Inside Nancy's Noodle

God messing with us: the deeper story of our lives

2012-02-11T17:06:00.004-05:00

There is a lot more to us than the story that is told in high school yearbooks or on business resumes or in obituaries. It’s a story that’s veiled to the eyes of the world, but it is the deeper story of who we are. It’s our God story.

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about being woven into the fabric of God*. Each of us has a story that is like a thread. And our stories, our threads, come together with all the other stories of God’s people. They’re all woven together into the fabric of God’s story.

The thread of our deeper story has nothing to do with the places we’ve gone to school, or our employment history, or how many grandchildren we have. It's more than a list of our accomplishments or losses. It has nothing to do with the places we’ve lived or the amount of material wealth we’ve been able to accumulate. The deeper story of who we are is unfolding beneath that surface story. It may even be hidden from our own awareness. But if we’re paying attention, we know that this story is moving us forward through times of transformation, with God pulling us toward places we never dreamed of going.

It kind of works like this. We have this way of looking at our lives, a narrative that we imagine for ourselves. We know the way things work in our world and that’s what we expect. But then something happens that we don’t expect, something that challenges the way we look at our lives. And we have to adjust our story so that it’s big enough to contain that new experience. In the process, we grow. In big and small ways, we’re transformed. That's the way God messes with us.

We may be able to recognize the God moments in our lives when they happen, but at the time we’re not always sure about what they mean. That’s how it seems to work. We grow through experience, but it’s not just experience alone that leads to transformation. We need to find meaning from our experience. That happens when we give ourselves the time we need to process it.

In my lifetime I’ve had the opportunity to know many people who have had a close encounter with death and lived to talk about it. Whether surviving a near fatal car crash, or a serious heart attack, or some other narrow escape – they have been given another chance at life. And I always find it interesting what people do with an experience like that. There are those who are transformed by such an event. They use it to re-evaluate their lives and they consider what’s really most important for them as they go on with the new life they’ve been given. They’re much more aware of their relationship with God. The deeper story of their life that they once kept in the background is suddenly lived in the foreground.

But that doesn’t happen for everyone. Some people are given a second chance at life after a brush with death and they are unphased by it. Nothing changes for them. They continue their lives as if nothing has happened: satisfied with broken relationships, still caught in destructive behaviors, with no awareness of the deeper meaning of their lives beyond the normal day-to-day stuff that occupies their time. And when I’m with people like that, who miss the opportunity for transformation, I think, what a waste. They went through all that for nothing!

Of course, the same may be said for any of us, whether we’ve had a brush with death or not. We have experiences in our lives that can lead to transformation, but if we don’t take the time to search for the meaning in those experiences they’ve been wasted on us.

Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I don’t know if it’s not worth living, but the unexamined life could easily become pointless, as the deeper stories of our lives are lost on us when we aren’t paying attention.

Are you aware of the deeper story of your life? Can you look beyond the story the world has created for you and consider the story God is creating for you? How has God been messing with your life? Where does your story meet God’s story? What is your thread that is being woven into the fabric of God?

* see "Hanging on by a Thread"

Meeting the boyfriend

2012-02-09T15:57:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow I’m going to meet my daughter’s new boyfriend for the first time. He’s not a “new” boyfriend, really. They’ve been together for a year, but I’ve not laid eyes on the man, so he’s new to me. Gretchen says he’s excited about meeting me. Hmmm. Does that mean he’s looking forward to the pleasure of my company, or is he making a meal of his fingernails? I would expect that he’s a bit nervous about it. And it might surprise him to know that I am, too. After all, this person is a very important part of my daughter’s life, so I want him to become a part of my life, too.

Mind you, this isn’t an audition or an interview. I won’t be giving him a thumbs up or down for the position of Gretchen’s BF. That was Gretchen’s call. And yet, the whole time we’re together, there will be an elephant in the room. It’s called, meeting-the-parent’s-approval. Try as we might to downplay it, we all know it’s there. And, truth be told, it's always there with the parents of our significant others. Whether it’s the first day you meet them, or decades have passed, parents are ever vigilant, looking out for their babies. It’s in our parental DNA. There’s no fighting it, so you might as well accept it. In other words, try not to piss us off. If you do, there will be hell to pay.

The problem, of course, is that you don’t know what might be the parent’s hot button until after you’ve pushed it. Although I doubt that my daughter’s BF reads my blog, he may after today, because I’m going to tell him what it is for me.

Yo! I’m talkin’ to you, BF of my one and only daughter! This is inside information that I have never shared with any of Gretchen’s past BFs, so take it to heart.

There are many things you could do to irritate me, such as: quote Bible verses at me, pour Texas Pete all over everything you eat, badmouth my dog, fondle Gretchen in my presence, or beat me at Scrabble... to name a few. But none of those are deal-breakers. And trust me, I won’t be impressed if you agree with everything I say, are overly helpful around the house, and treat me like the Queen Mother. Don’t try to schmooze me because I am unschmoozeable. (Something I learned as a kid from June Cleaver, who was way too smart to be schmoozed by Eddie Haskell.)

What matters the most to this mama is nothing that you can control. It’s the way my daughter is when she is with you. Now, I’m not just talking about the way she may defer to you or laugh at your jokes. It’s more than that, and it takes more than a few days to see how it plays out. Unlike some mothers, I’m not overly concerned about Gretchen finding someone who will protect her. She’s already had her heart broken deeply in her life and proven that she can survive. Nor am I looking for a good provider. No daughter of mine needs a man to provide for her. I’m not even one of those parents who says, “I just want you to be with someone who makes you happy”, because I don’t think anyone else is responsible for my daughter’s happiness. (Nor do I think that being happy is the goal for our lives.)

What I want the most for my daughter (and anyone I love, for that matter) is that she find wholeness in her life and become the person God created her to be. She will always be growing and becoming Gretchen; it’s a life-long journey. And, along the way, God will send people to accompany her. I was blessed to be the first, but I know I won’t be the last.

More than anything else, I hope that any person who becomes a significant part of Gretchen’s life will help her grow to become her true self. I don’t expect you to do it for her; I expect you to be working toward your own place of wholeness. What I hope is that you won’t stand in her way, smother or stifle her. Instead, cheer her on. Listen to her. Hold her when she cries. When necessary, tell her the hard truth she may not want to hear. Remind her that she is loved for no other reason than because she is Gretchen. Celebrate the person she is becoming. And love yourself enough to expect the same from her.

That’s what I want for my daughter and the man she loves. I don’t think it’s expecting too much, and yet I know it’s not easy to find. No, I won’t be able to see it in one weekend. But I pray it’s something I’ll have the joy of seeing in my lifetime.

Miffed about the Media and the Marriage Amendment

2012-02-02T18:03:00.009-05:00

I’m miffed at the local media over the way they have framed the upcoming North Carolina vote on Amendment 1. And I’m getting miffeder and miffeder with each day that passes. So much so that, for the first time in my life, I actually wrote a letter to the editor of The Charlotte Observer. Here’s my beef.

Every time they print a news article about Amendment 1, it is called the “Gay Marriage Ban” or the “Amendment to Prohibit Same-gender Marriage.” By continuing to label the amendment as such, the Observer and other so-called news sources are distorting the truth and unduly influencing the way the public views the amendment. The implication is that in May we will be voting on whether or not to approve same-gender marriages. Don’t believe that. It’s a big fat lie.

If you’re interested in learning the facts, and not just the media’s spin on things, here’s how Amendment 1 is worded: "Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State." This amendment affects all couples who are not married. Yes, that includes same-gender couples who might like to marry, but are already prohibited to do so by North Carolina law (and don’t need a constitutional amendment to tell them what they already know). But it also affects opposite-gender couples who are unmarried. Although the state may allow them to be married, some choose not to marry for a variety of reasons.

I’ve known older, retired couples who can’t marry because one of them would lose a pension and they couldn’t afford to live on the reduction in income. I’ve also known heterosexual couples who have refused to marry, out of principle, until all couples are allowed to marry. But whatever their reasons, the fact is, they also will be affected by this amendment.

Amendment 1 will affect hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians: both gay and straight couples, both adults and children. It threatens child custody laws, domestic violence laws, domestic partner benefits, and end-of-life directives. The list could go on and on. It says that the only couples who are protected under the law are men and women who are married.

I would call this the “Discrimination Amendment”, but you won’t see that in any of the headlines of the Charlotte Observer. If I sound angry, I am. I’m miffed at the media for distorting the truth, although I realize they didn’t create it.

I can’t understand how those who represent us in Raleigh allowed this to happen. The constitution isn’t intended to prescribe discrimination against a certain group of people, is it? And now they think it will be helpful to take it to the masses, to put it to a vote? As if we weren’t already polarized enough. It grieves me to the core.

My point is, this is not just about gay marriage. Don't think that when you vote on Amendment 1 you're going to be voting for or against same-gender marriages in North Carolina. In fact, I think it’s very possible to be against gay marriage and oppose this amendment for a variety of reasons: 1)We already have a law that prohibits same gender couples to marry. 2) It is inappropriate as a constitutional amendment. 3) It is allowing discrimination to become the law of the land. 4) It has far-reaching legal implications for ALL domestic partnerships other than those within a marriage. 5) It is wrong for a certain religious group to impose their beliefs on others by making them law. 6) It reflects badly on our state, and that’s bad for business.

I can’t bring myself to think of how the passage of this amendment could affect our state and so many of the families I love. I know that North Carolina is the only Southern state that doesn’t already have such an amendment. (And I’ve been proud of that!) I also know that every time a similar amendment in other states has come before the people for a vote, invariably it has passed. (Although all these amendments are worded differently so people aren’t always voting on the same thing.) And so, it scares me.

If you’ve read this far, you know that I’m an emotional mess over this: I’m angry, I’m grief-stricken, I’m scared. But I also am hopeful. I know that if the people of North Carolina will get off their duffs and vote, and if they are given the facts, all will be well. And that, of course, is why I’m so concerned that they be given the facts and not biased “news” in the media.

I’m praying that we’ll use our heads when we vote on this amendment in North Carolina. And I’m praying that we’ll be the ones who turn the tide on the introduction of fear-based laws that discriminate against those who are not-like-us and threaten the freedom we cherish so much as Americans.

Enough foolishness

2012-01-29T20:18:00.004-05:00

When you’re young and idealistic, you believe anything is possible. But the longer you stick around on this planet, the more disappointments you experience. Your parents disappoint you. The church disappoints you. The government disappoints you. And your childish idealism seems rather foolish.

As I was coming of age, one of our presidents was shot and killed. The next one dropped bombs on North Viet Nam so he could prove to his opponents that he was tough and win an election. And then there was Nixon. Uff da!

I learned not to expect much of politicians. In fact, I became very cynical about life in general. It’s safer to live that way; the cynic is never disappointed. But the thing is, deep down inside me there remained this starry-eyed young woman who still wanted to believe things could change. Like many of my generation, I was a closeted idealist.

Have you noticed how every once in a while something happens in our world that seems to shift everything we thought to be true? Just when we think things will never change, they do. Remember when President Reagan demanded that the Berlin Wall come down and we all said, “Yeah right. Like that’s going to happen”? And then, it seems like overnight, the wall did fall, along with communism in Western Europe. There have been other seismic shifts like that in the world that I’ve seen in my lifetime, too. Like the Arab Spring going on right now. I watch the events unfolding in the Middle East in disbelief; I never imagined any of it was within the realm of possibility.

For a long time, the people in my congregation struggled with the fact that our denomination refused to accept gay and lesbian people as full participants in the life of the church. There were times when we were so discouraged that we wanted to give up the fight. I was one who believed change was a long time coming and it probably wouldn’t happen until I was an old biddy using a walker to get around. And yet, after years of struggle, the ELCA actually changed its mind. Three years later, I’m still amazed. And I’m so glad that I was wrong in my cynical assessment of the situation. Things can change.

Of course, as God’s people, that’s something we already know. The Book tells us: “With God all things are possible.” Our God is not a status-quo God, but a God of transformation.

Sometimes it takes a radical event in the world around us to remind us that it’s possible for things to change. When that happens, our hope is renewed. We’re freed of the cynicism that enslaves us. And we’re reminded that we can dare to be the people God calls us to be.

There is a Franciscan benediction that expresses this call to us so well:

God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Harmless old ladies?

2012-01-28T16:32:00.003-05:00

As a newcomer to my neighborhood, I’m gradually becoming acquainted with my neighbors. They are a diverse group: all colors, languages, and ages. I’ve noticed a lot more senior citizens around me than anyplace else I’ve lived in Charlotte*, but this is also the oldest neighborhood I’ve lived in, ever. My house was the first on the street and it was built before the Big War.

On this beautiful North Carolina day, that feels more like May than the end of January, the dog took me for a short stroll up and down the street. I saw an older woman heading our way up the sidewalk. She appeared to be in her late 70s, with classic old-lady perm and orange-colored hair. Oh good, I thought, an opportunity to meet another one of my neighbors. She sweetly smiled at me and we started up a conversation.

“I see you have your traveling companion with you,” she said, referring to my little pug, Pooky.

“Yeah, she’s my protection in case anyone attacks me,” I told her. This was meant as a joke, and just to be sure she got it, I grinned at her.

She grinned back and held up a little box in her hand. “That’s why I carry mace!”

Yikes! I didn’t know what to say. Mace? Is somebody going to attack her at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon? I suppose if it makes her feel safer, it serves a purpose. But I can’t get her out of my mind. What kind of a neighborhood have I moved into? Perhaps it's more dangerous than I first thought. You’d better believe that from now on I’m sure as hell going to be very careful around old ladies who smile at me. Oh, yeah.

* This is my fourth Charlotte home.

Imagine that

2012-01-23T19:24:00.003-05:00

I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk
By your side

I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When your face
Is before me
I can only imagine

I can only imagine

[Chorus:]
Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in honour of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine

I can only imagine

I can only imagine
When that day comes
When I find myself
Standing in the Son

I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever
Forever worship You
I can only imagine
I can only imagine

Jesus dares us to imagine. Yet his message couldn’t be further from the one of this popular song by MercyMe. Jesus doesn’t challenge us to imagine what it’s going to be like when we finally get to heaven. He challenges us to imagine what it’s going to be like when we live in a different world.

It makes me think of the lyrics to another song. But this isn't one they play on Christian radio stations.

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.

I suspect that Jesus would have loved John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”, because it stirs us to imagine a whole new way of being in the world. Jesus’ understanding of his mission, and his followers’ mission, is to imagine a new world order. The Christian gospel and the community it creates are utterly different from the business as usual that we encounter in the world around us.

Think about the way that power is experienced in the world and the way it works in Jesus’ life and teachings. Whereas, in the world we usually define power as lording it over someone, Jesus says that true power comes in serving others. This sounds simple enough. But it is a radically different way of being in the world...
• A world where we compete in sporting events to prove that we’re number one
• A world where people make it their life’s work to step over other people while they climb the corporate ladder
• A world where we hoard all the goods we can for ourselves
• A world where we use others to get what we want from them
• A world where the nation with the most weapons and the strongest army assumes what they have to say has more clout

“It shall not be so among you,” Jesus says. “But whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Imagine a world like that? That’s what Jesus wants us to do. He wants us to imagine a new way of being, with a new perception of what power is.

Daring to imagine this is ultimately what gets Jesus killed. His resurrection shows us that things can be different.

The story the world lives by, the story of lording power over another, doesn’t have to be our story. There’s another story for us, and Jesus calls us to be a part of that story.

Jesus invites us first to imagine that story for ourselves. Maybe that doesn’t sound all the impressive, just getting people to imagine a new way of being. But, what could be more powerful than to actually change another person’s way of seeing the world? That’s what Jesus did. He taught his followers to imagine what had been unimaginable. And then, he called them to live into it. Yes, still in this world, but without living by the script of the world’s story. Living by the Jesus story.

That’s what it means to be a part of the Kingdom of God. It’s not just someplace where we go someday after we die. But it’s a place where we live right here, right now, because it’s a way of life.

As Jesus' followers, kingdom living means something else for us, as well. It means working toward a realization of God’s kingdom on this earth: a kingdom where we bend our knees, not to bow to the powers of this world, but to serve one another in love. We ask for the courage to do that every time we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Imagine that.

Hanging on by a thread

2012-01-21T21:00:00.005-05:00

Are you stressed out? A lot of us are these days. You may have a schedule so jam-packed that you don’t know how you’re going to accomplish everything you need to do. Perhaps your job requires so much of you that you don’t know if you can keep going. You may be among those who have lost their job and you have applied for a new one every place you you can think of, yet with no luck. You may be scrambling to keep your house or feed your family. Maybe you're in school and totally stressed out by all that’s expected of you by your teachers and your parents. Or you may be retired and worried sick about meeting rising costs on a fixed income.

There is no shortage of stuff to be stressed about. And we may think that in the entire history of the world, there has never been a more stressful time to be alive than right now. But the truth is, there has never been a time when people have not been stressed out. Life is hard. As the ancient Greek philosopher Seneca once said, “Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.”

In his gospel, Mark portrays Jesus as a man who had every reason to be stressed out. He’s doing this and then he’s doing that, rushing from one thing to another. He shows up in Galilee and calls the first disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” It didn’t take any convincing. Immediately, they follow him, and they’re off. They go to Capernaum where Jesus enters the synagogue and teaches. In the midst of his teaching, a guy with an unclean spirit calls out to him. Jesus casts the unclean spirit out of him. And that’s where his anonymity ends. Word of this miracle spreads quickly and Jesus becomes a rock star. He leaves the synagogue, then goes to Simon and Andrew’s home. As soon as he gets there, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law. The next thing you know, Jesus goes to the door of the house and sees the entire city waiting for him. Everyone wants a piece of him. He heals the sick and casts out demons. And, mind you, all this occurs during his first day on the job as a traveling rabbi. It all happens in a single day.

After he races through this very hectic, jam-packed day of ministry, Jesus has another day ahead of him that is equally demanding. How does he keep up with the frenetic pace of his life?

Mark includes a remarkable detail in the first chapter of his gospel account. It’s a scene that is repeated throughout Jesus’ ministry. In the midst of all the teaching and healing and casting out demons, we get a simple verse that tells us how Jesus dealt with all this stress in his life. Mark, who gives us an energizer bunny approach to Jesus’ ministry, going from one activity to another in rapid succession, tells us that “in the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

For most of us, if we have a lot to do in a day, the expendable part of our schedule becomes prayer, doesn’t it? In fact, we often use that as an excuse. "I’ve got too much to do. I don’t have time to pray."

I remember being so inspired when I heard that Martin Luther once said, “I have twice as much to do today and therefore I need to pray twice as long.” It inspired me… until I started feeling guilty about it.

Now, please know that I’m not bringing this up to make us all feel guilty if we don’t pray as often as we should. This is not about being good little boys and girls and saying our prayers every day. It’s not about putting in our time with God like we’re fulfilling an obligation. It’s about something much deeper than that.

St. Augustine identified our very human longing when he said that our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God. Could it be that our stressed-out lives are a symptom of a deeper condition that afflicts us: restless heart syndrome? Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God.

There’s a passage from Isaiah that seems to speak to this. The prophet is talking to Israel when they have hit bottom and can see no reason to hope for a better future. And here’s what he tells them:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall rise up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

All this will happen for those who wait on the Lord. So what does that mean, to wait on the Lord?

In the Hebrew language in which this passage was originally written, there are dozens of words for wait. For example, there’s waiting like you’re expecting something to happen, but that’s not the word that’s used here. There’s waiting silently, but that’s not the word that’s used here. There’s waiting as standing still, but that's not the word that’s used here. This is a very special kind of waiting that Isaiah’s talking about. It’s the word Qavah and it means to be gathered into God like strands of thread woven together to become a fabric. It’s being woven together into God. Those who are woven into the fabric of God shall new their strength.

And isn’t that why Jesus got up early in the morning, before the sun had risen, and he went to a place all by himself and prayed? In the midst of all his doing, doing, doing, he knew that he needed to be. He needed to be with God. To be woven into God. That’s what happens when, in the midst of our doing, doing, doing, we take time to be with God. We are woven into the fabric of God.

Most of us go through life hanging on by a thread. But as God’s people we don’t have to go through life frantically grasping at something that all too easily slips through our fingers. We can be woven into God instead. Why would we want to go through life hanging on by a thread when we can be woven into the fabric of God?

Torn apart places

2012-01-07T10:46:00.000-05:00

Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized. Mark’s gospel tells us that as he was coming up out of the water “he saw the heavens torn apart and the spirit descended on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

The heavens are torn apart when Jesus comes up out of the water. Mark was very intentional about using this word. It’s the word that Isaiah used when he was living in exile and cried out, asking God to “tear open the heavens and come down.” Mark chooses this same powerful word to describe the tearing open of the heavens at Jesus’ baptism. And he uses it only one other time in his gospel. We read it again at the very end of Jesus’ life when the curtain to the temple is torn apart, from top to bottom.

It’s a word that packs a wallop. The torn apart place is the place with the jagged edges that can never be closed again. And it’s the place where God comes through.

I don’t know about you, but when I experience a torn place in my life, my natural inclination is to do everything I can to repair the tear. I want to fix it so that everything goes back to the way it was before. But there are some problems with that. For starters, it doesn’t work. Once the place has been torn, it will never be the same again no matter how hard I try to make it not so. And then, while I’m working so hard to fix the tear, I miss the voice of God speaking to me through the torn place.

Many of you know that over the past year I’ve been struggling with some kind of illness that seems to defy diagnosis. It’s one of those things that isn’t going to kill me, but it’s really changed the way I live my life. Mostly I have heaviness and burning pain in my arms and legs. Some days are better than others, but it’s greatly affected my energy and stamina. One of the things I love to do is contradance, which is a high energy activity. And I can’t dance every dance for two or three hours the way I did a year and a half ago. But then, I can’t really do a whole lot the way I did a year and a half ago.

Now when this happened, I spent a lot of time going from specialist to specialist trying to find a cause. I figured that if I could find out what was causing this, then I could fix it and return to my normal life as if it had never happened. That's the way illness has always worked in my life in the past. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that that isn’t going to happen this time. I can do some things to make this condition more manageable, but it’s not going to go away. My life has been torn apart and it isn’t going to go back to the way it was.

Our lives can be torn apart in so many ways. Through the death of someone you thought would always be there. Through the loss of a job that you were counting on to see you through until retirement. Through a broken relationship that you thought would last the rest of your life. All of a sudden, your life is torn apart. It will never be the same again. It’s a shock to the system and not something we welcome. But it seems to happen to all of us sooner or later, in big or small ways. There are torn places in our lives.

And here’s the thing. Those torn places in our lives give God access to us. When our lives are torn apart, God speaks to us, reminding us of who and whose we are. I suspect that God is reminding us of that all along, but when we’re in a torn place, we’re ready to hear it: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”

Water, water, everywhere...

2012-01-06T18:31:00.002-05:00

One of the cool things about baptism is that we can be reminded of it every time we see water. Early last week I was walking outside after one of those good rains we had, and I saw big, plump drops of water hanging down from the naked branches on the trees. They glistened in the sun and looked like jewels hanging there. So I stopped to examine one of those drops up close. Have you ever done that? After a rain, have you ever gotten really close to a drop of water hanging from a tree branch? Do you know what you see when you do that? You see the world reflected in the water. But everything is upside down. And if that’s not an image for baptism, I don’t know what is.

In the waters of baptism, God invites us to live into an alternative reality where nothing is as it seems. The ways of the world around us are turned upside down.
• A reality that’s not about competition but compassion.
• A reality where people don’t get what they deserve, but grace is given freely
• A reality where we don’t get even with our enemies, but we love and forgive them
• A reality where power isn’t shown in brute strength, but in servanthood
• A reality that’s not about acquiring a bunch of stuff, but where we gain everything by giving ourselves away
• A reality where seeking a relationship with God is of more value than anything else

We call that alternative reality the Kingdom of God. It’s not just the place Jesus inhabited while he was walking around on this earth. It’s also the place his followers inhabit. From the day of our baptisms on, we’re living with one foot on planet Earth and one foot in the Kingdom of God. But the reality of the earth is transient; it will pass one day. The reality where God rules will never end; we’ll be living there forever.

The challenge for us as God’s children is to live in both of those realities at the same time. It’s easier in many respects to live in one kingdom or the other. And since, as finite beings, we aren’t yet able to live completely in God’s kingdom, it’s tempting to live with both feet in the world around us and to forget about God’s reality. And yet, we’re called to live as if God’s kingdom has already come even while we wait for it to be fulfilled. In fact, God’s kingdom is present whenever and wherever we live according the words we so often pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on, on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom is present whenever God’s will is done.

I like Luther’s explanation to the Lord’s Prayer where he says that God’s will is going to be done with or without our prayers. But we pray that it might be done through us. That’s when we’re living into our baptisms. And it’s when God’s kingdom becomes a reality for us.

This week at worship we will be celebrating the baptism of Jesus. It’s a good time to reflect on your own baptism and what difference it’s made in your life. Whenever you see, hear, taste, smell, or feel water, may it remind you that you are among the walking wet. And, as you walk, pay attention to where your feet are.

Good at funerals

2012-01-05T19:55:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid and went to funerals, I always hung back from the center of activity and did all I could to restrain myself from bolting for the door. But I remember that my mom was good at funerals. She charged right in and she always knew just what to do. One of my most vivid memories of Mom was watching her literally carry my aunt through my uncle’s funeral. Without my mom holding her up, I think my Aunt Margaret would have collapsed onto the ground.

She was always like that. When no one else knew quite what to do to help a woman who had lost her husband, my mom knew. I always assumed that she knew because she had been there. Now that I’m older, I think there was more to it than that. Walking through the illness and death of her husband, my father, taught her something about resurrection living.

If you’ve ever lost someone close to you, you can probably remember people like my mom, the ones God sent into your life to carry you through it: the person who brought you a meal or watched your children; the person who gave you permission to talk about the one who had died; the person who accepted you as you were, never once telling you what you should be feeling or glossing over your pain with a cliché or a Bible verse; the person who held you while you cried.

We appreciate people like that because we know that not everyone can do it. Some people are so freaked out by death that they can’t deal with it. They run away and hide until it’s all over and then later they re-appear.

Although we Christians talk a lot about resurrection, I suspect that what we really want is a God who will rescue us from our mortality. We want death to be deleted from the human experience. Yet that’s not the kind of God we have. Instead, we have a God who resurrects us from our big and little deaths, not by putting an end to them, but by transforming us as we walk through them: creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair. Every time death finds us, we are reminded that the only road to Easter morning runs smack dab through Good Friday.

