The Kingdom of God is like scrambled eggs?

On January 5th my husband Donnel and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. This anniversary was particularly special, as we were celebrating it together with Donnel's family and friends in his hometown in the Philippines. I can still remember one premarital counseling session 17+ years ago in the library of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church where we explored boundaries and compared patterns of "distance" and "closeness" in our respective families of origin.  

In that session, I remember Donnel describing the difference between our respective cultures and families of origin like this:  "From my perspective, Sylvia's family, and Americans in general, are like hard boiled eggs.  On the other hand, my family, and Filipinos in general, are more like scrambled eggs.  I'm hoping that in this new family we're creating together, we can find a happy medium-- something like over-easy."  

It's not just families that can be like hard-boiled eggs in upper-middle class Anglo-American culture. In my experience, we tend to opt for fairly clearly defined boundaries around everything--our families, our houses, our money, our possessions, our churches, our communities, our lives.  And when those boundaries are dissolved or transgressed, it often makes us very nervous.  

I suspect this was one of the roots of the discomfort and conflict that surfaced in my former parish with the influx of unhoused people into the church.  The boundaries between "us and them", "rich and poor", "inside and outside", "clean and dirty" were transgressed.  And whenever our boundaries are transgressed, there can be a sense that our liberty is in peril and chaos and danger are close at hand.  The current "crisis" along the US/Mexico border is a case in point.  

I get it.  I could feel an uneasy sense rising within me as soon as we arrived in the Philippines.  It's hard to say what the feeling was, exactly.  Anxiety?  Judgement?  Perhaps the most charitable and accurate word to describe what I was experiencing is simply "disorientation."  

It seemed like practically every boundary that was familiar to my upper-middle class Anglo-American context had been dissolved.  In the Philippines, to my Western eyes at least, the boundaries were noticeably permeable and blurred between:

• Wealth and poverty: Geographic areas of wealth and areas of poverty are not so clearly delineated.  "Rich" and "poor", "nice" and "bad" neighborhoods are all mixed up together.  Mansions rise up in the midst of slums.  Shacks with no indoor plumbing are literally adjacent to "fancy-schmancy" resorts.  Professionals live next door to the pedicab drivers who drive them to work each day, and their poorer cousin lives downstairs to help with chores.  

• Indoors and Outdoors. Rural and Urban.  Human and Animal: In hot, humid weather, open doors and windows in homes, restaurants, churches, and shops facilitate the free flow between indoor and outdoor spaces, not only of fresh air, but also of noise and wildlife. Furthermore, "free range" was definitely the name of the game where animals were concerned. I encountered cows, goats, and water buffalo grazing along highways and city streets as well as in fields and rice paddies.  Dogs resting and roaming on the beach and through busy streets.  Roosters crowing day and night in backyards and beach resorts.  And swallows swooping back and forth in the nave throughout the Sunday church service. 

• Commercial and Residential Space:  All along the road, residential front porches became neighborhood barbershops and front rooms (yards, porches, closets and sheds) became "Sari-Sari" stores where you could buy a bottle of water, a bag of chips, or an envelope of instant coffee for a handful of pesos. 

• Public and Private Space:  ​For my profoundly introverted Anglo-American self, this was sometimes the hardest part.  Privacy and personal space just aren't things you can expect.  The upside? You can get an awesome massage or pedicure for 100-200 pesos (2-4 dollars) just about ANYWHERE--in the airport terminal, in the town square, in the city park.  

• Performance and Participation in Art, Music, and Culture: Apparently Filipinos love to sing and dance and create strange semi-religious art installations EVEN more than I do!  There were Karaoke tour buses everywhere--for when you get a hankering to sing in the middle of the day and can't wait until you get to the bar later in the evening.  When the blind men who were giving massages for 100 pesos in the airport terminal didn't have any clients, they picked up their guitars and led songs for waiting travelers (many of whom sang along!)  There were contests to build the most original Nativity Scene at schools and resorts; contests to create the most original parol (Christmas Star) at churches and bus stations; contests to create the most original Christmas Tree (in a climate where pine trees do not grow) in shopping malls and empty lots.  The boundaries between "performer" and "audience"  or "producer" and "consumer" of music, dance, and art were often indistinct. 

• Religious and Secular Space: There were religious shrines at airport gates, in gardens, and on street corners, chapels with simple iron bars instead of walls (so passersby could look in and saints could look out), chapel bells rising up from lines of laundry hanging out to dry, and pedicabs with brightly painted messages invoking saints and scriptures.

Did all this "mixing up" of people and practices and creatures make me uncomfortable?  Sure it did.  But as the days went by, I actually found myself relaxing into the "chaos" and coming to love it.  There was real beauty and holiness in the mixing. Somehow this messy, mixed-up world felt more lively and alive, more honest and real than the more sanitized, ordered and boundaried world in which I normally reside. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After all, when all is said and done, isn't this the whole POINT of the Gospel in which I claim to place my faith?  I mean, in the Incarnation of Jesus, God chooses to transgress and dissolve the boundary between Divinity and Humanity, between Heaven and Earth.  How messy and disorienting is that???  And we all know how kindly the religious and imperial authorities take to Jesus and his boundary-busting.  Ha ha ha. But, despite religious and imperial attempts to discipline the disorder of Jesus by nailing him to a Cross, Jesus goes on to transgress and dissolve the ultimate border--the boundary between death and life--in his Resurrection.  

As we move into this New Year, I wonder if we might take a page from the Divine Playbook and dare to mix things up a little bit?  Get a little messy?  Will you join me in cracking some eggs?  We don't necessarily have to scramble them.  We could just crack them open for now.  Maybe let some faith and some music spill out.  Maybe let some fresh air and strangers flow in.  Perhaps in the process we'll find ourselves living just a little bit more fully into the Kingdom of God.