Five years ago there was an article in the Boston Globe by Judy Foreman entitled, “Fighting isn’t how you deal with cancer.” She wrote the article for Senator Ted Kennedy on hearing the news about his brain tumor. “Everyone is going to say to you,” she wrote, “‘Fight, Ted, fight!’ You have to fight your cancer, but it’s the wrong image. The fighting image is so American. But it’s insidious, because it implies that if you fight, you can win. And if you don’t fight hard enough, you lose and are therefore a loser. And if you die from cancer it suggests you didn’t try hard enough and it’s your own fault. But in truth, cancer doesn’t care whether you fight or not.”

Judy Foreman goes on to say “We think that a fighting attitude will improve our overall survival rate, while pessimism will beget failure. But studies show that it doesn’t. So I would change the mantra from ‘Fight, Ted, fight’ to ‘Breathe Ted breathe.’ Sail your boat. Kiss your wife, hug your kids. Keep doing the work you love. Focus on what really matters in the living of your life. ‘Breath, Ted, breathe.’”

These words from Judy Foreman are words of wisdom. There are two types of wisdom in every society. The most common type of wisdom is conventional wisdom. This is the mainstream wisdom of our culture, what we take for granted like saying: “Fight, Ted, fight!” But there is a second kind of wisdom called countercultural wisdom. It offers us the invitation to see differently; to discover a way less traveled that can make all the difference to understanding what’s really best for us.

And it is this countercultural wisdom that Jesus tries to teach us when he says, “Therefore I tell you do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

In his book Meeting Jesus for the First Time, Marcus Borg says that if you really want to understand who Jesus was you must understand three primary things about his life. First, he was a person through whom the power of the Spirit flowed. He lived in the Spirit. He opened his heart to the Spirit. He breathed the Spirit in his breath. Second, says Borg, he is a teacher of alternative wisdom. He questions society’s conventional wisdom. He tries to get all of us to see differently because he knew that what our society takes for granted is often not good for us. He wanted us to take the road less traveled, and live in a way that led to life in all of its fullness. And third, he was a movement founder. As he healed people’s lives he drew people into a movement that sent forth ripples of hope for a better world. And that movement continues today.

Today we face a major world danger. It is the threat of extinction from global climate change and the huge outpouring of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere. Measuring the amount of carbon dioxide you emit from your homes and cars is countercultural wisdom; that same kind of alternative wisdom Jesus tried to teach about the need to simplify our life, and live simply so that others can simply live. The old Shaker hymn says it best: “‘tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free, ‘tis a gift to come down where you ought to be, and when we find ourselves in a place just right, t’will be in the valley of love and delight.”

We need this alternative wisdom of Jesus and the Shakers, and Judy Foreman for our lives today and seeing what matters.

Rev. Peter Ives, Theologian-in-Residence