I’d like to believe that on some level, my mom understood what resurrection is about in much the same way that I do. I understand it because I’ve experienced it. I’m not the same person who wanted to run away from death as a child. Like my mom, I’ve walked through death in my life and found new life on the other side. And like my mom, I’m good at funerals.

She died when I was 28 and we never had the opportunity to discuss stuff like this. She wasn’t a “religious” person, so I’m not sure if we ever could have. But someday we will.

Don't try this at home, or at church

2011-12-24T19:07:00.006-05:00

As I sit in the quiet on the night before Christmas, I am recalling the most memorable Christmas Eve of my ministry. It happened at Advent Lutheran Church in Uniontown, Ohio. We had an early worship service that was geared for families with young children. It had grown in popularity through the years, along with my creativity as a preacher. One year I had two people dress up in a donkey outfit and I had a little dialogue with them about the first Christmas. Well, it was more a dialogue with the one in the front end, but you get what I mean.

Every year I tried to do something different to bring the Christmas story alive for the kids. And, yes, also to top whatever it was I had done the year before. So, after the Christmas donkey who had carried Mary to Bethlehem, I was wracking my brain to come up with another idea. And then I had a flash of inspiration. Why settle for an animal costume when we could bring a real live animal into the church?

It was a perfect plan. I wrote a simple dialogue between myself and a shepherd, who would retell the Christmas story while holding a little lamb. So, I called a local farm and made all the arrangements. At a designated time, after worship had begun, the farmer would bring the lamb to the church parking lot and my shepherd, Sam, would pick up the lamb and make his entrance. It was going to cost $100 for the use of the lamb, which I paid for out of my own pocket as a gift to the kids. I couldn’t wait to see the excitement in their faces and knew they would remember this for the rest of their lives.

The church was packed. Candles in glass globes lined the pews. Poinsettias and lit trees decorated the chancel. It was a magical Christmas Eve. And then the moment came. I invited the children to come forward for the message and they surrounded me on the steps in front of the altar. I engaged them in some friendly banter so that the shepherd could make an entrance and interrupt us. Well, we bantered and bantered and bantered and I didn’t see the shepherd at the back of the church. Where was he? It became comical as I rambled on and the adults realized I was expecting someone who wasn’t appearing.

Finally, I saw Sam making his way down the hallway at the back of the church. He was walking backwards and struggling. I gave him his cue and he was still struggling to move. What on earth? Then I saw the problem. This wasn’t a lamb. This was a full-grown, big ol’ fluffy sheep. And he wasn’t happy. He had his legs tucked up under him so that he was this giant fuzz ball on the floor. A very heavy one at that. And Sam was dragging him with a leash.

All of a sudden, the sheep was on his feet. He and Sam started down the center aisle and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking everything was going to be okay. I thought wrong. When the sheep saw the candles and the people, he tried to run away. He leapt up into the air, flipped over and landed on his back. Then, scrambling to his feet, he did it again. Again and again as Sam pulled him down the aisle, the sheep did acrobatics and I held my breath. Each time he did this the kids squealed with delight. And, of course, that made the sheep flip out even more. I kept praying, “God, please don’t let that sheep break its neck and die here right in front of all these kids on Christmas Eve and I promise I’ll never do anything this stupid again.”

By the time they had reached the front of the church, I don’t know who was more frazzled, Sam or the sheep. Both of them had the same terrified look in their eyes. When I launched into the dialogue we had worked on, Sam just stared at me. He couldn’t speak. So, I worked both sides of the story as he stood there with his mouth open, nodding every so often. It didn’t matter what I said anyway. No one was listening. They were all watching the sheep to see what crazy thing he’d do next.

You probably know where this is going, because you’re a lot smarter than I was. The sheep left a Christmas present for us on the rug, right there in front of God and everybody. The kids thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen. And I knew that it was time to wrap this up before he did it again. We had to get this wooly bag of shit out of church and send him back to the farm where he belonged.

Sam went to make his exit. But the sheep had other ideas. He tucked all four legs up under himself and made like a footstool. (A legless footstool.) Sam slid the stubborn animal down the aisle, to the delight of all who were present. Kids were squealing and adults were howling. Some had tears streaming down their cheeks. The only one who failed to see the humor in this was poor, dazed Sam.

It turned out to be a moment none of those children will ever forget. But not for the reasons I had hoped. I’ll never forget it either. It will probably be one of those scenes that flashes before my eyes on my deathbed. As I think of it tonight, I still chuckle.

And what did I learn from this? Well, never bring farm animals into church, of course. Since that night I haven’t. And I won’t ever again. Trust me. There will be no farm animals at Holy Trinity in Charlotte tonight.

But, I also learned that no special effects are necessary at Christmas. The story itself is enough. That’s why we will gather together tonight. To hear the story again. It’s more than enough.

Merry Christmas y'all!

Need a light?

2011-12-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

Why do we celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25? The Bible doesn’t give us a date for the event, but from what we do know, it was more likely that it occurred in the spring than the winter. For one thing, if shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night, it had to be lambing time, which was in the spring. In the wintertime, sheep weren’t watched out in the fields; they were kept in corrals.

For the first 300 years of the Christian church, nobody celebrated Christmas. But sometime in the fourth century, Christian leaders became concerned about a popular Roman festival. It celebrated the winter solstice, during the darkest time of the year, when the hours of sunlight began to increase again and light was victorious over darkness. In an effort to compete with the sun worshippers, Christmas was born.

This worked out perfectly because, really, there is no better time to celebrate the light of Christ shining in our world than in the bleak midwinter. Our days have grown shorter. We know what it’s like to live in darkness, literally. And we’re reminded of what it means to live in darkness figuratively, as well.

At Christmas we see the holy family in the stable, Mary exhausted, but radiant; the breath of the animals visible in the frosty night air. We hear the lowing of the cattle and the rustling of the straw. And we gaze at the long-expected child in the manger knowing that this isn’t just the stuff children’s Christmas pageants are made of.

Bethlehem was full of visitors that night because a power-hungry politician far away had decided to take a census as a way to establish how many people there were who could be taxed. In this case, the people weren’t counted where they lived; they were sent back to their ancestral hometowns. Beneath the sweet, tender birth story runs a tale of oppression, of a people at the mercy of a tyrant, a people enslaved by conquerors. We can dress it up with tinsel, with poinsettias, shining stars and angels, but it is a story of oppression and vulnerability, of injustice with little mercy.

The journey to Bethlehem, the risky birth in a barn, the flight into Egypt – tell us of the kind of world Jesus was born into: a world of violence, fear, and misery. Christ entered into a world of darkness.

Isaiah’s words ring true: “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light” (9:2a). The contrast of light and darkness existing side-by-side in the days leading up to Christmas is stark. While we are following the light of a star hovering over Bethlehem, we also are walking through the darkest days of the year. While we journey toward beauty and wonder, we carry the deaths of loved ones within us and grief grips our hearts. While we celebrate this special family holiday, we are painfully aware of the brokenness within our own families. While children experience excitement that they can’t contain, we worry about paying the bills so they can have a Christmas that doesn’t disappoint them. While we say the word merry over and over, we are bogged down with depression that can’t be drowned with glass after glass of Christmas cheer. While we toast one another’s good health, we know those who carry the burden of serious illness. Both darkness and light are a part of our world.

In his gospel, John writes: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5). Notice what these words don’t say. They don’t say that the light comes into the world and destroys the darkness. That might be what we’d like to hear, but that’s not the way it works. Instead, the light comes into the world, and the darkness doesn’t snuff it out.

The darkness continues to be with us. In the 2,000 years since the birth of Christ, there is no less pain, no less meanness in the human spirit, no less heartache. The light hasn’t changed that. But the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness can’t overcome it.

Have you ever shone a light in the darkness and tried to put it out by adding more darkness? It doesn’t work. In fact, the darker it gets, the more brightly the light shines.

The point of Christmas is that God climbs into the darkest places to be with us. And because God is with us, because God’s light shines in the darkness of this world, including our own personal darkness, we have reason to celebrate.

People who walk in darkness: May you know hope, peace and joy this Christmas as you behold the light no darkness can overcome. It’s the light of God’s love shining through his son Jesus.

Mary's "yes"

2011-12-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

The incarnation was a collaborative effort. It was, appropriately, something that God and a human being decided to do together. That human being was a young woman named Mary. Now, God was the one with the plan. But he had to depend upon Mary’s agreement or it would have remained nothing more than an idea.

There are some who have suggested that maybe Mary wasn’t the first woman the angel visited on God’s behalf. Maybe Gabriel had presented this preposterous plan to other young women, searching for the right one. And maybe, Mary was just the first one to say “yes.” Of course, that would also make her the right one.

Mary had a choice. God didn’t just force his will on her. She had something to say about it. Because that’s the way God does things with us human beings. God doesn’t force us to say “yes” to him. If he just wanted us to do what he wants us to do, he might coerce us, or manipulate us, or trick us into doing it. But God wants more from us than just to get us to do what he wants us to do. Mainly, what God wants is for us to love him. And the only way to be loved by another is by giving that person the freedom of choice. So, Mary had a choice. She could have said “no” just as easily as she said “yes.”

Mary said “yes.” Actually, her words were, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” She heard God’s plan, and she said, “Count me in.” The incarnation became possible because Mary decided that God’s will would become her will, too.

Now, I would guess that not many of us have been visited by an angel and told what God wants for our lives. And we might like to believe that if Gabriel did show up on our doorstep, we’d be all about saying “yes” to God. I’d sure like to believe that about myself. But it doesn’t take an angel delivering a message from God for us to know what God’s will is for our lives. That’s actually pretty clear. No, God may not tell us if we should buy the new car we’ve been eyeing, or what our major should be in college, or whether we should go to see a movie on Christmas Day. But in the scriptures God is pretty clear about telling us how it’s his will that we love him above everything else in our lives. And God tells us that the way we love God above everything else in our lives is by loving other people. That’s no great mystery. As God’s children, we pretty much know what his will is for our lives. We may not know the particulars about today, but we have a good idea about the direction God wants our lives to go. Is that something we can say “yes” to?

Many people will point to Mary as the poster child for what it means to surrender yourself to God. But I wonder if that’s really the way it happened for Mary. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the idea of surrender. I’m not sure that’s what God wants of us -- that we surrender ourselves to him. Surrender seems to be the language of war to me. You don’t surrender to a loved one; you surrender to an enemy. And when you surrender, you give up a big piece of yourself. In fact, I think that a lot of people who try to surrender themselves to God have built up resentment toward God because of all they feel they’ve been required to give up to follow him. How can you love someone whom you grow to resent like that?

That’s why I can’t see surrender as Mary’s solution to God’s proposal. Her response wasn’t an act of surrender, but it was an act of love. And that’s the response God wants of us as well. God doesn’t hold us captive to his wishes. He doesn’t demand that we submit to his will for our lives. He gives us the freedom to make our own choices. That means we can say “yes” or we can say “no.” The only way to truly say “yes” to God is the way that Mary said it. It’s a “yes” born out of a relationship with God that’s grounded in love.

God wants us to love him so much that we want for ourselves what he wants for us; he wants us to love him in such a way that his will and our will become the same. He doesn’t want to force us to do what he wants us to do. He just wants us to love him so much that we freely say “yes” to him. And he loves us so much that whether we say “yes” or “no”, he’s gonna keep on loving us anyway.

Beyond the manger

2011-12-10T12:50:00.001-05:00

Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus, right? Yes, and no. It’s about the birth of Jesus, yes, but that’s not all it’s about. The birth of Jesus embodies something profound about God that we often lose in the swaddling clothes and the manger and the straw.

I’m talking about the incarnation here. The word incarnation means an embodiment of a god or a spirit in an earthly form. Christianity, as well as Hinduism and Buddhism all include the concept of incarnation in their belief system. Within Christianity, John’s gospel introduces an incarnational worldview as he begins with the proclamation that the “Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Father Richard Rohr talks about four possible world views that people can adopt.

The first is the materialistic world view. This perspective says the only stuff that’s real is the stuff you can measure, the stuff you can see and touch. It’s the perspective usually taken by a scientific thinker.

The second world view is spiritual. Those who adopt this view spiritualize everything. They don’t take the material world seriously. What you see out there is just an illusion. The real stuff is the inner stuff. It’s the perspective usually taken by a religious thinker.

And then, there’s a third world view that Father Rohr labels as the theological. People with this view spend their lives working really hard to put the material world and the spiritual world back together again.

Now, all three of these views are based on dualistic thought, an either/or way of looking at life. Something is either good or it’s bad. It’s either right or it’s wrong. It’s a rigid way of looking at things and lies at the heart of fundamentalism. And it’s not at all the Jesus Way of being in the world. The Jesus Way honors mystery and paradox.

And that brings us to the fourth world view that Father Rohr identifies. It’s a way of seeing the world that Jesus came to claim: an incarnational world view, which says that matter and spirit have never been separated. While the theological world view works so hard at cramming God back into the material world, the incarnational world view says that you don’t have to cram God back into the world because God never left the world. God has been here all along.

Ironically, the birth of Christ embodies the incarnational nature of God, and yet every year when we celebrate Christmas, we become preoccupied with how we’re going to split it in two. There is the sacred celebration of Christmas and there is the secular celebration of Christmas and we see them as two separate things. Heaven forbid we should mix the two. We don’t sing “Jingle Bells” at a Christmas Eve service because that has nothing to do with the real meaning of Christmas, we’ll say. And yet, we certainly don’t want to give up “Jingle Bells” and only celebrate Christmas as a sacred holiday. That’s no fun. The implication is, of course, that the sacred celebration is meaningful and the secular celebration is fun. It’s either one or the other, but it can’t be both. So, during the month of December we all adopt split personalities. I wonder if that adds to the stress of the season in a way we don’t even realize.

Well, here’s the thing. The whole point of the incarnation is that there is no line dividing the sacred from the secular. God is a part of it all. Singing a medley that includes both “O Come O Come Emmanuel” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” is completely appropriate from an incarnational perspective. In fact, the way that the celebration of Christmas first came into being is an acknowledgement of this. Originally, it was a blend of the pagan celebration of the winter solstice and the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ.

So it always amuses me when I hear Christians getting all hot under the collar because Christmas has become so secularized, as if that is some kind of an affront to God. The only thing that is an affront to God is a dualistic worldview.

The big thing about living in a split universe is that you are always having to decide where God is and where God isn’t. You get all caught up in judging, based on the false assumption that God is selectively present in the world around us. God is in America, but God is not in Iran. God is in Barack Obama but not Glenn Beck. God is in Bach but not Lady Gaga. God is in Holy Trinity Lutheran Church but not the Hindu Temple. If we spend all our time determining where God is and where God isn’t, it’s not much of a leap to say, “God is in me but not in you.”

When we live with an incarnational worldview, there’s no decision to be made about where God is and where God isn’t. Yes, we find God wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger. But we don’t stop there. We look at the world around us, seeing God in it all.

Popped in the nose by "God with us"

2011-12-09T18:40:00.003-05:00

I met three friends for lunch today smack dab in the middle of uptown Charlotte. It was a restaurant I hadn’t been to before, so I wasn’t sure where it was. Of course, parking is always a challenge uptown, so when I got close to my destination and saw a parking garage, I went for it. It was the Bank of America garage, something I should have no trouble finding later, since the Bank of America building is the tallest in town.

To say that I tend to have difficulty finding my car in parking lots and garages is an understatement. I could write a lengthy book entitled, Cars I Have Lost and How They Eventually Found Me. Lately, I’ve been trying to overcome this challenge by taking careful mental notes of my whereabouts whenever I park in a parking lot or garage. Today I was on the sixth level and my parking spot was #681. (You should be impressed by the fact that I can still tell you that, seven hours later.) As I walked away from my car, I was confident that I would have no problem finding it when I returned from lunch.

Taking the elevator to what I thought was the ground level, I found myself in a long white hallway with no doors. Had I landed in the Twilight Zone? There was no one around and it took several attempts for me to figure out how to exit the building. When I emerged, I was all turned around and had no idea where I was. (In addition to losing cars in parking lots, I also have a long, sad history of being directionally challenged. Not a good combination.) After I approached a police officer and asked him which way to Tryon Street, he pointed his finger and I followed it up the sidewalk.

I wandered around for a while and stopped several people to ask directions before I finally found the Aria Tuscan Grille and joined my friends for a delightful lunch. Then it was time to leave. As it turned out, they also had parked in the Bank of America garage, so we walked over together. Imagine my dismay when I realized that there was more than one Bank of America garage and this wasn’t mine!

I didn’t know what to do. I walked over to the Starbucks and asked one of the employees, “Do you know anything about the parking garages here? Do you know where the Bank of America garages are?” Suffice it to say, she was no help. Someone else overheard my question and asked, “Do you know the number of your parking space?” Well, yes I did, but I explained to him that this wasn’t my problem. I could find my car if I knew which garage it was parked in. He stood there with a puzzled look on his face as I walked away.

So, I approached someone else, a young man who was getting a cup of coffee. He listened to me explain my predicament and said, “I understand. With these tall buildings, it’s very easy to get lost in this part of town.” I was relieved that someone else could appreciate my problem without a tone of judgment in his voice. I handed the young man my parking ticket and he examined it for a moment. “I know where this is,” he told me. And while I was waiting for directions that I probably wouldn’t be able to follow, he said the most amazing thing. “Come on,” I’ll take you there. “You mean you’ll walk with me?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. And that’s exactly what he did.

Along the way we chatted a bit about his job, what brought me uptown today, the restaurant where I had eaten. It was all quite lovely. Whoever his mother is, she should be very proud of her son. Actually, he did a lot for me today, too. It was a grace-filled moment for me. We never exchanged names. He was just some unknown person who helped me find my way.

There are a lot of people God has sent into my life like that, some known and some unknown. People who seem to show up at just the right time, when I feel lost and something of a hopeless mess. Those are the times when the message of Christmas sneaks up on me and pops me in the nose. It’s a face-to-face encounter with the reality of “God with us.”

Doing Nothing for Christmas

2011-12-08T19:28:00.003-05:00

This year I’m preparing myself for Christmas by doing something I’ve never done before. It’s so radical for me that it’s taking everything within me to accomplish it. I’m pushing myself every step of the way. What am I doing? Nothing.

Through the years, I’ve been known to go a bit overboard at Christmastime, particularly with my decorating. When my kids were still living with me, every year I challenged myself to have a tree in our home more magnificent than the one the year before. When the Christmas tree farm opened at the crack of dawn on the day after Thanksgiving, I always had to be the first person through the gate. My snow-boots stomped through the rows of trees until I found the perfect blue spruce and tagged it. It had to be just big enough so that the tip would touch the peak of our 14 foot cathedral ceiling. When the time came to pick the tree up, I’d have to send someone with a truck. As we forced it through the front door, it always reminded me of the classic scene where Piglet is trying to shove a much-too-large Winnie the Pooh through a much-too-small window. One of my kids would invariably say, “It’s not gonna fit”, and I would insist that it had to. After it was up and decorated, and the other members of my family were barely speaking to me, it was always worth the effort when the kids’ friends would come into the house and gasp as they looked upon the perfect Christmas tree and asked, “Is that thing real?”

My Christmas decorations feature a Santa Claus collection that has grown over the years. It includes well over 50 versions of the jolly old elf. From an inch to three feet tall, he is black/white/brown. He’s playing golf, riding a motorcycle, swinging a lasso, blowing into the flute, making bubbles, painting toys… you name it.

Then there are the sentimental items that I can’t bear to part with: the ornaments made by my kids when they were in school, the stockings crocheted by my mom with Gretchen and Ben sewn into them, the handmade nativity scene given to me by a dear saint in my first parish.

It all means so much to me, from the greenery and candles on the mantel to the festive welcome mat at the wreath-decked door. And yet, this year I’ve decided that I’m not going to do any of it. And I’m discovering that it’s one of the hardest things I’ve never done.

I wish I could say that my motivation has been deeply spiritual, but that’s really not the case. It’s a practical matter. Over the past month I have been totally consumed with moving my nest from one location in Charlotte to another. I sorted and threw things away, and hauled carloads to Goodwill. I scrounged in dumpsters and collected cardboard boxes, and I packed. I cleaned furiously at my old home, and then I cleaned even more furiously at my new home. I sliced open boxes and unpacked and arranged stuff and then rearranged it and worked myself ragged finding a place for everything. Now, the last thing I want to do is haul out all the Christmas decorations and disrupt my home. The dust hasn’t settled from the move yet. I just don’t have the energy for it. So I made the decision that the practical thing is to forego Christmas decorations this year.

Every day I’m wondering if I’m going to break down and decorate. Maybe just a little. But I know what will happen if I start; I won’t be able to stop. As Christmas gets closer, I don’t know if I’ll be able to not do it. But what started out as a practical decision has become something more than that for me. As I find myself resisting the whole idea of not decorating, I’ve questioned why this is so darn important to me. Why is my celebration of Christmas so tied up in the activity of decorating and getting everything just right -- creating a setting for the perfect Christmas? My preoccupation with the window dressing of the season has shown me that this actually is a spiritual issue for me after all. And so now I’m more determined than ever to do nothing in preparation for Christmas. Nothing on the outside, that is. Instead, I’m focusing my energy on the inside. As long as I’m not decorating, I’ve decided to refrain from other activities as well, such as baking, and shopping.

What would it be like if you took all the time that you spend scurrying about doing all the stuff you just have to do before Christmas gets here and did none of it, but instead spent that time praying, reading scripture, serving those in need? I’ve always wondered that for myself, and this year I intend to find out.

Will Christmas still happen for me? I know that I definitely won’t be finding it under a tree or in dozens of Santa faces smiling at me on Christmas morning. But I have no doubt it will happen. I’ll find it the same place I always do. In my heart.

Measuring Out Your Life with Coffee Spoons

2011-11-13T14:48:00.003-05:00

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. Words from one of T.S. Elliot’s poems that have always stuck with me. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. Would that describe you? Do you measure out your life with coffee spoons?

This could certainly be said of one of the characters in a parable that Jesus told about a man who was going on a journey and entrusted some of his wealth to his slaves while he was away. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to the another one.

Now a talent is a unit of money equal to fifteen years of an average laborer’s pay, or about half a million dollars. So don’t feel too sorry for the slave who only got one talent. It was still a lot of money!

We learn that there was a good reason why the master didn’t give the third slave as much as the other two. Jesus says they each received according to their ability. No doubt, the master knew his slaves pretty well, because they didn’t let him down. The first two were able to present the money to their master when he returned with interest. In fact, they doubled the money that had been entrusted to them. But the third slave went and dug a hole in the ground and hid his one talent. So when the master returned, the third slave handed him back the one talent, just as he had received it.

Why? What excuse did he offer his master? Well, it seems that he thought he was doing the right thing in burying his one talent. Because, from his perspective, that was the safest thing to do. He had a different way of seeing the master than the other two slaves. He saw him as a harsh master and he was afraid. Therefore, he wasn’t about to take any chances. He was very careful. He played it safe.

So this is a story about people who are entrusted with great wealth. And there is a direct correlation between the way they handle that wealth and the way they perceive the one who has entrusted it to them. For the one who felt the master was someone to be feared, any kind of risk was out of the question.

And so it is for God’s people as well. You can tell a lot about the perception people have of God from the way they live their lives. Particularly the way they spend the gifts God has entrusted to them.

Christians are notorious for saying they believe in a God of love, but living as if they were scared to death of him. Afraid to take any risks for fear that they may mess up and God won’t be happy with them. They’re wasting the gifts they have been entrusted with. Even the very gift of life itself.

Psychologists will tell you that the healthiest people are willing to take risks in their lives. People suffering from anxiety aren’t able to take any risks. Their fear paralyzes them. But this isn’t just a psychological truth. It’s a spiritual truth as well.

It’s the difference between living large and surviving small. Surviving small is not a faithful response to our God of extravagant love. That’s responding to God out of fear. You’re convinced that God is just waiting to zap you when you mess up, and you’re afraid to take any chances. The main problem with responding to a God of fear is that this isn’t who God is. And you’re missing out on a relationship with the true God, a God of love. Playing it safe is never a faithful response to a God of love.

God’s love frees us from fear. It empowers us to act boldly for the sake of love. And it catches us when we fall. That’s what it means to live by faith. It’s to trust in God’s love enough to step out into the unknown without allowing fear to hold us back.

There’s more to life than avoiding mistakes. That’s not the life God calls his people to. God calls us to put it all out there, to risk our lives in order to find our lives, our true selves, the people God created us to be. That’s why Luther said, “If you must sin, sin boldly.” What pleases God is not that we live perfect little lives and never do anything wrong. What pleases God is that we risk it all for the sake of loving God and others.

We’re living in a fearful world right now, aren’t we? It’s scary. People we assumed were perfectly secure in their jobs have become unemployed. All around us houses are being foreclosed on, businesses are closing, building projects have been abandoned. We know that no one is immune. And we don’t know where it’s heading. Will it get better? Will it get worse? Will it get worse before it gets better? We can’t count on the things we once did. And so, we live by fear. Fear drives our decisions. And we survive small.

As people of faith, that’s not the way God calls us to live. We’re called to live large. That doesn’t mean that we’re reckless with the gifts God has given us. As God’s stewards, we responsibly care for the gifts that have been entrusted to us by God: our money, our abilities, our time. But good stewardship isn’t based on fear. God hasn’t entrusted us with gifts so that we can bury them in the ground.

Look at your own life. Are you out there living large or just surviving small? Is life flowing through you and spilling out onto the world around you? Or are you carefully measuring out your life with coffee spoons?

Can you make me love you if I don’t?

2011-10-22T11:53:00.008-04:00

'Cause i can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something that it won't
Here in the dark in these final hours
I will lay down my heart
And i feel the power
But you won't, no you won't
'Cause i can't make you love me if you don't

Those are the angst-ridden words to a pop song that you may have heard. It’s about someone who wants to be loved by another and is trying to deal with the fact that it just ain’t gonna happen. You can’t make someone else love you, no matter how hard you try.

So, how can God command us to love him? What’s that about?

In Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is in Jerusalem during his final days, the religious authorities are coming at him with both barrels. Their goal is to trip him up so he says or does something that will justify having him arrested and killed. And he comes right back at them, exposing their hypocrisy and proclaiming the truth regardless of the consequences to himself.

