A Clanging Cymbal
Hearing & Acting Through The Noise
Dear Friends,
It’s a peculiar joke in my house that no one is allowed to read 1 Corinthians 13 at my funeral. Like many popular bits of scripture and favorite hymns, the world has turned passages like this trite. And yet, I actually love this passage, and what I needed in order to love it was for it to be made new.
I almost certainly wrote about The Corner Room’s three movement suite “Love Never Ends” earlier in this newsletter, but my heart still swells when it begins to play. In part, this is because it starts at the beginning, not at “Love is patient…” but rather, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” And wow, are we so surrounded by such noise as that –
1 Corinthians 13 is our Epistle in the RCL this week, and it’s a passage I first encountered as a Sunday School student. I cut it out of my worksheet and hung it on the wall of my bedroom. Thinking back on that is a good reminder of just how accessible this passage is for children compared to so much else they encounter in the Bible. And that maybe it’s a passage that can cut through the noise.
How do we show love in a way that the world can feel and hear? Recently, in digging around my office, opening up files, I found materials for a previous curriculum, “Love First,” which explained a few things about the other contents of my office, such as the multiple copies of “Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch,” a book about a surprise gift sent to a lonely man by his neighbors. How many people do we hold this sort of tenderness towards, without acting on it? And how do we make people feel loved in ways they can really feel? In my experience children are uniquely good at doing this.
1 Corinthians 13 has, at times, felt like a clanging cymbal to my ears more than a call to action, but it shouldn’t be that way. And so maybe that is what we are all tasked with this week: making our love louder than the noise of the world.
What might your acts of love look like?
Some things that made me feel loved recently or felt like love happening around me:
I gave a talk for Province I on Neurodivergent Leadership in Sunday School spaces. The people in that space made me feel loved as they asked questions from my experience and helped me imagine what more could grow from that. You can access a recording of the talk here. (Password is PY9=YG7^)
Similarly, Kimberly Douglass sharing her weekly blog on Decolonizing Neurodivergence also felt like an act of love. As a white autistic person, I have a responsibility to be attuned to her experiences and her willingness to share her reflections on this topic is a gift.
Social media can certainly be a clanging cymbal much of the time, but a cultivated feed can be full of blessings. I love encountering Catechesis Books, Little Way Chapel, Black Liturgies, Robin Henderson-Espinoza, and Meredith Anne Miller among others in my feed.
Sometimes a text message at the right time – even if it’s just a cute picture of meme - feels like love that interrupts the noise. And, of course, it’s vital that we not be the noise. Considering how we fill the space is important.
It’s still funny to me, how mixed up my feelings are about 1 Corinthians 13, but I think it’s because sometimes it is used as noise in its own right. The world tries to force these words to be of it, rather than acting in keeping with this passage. I think that’s the heart of thing. It’s not surprising that the world can do that, and yet it still startles me.
May your household be full of acts of love and may they radiate, filling up those around you in the coming days.
Best,
A. Bird