Flash Mob

Perfect timing: A young woman’s question “How do I get Faith?” and an unexpected trove of old email-essays on the same day.

Recently, my brother Michael and sister, Colleen, turned over hundreds of emails written during my teaching trips to China. Turns out in April 2005 I wrote: 

“Had an interesting encounter with some of the senior Pakistani [students] on Monday. They heard about my MWF evening lecture series and attended. Monday night’s subject was “Talking With Patients About Death and Dying.” Telling the patient the truth is definitely NOT the Chinese way [at least in 2005 when I wrote this]. Chinese doctors only tell patients that they are getting well, never that they have a terminal condition. There is only one way Chinese doctors give such news: ‘You can eat whatever you want.’ Hey, I’m not kidding.

 “Essentially, I spoke about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of death and how we as professionals should deal with these issues. The audience had two reactions to the 100-minute presentation: ‘That is very good and very interesting. But if we do that, if we tell the patient that he has a terminal disease, the patient will die of shock.’ The majority of the audience – doctors, nurses, medical school faculty and students – believe that if you tell the patient he has a terminal condition the news will be so unsettling he will immediately have a fatal heart attack.

“When the lecture was over, ten senior Pakistani students came to speak with me – they wanted me to go to dinner with them, but I was emotionally exhausted (of all the ‘good  luck’ in scheduling I spoke about death and dying on my father’s birthday; so it was more emotional than I had expected). 

“One of the Pakistanis put it very succinctly: ‘They (the Chinese) have such a hard time because they do not believe. But we (the Muslim Pakistanis and the Christian teacher) are people of faith. So, we can speak about death and not be afraid.’

“WOW! I wanted t throw up my arms, shout ‘Touchdown!’ and begin high-fiving all around.”

How do I get Faith?

It’s not as though we can walk into the local grocery or auto parts store and pull the Faith of our choice off a shelf.

Instead, the hiding place of Faith is something like Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Garden, one of the world’s most diverse collections of plants, palms, orchids, trees and hundreds of tropical butterflies. From day to day, month to month and year to year the Garden is in constant change. Elements of the collection blossom at various times and in different temperatures; some annually, others year-round and still others only once a decade. 

So it is with the gift of Faith. It blooms not as we would have it, sometimes not even where we are expecting or looking for it, but in God’s time; it flowers among Ethiopian Coptics  and Israeli Jews; in Daoism and Sikhism and Buddhism; as Episcopalian and Catholic; among the Zulu of South Africa and Maasai of Tanzania and Andean and Amazonian Indigenous peoples.

The world’s Faiths are God’s garden, each expressing His desire for intimacy with His creation as distinctly as the Fairchild orchid collection. 

When my caller asked “How do I get Faith,” I could only answer honestly – “You can’t. But you can prepare for it, you can allow it to sprout and grow, you can nourish it.”

Wondrously, the gift – the seed - of Faith is always there. Planted deeply in the soul – in the essence – of each of us. To flourish, it requires Kindness, Goodness, Justice and the slow passage of time.

Whether one is born into a family or community of Faith or has a Paul-on-the Road-to- Damascus conversion experience, whether one observes the living Charity – love in action - of people of Faith in the midst of a pandemic or aftermath of a hurricane or simply joining others in a Habitat for Humanity construction project and elects to “be part” of that community or stumbles across the courage and intellects of Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Teilhard de Chardin or is emotionally moved by the writings of Jesuit Fathers John Martin and Gregory J. Boyle or Richard Rohr and C.S. Lewis, Faith is nourished by Kindness – by being kind - and quietly contemplating and celebrating the fruits of that kindness. 

Faith is nurtured by Goodness. If we are honest with ourselves and the world, we recognize Goodness – simply good men and good women – and, when we see good, when we are good, we understand “my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” (Luke 1:46)

Faith gains strength through the “living water” of doing Justice – to the poorest of the poor, the marginated and oppressed, the excluded and the other. When Justice is practiced and realized, the soul is changed and Faith finds its Spring.

With Kindness, Goodness and Justice, Faith will have its season. It cannot be rushed. The Garden is a reflection of the seasons of Faith. Some palm trees and succulent plants seem to “wait” years – even decades - before they bloom. They will not be rushed. 

Strangely, despite all of his travels and destinations, not one of the Gospels reports Jesus “hurrying” or “rushing.”  Running and hurrying enter the Gospels only on Easter – when the women “hurried” to share the Good News with the disciples of Jesus, when Peter and John ran to witness the empty tomb. 

Faith grows day unto day, night unto night, season after season leading to a sense of the extraordinary presence of the Everlasting God.

A life lived in rush is, in its end, a life empty of missed joys and never-experienced simple pleasures. 

If permitted, day unto day, night unto night, season after season leads to an extraordinary sense of the awe and the omnipresence of God. 

There is something magical, joyous, mystical, wondrous about a symphonic flash mob. (If you don’t understand “flash mob,” Google and enjoy.) As men and women hurry through a busy Japanese shopping center or popular Italian piazza or Spanish plaza, a lone musician begins the opening stanzas of a Beethoven symphony or Ravel’s Bolero or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody only to be joined slowly – oh, so slowly – and from around corners and out of shops, from seemingly nowhere yet everywhere by all the members of a full symphony orchestra and chorus. 

These are serendipitous moments to be celebrated, leaving a smile on the face and the flavor of joy in the heart. These are ephemeral moments, lost forever by those who hurry by. [For fun, check out the “Royal Air Force Flash Mob For the Queen’s 90th Birthday” on YouTube. Ya gotta luv the YouTube comment: “These guys stopped my base being mortored in Afghanistan. This is a serious fighting unit. As you can imagine, when someone saves your arse you build a lot of respect. Oh yeh, and they are good at drill.”

Flash mobs are a wonderful experience – if you go slowly, if you grace yourself with the extra minutes to enjoy them. Faith only grows and become Joy when you give it time.

“How do I get Faith?”

Be kind, live Kindness. Be good, live Goodness. Be just, live Justice. Go slow.

And God, who loves you with and without Faith… God in His goodness will do the rest.