A lawyer approaches Jesus with a let's-cut-to-the-chase kind of question: “Rabbi, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” And, for once, Jesus doesn’t answer a question with another question. He offers a straight-forward answer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” That’s the most important commandment of all, Jesus says. Love God with everything you've got; don't hold back. But he can’t stop there, because there is another commandment that is so closely related to this first commandment that you can’t have one without the other. “A second commandment is just like this,” Jesus says. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you get this, you get it all, Jesus tells his inquisitors.

There are hundreds of laws in the scriptures. And unlike us, good religious types back then didn't make a practice of picking and choosing which ones they would follow and which ones they could ignore. They tried to follow every single one of them. It was enough to drive a person nuts. How could you remember them all, much less observe them? But all the laws in the scriptures boil down to this, Jesus explains: More than anything else, God wants us to love him. And we show our love for God in the way we love other people.

God commands us to love. It's as simple as that. Or is it anything but simple? Can God make us love him if we don’t?

Well, if love is a mushy feeling we have somewhere in our chest cavity, probably not. If that’s what you think love is, no, it’s not something that can be commanded. But love is more than that. It’s not a mushy feeling. It’s a commitment to act on behalf of another in a way that goes beyond our own self-interests. Often, in fact, what we may call love is simply a symptom of our brokenness, a neediness we carry around inside us. We love another hoping they will love us back so then we can feel as if we’re somehow worthy of love. When they don’t reciprocate, we’re hurt and angry, because we needed it so much. But that’s not love. Not really. Love isn't a feeling that comes and goes. Love is a commitment to act on behalf of another in a way that goes beyond our own self-interests.

Knowing and experiencing the love of God in our lives seems to be the key to loving like that. When we know we’re truly loved by God, we can love ourselves and we aren’t so desperate to fill our need to be loved by another person. Real love is never born out of desperation. It’s not like a person lost in the desert who is dying of thirst and clawing at the sand for water anyplace they can find it. As Annie Dillard says, it’s like a person filling a cup under a waterfall. The water keeps coming and coming and it fills them to overflowing.

When we’re hurting and needing to have something or someone fill a deep hole we carry around inside us, it’s pretty hard to love. Really love. And yet, when we open ourselves to receive the love God offers us, that love fills us to overflowing.

This may be easier said than done for most of us. I know it is for me. I struggle to love. Really love. But I know it’s worth the struggle. God commands it for a reason. More than a heavy demand placed upon us to weigh us down, it is the way to true freedom. For it’s only in losing our lives that we gain them. It’s only in giving ourselves in love that we ever discover who we truly are. God’s beloved, created in God’s loving image -- worthy of God’s love, and capable of sharing that love with others.

Dinosaurs R Us

2011-09-30T10:20:00.004-04:00

There is a bond I feel with those who grew up at the same time I did. We could have been living a thousand miles apart, but if they can sing all the words to the Davy Crockett theme song, if they know the name of Sky King’s airplane, if they ever shopped at a 10 cent store, if they can remember being glued their T.V. set when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, if they ever did the watusi… I feel a connection with them.

This is true for every generation, I suspect. Through the years I’ve had the privilege of knowing several people who have lived past the age of 100 and I’m always struck by the loneliness they experience because there are so few people remaining who have shared their life experience. No one remembers what it was like to shovel coal into the furnace, or use a wringer washing machine. No one can sing the words to “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” with them. I can only imagine how that must feel.

Of course, young people have their own experiences that connect them to one another. When they start talking about the music they listen to, or the apps on their phones, I realize that we live in different worlds.

One of the things I really enjoy about contra-dancing is the way age differences disappear. We’re all together for the same reason. We love to dance. Kids dance with old people and together we create a community of joy. I have dear friends who are younger than my children and I don’t think a whole lot about it. But once we stop dancing… that’s when I’m often reminded that I’m becoming a dinosaur.

The other night while I was leaving a contra-dance, I noticed that one of the other dancers, a twenty-something guy named Peter, was wearing someone else’s nametag. “Moriah” it said. When I saw it, I told him, “You know, they call the wind Moriah.” He looked at me like I was speaking complete gibberish. Then, while exiting the building, I saw that a group of young adults had gathered on the front steps. So, I ran the scenario with Peter past them, and, once again, I got blank stares. I informed them that they were no help at all. Then one of them piped up, “Is it a song or something? It sounds like it could be a song.”

Those moments when I think to myself, “Oh, my God, I’ve become a freakin’ dinosaur!” have been finding me with greater frequency these days. They come whenever the reality of my impending obsolescence smacks me in the face.

I have to face the fact that generations pass. One day, we Baby Boomers will become a footnote in a book some know-it-all-kid studies in a Western Civilization Class. That is, if people are still reading books and going to classes. As for civilization... I can only hope that future generations will do a better job with that after all the dinosaurs like me have become fossils in the earth.

Outrageous paychecks

2011-09-16T12:46:00.004-04:00

Whenever dollars and cents are involved, people become exceedingly concerned about what’s fair. Because money is our cultural measure of value, we want to see people receive as much of it as they’re worth. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. That’s why we’re miffed when a professional football player, who can barely put two sentences together and is known for his immoral lifestyle, is paid millions of dollars, and an elementary school teacher with years of education, who is responsible for the future of our nation, makes $35,000 a year. It doesn’t seem quite fair.

We have such a sense of what’s fair and what isn’t that when people are compensated in a way that seems out of line, we can become quite indignant about it. When the CEO of a large company does a lousy job and gets fired and then walks away with a severance package that turns out to be more than most of us will make in a lifetime, it pisses us off!

What’s fair is that the most money goes to those who work hardest and longest and are most productive. Imagine what it would be like to work for a company where everyone receives the same pay, no matter what they do. The one who works a full day every day, plus overtime, receives the same salary as the one who only works part-time. How would you feel in such a situation? No doubt, if you were the part-time worker, you’d be thrilled. But if you were the one working your butt off, you’d be hoppin’ mad.

Well, that’s exactly what’s going on in a parable Jesus tells in the 20th chapter of Matthew. There’s this landowner who needs to have some work done in his vineyard. So he goes out into the marketplace where there are day laborers standing around waiting to be hired and he takes them on for a standard daily wage. Then he goes out a few hours later and hires some more workers. About noon, he hires others, and at three, does the same thing. Finally, at about 5:00 he goes back to the marketplace and sees some guys standing around with nothing to do. So he hires them, too. When the evening comes and it’s time for them all to be paid, the landowner tells his manager to have them line up for their money, with those hired last first in line. And then comes the kicker. They all receive the same pay. Whether they were hired in the early hours of the morning or only a couple hours before quittin’ time, they all receive exactly one day’s wage.

Now, remember these are day laborers, so a daily wage is as much as they need to make it until the next day. Without a full day’s wage, they won’t have enough to feed their families. Knowing this, the owner gives them each what they need. He isn’t intentionally being unfair. He is intentionally being compassionate. When those who think they deserve more because they've worked longer complain, he says to them: “Didn’t you agree on the daily wage? Take your money and be on your way. What’s it to you that I choose to give the same to everyone? Isn’t it my money? Can’t I give it however I want to? Are you envious because I’m generous?” Well, of course they are. Because they’re thinking like humans think.

In this parable, Jesus is challenging us to think in a new way. He wants us to think as people who are part of the Kingdom of God, as people who pray that God’s "will be done on earth as in heaven." In the Kingdom of God the last shall be first. It’s all about grace -- giving people not what they deserve, but what they need. Fairness isn’t the goal. Compassion is the goal. It’s hard for us to grasp this because it’s a complete reversal of what we’ve grown to expect in the world around us. It’s a whole new way of dealing with other people. And it’s outrageous. By that I mean that when God pours out his lavish grace upon us, we’re all for it. But when God pours out his lavish grace on those who don’t deserve it, we’re outraged.

We hear a lot of talk these days about entitlement programs. Often, the word entitlement is uttered with a sneer, which implies the irony of the very word, as the people who are so entitled are clearly anything but entitled. Popular opinion would say that the elderly and the poor aren’t in any way worthy of the money our government hands them. Why should hard-working Americans give their money to people who haven’t done anything to deserve it? It’s not fair. Whenever we talk about cutting the federal budget, the entitlement programs go right to the chopping block. And isn’t it interesting that many of those who are most vocal about the unfairness of entitlement programs claim to be followers of Jesus? I wonder if they’ve ever read the 20th chapter of Matthew. I suspect that if they have they might be less inclined to call them entitlement programs and more inclined to call them grace programs. (And they wouldn't push to cut them; they would do all they can to increase them.)

We know that Jesus had a passion for the "undeserving", the untouchables of his day: people with dreaded diseases, the poor, the immoral, the outsiders. Of course, the good people, the “deserving ones”, had (and still have) a major problem with that. But those who choose to follow Jesus share his same passion. They are people of grace, extending the love of God to all people and making an extra effort to include those who might feel the most excluded from God’s kingdom of grace, so that the last and the first are all loved the same.

No, by our human standards, it’s not fair. And that’s exactly the point.

Walking through walls

2011-08-25T19:36:00.007-04:00

The day begins with Jesus sealed inside a tomb behind a stone no person can move. Then, by day's end, it was the disciples who were sealed inside a tomb behind a stone that no person could move.

There in the upper room, they’re shut tightly inside. The threatening world is shut tightly outside. It’s like they have been hermetically sealed off from everything. Everything, including Jesus.

To a greater or lesser extent we all have times when we do that, don’t we? We try to seal ourselves off from everyone and everything, even God. It may happen when we’re hurt. Or when we’re afraid. Or when we dare not allow ourselves to hope. We seal ourselves off from the rest of the world: physically, mentally or spiritually.

The message of resurrection is a message of hope for all of us living in our own individual tombs. Or maybe I should say, it’s a message for all of us dying in our own individual tombs. God’s message to us is this –
You can try to seal yourself off from me if you want, but you can’t keep me out. I will come after you. I will hunt you down. If need be, I’ll walk right through the wall you’re hiding behind.

There have been times when I’ve hidden in the upper room with the disciples, behind a locked door, sealing myself off from the very one who would save me. I have struggled with clinical depression in my life. When I’ve been lost in my own despair, what I want to do is seal myself away where no one can get to me. I want to stay in my own little world and I don’t want to be around people who might challenge my distorted view of reality. I certainly don’t want to be bothered by a God who’s going to come to me with a message of hope in the midst of my hopelessness, who’s going to tell me that I’m worth as much to him as his own Son. I don’t want to hear that.

I have two favorite Bible passages and only recently realized why they mean so much to me. They’re both about the same thing. They’re a lot like the story where Jesus walks through a wall to get to the ones he loves.

The first one is Psalm 139.
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

And then the other one is from Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Who will separate us from the God’s love? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
Paul’s answer?
I am certain that there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yep. I can relate to those crazy disciples who thought that they could actually keep him out by locking the door.

A passage from the Bible that I don’t connect with very well is the one where Jesus says that he stands at the door and knocks. I know there have been times in my life when he could knock until his knuckles bleed; I’m not about to open that door.

But the thing is, at those times, Jesus doesn’t bother knocking. He just appears. Sometimes in startling ways. Nearly always, it happens through community. Over the course of my life, many people have walked through walls for me and they probably don’t even know it. They seem to be oblivious to the walls I hide behind.

Jesus appears to us just as he did to the disciples. Whether we believe in the resurrection or not, the resurrected Christ appears to us. Whether we embrace the abundant new life or not, God gives it to us. Whether we welcome God into our lives or not, he’s with us, loving us every step of the way. The disciples couldn’t lock him out even if they wanted to. Jesus appears. Defying closed doors, and locked hearts. He simply appears.

There’s more to the resurrection than the story of Jesus breaking out of a sealed tomb. The resurrection is also about Jesus breaking into our sealed tombs. When we least expect him and when we most need him, Jesus appears.

A different drummer

2011-08-19T14:44:00.004-04:00

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau

In theory, we admire non-conformists, the ones who move to the beat of their own drummer. But in reality, we usually think they’re strange. They may be the kids with blue hair and tattooes all over their bodies. Or they’re the people who move to a cabin in the woods and turn their backs on televisions, and computers. Perhaps they’re the ones who protest against whatever the government happens to be doing at any given moment. I suspect those are the kinds of images that come to mind when we think of non-conformists.

In our culture, where Christianity is the dominant religion, not many people would consider Christians to be non-conformists. Just the opposite. Being a Christian means being a part of the status quo. This is disturbing because if Christians truly did follow in the way of Jesus, they would be so far outside the norm of behavior in our culture that they would be considered radicals.

When Christians take the teachings of Jesus seriously, they turn their backs on competition and the need to prove that there are winners and losers in this world. They practice non-violence, returning acts of love for acts of hate. They offer mercy and forgiveness instead of punishment and vengeance. They freely give other people, not what they deserve, but what they need. They lobby for the poor and those who have no one to speak on their behalf when important decisions are made in our government. They value relationships above material wealth. They engage in genuine dialogue and work toward understanding with those who don’t see things their way. They speak out against statements of bigotry, even the jokes they hear their friends tell that demean other people. They are concerned about what will benefit the community rather than “what’s in it for me.”

Many people like to refer to our country as a “Christian nation” when nothing could be further from the truth. Not if being a Christian means following Christ.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

What keeps us from being transformed into the people God would have us be? For me, it’s fear, plain and simple. Fear of being ostracized by my friends. Fear of not having enough. Fear of missing out on what I think I deserve. Fear of being taken advantange of if I’m too darn nice. The list could go on and on. Perhaps the first step toward allowing God to transform us by the renewing of our minds so we can discern what is his will is honestly facing our fear-driven need to conform to the ways of the world around us.

The opposite of fear, is trust. We overcome our fear by entrusting ourselves to God. Offering all that we are to him, we become new people. No longer conformed to the ways of the world, we are transformed.

A few verses later in Romans, Paul talks about the marks of a true Christian. It’s a good list. Read it over and think about what a radical way of being it describes. If ever there were a description of a non-conforming way of life, this is it.

"Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God….No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink….Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:9-21)

Now that's what it means to move to the beat of a different drummer.

Kissing and making up: is it always necessary?

2011-08-12T10:15:00.002-04:00

There’s a new show on T.V. called “Revenge.” I guess we don’t have to wonder what that one’s about. It’s a theme people seem to resonate with. Particularly within the action genre, it comes up again and again. You know the story. Our hero spends his whole life avenging the people who killed his wife, or father, or his best friend in the army. Whatever. It’s all very dramatic and it hooks us because deep down inside we long to see the bad people get what’s coming to them. Of course, the bad people are the ones who do things that hurt us or the people we care about. If someone has hurt us, we hurt them back. From kids on the playground, to those who lead the nations of our world, it seems to be our natural inclination to get even.

As people created in the image of God, we were created for more than that, weren’t we? Certainly if you know anything about Jesus, the one who showed us the very essence of God by the things he taught and the way he lived his life, you know that seeking revenge is not God’s intention for us. He taught about turning the other cheek and loving our enemies. He didn’t fight back even when it cost him his own life. And this way of non-violence was more than a political strategy for Jesus. It was motivated by love expressed through forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the opposite of revenge. It's letting go of the grudge we carry or the need to get even. Despite the fact that we may have every reason to hate the person who wronged us, we choose to love instead. It’s really a way of life more than isolated acts that we perform. We don’t have to decide in any given case whether we will forgive another person or not. Of course, we forgive. It may not always come quickly or easily, but it’s the direction we’re always headed. Because it’s who we are as people of God; it’s what we do.

Now, sometimes I’m afraid we confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. The two are not synonymous. Often forgiveness leads to reconciliation, but not always. Reconciliation is kissing and making up. It’s allowing that person to become a part of your life again. And it’s a mistake to insist that forgiveness isn’t complete without reconciliation. Sometimes it’s impossible to reconcile with another person. For example, if the one who has wronged you is no longer living, reconciliation is impossible. Or if the other person refuses to have anything to do with you, what can you do? Still, you can forgive, for your own sake, to free yourself from the burden of bitterness.

Reconciliation also doesn’t work when you know the person who has hurt you will continue to hurt you if you let them. When a relationship isn’t healthy for you and you have every reason to believe that it never will be, a boundary separating you from that person is necessary. This doesn’t mean you haven’t forgiven them. It just means that you will no longer allow them to be a part of your life. You can still love them as a human being and wish them well. Just not in close proximity to you.

Forgiveness is for the forgiver as much as it is for the forgiven. That’s why it’s important to forgive even those who don’t come groveling at our feet. Often, reconciliation follows forgiveness. We make up and we’re friends again and all’s right with the world. But sometimes that’s not healthy for us and we can choose not to reconcile. It doesn’t mean that we’re carrying a grudge or seeking revenge. It doesn’t mean we haven’t forgiven. What it does mean is that we’re consistently making life-giving decisions for ourselves. In the end, I have to believe that’s what the God who loves us wants for us: life.

Can you change?

2011-08-06T18:21:00.003-04:00

Often when my cat Romeo kills a bird or a bunny, he will leave some brain pate or a gnawed paw under a bush to share with his sister Pooky. The problem is that Pooky has a very sensitive tummy and is on a restricted diet. (I think you can see where this is going.) She finds these gourmet treats and gobbles them up. Then she’s sick for days and I get to clean up the mess. This happened again early last week and I caught myself wondering why she keeps eating stuff that’s so bad for her. It doesn’t make sense. But then I remembered that she’s a dog, after all, and dogs don’t know any better. She has no awareness of the connection between what she eats and how it affects her.

Well, all this ruminating led me to the painful question: So, what’s my excuse? I put stuff into my mouth on a daily basis that I know I shouldn’t. And the big difference between Pooky and me is that I do know better. Why is it so hard for me to change my behavior and do what I obviously know is best for me?

Last night I was with some friends and we watched a wonderful video of Karen Armstrong speaking about compassion. After the viewing, we had a deep discussion reflecting on what it really means to practice compassion in the world around us. Then when we moved our conversation to the kitchen table over a cheesecake, somehow the topic of politics came up. Mind you, this was my kind of crowd, a gathering of politically like-minded people, so we weren’t really in a position to practice compassion with one another. However, we were in a position to practice compassion with those who weren’t there. But instead, we ended up ranting about them. We just couldn’t stop ourselves. Again and again one of us would say something like, "How can we talk about those we disagree with from a standpoint of compassion? How can we put into practice what we just heard Karen Armstrong talk about in her speech?" We’d think on that for a moment, and go right back to bashing those who don’t see things our way. Much as we knew it wasn’t what we wanted to do, we couldn’t help ourselves. It became almost comical. Almost.

Do you ever wish that you could be different? Maybe you’re not satisfied with your unhealthy lifestyle. You might long to be more compassionate in your behavior toward others. You could be frustrated with a job that doesn’t stretch you to use your God-given gifts. Perhaps you have experienced one failed relationship after another. Or your connection with God falls short of what you’ve always longed for. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just wave a magic wand and be transformed into the person you want to be?

Understanding yourself goes a long way toward finding a new life. So does a sincere desire to alter the course of your life. But neither self-awareness nor strong motivation will necessarily change you. You can know all about yourself and have a clear vision of how you want to act differently in the future, but then putting that into practice is another matter entirely.

St. Paul seemed to understand this struggle when he wrote: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:14) He knew what he should do, but he had trouble actually pulling it off. His answer was to put himself in God’s hands and to allow God to change him. It’s an answer that still holds true for us today.

God changes people who are willing to open themselves up to the Holy Spirit at work in their lives. But that doesn’t mean that we just sit around with our palms turned upward, waiting for the Spirit to enter our bodies. It means that we trust the Spirit to lead us to opportunities for growth and then we have the good sense to follow where the Spirit leads us.

It’s been almost 2,000 years since St. Paul wrote to the Romans, and in that time, humans have learned a lot about how the mind works. One of the things we have learned is that the brain has pathways in it that are formed when we behave a certain way. The more a behavior is repeated, the more defined the pathway becomes.

If you’ve ever been walking in the woods, you’ve probably noticed that there are pathways between the trees. These are routes that have been traveled in the past. The more traveled the pathways are, the more beaten down, wider, and easier to use they are. That’s how it is for the pathways we have in our brains, too. The more we travel a certain pathway, the easier it becomes to use it. When we’re hiking around in the woods, we tend to stay on the pathways that are well worn. It’s easier for us to get from one place to another and we don’t have to worry about becoming lost. Our pathways in the brain are the same for us. We tend to stay on the well-worn pathways, the ones that have worked for us in the past.

The most entrenched pathways are the ones we began traveling as children. Take our relationship pathways, for instance. As children, we first learned how to cope with the significant relationships in our lives. And that's why the relationships that we had with our parents have such an influence on all our future relationships. From our parents we learned how to be in relationship. We learned how to love. We learned how to trust. We learned how to protect ourselves. A pathway was formed. It’s a well-worn pathway that's worked for us, so it continues to be the pathway we find ourselves traveling in the significant relationships of our lives.

Some of the pathways in our brains are helpful for us, and some aren’t. If you’ve seen a pattern in your behavior that isn’t healthy, even if you’ve done the intensive work of understanding why you’ve engaged in this unhealthy behavior, it’s still really difficult to act differently, because you naturally use the pathway in your brain that’s so well traveled. Changing your behavior requires you to step off of a well-established pathway and form a new pathway. Can you see why it’s so difficult to change? It means setting out on a different course than the one you’ve always used in the past.

A new path isn’t a path at all until it’s been traveled a few times. It takes more than one journey to forge a new pathway. And it’s hard work. There are boulders to be removed along the way, weeds to be chopped down and trees you may need to go around. It can be so difficult that you may return to the old path by default. But the same old path will never get you anywhere but the same old place. There is only one way to find yourself in a new place.

God gives us all opportunities to forge new pathways in our lives. Don’t let those opportunities pass you by and your life will be changed. I don’t know that Robert Frost was talking about the spiritual path when he wrote about two roads that diverged in the wood, but his words ring true. When you take the road less traveled, it makes all the difference. It’s the way to transformation.

What's up with all the !!!!! ?

2011-08-04T09:10:00.007-04:00

What’s up with all the exclamation marks? Back when most communication between friends was received audibly, via face-to-face conversations or telephone, I wasn’t aware of the punctuation a communicator intended. Now, thanks to social media, I am privy to their punctuation. And I can tell you that there’s a whole lot of !!!!! going on.

Here’s a news flash for all written communicators. The standard ending punctuation for a sentence is the period. Other ending punctuation should be reserved for times when you just have to deviate from the period or the intent of the statement would be lost. Take the question mark, for example. You reserve it for questions. You don’t just decide, I think I’ll end this statement with a question mark, if it’s not a question. In the same way, the exclamation mark should be reserved for times when you can’t possibly not use it in order to communicate your intent. Think of it like the story of "The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'". If everything ends in an exclamation mark, then when an exclamation mark is really needed, it loses its impact.

I read a lot of emails, tweets, texting and Facebook postings that end every statement with an exclamation mark. This makes me ca-razy. But what makes me even crazier is multiple exclamation marks. As if one isn’t enough, they have to use five or six. I suppose that’s what happens when you end every sentence with !. Then, if you really want to show excitement you have to end the next one !!. And if it’s over the top excitement, !!!!!. Where will it end? One is enough. And it should be used sparingly.

My hometown of Hamilton, Ohio decided that they wanted to create some enthusiasm for their little corner of the world, so they changed their name to Hamilton! Although they tried to make this official, whoever it is who decides such things didn’t buy it, so to the rest of the world, it remains just plain Hamilton. But to insiders, it’s Hamilton! This is so silly on so many levels. First of all, the names of cities have never been followed by punctuation. And if they were, would Hamilton necessarily be followed by an exclamation mark? Why not a question mark or a period? Or how about an ellipsis, as if the story of "Hamilton" were still unfolding: Hamilton... I really like that. But, here's the thing. Even if we did have the option of following the names of cities with punctuation, should the good people of Hamilton be the ones to decide that for their own city? They’re not exactly objective about it. Wouldn’t everyone like to see their city name followed by an exclamation mark? I live in Charlotte! My daughter lives in Brooklyn! My son lives in Pittsburgh! And therein lies the real problem with exclamation marks.

The overuse of exclamation marks is a sign of ego-centricity. When you have to end everything you say with !!! it tells other people, “Listen to me because what I have to say is always important.” Yeah, I know, we’re all ego-centric. But do we have to flaunt it with our punctuation? I am hereby taking an official stand for more humility in punctuation!*

* Yes, in that sentence an exclamation mark is totally necessary! Okay, but in that last case it wasn’t. Redo. Yes, in that sentence an exclamation mark is totally necessary. Period. Got it?

A time to dress like a nun/a time to dress like a slut (a neckline for every purpose under heaven)

2011-08-01T11:08:00.009-04:00

Whatever happened to scoop necklines? When I go to buy clothes now it seems that I have two choices. I can either choose to look like a nun or a slut. Either the necklines literally line my neck (and I get enough of that wearing a clerical collar, thank you very much) or they plunge to my sternum. Of course, all the dresses I like fall into the latter category. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I suspect that if you’re one of those women with little to non-existing boobs, and you don’t have to wear a bra, you can just let the neckline fall to the depths and it’s no big deal. I used to be one of those women. About 50 years ago. In fact, I was the last girl in my class to wear a bra, or need one for that matter. But I made up for lost time and am into some serious heavy lifting now.

So, when I try on a dress that I find attractive, I have to focus on the amount of cleavage it reveals. I figure two inches is acceptable; anything beyond that makes me uncomfortable. If I’m showing too much cleavage I feel like everybody around me is staring at my chest. But, of course, that’s not true. I’m just being overly self-conscious. Everyone around me isn’t staring at my chest. Only 50% of the population.

Now, once I decide on a dress that I like, with a neckline I can live with, after I bring it home, I’ll try it on again. That’s when I discover that, in reality, it shows a little more than my two inch limit. Especially if I’m not standing up straight. And, face it, I slouch something awful, so there it is. (Or rather, I should say, there they are.) Then I'll try desperately to turn a capital V into a lower case v by pulling and patting, but to no avail.

I’ve gone the route of sewing in a snap, but the dress never quite lays right and this ends up calling even more attention to my chest, particularly when every time I breathe I pop the snap. Boing! Yep, there they are again!

At church, in the summertime it’s too darn hot to wear a collar, so I wear dresses. And I’ve tried strategically clipping my name badge to the exact spot where my breasts smoosh into each other. Yes, it looks silly. But who wants to look at their pastor’s cleavage on a Sunday morning? That’s just icky. Yet, I find that people are still staring at my chest. Either to see what my name is, or wondering what it is I’m hiding behind that badge.

