, get sleep, organize my files and keep them organized.  I will call mom twice a day.  I will learn Mandarin and Italian, I will learn silversmithing and gemcutting.  My garden will teem with vegetables.

But that is not Jubilee.

Jubilee is not just self improvement.  My understanding of Jubilee is not that it is a way of transforming the self into a new, improved version 2.0 of yourself. 

Instead, Jubilee is a return to the things that are important.  Family.  The act of giving back of all lands means that you are restored to your ancestral place, with ties that bind you to family.  The ties that are important get reinforced, re-established and undergird me once more.  Relationships.  The severing of debts means that you get to remove grudges and prejudices, and just interact with people for who they are.  Not based on the past, not based on other experiences, but rather in direct fellowship and love. 

But maybe the most important thing is the fallow fields.  The act is one of re-turning.  By making everything a little less about the money and the job and the business and success, the Jubilee makes us re-focus on trust.  Having real faith that we are taken care of.  Especially when we turn our hearts to what is important. 

May God be with us all in my 50th year.  Sound the trumpet.

Caroline McCrorey

One hundred years ago today, Caroline Gertrude McCrorey was born.  My Grandmama was fifty years old when her first grandchild was born, but it seems like every picture I have seen of her had a baby on one knee. Every cousin, every aunt and uncle, everybody started out their picture-taking career being dangled on Grandmama's lap.

Grandmama (or Mæ-mæ, as some of my cousins inexplicably called her) held so many babies over the course of her life that somehow it seems as though it is how we all got our start. 

This morning, one of my beloved cousins posted on social media, "I know my grandmother prayed for us each day by name." 

She did.  I witnessed it on many occasions.

We joked about it, when, as we got older, we received those prayers for specific reasons.  She would pray special prayers for us as her kids or grandkids fell to the tempter's snare or found ourselves in situations or locations where she felt like she had to spend a little extra time on prayer for us.  (The Hallow-e'en where I dressed up as Morticia Gomez kept me on the special list for a couple of months...) But even when we were not in trouble, we were named each day.  Grandmother asked God every day to take care of us.

As I turn 50 myself, I am allowing myself the opportunity to look at the things that my relatives valued, and on this, the 100th anniversary of her birth, I want to write about the things that I learned from Caroline Gertrude McCrorey Lawton.

Number one:  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths." 

Grandmama knew me from the start, and she wrote that verse in the flyleaf of the Bible presented to me at my Baptism.  She knew that her oldest grandchild was prone to learning, to trust in his own knowledge, and to challenge, challenge, challenge.  After watching me for years, she presented me with that Bible, knowing that it was important for me to know and think about that verse from Proverbs.

Reminding me that I was not to lean on my own understanding.

The thing is, Grandmama was not just about platitudes.  She lived the truth in that verse, modeling the behavior called for in that passage.  Not just the trust part, either.  I tend to focus on the first part, where I trust in God.  The second part of the passage calls for us to acknowledge him.  For her, acknowledging was not a superficial thing, but a truth lived.  She literally thanked God all the time.  She asked for his mercy.  She acknowledged his dominion in her life.

All of which are things with which I struggle.

I write on this blog a lot, and very seldom do I mention the God that I worship.  Not so with Grandmama - and hers was not a proselytizing approach.  It was simply a calm, steel-in-your-soul faith with which she acknowledged His presence in her life.

She also drank deeply in the promise of the verse.  She trusted.  She leaned.  And she acknowledged.  But more than anything, she allowed her path to be directed by God.  At the end of every prayer for the sick, she asked for His will to be done. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths.

Number two: family, family, family.  Every Sunday after church, the entire Lawton clan piled into the house on Sumner Street.  The house is no longer there, but the memories of every nook and cranny are vividly etched into my mind.  Every guest was welcome, and there was always enough food for everyone.  I remember 35 being a normal number of participants around the weekly table, as my twelve uncles and aunts (yup - seven kids) started to have their own kids, bringing them - and friends - over for Sunday dinner.

So every Sunday, she would finish preparations for the meals for an army.  Jell-o fruit salad, homemade applesauce, Lawton-canned corn and green beans, macaroni and cheese, seasonal greens, whop biscuits and a meat.  (Am I missing anything?)  We would all gather around the table in the kitchen while the wood stove pumped out warmth in a solid 3-foot radius, and she would start us in singing the Doxology.  It was always a guess as to where it would be pitched (Alto today?  Nope.  Soprano). And her reedy, but surprisingly strong voice would kick it off.  And all of us - visitors and Lawtons alike - would join in with four-part harmony.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him all creatures here, below.
Praise him above, ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father.  Son.  And Holy Ghost.  Amen.

The Amen would always last a little too long, and around that laminate table we would always smile a little.  We were holding it out.... not wanting that last note to end.  Even with the promise of food, we loved that moment.  In it, we were joining with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  All of us family members, following the matriarch.

When you came to her house, you became hers, and she loved you.  Of course, she always loved her oldest grandchild best, but she loved everyone whose feet landed under her massive table.  The words of the doxology were, to Grandmama, your adoption papers.  And, most probably, landed you in her prayers, as well.

Number three: Numbers 32:23.  Her family members will not even need to be told, but for everyone else, the passage is a little lost proverb deeply embedded in the fourth book of the Bible.  We certainly heard it often enough: "Be sure your sin will find you out."

For Grandmama, it was a warning, but it was also tied to the other two tenets above: trust in the Lord and family.  Her family heeded her warning, and it was more than just a threat...

It was a statement.  A statement of belonging. 

By being kin - naturalized or adopted - you were expected to live up to standards.  You were receiving prayers.  And you needed to know that your actions reflected on her, on the family, and most importantly, on the one in whom she put her trust.

See, Grandmama's yard was the Sunday School yard.  Nothing there was tolerated that you wouldn't do in Sunday School.  You didn't use bad language, you didn't do bad things, and you didn't plot evil.  Not in Grandmama's house. 

By belonging to her, and to the Lord, you had standards.  And if you were covert in not living up to those standards, it was not going to be a secret for long.

Number four: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Part of the reason that Grandmama always had a child on her lap was that it was the best place for instruction.  I heard her singing lullabies to babies, holding wiggling toddlers, and loving on children all my life.  And with each one, she expressed love in the way that she knew how.  Those teaching have stayed with me to this day.

I trust.  I acknowledge.  I believe in family.  Yes, I know my sins will find me out. 

And now that I am old, I understand the importance of what she taught that wiggling little boy in her lap. 

Grandmama, I will not depart from it.