+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 18:5-16, 27b-30, Acts 11:19-30, Mark 1:29-45

And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
Mark 1:34-35

There’s a really beautiful scene in The Greatest Story Ever Told where Jesus walks to the end of a long, wooden dock to pray at the end, facing the water. The crowd following him is so great, pushing and shoving against each other that they can not get through the entrance to the dock. There is just a huge wall of hands reaching forward to touch him and he with his back turned and his prayer shall covering his head, seems oblivious to the maddening press behind him.

Out of all this reading including several signs of power, it is this that draws my attention because I’m an introvert.

In case you can’t tell I like to spend hours sitting at my computer writing. I retreat to the corner of a room in a large social gathering. Recently, at a party in Toronto, I used smoking a cigarette as an excuse to go sit on the balcony for a while. Some of the best pics of that party (that I took) are taken by a camera held inside the room through a small vent from the balcony. From outside the room I was reaching through a wall of house plants, like Arte Johnson on Laugh In. “Very innnnnteresting.”

I love parades, I love leading liturgy: deaconing at St Gregory’s Church, or singing in the choir in the Orthodox Cathedral or, God save me, directing the Choir at the Monastery, on Sunday when the regular director is on vacation. I can perform before a a huge group of people. I can entertain a business meeting with a presentation like no body’s business. I look forward to facilitating a discussion group at church this fall.

Certain, I love Deaconing. I love singing. I love making people laugh at a staff meeting. But then, suddenly, I end up on the end of the dock with my back turned: driving my scooter through a long, wooded and twisty roadway just to be quiet and take some down time. My boyfriend lives 770 miles away. It’s a 12 hour drive which in real time takes 18 hours. During which time of long silence I think nothing describes me so much as Mike Peter’s song, Breathe:

Silver rivers reflect the sun
On black highways I will be done
Mile on mile…of empty heat
I will wait for you…
I will not look back

Chasing shadows all night long
Indian nation… a tattooed arm
Manifest destiny drives my car
I will follow you….
I will not look back

I breathe the air
I watch the sun
Rise and fall
In twenty four hours
I breathe the air
I watch the sun
Rise and fall
In twenty-four hours
I breathe

After deaconing, or after choir directing and after the coffee hour or the pot luck I run home. When the liturgy is over, I need a nap. Last night I visited a very cool church, here in Asheville: The Circle of Mercy. After all the hugging of strangers during the passing of the peace and all the singing with out sheet music, there was an invitation to a pot luck… with strangers!!! Argh. I made my excuses and dashed. Maybe next time.

A huge part of me feels this is a failure: I’m certain that to be really human I’m supposed to dash out there and be loved by everyone. I’m certainly not showing the hospitality of Jesus if I hide in my room for hours a day. I’m a failure as a human being because I enjoy a job that lets me sit for hours all night while other people sleep: I get to read, write and chat (via instant message) with my boyfriend. But I don’t have to deal with many people at all save for the time from 6AM when the clients wake up until 8AM when I leave work. I’m even more certain that others feel me to be a failure because of this.

And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”
Mark 1:36-37

You know… I’ve had that practically yelled at me, sitting in a beach-front hotel room in Ft Lauderdale, FL. I’m on Spring Break with my fraternity and, at 3 in the morning, I’m not out drinking: I’m reading a book. Something is clearly wrong with me.

Until just now… because it dawns on me that on a standard MBTI, would Jesus show up as “Introverted” - prone to having his batteries “drained” in a large group and seeking solitary time to recharging. In fact, Jesus could talk about “feeling the power drawn out of him.”

So the question for me now is how do I find a way that is Eucharist - which by definition requires fellowship - how do I make Eucharist with introversion? No one is saved alone. Isolation - per se - is not the answer. Priests hiding in monasteries and saying mass along in silence seems to be exactly the reverse extreme and no more healthy.

What is the way forward?