There’s really only one time in my life when I don’t mind showing a little cleavage: when I’m contra dancing. That’s when I give myself permission to go past the two inch limit. Sometimes, way past it. I figure that as long as my puppies are on a tight leash and they can’t go wandering off on their own, sometimes it’s a good idea to take them for a spin around the dance floor. After all, the dances go fast and people have better things to do than focus on my chest. We’re there to dance. Right?

Well, in the two years that I’ve been dancing I have to admit that I’ve made an observation. My less endowed girlfriends have joked that if you have cleavage more men will ask you to dance and I’ve repeatedly denied it. But it’s time to admit the truth. Because I haven’t actually done a scientific study of this, I can’t say for sure that there’s a direct correlation between the amount of cleavage I’m showing and the number of times I get asked to dance. But I can tell you that despite the fact that I’m not the best dancer, when I’m not bashful about sharing two of my greatest assets, I’m always popular. Hell, if it works for my dance partners, it works for me.

I’m still waiting for scoop necklines to come back in style. But in the meanwhile, current fashion trends have taught me a hard lesson in womanhood. Although I spent most of my adult life refusing to accept it, I have to admit that in every woman’s life there is a time to dress like a nun and a time to dress like a slut. When it comes to cleavage, if I want to be taken seriously, get me to a nunnery! But if I want to dance, and believe me I do want to dance, well…

It just doesn't matter

2011-07-29T17:01:00.009-04:00

One of my favorite speeches of all time is given by Bill Murray in the movie Meatballs. He’s a counselor at a camp for losers and they’re getting geared up to get their butts whooped for the umpteenth straight year by the hoity-toity camp on the other side of the lake. His motivational message to the campers is that “it just doesn’t matter.” He works them into a frenzy as they all rise to their feet chanting, “It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!” Oh, I love that! I often silently chant it to myself when I catch myself getting all caught up in some effort to prove my worthiness to the world around me. It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!

When my daughter was in high school she was one of the kids in her class who was competing to be the valedictorian. This wasn’t anything her father or I encouraged. It came from someplace within her. She pushed herself to be the best. Well, I believe it was sometime in the middle of her junior year that she got an A- in some rinky-dink class like health. She felt it was unjustly given and she fought it, but the A- stood. I did a little happy dance. “Thank God!” I said, “Now you can stop worrying about being perfect.” I mean, really. It just doesn’t matter. I recall that at the time she was a bit miffed by my reaction, but she laughs about it now. (She still finished third or fourth in her class and got to make a speech at graduation, so she was pleased with herself in the end.)

I was a band kid all though junior high and high school. And the thing about being a band kid is you really can’t care a whole lot about what the other kids think of you. You’re so far from being cool that you’re just not in the running to be anything but a world-class dork. So, you get to go through high school with this it-just-doesn’t-matter attitude. That’s why the band kids always have more fun than anybody. Being a band kid is great training for the rest of life. It helps you put things into perspective. So much of what people strive for in this life just doesn’t matter.

We spend our lives trying to prove that we’re better than other people. Our house is bigger. Our car is faster. Our yard is greener. Our children are better behaved. Our job title is more prestigious. We have more degrees hanging on the wall, or more published articles, or more awards. We’re thinner. Our teams win more games. We get invited to more parties. Our church has more members or a bigger building or a more exciting youth group. Our country is more powerful or more prosperous. Oh, the list could go on and on. We are so busy proving that our lives are worthwhile that we can’t see how, in the grand scheme of things, this stuff just doesn’t matter.

If we’re lucky, we have an opportunity to see what doesn’t matter and what really does. Most often, it comes when we are confronted with failure or disappointed by reality. We get fired. We end up with a debilitating disease. Our children get into some serious trouble. Our marriage falls apart. We have to file for bankruptcy. Something happens to strip away the façade we’ve created to prop ourselves up in the eyes of the world. It may feel like the end of life as we know it, but if we’re smart we won’t let the opportunity pass us by. It’s our chance to consider what really does matter.

Of course, none of what we strive so hard to achieve matters a hill of beans to God. In fact, this is the very stuff that keeps us from experiencing an authentic relationship with God. We can never really come clean with God until the trappings that we hide behind are stripped away. That’s what Jesus taught us when he said that if you want to gain your life, first you’re going to have to lose it. He wanted us to see how so much of what we think is so gosh darn important just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you follow the law to the letter and pert near never do anything wrong. It doesn’t matter if you hang out with all the best people. It doesn’t matter if you have all the right answers. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich. It doesn't matter if you're admired by all the people in your community. None of the standards and measures we use to judge who is better than whom matter. It just doesn’t matter.

But here are some of the things that do matter, according to Jesus: humility, honesty before God, mercy, kindness, compassion. It’s not what you get that matters, but what you give. In short, what matters most is love. The opportunities we have to give and receive love are what make our lives worthwhile. It’s love that binds us to God. Wherever love is, God is.

Blessed are those who come to realize what matters and what doesn’t.

Holding back the tears

2011-07-28T10:00:00.005-04:00

Once when Ben was little and I noticed that he was crying, he quickly denied it and informed me that it wasn’t what it looked like. “I’m not crying,” he explained. “Water just keeps coming out of my eyes and I can’t stop it.” Tears have a way of doing that, don’t they? You can only hold them back so long.

I have expended too much time and effort in my life holding back tears. As a pastor, I know there are situations when I might be prone to cry and it’s just not helpful to the people around me. Take officiating at the funeral for someone I love, for instance. When I’m grieving along with everyone else, I know it’s hard to be their pastor, and what they need is a pastor. So, I’ll work myself into a zone in order to get through it. “I am the pastor,” I keep telling myself. When the funeral is over and I take my robe off, that’s when the water starts coming out of my eyes and I can’t stop it.

I suppose I’ve been conditioned through the years to fill the role of pastor because I seldom have the problem of blubbering when I need to have it together for the people I’m serving. But I will admit that as soon as I’ve done what the pastor needs to do, it’s almost like flipping a switch, and the tears suddenly appear. Many times I’ve stepped onto a hospital elevator after leaving the bedside of a parishioner, completely composed, and then, by the time the doors open again and I walk toward the lobby, I’m a liquid mess.

I’ll never forget one time in particular when I started my car in a hospital parking lot after spending time with the family of a teenager in the emergency room. He was in a car accident and didn’t make it. I had been there for the family, steady as a rock. When it was all over and it was time to go home, I turned the ignition in my car and noticed that I couldn’t see what was in front of me. So I flipped on the windshield wipers. But the wipers weren’t doing the job. It took me a while to realize that the moisture blocking my view wasn’t on the windshield.

The times when I lose it around other people are usually the ones that sneak up on me. I don’t see them coming, so I can’t possibly prepare myself by erecting a shield. Those are usually moments that are so full I can’t contain them. They’re too much for me. I want the world to stop so I can take it all in, but the power of the moment is all I can absorb. I place a piece of bread in the hand of a wide-eyed child and announce that this is the body of Christ given for her and the words get stuck in my throat. I sit across the table from my daughter as she tells me stories about her adult life, while all I can think about is the first time I held her as a baby, and suddenly my cheeks are wet. I feel the warmth of a dear friend’s arms around me after a long absence and as I sigh with gratitude and relief the tears flow with my breath. It’s as if the power of the moment fills me so completely that there’s no longer any space in my body for my tears and they’re pushed out.

I learn a lot about myself in those times when I can’t hold back the tears. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a direct correlation between my tears and my capacity to love. I’m thankful for both.

Why Christians should just shut up

2011-07-26T19:46:00.003-04:00

My sister Wendy and her husband Barry had two wonderful Labrador retrievers, Morgan and Bruno. Last year Morgan died, and Bruno doesn’t have the stamina he once did for taking long walks. But back when they were young, whenever I visited Wendy in Massachusetts, twice a day we loaded them up in a truck and drove them to an idyllic little country road that meanders through the woods and cranberry bogs. On one particular afternoon we parked the truck at one end of the road and had walked about a half mile or so when Bruno darted off after a rabbit and hurt himself jumping over a large rock. He started limping and we realized that he couldn’t make it back to the truck without doing more damage to his leg. So, Wendy headed back to get the truck while I waited behind with Bruno. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work as he was very, very protective of my sister.

As soon as Wendy walked away, Bruno went nuts trying to go after her. I held tight as he pulled on his leash and I commanded, “Sit, Buno.” He obeyed, and sat. Then I praised him and patted him, and with a calm voice I tried to assure him that everything was going to be fine. “It’s OK, Bruno. OK.” But I no sooner finished saying this than he was trying to charge off again down the road after my sister. So once again I had to command him to sit. He obeyed and sat. And once again I praised him and patted him, “It’s OK, Bruno. OK.” And then again he suddenly lunged forward to run after my sister. It happened over and over.

When my sister returned and I told her what Bruno had done, she informed me that OK was the command Bruno had learned for go. The poor dog. I was telling him, “Sit and go” over and over again. “Sit, Bruno… It’s OK, Bruno. OK.”

I was clueless. I assumed that telling Bruno it’s okay would be reassuring for him. I thought it would calm him down. Instead, it had the opposite effect. Words can be deceptive in that way. You may assume everyone understands that a word means what you think it means only to become flamboozled when you can’t communicate.

That seems to happen a lot among Christians. We’ll use the same loaded words and not even come close to attaching similar meaning to them. Words like: sin, salvation, evangelical, redemption and resurrection. They don’t mean the same thing to me that they do to a conservative Christian. And so, we can have a conversation and think we’re in agreement because we’re using the same vocabulary, but actually we’re worlds apart.

I don’t know what to do about this. It makes dialogue difficult, particularly when the need to defend one’s perspective is greater than any openness toward understanding a different perspective. I have to tell you that after a lifetime of conversations with conservative Christians, I'm both wary and weary. I am fed up with people telling me I’m going to hell because I don’t believe in a literal place called “hell.” I’m also sick to death of explaining to people that being a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America doesn’t mean that we’re anything at all like the Christians who call themselves evangelicals. And I’m tired of people tuning me out when I talk about salvation as a journey toward wholeness, which includes embracing our imperfection. What kind of a preacher talks like this, they wonder? How can she call herself a Christian?

How is it that language, which is intended to bring people together, can drive such a wedge between us? Sometimes I think the Christian church universal would be a lot better off if we would just shut up. If we’d stop trying to convince each other we’re right and instead, do what’s right together: feed the hungry, build houses for the homeless, speak for those who have no voice. Maybe if we spent more time being Jesus in the world we wouldn’t have to worry so much about defending our version of Jesus with our words.

Okay, enough said. It's time for me to shut up now.

When you've royally messed up

2011-07-25T11:15:00.012-04:00

Three times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?" What’s that about? Wouldn’t once have been enough? Was Jesus just being annoying or was there a point he was making?

If you’ve lived long enough, you have a past. And you probably have had the opportunity to royally mess up at least once in your life. Peter was such a person. He had a past. And he messed up. Royally.

He had been one of Jesus’ closest friends. And when it was all about to come down, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times. Of course, Peter insisted that he would never do such a thing. He would never betray Jesus like that. He couldn’t! But then, it happened just as Jesus said it would. When they came to arrest Jesus, Peter ran. And when he was asked if he wasn’t one of Jesus followers, he denied even so much as knowing the man. Three times.

How could he ever forget what he had done? How could he ever face Jesus again or even so much as look at himself in the mirror? Would he ever be able to recover from this or would he forever be known as Jesus’ friend who stabbed him in the back him three times?

When Jesus meets Peter after the resurrection and asks him three times, “Do you love me?” it changes everything for Peter. Come to think of it, it changes everything for all of us who carry around a past that we wish we could do over.

I moved to North Carolina thirteen years ago because I had a past I wanted to leave in Ohio. My life there was so different than it is now that you probably wouldn’t have recognized me. I had a husband and children and I suspect that many people who knew me envied my life. I was married to a man I met in seminary and we spent 20 years together, doing ministry and raising our kids. I actually thought it was a pretty good life myself, until I learned that there was something very sick going on. Unbeknownst to me, through the years, my husband had been unfaithful to me with women in the church. Of course, there is a long, drawn out story, but to cut to the chase, he got caught and it led to his resignation from the clergy roster of the ELCA. Despite my resolve to stand by him, trust had been destroyed beyond repair and we divorced. The story goes downhill from there.

I didn’t do the work I needed to do to heal after my marriage ended. Instead, I continued to serve at the church my husband and I both had served together and I took care of everybody else in the aftermath of this crisis. On the outside, I was this amazing pastor who was handling a horrible situation like the Woman of Steel. But I was in complete denial and I was a disaster waiting to happen. Shortly before my divorce was final, a former high school boyfriend came back into my life and swept me off my feet. It was all terribly romantic and then I did something terribly terrible. And stupid. More red flags were waving than you'd see at a Soviet parade, but I ignored them all and I married him.

There was a huge problem with this "marriage." I came to learn that he was already married to someone else and he had a family in California. Yes, I married a bigamist. My so-called marriage lasted about a year and a half with a man who never really lived with me. And all this, with my congregation and the entire synod tuned in to my life like they were watching reality TV.

I decided I needed to start over and go someplace where no one knew me. So I moved to North Carolina. I also went back to my maiden name of Kraft and I started coloring my hair red. It was a whole new me. So I thought.

One of the first things I did after I moved to North Carolina was attend a spirituality retreat that the synod was sponsoring. When I arrived to register, I ran into a woman who had chaired the call committee at a church where I had interviewed in the synod. I knew she would be there because they sent out a list of participants in advance. Her name was Jane. When she saw me, she said, “Why, Nancy Z**, I didn’t know you were going to be here!” Z** was the name I took from my bigamist husband and I explained to her that this wasn’t my name anymore. I was divorced and my name was now Nancy Kraft. Well, she’s still standing there chatting with me when a pastor I knew in Ohio, who had moved south several years before I did, walked in the door. He took one look at me and said, “Nancy F**! I didn’t know you were going to be here!” This had been my last name when I was married to husband number 1. “Well,” I told him, “My name isn’t F** anymore, it’s Kraft.” At that, Jane turned to me and said, “Boy Nancy, you change names like other women change shoes.”

Oh my! Never had I ever imagined such a moment in my life. And I realized that a change of geography wasn’t going to change my past. I would be carrying it around with me for the rest of my days. It was a part of my story and that made it a part of me. But did it define me as a person?

The thing about life in God’s reality is that we’re never defined by what we have or haven’t done. Yes, that’s a part of who we are, but it doesn’t define us. We’re defined by what God has done. Our lives aren’t framed by judgment and shame for all the bad things we’ve done in our past. Our lives are framed by God’s grace.

“Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter. And Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Now, considering their history, Jesus could easily have come back with, “You love me? Well, you sure coulda fooled me.” But instead, Jesus left the past in the past and chose to give Peter a future.

Jesus’ repetition of “Do you love me?” wasn’t spoken in judgment of Peter, but as absolution, three times, in order to wipe away Peter’s three denials. So Peter could be restored: to himself, to his Lord, to his community. And then, Peter isn’t simply forgiven and restored; he’s also commissioned. There is a new purpose for his life.

Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. Now, John’s gospel is also the one where we hear Jesus, in chapter 10, describing himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. After the resurrection, Jesus commissions Peter to take on the shepherd role in his absence. He doesn’t tell Peter he must be a shepherd to his sheep to make amends for his past. He forgives him first, unconditionally, and then he helps Peter to re-frame his life by grace. Peter will not be defined by his past. No one can change the past. Not even Jesus’ forgiveness can change what Peter has done. What changes, though, by Jesus’ forgiveness, is Peter’s future.

Through the years, I’ve met a lot of folks who believe that all they ever will be has already been determined, because of something that happened in their past. The memory of their past failure seems to have a grip on their lives. They resign themselves to the identity their failure has imposed on them. Because of their past, they live as if their future has already been determined.

But here's the thing. While it’s true that we all carry our past around with us, we get to decide how we will frame that past. Will we use it to block us from living into the future? Or can our past be redeemed and used as a source of healing and wholeness for the world around us?

The early church used the memory of Peter’s greatest failure as an example of the power of God to forgive our failures, redeem the past and renew our calling as followers of Christ. We are more than victims of the past. Even though we can’t change it, by God’s grace, our past doesn’t determine our future.

Let the whining begin!

2011-07-18T15:04:00.009-04:00

Dear God,

Things aren’t going my way lately. And I’m afraid I'm on the verge of becoming something I detest: a whiner. Please don’t let that happen to me. You know how I can't stand whiners.

As the keeper of a cat, this is tested from time to time, but, it holds true. I’m thankful Romeo is an inside/outside beast, because when he whines, his furry little carcass is routinely tossed into the outer darkness where there is weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

Whiny kids are a problem for me, too. Thankfully, neither of my kids are whiners. Never were. Not even when they were wee little. They knew better. It never got them very far with me. (They would have ended up with the cat.) And you know that I love other people’s kids. Really I do. But other’s people’s kids have a tendency to whine. And I hate it when they whine. Really I do.

I remember the Whiner family from Saturday Night Live. I would sit and listen to them whining while people around me thought it was the funniest thing. Did you find it amusing? I never laughted. All I wanted to do was turn the TV off.

We both know that when parishioners come to me and whine, you give me the strength I need to do my job and listen to them sympathetically. So far, you’ve restrained me from saying “Oh, suck it up!”, which is what I’d most like to tell them when they start whining. Thank you for that.

Of course, I know you’re a lot more patient than I am with whiners. It seems to be your nature to put up with them. There was Adam who whined that he wasn’t responsible for his actions; it was all Eve’s fault. And who can forget the children of Israel, who were saved from slavery and certain death through a miracle of God’s deliverance, and then proceeded to whine for forty years because things weren’t quite perfect on the way to the Promised Land? Jesus’ disciples were classic whiners, all worried about petty concerns, like who got to talk to Jesus, or who got to sit where in the Kingdom, as if any of that mattered a hill of beans. And then there’s Saint Paul, who was so pathetic, whining round and round in circles about how he wanted to do the right thing, but as hard as he tried, he always ended up doing what he knew her shouldn’t be doing. Oh, Whaa! Whaa! Whaa!

The Bible might be subtitled, The Book of Whining. It’s filled with self-centered people who don’t get what you’re up to, and can only fret about what’s in it for them, or usually, what’s not in it for them. And, of course, the Bible is a fine representation of humanity, isn’t it? That’s why we love it so much.

If I were you, God, I would have ended it a long time ago. I really don’t know how you tolerate it. But from what I know of you, you more than tolerate it. You seem to have an affinity toward whiners. Why? I don’t understand it one bit. But you do.

So, here’s the deal. I’m afraid I can’t hold it in any longer. I think I need to give myself permission to whine. I don’t want to and I hate it hate it hate it. But if I don’t, I may implode. And I think I would hate that worse. So, all that being said, I really do appreciate the fact that you’re a lot more gracious with whiners than I am. I’m going to count on that.

Love, Nancy

What I’ve learned about myself from my VW Beetle

2011-07-14T18:23:00.013-04:00

Back in the old days, I drove Beetles and always loved them. They were so simple and uncomplicated. In my first call, while I was living in North Dakota, I had one with a propane heater. Despite the harsh winters, it was always toasty inside the car. Sort of like fishing in an icehouse, though. The bottom had rusted out in the backseat and there was always a puddle of water on the floor, so all winter you sat there with your feet on a cake of ice. Then, once the spring thaw set in, it was like a day at the beach. Every time the car stopped, a little wave would come sloshing up to the front seat. To keep your feet from getting soaked you would have to lift them for a moment and wait for the water to roll once again to the backseat. Now, I ask you, when have you simulated the experience of fishing in an ice house and wading in the waves along the beach all in the same vehicle?

While I was going through my child-raising years, I drove more practical cars: safe, boxy things with four wheels and no personality. But then, as timing would have it, shortly after my nest became empty and I became single again, the New Beetle came out. A coincidence? I think not.

As soon as I saw them I was hankering to have one of my own. They were just so darn cute I that I couldn’t stand it. I know nothing about things like engines. But cute is very important to me. (If you’ve seen my house or my dog, you know cute has become something of a lifestyle choice for me. I cannot resist cute. Yeah, this would be true for men as well, but that’s another blog.) So, yes, I bought the Beetle because it was cute. But I soon learned it wasn’t like the old Beetle. Specifically, it wasn’t simple and uncomplicated. And a particular disappointment to me was the horn. No sweet baby beep-beep! It just sounds like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill horn. Boring! (I didn’t even think to try it out on my test drive.) Still, the New Beetle had the cute factor going for it, and cute covers a multitude of sins.

The times I have enjoyed most with my New Beetle have been the gotcha moments related to space. It's like a little truck inside. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to pick something up at Home Depot, or a furniture store and had some guy bring the item to my car and look at me in disbelief, like I’m the craziest woman in the world, telling me, “That’s not gonna fit in your car.” And I’ll just smile and say, “You’re probably right, but just humor me.” And sure enough, it fits. Stuff you wouldn’t believe. Only one time did this fail me. It was a nine foot ladder. We put the front seat down and placed it in the car diagonally with the top of the ladder wedged up on the dashboard. I had used my “humor me” speech on this guy. So, he slammed the back hatch down, and the ladder went through the front windshield. No, it wasn’t fail-safe. But it worked often enough that I’ve had the pleasure on numerous occasions of proving a man wrong. And that’s always good for me.

Lately, I’m having some wear and tear issues with my Beetle. The latch on the flap for my gas tank is busted, so I don't want to close it. Every once in a while someone passes by my car and thinks they’re doing me a favor by pushing it in and then I have to use a crow bar to open it the next time I need gas. This often happens when it’s parked at the church. I’ve thought about putting a post-it on it that says, “Please don’t help me!” Why do people in church parking lots feel so compelled to be helpful?

Now that we’re in the hot season, another problem comes up. I have this beeping brake thingy that always goes haywire when it’s unbearably hot, which is the entire freaking summer in North Carolina. So, it’s over a hundred degrees out and I’m driving around town with this obnoxious little alarm constantly going off. After trying to have it fixed a couple of times, I’ve given up hope, and try to live with it. But if you ever pass me by during the summer and hear random screaming (or worse) coming from my car, that’s why. It’s not road rage. It’s *bleeping* beeping insanity!

This morning the car got the best of me again, when I flipped up the cover to the mirror on my sun visor, and it fell off. Apparently, I spend so much time primping in the car that I wore the hinges off it. Unfortunately, when the mirror isn’t closed, the interior light comes on, so I had to wedge it back and quickly fold the visor up to hold it in place. But then I found that I was constantly pulling the visor down and flipping the mirror up, reflexively, without even thinking about it. I couldn’t stop myself. I guess I really have a primping problem. Of course, every time I do this, the cover to the mirror ends up in my hand and I can’t turn the light off. I don’t need to tell you that messing with this the whole time you’re driving can impede one's effectiveness on the road. So, I sealed the mirror cover to my visor with a huge piece of duct tape. Now I primp in the rear view mirror like I used to in the old Beetle.

It probably goes without saying that there are other things wrong with this car. It leaks oil. I can’t lock it anymore. It’s going to need something majorly done with the heating system before winter because it has that funny sickening sweet smell that a guy who knows about these things tells me isn’t a good thing. Oh, the list could go on and on. But the thing is, it’s paid for, and I can’t think of any car I’d rather have than a car that’s paid for. So, I’m going to try to get about 100,000 more miles out of it.

But beyond all that, how could I part with a car that has taught me so much about myself through the years?: my irrational weakness for cuteness, the sense of superiority I feel when I prove a man wrong, my disdain for people who insist on helping me, the limits to my tolerance, my perpetual primping.

Oh, my! This car hasn’t exactly brought out the best in me, has it? Is it possible to have a dysfunctional relationship with your car? I wonder if there's counseling for this sort of thing.

Having a history without your history having you

2011-07-10T16:00:00.016-04:00

Why do people have such a propensity to hold onto the past? My friend Pauline says that she does it because the past is what she knows. There’s security in the past. Anything else is scary because it’s unknown. So, we cling to the past because, whether it was good or bad, it’s what we know. I suspect she’s right.

Holding onto the past is antithetical to living by faith, isn’t it? And yet, so many people of faith I know seem to be enslaved by their past. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

There are those who hold onto the past because they believe that their best days are behind them. They may have a moment of glory from high school that they relive over and over again. Or a cherished memory of happier times when they were surrounded by loved ones who are now gone. They may look at the good-old-days as a time that was simpler, when you spoke to your neighbors by name, when people appreciated the value of a hard day’s work. Nostalgically, we remember the past like Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot, “where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average.”

Others hold onto the past because they can’t let go of pain they are carrying. They don’t want to relive the past, so much as they want to be relieved of it. But they can’t forget past resentments or regrets. They resent the wrongs they have endured at the hands of another. Anger eats a hole inside them that can only be relieved through genuine forgiveness, which seems to elude them no matter how hard they try. Or they may regret the wrongs they have done themselves. If only I could have been a better parent to my son. I should have known better than to marry a man with a drinking problem. If I had been smarter I would have finished college. All the coulda-shoulda-wouldas can suck the life out of you if you let them.

Certainly, there is value in remembering our past. It can be the source of beautiful memories for us. And we can always learn from our past experiences, whether crowning achievements or royal screw-ups. Our history has made us who we are. And yet, it doesn’t have to determine who we will be. Not unless we allow it to. The most tragic thing about holding onto the past is that it prevents us from embracing today.

What is your relationship with your past? Would you say it’s healthy? Do you spend way too much time reliving the past as the best part of your life? Or is the past a life-denying source of resentment and regret for you that you just can’t shake? What would your today be like if you could let go of your past and truly live by faith?

I struggle with this all the time. So much so, that I have a special Celtic blessing taped to the wall in my office, just above my computer screen. It’s my prayer for a life of wholeness. That life includes a healthy respect for the past, while keeping it where it belongs, in the past. It’s about living fully in each moment that God gives me, trusting that the best is yet to come. That’s what it means for me to live by faith.

May your past be a pleasant memory,
Your future filled with delight and mystery,
Your now a glorious moment,
That fills you life with deep contentment.

A Jesus Way of Seeing

2011-07-09T21:22:00.003-04:00

When Beth opens the door to pick up the Charlotte Observer, on the welcome mat she finds a package wrapped in shiny silver paper with a glittery gold bow. She carefully picks the package up, brings it into the house and places it on the kitchen table. There is no card and no one who lives in her house is having a birthday or an anniversary or any special reason to be receiving gifts.

Now Beth, who grew up in a home where her father was constantly putting her down, always feels like she’s never quite good enough, and she just knows this gift couldn’t be for her. “Hmmm,” she says, “I bet this got left at our house by mistake, and it was really intended for one of our neighbors.”

