Attitude of Being

 

It was about day two into a 14-day trip across the Quetico from north to south when I realized the mistake. Through a communication error with the Wilderness Canoe Base trail shack kitchen, I’d left about . of the food I’d requisitioned for my trip behind. I was 24 years old, and this was my third-year guiding. I should have known better. In my first year I’d forgotten TP and on one trip a camper had disastrously left behind one of the little white “dog bones” that hold the poles of a timberline tent together. But this was simply inexcusable. As I pawed through the food pack one more time at the site we’d chosen for lunch just before the portage out of Pickerel Lake, I started to feel panic rising and my attitude sink.

On a three-year trip from the Galilee in the north through Judea in the south, Jesus gathered his followers on a mountainside and preached what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount. If you read it from beginning to end today it might take 20 minutes, but in those minutes, Jesus explodes the conventional wisdom of his day, and ours, regarding what it means to be a citizen of what he called “the Kingdom of God” – a kingdom he says can be found “within you” and “among you.” In the first few lines he says things like “blessed are the poor,” “blessed are those who mourn,” and “blessed are those who hunger.” Some translations use “happy” rather than “blessed.” But it sure doesn’t seem like poverty is a state of blessedness, or that mourners are happy, and how could being hungry in the middle of the wilderness be either? My brother-in-law always keeps a snicker bar in his glove compartment to stave off the “hangry” as he calls it. What in the world is Jesus talking about?

These sayings have been referred to as the beatitudes, and, although this is somewhat etymologically tenuous, the word “beatitude” gives us a clue. What Jesus is saying is that in order to be citizens of the kingdom of God we have to reorient our attitudes! We have to come to recognize our innate desire to enrich ourselves with things that aren’t of God. It is when we realize that in fact, we are spiritually poor that the Holy Spirit can enrich us with his gifts. Poverty of spirit, then, is an “attitude of being” a citizen of the kingdom. Similarly, those who hunger after righteousness realize that only God in Christ can fill the spiritual emptiness inside. Those who mourn necessarily understand that what it means to be human is, in part, to suffer loss. It is only then that an attitude of empathy for one’s neighbor is possible, and we can confront our need for the eternal.

The beatitudes aren’t so much about worldly wealth as they are about spiritual treasures, although temporal goods can often cloud these realities. The danger is that the more stuff you can acquire, the more you may begin to think that more stuff is the answer. The more food you have, the more you may begin to think that more food is the answer. Jesus is preaching attitude adjustment…the sort that I have to recommit to frequently.

On that Quetico trip 30 years ago, the youth pastor that accompanied those eight young men from North Minneapolis helped me readjust my attitude and make what might have been a disaster into one of my most memorable trips. We had fishing poles, he pointed out, and the panfish were plentiful. We had lots of cooking oil and even some shortening we’d otherwise not use without the food that had been left behind. In addition, the blueberries and strawberries were ripe right about then. All we needed to do was reorient our attitudes about supper. We’d send out a fishing party and a berry picking detail every night, get creative with what we had, and make the best of it. The only alternative was to hunker down and bawl about it.

He was right. And so, though we went through a little more TP than I thought we would due to the effect of so many berries in our diet, we actually had plenty to eat, and my attitude of despair quickly turned into an attitude of thankfulness and wonder at God’s provision – perhaps just a little closer to what Jesus was preaching about on that hilltop in Galilee 2,000 years ago.

Daren Blanck is the Pastor of Zoar Church in Tofte, MN, a Lutheran Congregation in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Pastor Daren holds a BS in Environmental Science from Bemidji State, a MS in Education from UW-Superior, and recently completed his MA in Pastoral Theology from Kingswood University in New Brunswick. In addition he studied theatre in the UK and trained for ministry through the LCMC’s Beyond the River Academy. He’s also a part-time teacher in Silver Bay.