Her husband Frank, a veteran of the Iraq war, sees the gift and warns Beth not to touch it. “I think we’d better take it to the police station and see if there’s a bomb inside,” he says.

Frank’s 95 year old grandma, who lives with them, takes one look at the gift and says, “Oh, I like that wrapping paper. And the ribbon is lovely.” A child of the depression, she’s already thinking about saving the paper and the ribbon and re-using it another time.

As the three of them sit around debating what to do about the gift, all their speculation ends abruptly when 4-year-old Andy bounds into the kitchen. Without thinking twice, he immediately rips the shiny paper off the present and opens the box.

One simple gift. And four people each see it in a different way.

A wise woman (Anais Ninn) once said: “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” The ability of our eyes to receive a visual image is only a small part of what we see. The way we process what we see in our brains tells the real story. We have a point of view that is unique to each of us. It’s affected by our life experience, our knowledge, and our feelings.

Is there such a thing as a Christian point of view? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, “We walk by faith and not by sight. From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” When we become a new creation in Christ, we don’t see things in the same way. We’re transformed. We develop a Jesus way of seeing.

Now, that’s not the same thing as assuming that you and Jesus see eye-to-eye on things. Many Christians use Jesus to reinforce their way of thinking, rather than allowing Jesus to change their way of thinking. They’re not a new creation in Christ, but Christ becomes a new creation in them. It’s disturbing how certain they can be that Christ agrees with them. Ann Lamott was acknowledging this very human tendency when she said that "you’ll know you’ve created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do."

So, how do you keep from creating God in your own image and instead become a new creation in Christ with a Jesus way of seeing things? Well, first of all, you have to you acknowledge that God is God and you’re not. You dare to admit that your way of thinking, and your way of doing things may not be God’s way. You let down the self-protective wall you place between God and yourself and enter into a relationship with God.

Being in Christ is not about theology, or what you can say you believe about God. It’s about a relationship. And what is true for our human relationships, in many ways, can also apply our relationship with God.

Have you ever been so close to another person that you understood what they were thinking without saying a word? My daughter and I are like that. We’ll be out in a crowd and we’ll hear someone say something and the two of us will make eye contact. Nothing has to be said between us. We already know what the other person is thinking because we know each other so well. I can see the world as she sees it and she can see the world as I see it. What would it take to have a relationship like that with Jesus? To understand him so well that you come to see the world the way he sees it?

We have some tools to help us develop a Jesus way of seeing. Like, spending time in prayer, not so much the talking part, but actually listening. And becoming part of a faith community where we are regularly supported, encouraged and challenged. But first and foremost, the best way to get to know Jesus is through the scriptures.

The world is full of people who have all kinds of distorted ideas regarding what the Bible says about Jesus without ever diving into the scriptures and finding out what they really say. William Sloan Coffin has said, “Most Christians use the Bible much like a drunk uses a lamppost, more for support than for illumination.” Serious Bible study isn’t just using the Bible to support what you already hold to be true, but allowing the Bible to lead you into the truth. Unless you have moments when you’re studying the scriptures and you can say, “Wow! I never saw it that way before!” you aren’t really allowing the Bible to do what it’s intended to do in your life. You’re not allowing it to transform you. And you can’t begin to see the world from a Jesus perspective.

Without reading the scriptures with an expectation that you will be transformed by what God has to say to you, you’ll end up assuming that Jesus agrees with conventional wisdom that you’ve been taught by the world around you (not to mention dogmatic Christian teachers you may have encountered in the past). But, if you really study the scriptures seriously, with an open mind and an open heart, expecting to be transformed, you will be transformed.

Being in Christ means taking up a whole new way of seeing the world. If you aren’t aware of the difference, take some time to get to know Jesus. Not the Jesus you think you know, but the Jesus who will surprise you, and challenge you, and turn your world upside down.

I. HATE. TO. WAIT.

2011-07-06T10:26:00.003-04:00

(Understatement alert!) I don’t do very well with the whole waiting thing. For example, I always have to read how a mystery turns out before I work my way to the end of the book. If I received the chapters of a book in installments, so that I couldn’t read ahead, I would deal with it. But if the ending of a book is right there in my hands, I couldn’t imagine holding off to see how it ends. They say that the best things in life are worth waiting for, but I say, if they’re so darn good, why wait? So, for me, the only waiting I do is waiting that is imposed upon me. I can’t remember the last time I waited for something by choice. Delayed gratification isn’t all that gratifying to me. I eat dessert first a lot!

I suspect that technology hasn’t served me well as a wait-er. When I first started using the internet and dial-up was my only option, I could sit and listen with amusement to the cartoon noises my computer emitted while I waited for the little hamsters inside to grab onto a connection. Now I would gladly choose water-boarding over going back to a dial-up connection. My tolerance for waiting seems to diminish every time I flick my finger and receive an instant result.

People aren’t machines. You can’t push a button and get them to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it. And so, I sit and wait for the doctor’s office to give me test results. I wait for the cable guy to come to the house so I can watch T.V. again. I wait for my daughter to call me back on the phone. Being human myself, I understand the limitations we all have. When you deal with other people, you have no choice but to wait. And the more people you have to deal with, the more you have to wait. Have you ever traveled with a group of people? The more the merrier? Not for me! The more, the crabbier. We’re always waiting on someone. Gladys is in the gift shop. Herb is in the bathroom. Stan locked himself out of his room and needs to get a key. Shirley can’t find her sun glasses. When I picture hell, I imagine it as an endless group vacation.

Lately, it seems like I’ve been spending way too much of my precious time waiting. And it’s occurred to me that all waiting is not created equal. At this moment there are members of my congregation who are waiting for their first child to be born. And we’re all waiting for the oldest member of our congregation, who is almost 102 years old, to die as she lives through her final days. Those events are just a matter of time. You know they’ll get here sooner or later. When they come, it’s a relief.

Open-ended waiting is another animal entirely. That’s waiting for something that may or may not ever happen. I have a number of dear friends who are waiting for their next job right now. Despite their best efforts, doing everything in their power to make it happen, they’re left with endless waiting. And they wonder, “Am I waiting for nothing?” Waiting with uncertainty is so much more difficult than waiting when you know that it’s just a matter of time.

And that brings us to the worst kind of waiting. That’s waiting till the cows come home. That’s when you’re waiting for something or someone to come along and magically change your life. There’s a fine line between having faith that your future will be better than your past and passively sitting back and waiting for your future to find you. I’m not one to wait till the cows come home and I don’t have a whole lot of patience for people who do.

But then, as I’ve said, I’m not one to wait, in general. I’m not particularly proud of this. In fact, I’m starting to see it as a real problem. I always thought that patience is something I would learn along the way as I aged. That hasn’t happened for me so far and I wonder if it ever will.

I realize that my life would be better if I could learn to wait with a certain amount of grace, if I could stop fighting it. I think of the passage from Ecclesiastes that the Byrds first introduced to me back in the days before I ever cracked open a Bible. "For everything there’s a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." There’s a time for everything, and that includes waiting. Some things truly are worth waiting for. And sometimes waiting is necessary because we’re not yet ready for what comes next. Often, there’s a purpose to our waiting, particularly when we look at it as more than just marking time until the next big thing comes along.

Here’s what Henri Nouwen says about waiting: “A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” I really love that. And I can’t help but think that I’m missing out on something significant in my life because I’m not taking the time to wait on God.

I know I’m not dead yet. Maybe I can still learn to be at peace with patience. But am I willing to wait so that I can learn to wait?

Why being cool isn't really all that cool

2011-07-05T12:43:00.006-04:00

There’s an old Indian teaching that says every person is like a house with four rooms: a physical room, a mental room, an emotional room, and a spiritual room. To be a whole person, you need to spend at least a little bit of time in each of those four rooms every day. What I like about this image is that it’s a good way to think about bringing some balance to our lives so that we’re not just spending all our time in our brain, or we’re not just doing, doing, doing without taking time to reflect on our actions.

But here’s what I don’t like about that image. It compartmentalizes spirituality, as if it’s just one more aspect of our lives where we can choose to spend time as part of a well-rounded life. You can wake up in the morning and read a Bible passage and say a prayer and move on to the next room. This doesn’t ring true for me. Spirituality isn’t something we can control and compartmentalize. It permeates every part of our lives. It’s a part of our physical health, and our mental health, and our emotional health. Spirituality is being conscious of the relationship we have with God and how it impacts every facet of our lives. You can’t relegate God’s Spirit to one room of your house and expect it to stay there while you move on to other things.

Walls are irrelevant to the work of the Spirit. There is an idea in Celtic spirituality of thin places. Those are the places where the distinction between the physical world and the spiritual world are so thin, or so close, that they become blurred. To be open to the Spirit moving in our lives is to embrace the thin places where we might have erected walls between us and God.

If you’ve ever seen the way charismatic Christians worship, you may have noticed that they use a different posture for prayer than the rest of us Christians do. When we pray, we fold our hands and we bow our heads. But charismatic Christians lift their heads and they hold their hands in the air. I prefer this posture; when I’m in the privacy of my home and no one is watching, that’s the way I pray. Certainly, it doesn’t change the way God receives my prayers, but for me it says something about my openness to God’s Spirit working in my life. It feels like I’m a satellite dish, open to receive whatever God is sending my way. On the other hand, when I bow my head and fold my hands, it often feels to me like I’m turning in on myself and closing myself off from God. My body language seems to say something about the way I approach God in my life.

Of course, there are times when the last thing I want is to be open to God’s Spirit taking over every aspect of my life like a wildfire. It scares me to think of giving up control. God only knows where the Spirit may take me, what may happen in my life as a result. I prefer to play it cool, and it’s hard to play it cool when you’re on fire.

We admire people who keep their cool, don't we? When you’re a kid you learn that it’s not cool to let the teacher know you like her, or that you’re in any way interested in what she has to say. So you just sit there and act cool. That doesn’t change a whole lot as we get older. When we show an inordinate amount of enthusiasm for something, afterwards we feel compelled to apologize for our emotional outburst. “I’m sorry I got carried away,” we’ll say. We notice how those who make a habit of showing their emotions in our culture are dismissed as a having little credibility and we don’t want to be one of them. So, we work hard to present a cool façade to the world. We keep ourselves in check. We are determined not to lose control.

Do you know where the word enthusiasm comes from? It comes from en theos, which means in God. To be in God is the opposite of playing it cool. It means daring to show enthusiasm… living in the thin place… being out of control. What if you lived with enthusiasm for God? What would that look like? I don’t know. But I do know that we’ll know the Spirit is moving in our lives just about the time we feel like we’ve lost control of ourselves.

What I love about this country

2011-07-03T22:01:00.004-04:00

I decided to sit on the front porch for a bit this evening. Despite the heat, it was pleasant. That is, until a man and woman walked by and I overheard the conversation they were having. Here’s how it went...

HER: …You know, just because someone is speaking Spanish, that doesn’t mean they’re from Mexico. There are other countries they could be from.
HIM: Like what?
HER: Um… well… I can’t think of any others right now. But there are others.
HIM: You mean, like Spain? They speak Spanish in Spain, don't they?...

And on they continued down the street, beyond ear range.

I can only guess about what preceded and followed this snippet I heard. They had just passed a Latino family who were out in their yard lighting sparklers on the other end of the block. I assume the man and woman had been talking about them when the man referred to them as Mexicans. So, the woman had to set him straight. He had stereotyped them. "Well, good for her!" I thought. But no sooner had I mentally sent up a cheer for the woman than she let me down. She couldn’t think of a single country, besides Mexico, where people spoke Spanish. Seriously? After they moved along down the street, I wondered if they were ever able to come up with any countries, other than Spain. Like, how about the entire continent of South America? (With the exception of Brazil, of course.)

And this… on a Fourth of July weekend. It reminds me of what I love about this country. It’s the sweet land of liberty where a family of immigrants can gather in their front yard to celebrate an opportunity for a new life. It’s also a place where men and women are absolutely free to walk down the street and forget about entire continents of people in other parts of the world.

Happy Independence Day!

God’s Cleverly Disguised Transportation System

2011-07-02T18:24:00.010-04:00

Faced with a decision along the path,
I chose the wrong way.
Stumbling and tumbling downward,
engulfed in darkness,
my hands disappear before my face.
Into what hole have I fallen?

Musty wet walls on either side of me,
a tunnel twisting before me,
I crawl through inky soup,
feeling my way forward
...or perhaps backwards
...or perhaps sideways.
My direction disturbed
Moving into the void
Nowhere
How will I find my way out of of this cave?

Suddenly I am violently vomited
from my place of despair.
Tangled in seaweed
Strewn among the scattered shells
Sand scraping my back
Cheeks seared by the sun
What hole heaves with such force?
What cave careens upward?

This is not the path I traveled
before descending into darkness.
It is a place I have never seen before.
Had I been stuck in hole or cave,
emerging, I would find myself
exiting the same space
where once I had entered.
Instead, I am transported
by my tomb.

How could I know that I had been traveling
inside the belly of a whale?

Unsolicited advice: why bother?

2011-06-28T15:52:00.005-04:00

Never have I met a person who appreciates unsolicited advice. So, why do we continue to offer it? Is this just one more pointless human activity, like when someone yells at you and you yell back at them, or when you carry on philosophical conversations with your dog? There is no explanation for why we do such things. We know they don’t serve any purpose whatsoever, yet we continue to do them anyway. Does unsolicited advice fall into that same category? Or could there possibly be a good reason for this compulsion we have to tell other people what’s best for them, despite the fact that they aren’t interested in hearing it?

I don’t know about you, but when I go to a friend with a problem and pour my heart out, that doesn’t mean I’m asking for advice. I don’t want her to solve my problem; I just want her to listen to me. When I want advice, I’ll ask for it. If I don’t ask for it, it doesn’t matter if it’s the best advice in the world, I’m not receptive to it. Aren’t most people like that? The only time we respond well to unsolicited advice is when someone advises us to do something we wanted to do all along. Otherwise, put a sock in it!

Knowing this, advice-givers will often find well-disguised ways to get their message across. There’s the stealth advisor, who sneaks his directives under the radar by asking innocent questions like, “Were there any instructions in the box?” Or the disclaim-er who thinks she can clear the way for receptivity by preceding her prescription with, “I don’t mean to be telling you what to do, but…” The one I find most endearing is the yarn spinner, who opens with, “Did I ever tell you about the time…?” Is this going to be a stroll down memory lane, or is it a story with an agenda?

Now, there are clearly some people who simply enjoy telling others what they ought to do. I suspect it gives them a feeling of superiority. And there are also those who are insufferable control freaks who will jump at every opportunity to push other people around. But what about all the people who truly mean well when they freely offer up their pearls of advice without being asked?

My children are the recipients of unsolicited advice on a regular basis. I know this because I’m their unsolicited adviser. They roll their eyes and sigh while I say my piece. Then they proceed to do what they want to. I realize that’s the way it works, but I can’t help myself. I have to dish it out like great big heaps of mashed potatoes. Why?

Well, here’s the thing. When they were little they needed me to guide them. If I hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t be here today. They needed me to tell them things like, “Don't play with rattlesnakes 30 minutes after you've eaten.” Then, as they grew in independence, my guidance wasn’t needed like it once was, and I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible. Yet, I still find myself saying things like, “It’s never smart to make the minimum payment on your credit card.” Or, “Please promise me you wear a condom when you have sex.” Through the years, the content of my advice has changed. But my need to offer it hasn’t. And, that may be the key to understanding why I do it. I do it because I need to be needed. It’s not that I think Gretchen and Ben are incompetent to figure these things out on their own. They’re both smart people, and I know they don’t need me to give them advice. Yes, they’ll end up doing whatever they choose, despite anything I might say to them. But when I offer them advice, it’s not for them, it’s for me.

When you love someone, your happiness is intricately connected to theirs. You want to protect them because, if they’re not safe, you’re not safe. You don’t want them to mess their lives up because when they do, it messes up your life, too. When they pay the price for their mistakes, you pay the price as well. Their heartbreak breaks your heart. Their failures leave you feeling defeated. Their wounds make you bleed. That’s why we have no choice but to offer advice to those we love, whether they ask for it or not. Yes, it may be annoying as hell for them, but hopefully they’ll understand that offering unsolicited advice is just another variation on “I love you.”

Why I’m alone on a Friday night

2011-06-27T19:06:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while I think it might be nice to have a man in my life. But when I get real, I know all too well that the odds are against me. Seriously against me. Not too long ago I met a good man. We seemed to hit it off and I enjoyed his company. Then it all went south quickly. We were having dinner and the topic of football came up. He has season tickets to the Panthers games and this is a big part of his life. When he asked me if I liked football I talked about all the old men I’ve met who are crippled because they played football in high school. “It’s hard for me to watch a football game without thinking about how they’re abusing their bodies. I mean, people weren’t meant to run at top speed and crash into each other like that.” Then I made what I will admit was an unfair comparison. I compared watching football to watching a cockfight.

Last Friday night, I was telling this story to a girlfriend and she shrieked. “Oh my God, you didn’t really say that to him! Are you nuts?” The implication was that I shot myself in the foot at that moment. I blew it with him because I couldn’t keep my opinion to myself. Is that what happened? Would I still be seeing him if I pretended to be someone I wasn’t? “That’s why you’re alone on a Friday night!” my girlfriend told me.

I don’t know if I’m getting pickier about men as I get older, or if I’ve finally come to terms with how narrow the field of potential mates is for me. I do know what I can and can’t live with, and I will admit that by the time you line all those things up, the field of potential men for me becomes miniscule to non-existent in no time.

First of all, the man would have to be available. That means someone who is straight, single and healthy enough to consider being in a relationship with a living, breathing woman without flipping out. There aren’t as many of those men around as you might think. Then, of course, he would have to be in my age group, give or take a decade. And so the field narrows a bit more. He would have to be bright and have the ability to write in complete sentences or I could never get past it. (I’m not saying this is fair, but I know how I am.)

And, here's a real sorter down here in the Bible Belt… He would have to be somewhat accepting of religion in general, because, after all, that’s my life, but… and this is the kicker… not a Bible thumper. (These two things seem to be mutually exclusive in these parts. Men are either hostile to religion, or they’re so religious that it creeps me out.)

In order to be comfortable around my friends, he would need to accept people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. (And now we’re whittling the field down further.) Politically, if he ever voted for W, I couldn’t deal with it. (Are you starting to see my problem here?)

Then there are the little things that would be deal breakers for me. He has to love dogs and tolerate cats or he couldn’t come to my home. If he doesn’t contra-dance, he’d have to be willing to learn. He would have to make me laugh on a regular basis, and here’s a biggie… he also would have to laugh at my jokes. (I’m just sayin’.) Then there’s the whole thing about football (see above). And now we’re talking about a very select few men in the entire world. (But, of course, I’m not interested in dating men in the entire world. For example, if such a man existed in Nome, Alaska, I would regretfully have to pass.)

All that’s to say that the field of men I could seriously be in a relationship with is mini-micro-microscopic. And then, on top of all that, should I ever find someone who meets all the above criteria, he would have to be into me. So, now what are the chances of all those planets ever aligning?

I know that for the sake of a relationship, sometimes compromises are necessary. I’m willing to do that. I can eat in a Thai restaurant once in a while. I can go to the beach in August. I can even watch a football game on T.V. if that makes him happy. But what I won’t compromise is who I am. And that’s why I’m alone on a Friday night.

So much to celebrate!

2011-06-26T19:59:00.005-04:00

Baby showers don’t usually do a whole lot for me. But I went to one today that left me feeling so full and happy that I still haven’t stopped smiling. Stephanie and Chrissy are expecting their first child, Amelia Rae, in a few weeks. The people in our Holy Trinity family are so thrilled that they’re already calling dibs on who gets to hold her during worship.

At today's baby shower, Stephanie and Chrissy received gifts from the whole congregation. I was so touched to see the three little sleepers that an elderly widower from the congregation gave them. And there were gifts from people who have only worshipped with us a few times. The guests at the shower included folks who were male and female; married, partnered and single; toddlers through senior citizens; straight, gay and transgender; parents, grandparents and doggy parents. All showered the new moms, not only with their gifts, but with their love.

Chrissy and Stephanie first started attending Holy Trinity when their relationship was budding. Then, they decided to get married and went to another state to make it legal. Next, they told us they were going to have a baby. Every step of the way they have been loved and supported by their church family.

I’m so thankful to be a part of a congregation where this is possible. In fact, it’s so commonplace at Holy Trinity for same-gender couples to marry and have families that I forget how unusual this would be for most other churches in Charlotte, North Carolina. I feel like I’m living in a bubble in that regard. While all around me pastoral colleagues have been battling for years with their congregations over sexual orientation, when I came to Holy Trinity, that war was over. They were already completely open to all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

It’s been over six years now since I first met with the search committee at Holy Trinity. Back then, their biggest problem was a membership so small that they were struggling to survive. As I sat with leadership to talk about my potential pay package, they insisted that they wanted a full time pastor and they were prepared to pay me for full time work. But when I asked them how long they would be able to compensate me at that level, if nothing changed, they told me we had about eight months. They knew that I could very well become the last pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. And yet, the faithful remnant at Holy Trinity believed so strongly in their mission that they couldn’t imagine how God would ever allow that to happen.

I believed in their mission, too. Although I wasn’t as convinced as they were that they were going to make it, with all my heart, I wanted to them to make it. At the time they were the only Reconciling in Christ congregation in our North Carolina Synod; they had carried the banner for the full inclusion of LGBT folks for a long time, and at great cost. I knew that other congregations were already pointing to Holy Trinity in their struggle for survival, saying, “See, that’s what happens when you welcome gay people into your church; we don’t want to become like Holy Trinity.” But I had another vision for Holy Trinity. I wanted other congregations to point to them and say, “Why can’t we become more like Holy Trinity?” I felt so passionately about it that when I was called to become their next pastor, I had to come.

When I first arrived at Holy Trinity, we only had one family with young children and no babies. Our new nursery, which I insisted would be in place before my first Sunday, stood empty, never used once in over two years. If a family should come to worship with us, they would take one look around, see no other small children, and that would be the end of them. I was beginning to think that I would never baptize an infant.

All of that changed when Kevin and Aaron, who were foster parents, started attending our church. I can’t remember exactly how it all unfolded, but suddenly we were crawling with kids. And that brings us to where we are today. We have families with a mom and a dad, some with a single parent, others have two dads or two moms. When they all come to the altar for communion on Sunday mornings, I can hardly take it in; there is so much to celebrate!

I have witnessed so many God-moments at Holy Trinity that I lose track of them. But next Sunday, I know another one is coming. After 32 years of ordained ministry, I’ll be baptizing my first triplets when three little boys will be brought to the font by their two moms. We’ll welcome them into God’s family through the power of the water and the word and this extraordinary community of love that surrounds them.

What did I ever do to deserve a congregation like this? Not a blessed thing, that’s what. They’re a gift from God. I’ve always insisted that the most important thing I can do as a pastor is love my congregation and if I can no longer do that, I need to leave. Well, it takes no effort whatsoever to love the people of Holy Trinity. I’d be crazy to think about leaving.

This is a test.

2011-06-25T15:20:00.009-04:00

The story of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command is a biggie for three faith groups: Jews, Muslims and Christians. Interestingly, each tradition has focused on a different overall meaning. For Jews, it is that the Lord will provide. For Muslims, the obedience of Abraham is the central thrust. And for Christians, the parallel between this story and the sacrifice of Jesus has been significant.

Despite the meaningful interpretations from those faith traditions, on a personal level, the story of God asking Abraham to kill Isaac has caused individual thinkers a lot of angst through the years. Typically, people react to it in one of two ways. Either they flat-out reject a God who could do such a thing, or they try to rationalize God’s actions in an attempt to defend God’s honor.

This is a tricky story. Before we launch into it, perhaps it would be a good idea to review a few of the basics on how to approach the Bible in general. The Bible does not give us a definitive picture of God. Instead, it tells us about the way people in different contexts have understood God. Those understandings are always limited by the lives of the ones who are telling us the story. It’s told through their eyes. So, what we get in the Bible is a collection of stories told by a variety of people who have a variety of perspectives based on a variety of experiences. That’s why we can say that the Bible is not a history book or a science book. It’s a book of faith.

Unfortunately, calling the Bible a book of faith is often misunderstood as well. That’s because, for many people, faith means accepting things at face value that nobody in their right mind would ever believe are true. But that’s not at all what faith is. Faith is a distinctive framework for living in this world. To live by faith is to walk in a relationship with God, open to the truths God reveals along the way. To say that the Bible is a book of faith is to say that it bears witness to the way people of faith have experienced their relationship with God through the ages.

When we read and study the Bible, its authors become a part of our faith community. Their witness informs our discussion as people of faith who are open to the truths God is revealing to us. I hope you hear what I’m saying here. The Bible is not a book we come to for answers. It’s a book we come to for questions. It’s not the final word that ends the discussion. It’s the living word that continues to be a part of the discussion.

Many of the Old Testament stories come to us by way of oral tradition. They were handed down from one generation to the next until finally, in a time when the religion of Israel was being threatened, someone thought, “This is a good time to start writing some of these down so we don’t lose them.” The story of Abraham and Isaac was once a part of that oral tradition.

Can you imagine a wise sage telling these stories to children as they sit around a campfire? Many of them were told to explain why the world is as it is. “Children, do you want to know why there is so much evil in the world? Well, once there was a man named Adam and a woman named Eve.” “Would you like to know why people are so violent? Let me tell you about two brothers named Cain and Abel.” “Have you noticed how people speak so many different languages? It all began when they were trying to build this really tall tower.” Explaining why things are the way they are comes through in the story of Abraham and Isaac as well.

The most primitive form of religion is the one that makes a case for an angry god who can only be appeased with some sort of sacrifice. In the ancient world, this primitive belief system was common, and along with it, the practice of child sacrifice. The story of Isaac and Abraham seems to have been told as a polemic against that. Yes, other gods may demand infanticide, but not this god, not our God. We worship another kind of God. Our God provides another way. This story differentiated the God of Abraham from the gods other people were worshipping. It was part of the process of figuring out just who our God is and what makes him different from other gods. I like that way of considering this text. It makes sense. But it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered about the narrative itself. And that’s why this is such a rich faith story.

Why would God ask Abraham to do this to begin with? And why does Abraham go along with it? It makes no sense that Abraham would do this when you consider his background.

Abraham was an old man and, in ancient times, any future hope a person had was intricately tied to having children, particularly sons. Abraham and Sarah had waited forever to have the child God had promised. They even decided God needed a little help and took matters into their own hands by using a surrogate mother, one of their servants, Hagar, to produce a son for Abraham, Ishmael. Then, in the midst of human impossibility for Sarah, she conceived and bore Isaac, even though she was in her eighties. With a true son to be the heir of Abraham, Sarah wanted Ishmael out of the picture, so she told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham questioned God on this matter, and found reassurance that God would be good to Ishmael and make a nation from him. So Abraham sent his first born son away, confident that his nation and his name would rise through Isaac.

Now, after going through all of that -- God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? This is crazy. Not simply because Abraham is asked to kill his son, which is horrific enough. But because it seems to contradict what God has already done through his faithfulness in providing Isaac. This is the son God promised to Abraham and Sarah. Now would God ask Abraham to kill that son? Seriously?

Well, it helps somewhat to know, from the first sentence of this story, that God is testing Abraham here. But what kind of a test is this? Was he testing Abraham to see if he would be obedient? Certainly, Abraham doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to following God's lead.

When God told Abraham that he was going to destroy those dens of iniquity, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham couldn’t accept it and tried to talk God out of it. When Sarah told Abraham that Hagar and Ishmael needed to be sent away, Abraham questioned God. And I don’t even want to get into that messy incident where Abraham passed Sarah off as his sister to save his own skin despite the fact that he knew how God felt about it.

So, considering the way Abraham behaves elsewhere in the biblical narrative, the Abraham in Genesis 22 seems completely out of character. After God tells Abraham to make a burnt offering of his son, we read, “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.” All the other things God asks Abraham to do and he digs in his heels, fighting God every inch of way. And NOW he chooses to acquiesce? No questioning, no pleading on Isaac’s behalf, Abraham just gets up in the morning and sets out to do what God tells him to do. What’s the deal? Could it be that, given the history he had with God, Abraham knew better than to believe that God would actually let him sacrifice his only son? Perhaps Abraham trusted that God would provide another way all along, just as it turned out he did.

Yes, knowing that this was some kind of a test for Abraham seems to help a bit. But, did Abraham pass or fail the test? Did God expect Abraham to obey whole-heartedly without putting up a fight? Or was he testing him to see if he would speak up and refuse to do something so absurd? Is it possible that God was disappointed in Abraham's unquestioning obedience? God's last-minute rescue suggests that Abraham's response was off the mark. Abraham may have deserved credit for his devotion, but his behavior called for swift intervention in order to spare Isaac.

This is a great example of one of those Bible stories that was never intended to give us THE answer. Instead, it invites us into a discussion. It’s also one of those stories that just won’t let us go because it entertains the kinds of questions that people of faith struggle with in every time and place. Does God ever test us? Even when we think we hear God speaking to us, can we really be sure the voice we’re hearing is God’s and not our own? How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to follow God? Would God ever require something of us that we know in our hearts is wrong? Can we ever know what God is really asking of us without stepping out in faith and putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that God will lead us to where we need to go?

It’s been thousands of years since this story was first told around a campfire and, for people of faith, the discussion continues.

I shall never surrender!

2011-06-24T13:39:00.003-04:00

“We shall never surrender!” So said Winston Churchill in his famous We Will Fight on the Beaches speech. The implication is that if you don’t surrender, you have only one choice, and that is to keep on fighting. But I have a problem with that. Is surrender the only alternative to fighting? What about love? Both surrender and love stand against fighting. But when we surrender, it’s because we have no choice. Love is always a choice.

Many people will say that the key to following God's will for your life is surrendering your own will to God's. As someone who has spent most of my adult life battling with God, I can tell you that approach may work for some people, but it doesn’t cut it for me.

Surrender is the language of war. When you surrender, you resign yourself to the fact that you've been beaten, or at least you aren't going to win, so you throw in the towel. In surrender, you come to the other defeated. And it’s pretty hard not to resent someone you have surrendered yourself to. You may continue to want the same things for yourself that you always wanted, but now you're forced to deny them and the resentment grows deeper.

Doesn’t God want to be in a loving relationship with us? How can you love someone to whom you have surrendered yourself like that? When I strive to follow God's will for my life, the real point for me has become, do I love God? If I love God, then I want what God wants. It's not a matter of doing battle with God and surrendering my will to God's will. It's about making God's will my will, too.

Have you ever watched two people who professed to love one another for the rest of their lives grow to become adversaries? Every issue between them becomes a battle of the wills and there is an ongoing struggle to see who will ultimately win the war. But when you love someone, you want what they want, don't you? If the one you love wants to watch a football game on Sunday afternoon, you don't dig in your heels and refuse to allow it. You want them to have what they want. You want them to be happy and their happiness makes you happy, too. Your will becomes the same.

That’s how my relationship with God works as well. God isn't the enemy. God doesn't want to do battle with me. God doesn't force me into submitting to him and seeing things his way. God loves me. And God wants me to love him so much that I want what he wants for me.

There is a huge difference between surrendering myself to God and giving myself to him in love. One approach feels like a requirement and I come to resent it. But when I respond in love, I’m offering myself as an expression of thankfulness for a gift beyond compare. And there isn’t a speck of resentment in me. Only joy.

God only knows

2011-06-23T09:17:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about how many questions I carry around in the course of a day. My brain has become a repository for whys, whats, and hows.

Why do I always end up wearing a white shirt when I’m eating spaghetti?
Why is my trash basket always full and my gas tank always empty?
What magical place do stray socks go to when they disappear in the dryer?
What makes forbidden things so irresistible?
What does my dog find so appealing about the taste of her own poop?
Why is it that when I was a little girl the doctor would come to the house to see me when I was sick, and now I can’t get one to talk to me on the telephone?
Why would anyone object to two people getting married who love one another and are committed to spending the rest of their lives together?
Why aren’t more people outraged by the fact that in the wealthiest nation on earth so many people can’t afford to be healthy?
How is it possible that people can use God as an excuse for hatred?

When I was a kid I had a lot of questions, too. But back then, I was working on the answers and thought that surely I would have them all worked out by the time I got to be the age I am now. Instead, what has happened is that I’ve become comfortable co-existing with the questions. It’s been a process. I’ve gone from -- I gotta know the answers, to -- I’m going to have to accept the fact that there aren’t always answers, to -- I treasure those questions the most for which there are no answers. Really, I do. I’ve learned that life isn’t about finding answers. It’s about savoring the mystery.

This is particularly true for the life of faith. Seekers eventually figure this out, if they hang in there long enough. We can never find God, no matter how hard we try. We may delude ourselves into believing we have, from time to time. But in the end, it’s God who finds us. And it usually happens when we we’ve finally realized the futility of the search, when we’ve learned to appreciate our limitations in the face of unanswerable questions, acknowledging that we are not God after all. I’m reminded of that whenever I entertain a question I find myself answering with the words, God only knows.

Never mistake your critics for your judge

2011-06-22T14:17:00.000-04:00

I could never be a politician, for many reasons. But one of the biggest reasons is that my fragile ego couldn’t take the abuse. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with the constant criticism that they receive. Everyone is listening to every single word they say, ready to pounce on those words or twist them or take them out of context. Everything the person ever did is scrutinized. Every term paper they ever wrote, every person they ever talked to at a cocktail party, every stupid thing they ever did as a kid. And people will go after them on the basis of their race or their gender or their age. Nothing is off limits because the goal is to tear someone else down so you can win. How can these people stand it? How can they tolerate being criticized so mercilessly without taking it personally, without being crushed? It’s brutal. Thank God it’s not the way people usually treat one another.

Now, that’s not to say that we don’t all know what it’s like to be criticized. We’ve all prboably had people in our lives who tell us how to dress, how to talk, how to think, how to live. How do you respond to criticism?

When dealing with our critics, we can make one of two mistakes. We can ignore them, which can work sometimes, but if they’re telling us something we really need to hear, blowing their criticism off isn't helpful. On the other hand, it can be an even bigger mistake for us to take our critics too seriously and assume they're always right. When we do that, we're promoting a critic to the status of judge.

Dr. Lewis Smedes talks about the difference between a critic and a judge. He says that critics give us their opinion and it’s up to us to decide if we’ll take it or leave it. But when we receive a judgment, we have no choice, we simply have to take it. So, he says, we should listen to our critics, but never let them become our judges.

Now, this whole idea caught my attention because it calls me to dig a little deeper into our core value at Holy Trinity, Loving Not Judging. Being judgmental is not the same thing as being critical. There's an important distinction to make between the two.

Often I think we don’t want to be viewed as judgmental, so we give the impression that no matter what a person does, it’s OK. It’s like anything goes. But anything doesn’t go. There are some things that are unacceptable. We'll say, "It's not for me to judge" as a way to let us off the hook, to exempt us from any kind of criticism, whether giving it or receiving it. Is it possible to offer criticism without being judgmental? And is it possible for us to receive criticism without feeling like we’re being judged?

The Apostle Paul had his share of critics and he had a word for them that’s helpful. He said, “With me it is a small thing that I should be judged by you—or anybody else for that matter. I do not even judge myself…. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4). He identifies three kinds of critics in his life: 1)other people, 2)himself, and 3)God. These are the same three critics we all have.

Paul’s critics were all over his case for the way he did his missionary work. And he responded to them by saying that he was listening to their words but he knew that their words were never the last word for him. They were not his judges.

Our human critics are our friends, our mothers, our children, people who go to our church, people we work with. They can be a blessing for us. We can learn from them and often, if their criticism is constructive and offered in love, it can lead us to make some changes in our lives that are for the better. But if we allow our critics to become our judges, we let them decide whether we’re good enough or beautiful enough to be loved and accepted, and any blessing that might have come to us from their criticism becomes a curse. Can we receive their criticism without allowing them to become our judges?

Our second critic, and for many of us our most brutal critic, is our own self. God created us with an ability that no other creature has – the ability to examine our own lives, to take stock of ourselves and become our own critics. The only way we will ever grow in our lives is by being somewhat critical of ourselves, being dissatisfied with ourselves as we have been and pushing ourselves to become something more. Being critical of ourselves can be healthy, but it crosses the line when we become our own judges. Remember, when a critic gives you their opinion, you can accept it or reject it. But when someone pronounces judgment, you’re stuck with it.

The fact is, we’re not competent to judge ourselves. We tend to see what we want to see. When we’re feeling up, we want to see only the good stuff about ourselves. When we're down, we actually look for bad things about ourselves to hone in on. How we see ourselves is always confused by how we’re feeling at any given moment. Besides that, we’re way too complicated for us to understand ourselves. You could see a therapist your whole life and still only scratch the surface of what you’re all about because there are so many sides to you. There’s light and darkness, evil and good, ugliness and beauty, hate and love. It’s all in there and you can never sort it all out because it’s always changing.

It’s troubling when people look inside themselves and like everything they see. They never do anything wrong. In any confrontation, they’re always the innocent ones. They’ve convinced themselves that they’re above reproach. But it’s also troubling when people look inside themselves and conclude that no matter what they do, they never measure up and they’re always lacking. Again, the mistake is not in criticizing. It’s in judging. And it’s something a lot of us do to ourselves.

And that leaves just one more critic. The apostle Paul refused to let his human critics be his judge. And he refused to be his own judge. But it wasn’t that he refused to be judged by anyone. He did have a judge. “God is my judge,” he said. God is the only one qualified to be our judge, because God knows us right down to the core. He knows everything there is to know about us. Good and bad.

And here’s the thing, the really BIG thing. The only critic who is really able to judge us also loves us and forgives us. So, despite anything you have ever done or ever will do, God will never reject you. The only critic qualified to be our judge is the Lord himself. And the good news about our divine judge is that he refuses to condemn us. As Paul puts it: there is therefore no condemnation. Only forgiveness. Only love.

As long as I know I have a judge like that, I suppose I can handle my critics. But that doesn't mean I'll be running for public office anytime soon.

Adjusting to the Land of Cotton Kindness

2011-06-21T10:47:00.005-04:00

Warning! If you can’t deal with gross generalization bordering on stereo-typing, you will want to click away from this blog right now. Sure there are lots of exceptions to what I’m about to say, but I’m not talking about those here. I also have no empirical evidence whatsoever to support what I’m saying, but then, that never stops me from saying it anyway. After all, this blog is about what’s going on inside my noodle, so deal with it.

Growing up in Ohio, I always thought that people are pretty much the same everywhere. Then, thirteen years ago, I moved south of the Mason-Dixon Line and I learned that there is a fundamental difference between those of us who were raised in the North and those raised in the South.

Many visitors to the southern states are charmed by the southern hospitality. It’s that warm, cozy feeling you get when you walk into the Waffle House and the waitress behind the counter yells out, “Mornin’, sweetie! Just plant yourself anyplace that looks good and I’ll be right with ya.” (Nobody in the North calls me sweetie or honey or darlin’ and gets away with it. But in the South, it would seem silly to take offense.)

I’ve discovered that what we consider southern hospitality is really just an outward manifestation of something much deeper, something that is so much a part of the southern psyche that it would take a lobotomy to remove it from a Southerner’s behavior. I’m talking about their congenital kindness. It’s clearly a cultural thing, passed on from generation to generation. I can tell you that this isn’t the way people are raised in the North. Southerners put kindness above everything else. And I mean everything.

There are many things Northerners value above kindness. One is time. They never seem to have enough of their precious time and resent it when someone else wastes it. I was reminded of that last night when I drove through a McDonald’s to pick up an ice cream cone on my way home. In Akron, Ohio, this would have taken three minutes, tops. I waited in line for fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds. And there was only one car ahead of me! Nobody had to remind me that I wasn’t in Akron anymore. In the North, you go to a drive-thru because it's quick. In the South, the difference between a drive-thru restaurant and a sit-down restaurant has nothing to do with the amount of time you wait. The only difference is that, at a drive-thru restaurant, you wait in your car. Despite that, I suppose some people might still consider the drive-thru a convenience, if you happen to be sitting in a really nice car, or if you want to run out and grab a bite to eat in your pajamas. But the point I’m making is, time is valued more highly in the North. For Southerners, time, or the lack thereof, isn’t very high on their hierarchy of needs.

As a pastor, I had to learn this the hard way. Let me give you two examples. First, where I come from, talking on the telephone is a utilitarian activity. You call someone up, you say what you need to say to take care of business, and then you hang up. That’s it. When I moved to North Carolina and did that with my parishioners, they started mumbling amongst themselves about the pastor. Was she mad at me? Did I do something to offend her? Doesn’t she like me? (Of course, it was a church member who had moved here from the North who had to tell me they were saying these things.) I realized that, in southern culture, a telephone call is, first and foremost, an opportunity to express to another person that you care about them. So, you have to begin with a friendly exchange of information. How is your mother doing? Isn’t Zac graduating from college this year? Where will you be taking your vacation this summer? It seemed rather tedious to me at first, but I've actually grown to enjoy it.

I encountered something similar when greeting people at the door after worship services. Where I come from, the whole point of standing at the door after worship is to shake hands and get people on their way as quickly as possible. To stand at the door chit-chatting with the pastor while other people are waiting in line is considered rude. But, here in the South, the exact opposite is the case. If I don’t have at least a mini-conversation with each individual as he or she leaves the church, they feel slighted. It took me a while to get this, but I think I understand it now. Yes, Southerners value kindness above time.

Another thing highly valued in the North, that kindness always seems to trump in the South, is honesty. Adjusting to this hasn’t been easy for me and I’m often confused about where I stand with people. Now, I’m not saying Southerners are dishonest. I just never know if they’re telling me the truth. I’m not sure if they know either, and I suspect it’s not something they think a whole lot about because they are congenitally kind. It probably doesn’t even occur to them that they might be telling a bald face lie if they think it makes someone else feel good. I mean, is everything really cool between us after I so obviously said something that hurt you? Could you really sit and listen to me preach for hours? Do I really look ten years younger than my age? Am I really as wonderful as you say I am? Funny how nobody ever told me any of this when I was in Ohio all those years. That’s because people in Ohio are brutally honest. They feel compelled to tell you the truth, especially when it has the potential to ruin your day. Southerners just don’t think that way.

I’m not saying this is good or bad, just different. And it’s taken some adjustment for this kid from the Buckeye State to learn to play nice. People who were raised in the South probably can’t understand how much effort it takes for us non-Southerners to adapt here in the land of ~~cotton~~ kindness. We weren’t raised to put kindness above things like time and honesty. Kindness is something we have to think about. Since moving to the South, I've been thinking about it a lot more.

He does a (Nazi) mother proud

2011-06-19T17:49:00.009-04:00

My son Ben’s brain works in an unconventional way. Keeping up with him exhausts me. I often feel like Alice trying to pin down that elusive white rabbit who had her hopelessly lost in Wonderland. While I don’t always follow Ben's logic, I do admire his creativity. And I know beyond a doubt that he can think for himself.

When I hear people these days lamenting the lack of critical thinking skills being taught in our schools, I think of Ben. No one had to teach him to be a critical thinker; he questioned everything from the moment he emerged from my womb. Challenging me at every turn, he accepted nothing at face value. Not even the rigidity of the American educational system could break him, and believe me, they tried.

Of course, there is a fine line between critical thinking and stubborn defiance and sometimes it’s hard for me to be around Ben. My daughter Gretchen would be quick to point out how Ben and I are alike in that way. Sometimes when the two of us get into an argument I feel like I’m driving my car down a one way street and he’s coming at me going the wrong direction. Despite all my warnings, he refuses to turn around and go the way he’s supposed to. Instead, he insists that I’m the one in the wrong. What’s a mother to do?

Given all that I’ve written above, it will probably come as no surprise to you that Ben has no time whatsoever for organized religion. Once when he was visiting me at Christmastime we were taking a morning walk in the park on December 24 and I asked him if he would come to the Christmas Eve service that night at my church. (For several years he had shared this time of year with Gretchen and me and he never attended church with us. Never.)

“Mom, you know I don’t believe in that stuff,” he told me.

I came back with, “I’m not asking you to believe in it. I’m just asking you to come because I’m the pastor and I'm your mother and it would mean a lot to me to have you there with me.”

I’ll never forget his reply. “Mom, if you were a leader in the Nazi party and they were having a rally tonight and you were making a speech, I wouldn’t go to that either.”

Now, how can you argue with logic like that?

So, we returned home and I stewed over his comment for about an hour before I decided that this year I couldn't let it go. I went to him and said, “Ben, do you think of yourself as an open-minded person?”

“Yes.”

So I asked, “Do you have any friends who are Muslim?” I knew that he did, and he affirmed that. “Well,” I said, “if one of your Muslim friends invited you to go to worship at their mosque with them, would you go?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said, “So how open minded is this… You’re here to be with your mother and your sister at Christmas. And tonight, there will come a time when Gretchen and I are going to get in the car and go to the Christmas Eve service. And you’re going to sit home by yourself… because you’re so open minded.” I actually managed to say this quite calmly and left it hanging there as I walked out of the room.

I didn’t hear anything from him for a good long while and decided that I said what I needed to say and that would be the end of it. But that’s not what happened.

Ben came to me and said that he would be going to church with us that night.

I’m not big on miracles, but if I were into that sort of thing, I’d have to say that this felt like one to me. Ben was growing up. He was able to do something that I have rarely witnessed in this world; he changed his mind. And in the process, he demonstrated to me that his mind truly was open after all. No, he didn’t agree with my beliefs, but that wasn’t really the point. My son, the critical thinker par excellence, was able to bend for the sake of love. I have never been prouder of him.

Squeezing God into our pea-sized brains

2011-06-18T11:06:00.011-04:00

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Was Shakespeare right? Doesn't the name we give to something matter? Well, that may depend on what we’re naming. When it’s God that we’re naming, it does seem to make a difference.

In ancient times names carried a special significance. We tend to lose this in our culture where we give our kids names like Jennifer and Richard, names chosen more for the way they roll off the tongue and into the ear than for whatever their meaning might be. But back in the days of the Old Testament, to give someone or something a name was a sign that you had power over it. Consider the second story of creation in Genesis 2. After God creates Adam, then he creates all the other creatures and he trots them out one by one and gives Adam naming rights. Yes, God did the creating, but Adam did the naming. That was significant. It elevated human beings in the pecking order of creation.

It’s also significant that when it came time for God to be named, it was God who revealed his name to his people, rather than the other way around. When God tells Moses to go to the children of Israel and tell them that he has been sent to them by God, Moses says, “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but when they want to know what your name is, what can I tell them?” Considering the task God has put before Moses, I’d say that was a legitimate request. But God’s response doesn’t seem all that helpful.
“I AM WHO I AM,” God says. “Tell them that I AM sent you.” Was God giving a smart-ass answer here or was he making a point?

When God referred to himself as "I AM WHO I AM", he was establishing the fact that he is beyond names and once we start naming God we’re robbing him of his power. Then we’re creating God in our image rather than the other way around. I wonder if the children of Israel got that when Moses told them I AM sent him.

Well, as the story unfolds, the name of God becomes expressed in four letters that are derived from the concept of I AM. We’re not sure how those four letters were pronounced in Hebrew because they’re all consonants (YHWH). Most of the time, we Christians pronounce the word Yahweh. In the majority of English Bibles, whenever this name for God is found in the original text, the word LORD in capital letters is used in the translation. There seems to be some controversy about whether this word for God was ever spoken by the Jews in Old Testament times. It might have been considered so holy that humans didn’t dare utter it. But whether it was spoken or not, this much we do know: God is more than a name. The depth and width and height of God cannot be contained in a name. We human beings can’t even begin to explain the mystery of God and, if we think we can, we’re not only fooling ourselves, but we’re insulting God.

And so, we come to the Trinity. It’s a way of understanding God that evolved through the years and became accepted as the true understanding of God by Christians sometime in the fourth century. It defines God as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is only referred to a couple of times in the Bible, so it’s not really the dominant understanding of God in the Scriptures, although the three persons of the Trinity are certainly revealed in the Bible.

Naming God as the Three-in-One has its down side and its up side for people of faith. On the down side, it is one more attempt for us human beings to put God in his or her place, to think that we are able to define the One who is impossible for us to define as human beings. I AM was probably the best name for God ever, and we would have done well to stop at that.

Anyone who has ever tried to explain the Trinity gets all tangled up in a circular argument. Although God exists in three persons, there is only one God because all three have exactly the same nature and being. The Father and the Son are one. The Son and the Holy Spirit are one. The Holy Spirit and the Father are one. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. Say what? If you try to make it clear, you only end up digging the hole deeper and deeper until pretty soon it makes no sense whatsoever. You can only throw your arms in the air in exasperation and announce “It’s a mystery!” And, of course, God tried to tell us that from the beginning. But that hasn’t stopped us from picking God apart through the ages like an investigative team on CSI. We humans tend to be pretty arrogant that way, thinking we can actually understand what is ultimately un-understandable for us. Is it really possible to squeeze the eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely loving, omniscient one into our pea-sized brains?

But there is another aspect to the Trinity that we often overlook when we get so trapped in our heads trying to comprehend it all. And that is the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is not an intellectual concept to be comprehended; God is a relationship to be experienced. If you’ve ever read the book The Shack, you have seen an imaginary picture of what that might look like. The persons of the Trinity are in relationship with one another, and we’re invited to be a part of that relationship, too. We seem to mistake the life of faith as an intellectual belief we must accept when it’s really a relationship that we can trust to hold our lives.

If you read through the Scriptures, there are many names for God. Those names reflect the experience of God’s people in different times and places as they live in relationship with him. One of the most shocking names for God comes from the lips of Jesus. He is in the Garden of Gethsemane anguishing over his future. And here’s how he prays: “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” In his time of deepest despair, he turns to God, and he addresses him as Abba, Father. No searching for the most accurate name to describe God in that moment. No flowery language. No doctrinal formula. Just Abba, Father. It’s a name of endearment. Abba means Daddy. It’s a long way from I AM and a name no one can pronounce, to Daddy.

There may be times in our lives when God seems so far removed from us, so almighty and powerful, that we dare not speak God’s name. And there are other times when we experience God so intimately that we can crawl up onto his lap and feel him cuddling us in his arms as we whisper “daddy” into his ear. God is all of that and more. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds of us of that because it is both intellectually incomprehensible and always calling us toward intimacy with a God of relationship.

What in a name? Let’s face it, when we do the naming, not so much. But when God does the naming, well that’s a different story. When I AM names you his child and becomes your daddy, YOU ARE!

Opening for a father -- inquire within

2011-06-16T10:27:00.014-04:00

My mom and dad were seated at the kitchen table discussing something very serious. Then he went to the chalkboard on the back of the kitchen door and wrote the longest word I ever saw. Years later, I realize it was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I don’t know if that’s the way it really happened or not, but that’s the way I remember it. That story has become a part of the myth of my father.

When you lose your father at the age of six, memories are fuzzy. My brother Ken recently talked to me about how saddened he was by the fact that the people in our family (cousins, nieces and nephews) who knew our father, for the most part, remember him being sick. I have a lot of those memories, too. They are indelibly etched in my brain. But I don’t really think of them as memories of my father so much as memories of a terrible disease that took him from us. That disease was not my father.

I remember dancing with him in the living room when I was probably no more than three or four. I was wearing a red plaid pleated skirt with shoulder straps. When one of the straps fell down, I pulled it back up and said, “Damn it!” My father couldn't help himself and laughed out loud. This is one of those stories I cling to because it reveals to me something important about who my father was. He was a man who enjoyed having a good time, but even more significantly for me, he was a man who took delight in me. (I wonder if this memory explains why two things that bring me great joy, to this day, are dancing and swearing.)

Most of what I remember about my dad was related to sports. That shouldn’t be all that surprising since he and my Uncle Gordon owned a sporting goods store. Our family life revolved around ball diamonds, bowling alleys, and fishing lakes. I can see him tossing a baseball in the front yard with my brother, inspecting bowling lanes with level in hand, turning off the lights at a softball field after an evening game. He seemed to be surrounded by friends with funky nicknames like Bones and Sparky. There was always a party going on when my dad was around. That’s the way I remember it.

The last time my father saw me I was standing in a hospital parking lot looking up at a hand waving at me from a window four stories up. It seemed to be an appropriate way for him to exit my life. Not only was I waving goodbye to him, but I was waving goodbye to life as I had known it. It felt a bit like being booted out of Camelot and into the wilderness. There was this void in my life that I couldn’t begin to understand as a little girl. My younger sister was just a baby and my older brother was a troubled adolescent who was acting out after losing the most important connection in his life. They required a lot of attention. That left me… nowhere. Every day I came home from school to an empty house and a black cocker spaniel named Inky. I was on my own. From that time on I don’t ever remember anybody laying out my clothes for me in the morning, or telling me to take a bath or go to bed at night. I was living in a void. In some ways I felt like I myself was a void.

A few years after my father died, my mother remarried. I’m not sure why. I suspect she thought we needed a father, or maybe she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to make it on her own. But it wasn’t a real marriage and in my book it did more harm than good to our family. I never accepted that man as anything that even remotely resembled a father in my life and I never let him forget it. He crossed the line with me on a few occasions and gave me ample material to pick apart with a therapist when I was in my early thirties. Suffice it to say that his presence in my life was not helpful. And I never confused him with a person I would call my father.

Through the years I created a myth for who my father was. Some parts of the story may be factual, but when a person becomes a myth, their story transcends the facts. In recent years, I learned that my father was a racist. I also learned that back in the days before I was born he moved his family repeatedly from place to place because he didn’t have money to pay the rent. So, my father was human after all. I'm not so sure now what's true about him and what isn't. The only thing I know for sure was that my mother adored him until the day she died. It’s not much, but I suppose it’s something.

They say that there’s a strong correlation between the relationship a woman has with her father while she’s growing up and her ability to have healthy relationships with men as an adult. Ugh. I don’t know what that means for me. How can I ever stop hoping deep down inside that some man will come along and fill the void I’ve been carrying my whole life? I know that’s absurd; no man can ever do that. But this six-year-old little girl still lives inside me and she will always long for that. I’ve learned to stop doing battle with that little girl and embrace her as a part of who I am. That helps. Overall, it keeps her from getting the best of me.

From time to time, God has helped me heal some of the damaging effects of the void in my life by bringing an extraordinary man to walk with me for a while. I think of three in particular. They are all pastors I’ve worked with at different times and I felt myself connecting to them as I would a father. They are not perfect by any means, but they are good guys. It was the way that I felt about myself when I was with them that made such a difference in my life. Like the father I remember dancing with in my living room, they took delight in me. I also felt protected by them, although it wasn’t like they were my knights in shining armor who fought my battles for me. It was more like they supported me in my struggles and I always trusted that they had my back. I could count on them for that. I felt safe and secure with them. Isn’t that what the love of a father looks like? A father delights in you. He has your back. You know you're safe and secure with him. I like to believe that God sent these men into my life because he knew how much I needed to experience that.

On Father's Day I can’t help but think about the dad I lost 50+ years ago. But I also think of Bob, Jan and Dick. They truly were God-sent gifts to help me along the way. And through them, I have come to recognize how, when all is said and done, God is the one who fills the void in my life. Had I never experienced the void, I might never know that. Although it has seemed so real to me, I know it is an illusion. God fills the void, and it ceases to exist. And God always fills it.

What keeps me from flying through the windshield

2011-06-13T14:21:00.016-04:00

Was she wearing a seatbelt? How often is this question asked when we learn of someone who was injured or killed in a car accident. I’m not sure why we ask it. I suppose it’s to confirm what we already know. Seatbelts save lives.

I remember sitting through those terrifying driver training movies during high school and being indelibly convinced that I would never turn the key in the ignition of a car without first fastening my seatbelt. Since then, buckling up has become second nature to me. I fasten myself in without thinking about it. Even if I’m sitting in a parked car with the engine turned off, I feel naked without my seatbelt.

Do you remember when it became the law that we would all have to wear seatbelts and some people groused about how this was an infringement on their freedom? I never understood that way of thinking. It seems to me that if you have to be forced not to be a fool, then you’re an even bigger fool!

During this wild ride of a life that I’ve been traveling, I'm thankful that I've been wearing a spiritual seatbelt. Being connected to someone greater than myself, someone who sees me exactly as I am, flaws and all, and yet loves me more than I can ever love myself, is what holds me together. Without that, I feel like I could just as easily end up in a bazillion pieces, scattered over a guard rail on the side of some obscure, God forsaken road. Wearing this seatbelt has become second nature to me. It’s always there; I don’t have to think about putting it on. But when I know that I’m in for an especially treacherous ride, I need an extra measure of security.

Last week I decided it was time for me to go public with some physical challenges I’m facing in my life. (see blog post, “Note to body: stop ruining all my fun”) That wasn’t easy for me. I hate whiners! But beyond that, I’m a very private person and have kept this problem to myself for a long time, hoping that it would all resolve itself and no one would ever have to know. (Yes, perhaps I was in denial.) As it became apparent to me that this disease wasn’t going to go away without considerable effort, I realized that the time had come for me to buckle up for a bumpy ride.

God’s love doesn’t come to us in a vacuum. We experience it through community, through the people God places in our lives. We were not created to travel “that long, lonesome highway." We were created to journey together, supporting, encouraging and challenging one another along the way. This is how God’s love comes to us; we’re channels of his love to one another. So, when we need help, it’s okay to ask for it. In fact, to keep things to ourselves, and think we can brave it alone, like strong little soldiers, is to deny God’s love access to us. It’s taken me a long time to realize that, but I think I get it now.

So, I’m telling people who have been accompanying me on my life journey about my struggle. You need to know. Not because I’m hoping someone out there can fix me, but simply because we're in this together and I trust that you care. I covet your prayers and your support and I long to know that you’re walking beside me, even if only for a single step along the way. I turn to you because I need assurance that the love of God is securely fastened, like a seatbelt, around me. (Just as I hope you turn to me, when you need to check to see if your seatbelt is securely fastened, as well.) That’s why God has given us to one another through the gift of community. For me not to share my troubles with you would be to turn my back on God. And turning my back on God would be as foolish as driving in rush-hour traffic without a seatbelt.

Is this going to protect me from anything harmful coming my way? Of course not. No more than wearing a seatbelt prevents traffic accidents. But it will keep me from flying through the windshield.

Why quoting Bible verses doesn't work for me

2011-06-12T19:22:00.005-04:00

Sometimes I get into misunderstandings with other Christians that are hard to resolve because we have such differing views on the Bible. From their perspective, I suspect they can’t fathom how someone like me, someone who calls herself a Christian, can say the things I do when they so blatantly contradict what the Bible says. I’m not always sure what to do about this because it seems like we’re speaking a different language when it comes to the Bible. When they quote Bible verses to convince me of the error in my thinking, I’m sure it seldom occurs to them that this is meaningless to me. I just don’t read the Bible like that.

What separates us is the way we allow the Bible to inform our lives. For many Christians, quoting the Bible is an effective way to make a point. This is the way it is, they’ll tell me, because it says so right here in the Bible. You know the bumper sticker approach to Scripture: “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Sometimes I wish it were that simple. Instead, for me, it’s more like: “One version of the Bible that is commonly accepted today says it. While trying to find my way in this world, it is among the voices that inform me. I’m open to its truth for me as my journey continues to unfold.” I know, it’s not as catchy as “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” And it sure won’t fit onto a bumper sticker.

I could tell you some of the reasons why I’m not a Biblical literalist, but then, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a Biblical literalist. Even those who might be labeled as such are selective about which parts of the Bible they will take literally. What most of us probably would call a Biblical literalist is someone who looks to the Bible for definitive answers. But you don’t have to turn very many pages in your Bible to see that it was never intended to be read that way. If it were, we would have one version of the creation story. We’d be able to point to it and say, “There, that’s how it happened.” But in the first chapters of Genesis we have two contradictory stories of how it all transpired. And if the Bible were written to give us definitive answers, we would have one story about Jesus. Instead, we have four. When Matthew, Mark, Luke and John can’t agree about the way the story unfolded, how can we say that the Bible was ever intended to give us definitive answers? Which answers would those be? (Actually, I’m thankful we don’t have definite answers in the Bible. Definite answers are highly over-rated. Who can grow when there are definite answers?)

I’m also not comfortable using the Bible as a rule book because I don’t think that’s its purpose. Jesus certainly didn’t use the Scriptures as a rule book. He often turned the law upside down and reversed what once had been accepted as truth. In the same way, in the early church, laws that once seemed to be ironclad were suddenly changed or discarded altogether. It seems that one of the things we learn from the witness of the Scriptures is that part of what it means to be God’s people is to be open to changes in the way we understand God working in the world. Maybe God changes, or maybe it’s just our understanding of God that changes, but clearly God is a God of transformation. When the laws of Scripture are changed within Scripture, how can we think that those laws would suddenly become etched in stone once someone decided the Bible had been completed? Isn’t the Spirit still alive and active in the world today? (I really wish they would stop putting back covers on Bibles!)

For me, the Bible is not a set of instructions that tells me how to live. It’s not prescriptive, but descriptive. It is a collection of writings from people through the centuries who have been in relationship with God. They have written about their experiences as people of faith and the meaning they have gleaned from those experiences. Because I am also a person of faith, I treasure their witness. They enrich me, encourage me and often challenge me. But I feel free to disagree with them. I think that’s how we were meant to read the scriptures.

When I sit down with the adult Sunday school class at Holy Trinity we get into deep discussions about what it means to live out our faith in the world today. We share with one another about how it’s working for us, what meaning we're finding along the way, how we struggle. We don’t always agree, but the Spirit speaks to us in those open discussions. I’m thankful to be a part of a community of faith where that happens.

In the same way, the authors of the scriptures are also a faith community for me and they speak to me. I may not always agree with what they have to say, but I trust that the Spirit is at work as they inform me along the way. Their witness has stood the test of time. They have spoken to millions of Christians throughout the centuries, and that gives them a level of credibility that makes them hard to dismiss. They are a treasure to me. I can’t imagine how I would negotiate the life of faith without them. I suspect I would be lost.

Does that make me a heretic? I don’t think so. It just means that when I read the Bible I’m not expecting answers. I’m expecting a conversation.

Kicking and Screaming into the Kingdom of God

2011-06-11T11:52:00.010-04:00

Imagine gathering together with people from every nation under the sun and they’re all talking at once. That’s the way the Christian church began, in a demonstration of diversity, like the Tower of Babel after people became divided over language and culture. But the day of Pentecost reversed the division of diversity. The cacophony of voices talking past one another was transcended and suddenly God’s people were communicating and connecting with one another. A bunch of uneducated guys from Galilee spoke so each person could understand what they were saying, each in their own native tongue. No one had gone to language classes and there were no interpreters on hand. How was this possible? It was a God moment for sure. The Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised them had arrived and it spread through their ranks like a wildfire.

We learned something about God that day. The story reveals to us the very nature of how God is active and alive in the world. God isn’t trapped in the musty old pages of a holy book. God is on the move. And from the very beginning we can see the direction God is headed. God is pulling us toward a place that includes all people. That place knows no boundaries just as the love of God knows no boundaries. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God.

It’s such a profound truth that you’d think Jesus’ followers would have welcomed it with open arms and embraced it as the only way to be in the world. But, from the get-go, the opposite has been the case. God’s people have always been pulled, kicking and screaming, into the Kingdom of God.

Just a chapter before the Pentecost story in the book of Acts, Jesus is with his disciples for the very last time. They’ve spent years with this man. They’ve heard him teaching about the Kingdom of God. They’ve witnessed what it looks like for a person to live within that reality through his actions. And yet, when the risen Christ tries one last time to explain it to them, they have just one more question for him. “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel now? Is this the time?” Can you imagine? I would have wanted to pop them one and say, “How is it that you still don’t get it?” But I guess Jesus realized at that point that they were never going to get it. Not without a serious intervention.

So, he tells them, “You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes over you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world” (The Message). Jesus makes it clear that the direction of the Spirit was not inward, but outward. And right out of the starting block, on the Day of Pentecost, his words are fulfilled as people of all nations hear about what God is doing in the world.

The disciples are transformed. Even Peter, the one who always had such a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, suddenly becomes eloquent. When folks who are watching all this want to know what’s going on, he quotes from the prophet Joel. I don’t know if he realized what he was saying, but the Spirit got it right in the selection of a sermon text that day. Through this passage Peter explains the significance of what’s happening by laying out God’s intention of diversity and inclusion for his people.

“In the Last Days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people.” Every kind of people. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? No exceptions. No exclusions. And he gives some examples of that, lest anyone miss the point. Sons and daughters will prophesy. Apparently gender differences aren’t an issue for the Spirit. Young men will see visions, old men will see dreams. So age doesn’t seem to be an issue either. The Spirit is poured out on all. It’s not like an eye dropper that very carefully and selectively chooses a few lucky recipients; it’s a cloudburst that soaks every last one of us to the bone.

The dynamic movement of the Spirit toward inclusion didn’t end on the Day of Pentecost. You’ll notice that even though the people who were gathered in Jerusalem that day were from a multitude of nations, they were all Jews. This became the first big challenge for the church as the Spirit pulled them along into the Kingdom, kicking and screaming. It was a huge controversy. There were angry meetings, and heated letters flying back and forth. But, if those early church leaders knew anything about how the Spirit of God works in the world, they had to know the direction it was all headed. Sooner or later, God’s love was going to break open their hardened hearts and minds and they were going to welcome Gentiles into their family. That’s the way God’s Spirit works. She’s always about the business of challenging our fear-driven need to exclude people and leading us into a community that reflects the grace of God.

You know, we’re all are a part of God’s realm, whether we recognize that or not. But the Spirit pushes, pulls, and prods us to expand our understanding of God’s Kingdom so that we get closer and closer to realizing it as it really is, that is, the way it is from God’s perspective, so we can enjoy being a part of it.

You may have heard me say in the past that I like the definition of God that says, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” It’s hard for us to get our heads around that. It seems that we’re more comfortable saying that there is a definite center, and that would be where our own personal truth is located, and there is a definite circumference, which would bump right up against the limits of our imagination. Based upon the circles we create for our understanding of God, we like to believe we can determine who’s in and who’s out. But the Spirit won’t let us do that. She constantly challenges us to expand our circle as it moves closer and closer toward that circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

This is the story of God’s Spirit alive and working in the world through the church. Historically, we’ve struggled to figure out how to include men and women, rich and poor, slaves and free, gay and straight. Personally we may struggle to include folks who didn’t vote the way we did in the last presidential election, people who have a foul odor because they don’t have a place to shower, or people who are just plain annoying. I think we all struggle with how to include people who don’t believe what we do about God. Are Muslims, Scientologists, atheists a part of the Kingdom of God? I can assure you that just when we think we have it all settled about who’s in and who’s out, the Spirit is going to come along and mess everything up for us. You may have noticed that we seem to make believing the litmus test for who’s in and who’s out. After all, the Bible says you have to believe in Jesus, right? Well, if we know anything about the way the Spirit works, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

On the day of Pentecost we’re reminded of how it all started for us as a Christian church. Within that story of our beginning, our mission was set in motion. Like a pebble dropped into a quiet lake, the Spirit created a ring in the water. If you've ever tossed a pebble into the water, you know what happens after that first tiny ring appears. It grows into a larger ring, and then a larger one after that, again and again. That’s the direction it takes. So, it begins, and so it continues. And that’s the way God is working through his people in the world. We’re being pulled toward living into God’s Kingdom. It’s what Jesus kept talking about when he taught us about the Kingdom of God as a reality, right here, right now. The Holy Spirit is moving us toward realizing it in our midst by the ways we include all in God’s circle of love. We can cooperate with that movement of the Spirit, or we can be pulled into God's Kingdom kicking and screaming. But make no mistake about how the story of God's relationship with his people unfolds. God's Kingdom comes. It's happening.

Note to body: Stop ruining all my fun!

2011-06-08T13:18:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite trails is the one on the Blue Ridge Parkway that goes up to Mt. Pisgah. It’s been a few years, but, in my mind, I frequently re-visit the last time I hiked it because of a man and woman I encountered along the way. I would guess that they were in their 80s and the picture of health. While my hiking buddy and I were struggling up the mountain, they sailed past us. And while we were still struggling up the mountain, they met us again as they were headed back down. I have no idea who they were or what their story was, but of all the older people I have known, they are the ones who have inspired me the most. That morning on the trail up the mountain I vowed to myself that someday I was going to be just like them. Lately, I’ve been thinking about them a lot because I can barely walk around the block without becoming exhausted.

What is going on? A year ago the only challenge I faced in the morning was waking up early enough to run before it got too hot. Now the slightest exercise is an effort for me. There’s this crazy weakness in my arms and legs that I first noticed last October while I was contra-dancing at LEAF. It’s really been cramping my style and I want it to stop! But despite what I may want, it’s getting worse. I hate it hate it hate it.

The last thing I want to become is one of those people whose whole life revolves around their illness. And yet, that’s what’s happening. As I’ve come to realize that this affliction isn’t going to disappear just as mysteriously as it first appeared, I’ve been going after it with a vengeance. I’m spending a lot of time searching the internet for answers. My primary care physician has been running every test known to medical science on me, some at her suggestion and others per my request. Altogether, I would guess that 40 some vials of blood have been taken and tested. And just about every square inch of my body has been imaged in one way or another. Now I’m also seeing a rheumatologist and he’s running more tests. In the meanwhile, I haven’t been sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I’ve been trying all kinds of things. I went off all my medications to see if that was causing it. Nothing. I’ve gone without dairy, gluten, wheat. Each time, nothing. Recently I started seeing a woman who practices alternative medicine and I have to say that I feel better than I have in many years. I love this woman and what she’s doing for me. But, so far, the heaviness in my arms and legs continues to get worse.

This makes no sense to me. In my spirit, I’ve got the energy to climb mountains and dance all night, but in my body it just ain’t gonna happen. I’ve been making plans for myself that don’t allow for this crap and thought that surely I would be well by now. This week I had to cancel my registration to a dance weekend in Asheville that I was so looking forward to. It broke my heart to face the reality that I just wouldn’t be able to do it. Now, the next big thing I have planned is my trip to the Grand Canyon at the beginning of August and I’m thinking that I just have to be well by then. We’ll find out what’s causing this, deal with it, and I’ll be good to go. But there is a fine line between optimistic thinking and facing reality and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been living in denial.

Whenever I am struggling in my life, I try to find meaning in my experience. That way it’s never for nothing. Certainly, through all of this, I’ve become more empathetic toward people who deal with ongoing illnesses. Confronting physical limitations is never something we anticipate when we’re healthy. We have to be smacked in the face with a physical limitation before we’ll even acknowledge it as a possibility for us, and then, once we do, it’s hard not to let our minds go wild. I don’t suspect this is going to be the death of me, and I have every hope that it can be cured, but still, I’ve allowed myself to think the worst from time to time. I know that sometimes the worst happens; that’s part of the deal. And it sucks. These days I have a better understanding of what it feels like to go through that, as many of those who are near and dear to me have.

I’ve also learned not to take my body for granted as I have in the past. I know that I’ve abused it in many ways over the years and like any victim of abuse, eventually my body couldn’t take it anymore and said, “enough is enough.” I need to be kinder to my body and listen to what it’s telling me. And so, I promise that when I get better I will take my health more seriously. I know that’s the only way I’ll be able to climb Mt. Pisgah on my 80th birthday. But wait a minute. Does this mean that I’ve gone from denial to bargaining?

Holy Erotica!

2011-06-07T21:12:00.009-04:00

If you’re looking for a great erotic read, check out Song of Solomon. Have you ever read it? At its core, Song of Solomon is a celebration of erotic love. It’s about the longing two lovers have for one another and the bold celebration of their passion. It’s racy stuff! I wonder, if Christians today were given the task of deciding which books would be included in the Bible, would Song of Solomon make the cut?

Through the years Christians haven’t known quite what to do with this little book in the Old Testament. Many have interpreted it as an allegory about the love between God and his people. Some have suggested that it be thrown out altogether, that it has no place in the Bible, as if its inclusion was some kind of mistake. But Song of Solomon is actually a treasure for us because these few highly erotic pages in the Holy Book celebrate God’s profound gift of sexual intimacy.

The fact that we don't read from Song of Solomon in public worship, and preachers choose not to preach about it, is the result of a larger problem we have in our culture that comes to us from Greek philosophy. It’s the belief that everything that has to do with the physical world will never be anything but impure and only in the spiritual realm can true purity be found. So we get this dualistic viewpoint where the body is bad and the spirit is good. This is a gross distortion of the world God created.

Dr. Phyllis Trible, a Biblical scholar at Wake Forest, sees the garden imagery of Song of Solomon as a recreation of garden imagery in the Garden of Eden, before the fall. In the Garden of Eden, after the fall, we find sexuality entangled with guilt, judgment and shameful nudity. In Song of Solomon, we find love woven with play and imagination and delight; there is no guilt found anywhere. In Genesis we find pain in childbirth and unequal power between lovers. In Song of Solomon childbirth is eagerly anticipated, the Rose of Sharon invites her beloved into her mother’s chamber for the consummation of their love, and their relationship is a rich mutuality of power and passion. Although God is never mentioned in Song of Solomon, there is something very sacred going on.

So, what happened? Why has our understanding of sexuality become so twisted? That’s a complex question that deserves more than a simple explanation in a blog post. But, beyond the way a dualistic view of body and spirit has permeated our western thought, there is also the matter of how sexuality is so often abused in the world that it’s hard for us to see it as a gift.

This was true in New Testament times, too. The new religion of Christianity was being introduced into a world where promiscuity, temple prostitutes, and pedophilia were not only commonplace, but they were also socially acceptable. Paul addressed these issues head-on in his letters.

We can never make sense of the writings of Paul without learning something about the culture in which he lived. When he refers to fornication, he’s talking about temple prostitution, something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us today. In the 21st century, our context for sexual ethics is different. 80% of college students have sex together regularly – many of them with the people they will eventually marry. 9 out of 10 heterosexual couples married in most of our churches have been living together before the wedding. (I can't remember the last time I married a couple that wasn't already living together.) When Paul refers to homosexuality, he’s talking about pedophilia, which was an accepted practice in his day. There was no understanding of committed relationships between two adults of the same gender. To say that sexual behaviors practiced today are different than they were in Paul’s day is an understatement to the Nth degree.

As Christians, we have a challenge when it comes to sexuality. We need to do what Paul did by offering guidance to one another about healthy sexual behavior in our time and place. We can’t base our behaviors upon the context of the first century Middle Eastern world. We need to establish a sexual ethic for our contemporary context.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has written what one commentator has called, “the best ten pages written about sexuality in the 20th century.” His view of sexuality has been very helpful for me, and you may find it helpful as well.

Williams affirms the sacred space of erotic love, but he also underscores an ethical imperative. He does this by grounding his ideas in covenant theology – in the faithful and exclusive covenant that God has with us – and the faithful and exclusive covenant that we’re called to have with God. Because we’re created in the image of God, Williams suggests that we are called to embody the creative ethic of God. To use Williams own words: “to desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire… it is to ask the moral question, ‘How much do we want our sexual activity to heal and enlarge the life of others?’” I really like that: a sexual ethic that heals and enlarges the life of the other.

A reciprocal and mutual covenant ethic suggests that asymmetrical – unbalanced – sexual relationships are simply not part of God’s vision: sexual behavior that exhibits power over the other, sexual behavior that focuses on me instead of the beloved, sexual behavior that hides in the shadows of shame. None of that behavior heals and enlarges the life of the other. That means that it’s not “anything goes” when it comes to sexual behavior. Some things are wrong, like prostitution, promiscuity, adultery, pedophilia, clergy sexual misconduct, “hooking up” for casual sex. Those practices are wrong, not just because they break some antiquated rules, but because they don't heal and enlarge the other.

So, why are Christians so afraid to talk about sex? We’re still very much people of the garden after the fall, aren’t we? When it comes to our sexuality we're filled with guilt and judgment and shame. But that’s not what God wants for us.

Song of Solomon reminds us of the amazing gift God has given us through our sexuality. Through our sexual relationships we have the opportunity to reflect the image of God within us by seeking the joy of the one we desire. I’m so glad Song of Solomon survived all the sorting and cutting that resulted in the Bible we have today. Lest there be any doubt about God’s intention for his people, we were created to enjoy sex. In fact, every time we engage in the act, we’re honoring our Creator. Now, if that doesn’t motivate you to go to bed a little early tonight, I don’t know what will.

With God all things are possible. Yes, even for Lutherans.

2011-06-01T21:31:00.001-04:00

Oh, it’s synod assembly time again, and the miracle of Lutherans moving forward continues. It’s not always pretty to watch, but eventually we seem to get to where we need to be.

Since moving to the North Carolina Synod back in 1998, I have been to every annual synod assembly. And at every single one of them we have struggled, in one way or another, with the issue of sexual orientation. Year after year, voting members stood in the aisles waiting for their turn at one of the microphones so they could make an impassioned speech in response to one resolution or another that either supported or refuted homosexuality. Some would make a case for loving the sinner but not the sin. Others would insist that homosexuality is neither a sin nor a choice, but simply the way God created some of us. And then there were those who insisted that the best way to love a gay person is to help them change. Some of the speeches brought me to tears and others made me so angry I wanted to spit. But it was all part of a process we had to go through as we discerned where God was leading us.

This is nothing new for God’s people. If you read the scriptures you can see that we have always stewed over who to include and who to exclude in God’s realm. Folks got really peeved with Jesus for hanging out with people who were undesireable, unclean, un-male, and un-just-about-everything-else. Paul and Peter got into it over whether non-Jews could be part of the church. And the thing is, if you pay attention to the way the story unfolds, there is no question that the way the Spirit moves God’s people is always toward inclusion, never toward exclusion. So, the direction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was a no-brainer. We were going to fully include gays and lesbians. It was bound to happen. The only question was, when?

It happened for us a couple years ago. At our churchwide assembly we decided that if a gay person had the good fortune to find someone to love, and if that person decided to make a lifelong commitment to the one they love, it was okay. Well, what we said was that it was okay for such a person to serve as an ordained (or rostered) minister in the ELCA, but, essentially, that was how we told all gay folks that they were okay by us. It was the right decision to make. And, apparently, it was the time to make it.

This year, someone has brought a resolution to our synod assembly asking us to rescind that decision. It reminds me of the classic horror film where you think the monster has been killed and all is well and then, just when you let down your guard, all of a sudden the monster comes back to life and makes one last lunge at the screen. It gets me every time. You’d think I’d see it coming, but I’ll scream, and grab onto whoever is next to me. Well, you’d think I would have been ready for this one last ditch effort to return to the homophobic days of yore as well. But I wasn't. It doesn’t leave me screaming, just shaking my head and wondering what the point is. Have these people never read the Bible? Can they not see that God’s people are constantly being transformed by the Spirit and that the direction of that transformation is always toward expanding the circle of God’s grace to include those who have been excluded?

I’m not all that worried about the people who can’t deal with the direction our church is headed. It would be nice if they’d get on board, but whether they do or not, the train has already left the station. If they choose to stay behind, I have won't be standing beside them holding their hands. The only hand I’ll be extending is the one I use to wave to them from the train window.

Every year I hope that this will be the assembly where sexual orientation is a non-issue. Well, it looks like this won't be that year. The monster needs to jump up for one last gasp of breath. So be it. We'll move on. Maybe next year will be the year.

Theological Tap Dancing? (or dancing around the center)

2011-05-29T20:28:00.001-04:00

One of the skills I developed after being ordained was theological tap dancing. It happens when you have to preach about something that you yourself may not hold to be true, and rather than share your truth, which might be upsetting to others, you tap dance around it. You don’t exactly tell the truth, but you don’t exactly lie about it either. As I started to question the teachings and practices of my denomination, I found myself tap dancing on Sunday mornings more and more. And let me tell you, it wore me out.

When I came to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Charlotte, I put away my tap shoes. I put them so far away that I don’t think I could find them now if I tried. The love I have known within this faith community has actually freed me to do that. I trust that they will continue to love me, even when I might say things that disturb them. That’s not only liberating for me as their pastor, but it’s liberating for them as well. For my role is not to make good little Lutherans out of them or to tell them what to believe or how to think. I’m here to mess with their minds so they don’t stay stuck in a place of comfort with easy, pat answers but move forward in their faith journeys. You might say my role within our faith community is to be an irritant.

That being said, I’m going to be honest with you about a part of our traditional Lutheran worship that makes me squirm like a worm on a hot skillet. It's the Nicene Creed. Historically, it's been the definitive word on how we Christians are supposed to understand God. My discomfort with saying the Creed in public worship increases with each passing year. It feels like a different flavor of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists have the definitive answer to every question. Fundamentalists must have certainty and they can’t deal with ambiguity. Fundamentalists tell us that there is only one right way to believe. Reciting a creed feels that way to me. It feels like we’re saying, “Here’s what you gotta believe about God.”

Creeds are not about faith; they are clusters of beliefs. There’s a big difference between belief and faith, although most people seem to use those words interchangeably. In Harvey Cox’s book, The Future of Faith, he does an excellent job of making the distinction. He cites a story by the Spanish writer Miguel Unamuno, that goes like this…
A young man returns from the city to his native village in Spain because his mother is dying. In the presence of the local priest she clutches his hand and asks him to pray for her. The son doesn’t answer, but as they leave the room, he tells the priest that, much as he would like to, he cannot pray for his mother because he does not believe in God. “That’s nonsense,” the priest replies. “You don’t have to believe in God to pray.”

The priest in the story recognizes the difference between faith and belief. Faith is more at the core of our being than belief. Beliefs, you can argue about. But not faith. Faith is putting your trust in something or someone. It’s a way of life. It’s a relationship. It’s of the heart. It’s fluid. It grows. A belief is more like an opinion. It’s of the head. It’s concrete. It’s possible that it may one day be discarded, but it never changes.

In his book, Cox separates Christian history into three eras. First, there was the Age of Faith which stretched from Jesus to the time of Constantine in the fourth century. Then, from the time of Constantine until now, we’ve been in an Age of Belief. The history of how that happened is too complicated to get into here, but it’s fascinating and I would recommend that you pick up a copy of Cox’s book to read about it. In a nutshell, there was a shady collusion between Constantine and the bishops that was all about power. Each wanted to use Christianity for their own purposes and it culminated at the Council of Nicea, which gave us the Nicene Creed.

The original purpose of the Creed was to unify the empire by weeding out anyone who didn’t agree. It became the law that led thousands of heretics to be tortured and burned at the stake. Over the next 1500 years, although most Christians quit executing those who disagreed with them, Christianity became all about believing in the right way.

Most of us lifelong Lutherans were educated in the faith by memorizing the right answers handed down to us from Luther himself in the Catechism. We weren’t nurtured into the life of faith so much as told what to believe. Our Lutheran way of indoctrinating children hasn’t served the church well. Is it any wonder that so many people ran from the Lutheran church as soon as they were confirmed? Should it surprise us to see the mess our denomination is in today when we continue to come at the life of faith as if it’s all about rooting out who’s right and who’s wrong?

But now, Cox says, we’re entering a new age, the Age of the Spirit. Much like the early church, it’s an age of faith. We’re returning to a time when doctrinal questions aren’t all that important. There were lots of different beliefs about God floating around in the first centuries of Christianity, and no need to agree on every point. The important thing was not belief, it was faith. Not identifying correct doctrines, but experiencing a relationship with God. In the early church there was never a single Christianity. There were many. It wasn’t until the time of Constantine that we got so hung up on rooting out heretics.

The fact is, despite the church’s attempts to root out heretics, they have always been with us. Thank God! For without them, where would we be? Heresy is healthy for the church. It’s always been the heretics, the ones traveling on the fringes, who have moved the Christian church to a new place. Those are the ones who have been God’s agents of transformation.

It seems to me that if there is any purpose for the Nicene Creed, it is that it gives us a center. We don’t have to agree about everything. But the Creed reminds us where the center has been for the Christian church over the past 1600 years or so. That center remains significant for us as we find our way on the journey of faith. We may be far from the center, but there’s value in knowing where the center is because, in some way, I suspect it’s that center that holds us in community even as it holds us in God’s presence.

My favorite definition of God is: God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Our Trinitarian understanding of God isn’t the only way God is experienced in the world. For us Christians, it is our center, but there are other centers for other peoples. And while our centers may be different, often our circles overlap so that those of us who have moved far from the center may find ourselves in more than one circle at the same time.

Way back before the Nicene Creed told us what we have to believe about God, the metaphor of the dance was used to describe the Triune God. It’s a dynamic faith image. It’s relational, it moves, it grows, it includes. Father, Son, and Spirit are inviting us to dance with them. And maybe, that’s the key to saying the Creed together on a Sunday morning. It’s not to trap us so we’re forced to tap dance around the truth. But it invites us into a circle dance. Perhaps it’s something like dancing around a maypole. None of us is required to stand in the center and make a statement of belief that is a litmus test for God’s people. But we can dance around that center, some close to it, some way out on the fringes, some weaving in and out. The important thing is that we’re all in the circle; we’re all in the dance.

I so prefer a circle dance to tap dancing.

A respecter of fences

2011-05-26T21:34:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, fences always seemed to be a problem.

The Stitsinger’s had a lovely white fence in their front yard with a top just about as wide as a balance beam. (Not that I would have known what a balance beam was back when I was a little kid.) I don’t remember how I ever got up there, because it was taller than I was; I suspect somebody gave me a boost. What I do remember is thinking I could walk along the top of that fence like a cat. Well, I was no cat. It was my collar bone that I broke. Then I had to walk around all wrapped up with padding around my shoulders, looking like a linebacker. Yeah, a very small linebacker, but still…

Hawkeye’s backyard butted up against ours. She hated kids coming into her yard so much that she had a very tall chain link fence installed around the perimeter to keep us out. It was upside down with the pointy part that’s usually near the ground on top. We called her Hawkeye because all she ever did was stand at her window and watch what we were doing. When we played baseball she waited for one or our balls to go over the fence into her yard. And if one of us dared to climb the fence to retrieve it, she would call the police. I know this because my brother did it once. I thought he was the bravest person in the world. Even if I had been big enough to climb that fence, I would have been too terrified to try. When I threw a ball and it ended up in her yard, I just kissed it good-bye.

There was a monkey living down the street from me. His name was Cocoa. He wore a little collar that was attached to a chain which was looped around the trunk of a tree. I used to stand behind the fence that encircled his yard and watch his antics for hours. As time passed and I got to know him better, it felt like we had become dear friends and the fence that separated us seemed completely unnecessary. He was so sweet and his eyes were so kind. So, one day I decided it was time to take our relationship to the next level and I climbed over the fence with a banana in my hand. I spoke in a gentle voice as I inched my way toward him. He watched me intently. Then, when I was within his reach, I held out the banana. Cocoa snatched it from hand. This was just as I had imagined it. Cocoa and I were going to become famous friends. But before I got too far into my dream for our future together, he let out a high pitched scream that sounded just the way Cheetah did when she got all excited in the Tarzan movies. And then Cocoa-zilla bit me in the arm!

Sometimes it seems that fences are constructed to keep us away from what would surely bring us happiness. It might feel like a good sturdy fence only serves to separate us from our heart’s desire and rob us of our freedom. But then there are the times when fences protect us.

Part of becoming a grown up is learning to be a respecter of fences.

Before I kick the bucket...

2011-05-24T22:10:00.001-04:00

Do you have a bucket list? The point of a bucket list is to identify the stuff you would like to do before you die. Of course, it should be stuff that’s actually possible for you. For example, having a fling with Johnny Depp doesn’t belong on my bucket list because, as much I might like to do that, I know it just ain’t gonna happen. On the other hand, items on a bucket list shouldn’t be so doable that they aren’t a challenge, either. They should stretch us to accomplish those things in our lives that bring us a feeling of completion. As I see it, the point of making a bucket list is so that we will live life to its fullest, with no regrets.

I’m on my third bucket list now. I keep doing most of the things on my list, or my desires change, and then I have to throw the old one out and start a new one. I remember that my first bucket list, which I wrote when I was in my 40s, had thirty items on it. Now I’m down to ten.

1. Retire in good health.
2. See the Grand Canyon.
3. Travel to Italy.
4. Find an extraordinary man to share my life with me as I grow old.
5. Enjoy a close relationship with my (as yet unborn) grandchildren.
6. Learn to paint with watercolors.
7. Sleep in every Sunday morning for at least a year.
8. Can my own home-grown vegetables.
9. Spend a week at a spa.
10. Have a home in the mountains.

That’s all very doable. And yet, I’m starting to realize that the best reason to stick around on this planet as long as possible isn’t so I have time to scratch items off a bucket list. It’s so much more than that. It’s being able to look back on the glorious triumphs as well as the miserable failures of my life with thanksgiving for the ways those experiences have shaped me. It’s cherishing the ordinary days and the contentment they bring. It’s an awareness of the times when I have spent myself in love for others without holding back, and because of those times, knowing that my life has been worthwhile. And it’s trusting that in big and small ways I’m always in the process of becoming the person God created me to be.

Maybe the real gift of getting older is the realization that life is about more than scrambling to get it all done before we die. It’s about being grateful for all we’ve been able to experience along the way. Within the past few years I’ve taken up residence in a grateful place. It’s more than enough for me. I know that, whether I accomplish all the items on my bucket list or not, when I finally kick that bucket, it will be full. Yes, I'm grateful.

For a lifetime or for life?

2011-05-22T18:04:00.001-04:00

Why do we tend to measure the success of a relationship by its longevity? If a relationship lasted only a year, we assume it was a failure, and if it went on for 50 years, we deem it a success. But I’ve been to more than one 50th anniversary event when I felt the only thing we were celebrating was sheer stubbornness and the tragedy of two ruined lives. There is a difference between a relationship for life and a relationship for a lifetime. The best relationships bring us life. If we’re among the lucky ones, we get to enjoy a life-giving relationship for a lifetime. But a lot of us aren’t that lucky and we come to a time when we are forced to choose between a lifetime with another person and a life.

If you’re married, it’s not easy to walk away from a relationship. If you’re a member of a Christian church, it’s even more difficult because it probably means going against the teachings of your faith community. I don’t know any Christian churches that condone divorce. They all teach that divorce is not what God wants for his people. That’s hard to deal with if you’re a Christian contemplating ending your marriage.

I’ve heard some preachers who have blamed all the ills of society on the increase in divorces. Our prisons are full, young people are on drugs, and adults can’t read, all because of divorce. These are preachers who like to believe they have the answers to all of life’s problems, and those answers are always simple ones, although the problems they address are complex. Their simplistic answers are drawn from connections that don’t exist, based on preconceived ideas that often prove false.

One of the statistics that I’ve often heard preachers cite is that one out of every two marriages in the United States ends in divorce. You’ve probably heard it too. It’s so often repeated, and so widely accepted, that it’s hard to convince people that it’s simply NOT TRUE! The statistic came about by comparing the number of people in a given year who were married and the number of people in that same year who were divorced. The problem is that the people who were divorced that year came from the pool of all married people, and not just from those who happened to get married in that particular year. So, it’s not true that half of all marriages will end in divorce. If you examine the trends in statistics, the divorce rate is actually declining. Of course, that’s not useful information if you want to convince people that the reason why the world is going to hell in a hand-basket is because of the high divorce rate.

The point I’m making is that there is a prevailing bias in the Christian church against divorced people. In some of the more legalistic churches, the judgment placed upon them is blatant. Divorced persons are removed from membership or given secondary status. In more liberal churches, the judgment is more subtle. Although no one comes out and openly labels divorced men and women sinners, the attitude is clearly felt. When you divorce, you have failed to be the kind of person the church expects you to be.

Christians who insist that marriage is for a lifetime will continue to judge the success of a relationship by its longevity. I suspect that they teach this because they fear what might happen if they didn’t. If they began to emphasize relationships for life over relationships for a lifetime, would the divorce rate be even greater than it is? The fact is, preaching against divorce doesn’t seem to deter people from divorcing. In research conducted by the Barna Research Group, divorce rates among conservative Christians were higher than those for mainline Christians and significantly higher than the divorce rates for agnostics and atheists. I wonder how the divorce rate for Christians would be affected if we stopped taking away people’s choices once they marry and instead focused on helping them make responsible choices for life-giving relationships.

I once heard a sermon that typified everything destructive that the church teaches us about a Christian marriage. It had a lot to say about a relationship for a lifetime, but nothing about a relationship for life. The preacher said, “Marriage is a room in which there is no exit except the door that is marked Death.” I groaned when I heard him say those words.

It reminded me of another quote, this one from the writer Steve Tesich. He also uses the image of a room to describe what happens to us when we’re in relationship with someone we love. But for him, the relationship isn’t about being trapped in a room with only one exit. His relationship has many rooms: “It’s like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you. But instead of becoming cramped and crowded, the space expands, and you discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you.” Isn’t this a beautiful way to imagine what a life-giving relationship looks like? It certainly isn’t a room with one exit door marked Death.

It can’t be God’s desire that two people remain joined for the rest of their lives, no matter what the cost may be to them as persons. In Jesus, we learned that the law of compassion trumps all other laws. Jesus didn’t come so that we may be miserable and pay dearly for the rest of our days for a bad choice we made when we were doing the best we could with what we were given at the time. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. Our God is a God of second chances. He is merciful and forgiving. He is a God who meets us in death and gives us life.

Before I became divorced myself, I was a little judgmental of those who were. I knew that marriage was tough and it required a lot of hard work. When I saw people who were divorced, I often wondered if they really had done all they could to save their marriages. I thought that if they had worked at their marriages like I did, they would still be married. I figured they had taken the easy way out. Now that I’m on the other side of divorce, I realize that divorce is never the easy way out.

We can all probably think of people who take divorce lightly, people who are married and divorced repeatedly, like Elizabeth Taylor. It probably won’t surprise you to know that Elizabeth Taylor never came to me to discuss her relationship problems. The people I talk to have not chosen the easy way out by divorcing. For them, divorce was a last resort that was only chosen after all other avenues to save their marriage had been exhausted. No one has to tell them that divorce is not God’s intention for his people. When their lives are torn apart, when they are grieving the death of their dreams for the future, when they are struggling to keep their jobs in the midst of their pain, they know very well that divorce is not what God wants for his people. But, there are far worse things for God’s people than divorce, such as, denying the gift of life that God offers them.

Not only is it permissible for a Christian to divorce when a marriage is not the kind of life-giving relationship that God wants for them, but in many cases, ending a marriage is actually the most faithful decision that a follower of Jesus can make. No, divorce isn’t God’s intention for his people in general, but divorce may very well be the kind of life-giving choice that God wants for you in particular. If you have already experienced a very real kind of death in your relationship that you could never have foreseen when you promised “until death do us part”, divorce is not a choice that is going to send you straight to hell. It’s the only faithful choice you can make; it’s a choice for life.

Why I wear blank t-shirts

2011-05-19T17:36:00.001-04:00

When I mount the pulpit at Holy Trinity, it often feels like I’m ensconcing myself in an armored tank, preparing to fire down a round of doctrine upon the people in pews below. These days, I’m much more comfortable preaching from the center aisle, in the midst of the community gathered. I know it may sound like a small thing, but it reflects my ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be a person of faith who is called to lead a community of faith.

The sermon is a time-honored tradition in Christian churches, and a unique form of communication. That communication tends to be one-way, with the “expert” imparting truth to a captive audience that can only sit and passively take it all in. When I first began preaching, I bought into that model and felt a responsibility to work really hard at studying a Biblical text until I arrived at the absolute truth it revealed so I could share that with my listeners. I wonder now how I ever could have been so presumptuous.

Back when I began preaching and I wrote all my sermons out by hand, I used to save them in a file cabinet with one drawer for each year of the three-year lectionary and a separate file folder for each Sunday. I thought I would be saving myself some work, in the long run, because when I moved onto the next parish I could just pull out an old sermon, dust it off a bit, and preach it again. But that’s not how it worked. Instead, each time I pulled out a sermon I once had preached and I read it, I would think, “How could I have said that? I would never say that now.” When I moved from Ohio to North Carolina, I trashed the filing cabinet and everything in it. That experience helped me to see how the truth is always changing for us. It’s not etched in bronze for all time. It’s fluid, ever expanding, never neat and tidy, often taking us in a direction we hadn’t expected.

That same fluidity of truth is evident in the Scriptures themselves. If you really take the Bible seriously, you know that it was never intended to be read as the absolute-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-God-forever-and-ever-amen. It was written by a variety of people in a variety of contexts who understood truth in a variety of ways. Its authors had one thing in common: they were all living in relationship with God and all were trying their best to make sense of it. When we study the Scriptures, we’re allowing the way its authors experienced God to inform our own experience of God. It’s like one person of faith sharing with another person of faith. That’s the value of the Scriptures for me. They become a part of my faith community as we walk together on the journey God has for us. We’re all figuring it out as we go, trusting the Spirit to guide us. And we’re helped along the way by the witnesses who have left us their legacy of faith in the Scriptures, as well as the other witnesses we meet, including the people who worship with us weekly. Yes, even the preacher. (And, lest you failed to notice the obvious -- an occasional blogger.)

Last week I saw a young man wearing a t-shirt that said, “When all else fails, read the instructions” and it showed a picture of an open Bible. I recall that I once could have worn such a t-shirt. I don’t think they make t-shirts for the spiritual place I’m in now. Faith development theory says that we all pass through different stages of faith in our lives. We begin with a need to have clearly defined instructions, right and wrong answers, and we move toward a faith that is less rigid, more open to mystery, ambiguity, and universal truth. I don’t know if it happens like this for everybody, but, in my life, this has certainly been the case.

I often hear young adults who have left the church tell me that “religion is just a crutch people use to get through life.” I guess for some people it never becomes more than that. The most primitive religion is fear-based, motivated by a desire to appease the wrath of an angry God. Young people who are bright and perceptive naturally come to a time when they can see the folly of this, and they reject it. What grieves me is when they also reject the spiritual path. I believe what they need most is to be a part of faith community that will pull them toward a broader understanding of truth. It can be disillusioning to discover that the faith you held onto as the truth isn’t so true for you anymore. But if that’s where you find yourself, let me assure you, your discomfort is only God’s way of leading you to a new place. Don't abandon the path!

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because of the lectionary text we have before us this week. It’s from the 14th chapter of John. In Jesus’ last night with his disciples, he tells them that he’s going to prepare a place for them. When Thomas wants to know how to get there, Jesus replies, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This was the text for the sermon I preached at my home congregation in Hamilton, Ohio while I was a still a seminary student. (A sermon which was no doubt a part of the filing cabinet that never made it to North Carolina.) Thirty five years ago, when I preached on this text from John 14, I said that Jesus is the only way to salvation. And, by that, I meant that Jesus paid the price for our admission to heaven and if we want to go there, we have to believe in him. I probably didn’t use those exact words, but I’m sure my message was along those lines because that’s where my brain was back when I was in my early twenties. That’s not where it is now.

According to John’s witness, Jesus is the way. And that’s my witness, too. Jesus is the way. But it’s not the way to heaven that I’m all that concerned about these days. I’m holding out for something larger than that. My life is a journey toward becoming the person God created me to be. God is pulling me toward authenticity and wholeness in my life so that I can have a relationship with him that is both honest and complete, without anything standing between us. I’m growing toward that. And as I am, the same truth keeps confronting me again and again. It is the truth of death and resurrection. In order to find the person God created me to be, I must first lose the person I have created myself to be. The persona I have created for myself, to protect myself, is not at all the person I truly am before God. If I want an authentic relationship with God, that persona has got to go. And, as much as I might like to believe otherwise, this kind of transformation in my life can only happen through struggle and loss. That’s the way of the cross, the Jesus way. I know that I’ll only experience a relationship with God in all its fullness after I die, when the self-destructive junk I cling to in this life is completely taken from me, but in the meanwhile, I’m on a journey that’s headed in that direction. The way to get there is the Jesus way.

In this passage from John's gospel, Jesus’ disciples want to know the way, and he tells them clearly that he is the way. “If you want to find God, if you want to know what God is all about, all you have to do is look to me,” he says. This takes us back to the very beginning of John’s gospel where he writes, "No one has seen God. But the only begotten Son, who rests in the very bosom of the Father, he has made him known."

Now John is bringing his gospel account to a close. Jesus is about to be betrayed, abandoned, handed over, tried, insulted, beaten and then nailed to a cross. Why? When we look to Jesus as the one who showed us the very essence of God in his life, there can be no doubt that God is all about love. So, why did Jesus die on a cross? Was it to appease an angry God? Or to take the punishment we deserve? Absolutely not! Consistent with his life’s purpose, it was to show us God -- to show us the depth of God's love.

This isn’t just something to benefit those of us who call ourselves Christians. It’s a truth that applies to all people, no matter what name they might use for God. That truth is: when we lose our lives, we gain them. It’s only when our false selves are stripped away that our authentic selves are revealed and we can enjoy the relationship we were created to have with God in all its fullness. It’s a universal truth. And it’s the Jesus way. In fact, it’s also the way Jesus revealed to us who God truly is in all his fullness. By emptying himself on the cross he showed us that God is love.

Is that THE truth? No, I wouldn’t dare suggest that. I can only tell you that it’s MY truth. Today. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not my truth next year, not if the Spirit is still moving in my life. I hope you know, that’s always the case whether I’m standing before you preaching or you’re reading the words of my blog on a computer screen. I’m not telling you how it is. I’m just a person of faith sharing my truth with you as one of the witnesses God has sent into your life to accompany you for a time in your own faith journey. Don’t think you have to agree with me. If need be, struggle with my witness for a bit along the way, and then keep moving.

Sorry, Oral. Sorry, Joel.

2011-05-14T17:40:00.001-04:00

"I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10b) It’s one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. (Well, technically it’s only half a verse.) But what does it mean? I think most people would say that it means God wants us to be happy. And, along with that, God wants us to have whatever it is we need in order to be happy. But is that what it really means or is it just what we’d like to believe it means?

Preachers of what we call the prosperity gospel use this as their favorite verse. If you haven’t heard of the prosperity gospel it may be because you’ve spent your life in a church like mine, where this isn’t the sort of thing we preach about. But it’s been around for a long time. The basic idea is that God wants us to be rich. Prosperity preachers include well-known names like: Oral Roberts, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen. They’re the ones who bring in the big bucks. That’s because they’re popular, and they’re popular because they tell people what they want to hear.

But, did you know that this verse about God’s promise of abundant life only appears one time in the entire Bible? You can only find it in the tenth chapter of John’s gospel. You won’t find it anyplace else. On the other hand, what Jesus talks about repeatedly, as the way of to a meaningful life for his people, is taking up a cross, denying ourselves, and following him. The way of the cross isn’t something you hear discussed a whole lot with enormously popular preachers. Instead, they tend to hone in on the abundant life God wants for us. But the thing is, without understanding the way of the cross, any attempts at living the abundant life are futile.

We can’t take the second half John 10:10 and adopt it as a way of life without also considering the verses that surround it. In this chapter, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. Actually, his words are, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” Although he doesn’t use the word cross here explicitly, make no mistake, he is describing the way of the cross. A bit earlier in this same chapter, he also refers to himself as the gate. He’s saying that the way to the abundant life comes by following his lead, by passing through him, the one who gives himself in love.

The abundant life is the new life Jesus offers us in the resurrection. It’s nothing we can achieve, so we don’t have to work for it. In fact, as a rule, we find it when all of our achievements have failed us. When we lose ourselves, that’s when we end up finding ourselves. That’s the way the resurrected life always works.

Jesus promises this abundant life to all his followers, his sheep. Actually, in John 10 he also says that he has sheep who don’t belong to this fold, as well. So, it’s not about who’s in and who’s out. It’s about the abundant life offered for all. It’s an authentic life lived in relationship with the God who loves us like the good shepherd who gives his life for his sheep. And it’s the life that follows in the way of that same shepherd. There is no abundant life apart from the meaning and purpose of life we learn from him; we find it as we give ourselves in love to others.

Sorry, Oral. Sorry, Joel. The abundant life that Jesus modeled for us didn’t end in a McMansion with a Mercedes in the five-car garage and a vacation home in Bermuda. Jesus wants more for us than that.

Will Jesus be making an appearance on May 21?

2011-05-13T17:16:00.001-04:00

You gotta give Robert Fitzpatrick credit. He has definitely put everything on the line for what he believes. Because in his heart of hearts he is convinced that judgment day is coming on May 21, he feels he has a sacred obligation to warn the rest of us. So he has spent all of his retirement income on billboards and other advertising to get the word out. On May 22, I suspect he will still be here on earth, and he’ll be penniless. How sad.

He has accomplished one thing. Through his efforts, he certainly has people talking about the end times. In the dominant culture around us, there seems to be one way we hear it explained by Christians. And that’s the whole bit about the rapture taking all the good people up into heaven and the rest of us miserable, rotten people being left behind. I don’t know if this puts me off so much because it offends my understanding of God’s grace or because somebody’s having a party and I’m clearly not invited. But it doesn’t matter because it’s just plain fiction. The whole idea of the rapture has only been around for about a hundred years. It draws on a bit of scripture here and a bit of scripture there, all put together with crazy glue in a way that’s very creative, but not very biblical.

Among Christians, there are other ways to understand the second coming. Most of the Lutherans I know believe it's something that happens for us individually; for each of us our final day will come when we stand face-to-face before our God. In that respect, being ready at all times because nobody knows the day or the hour is good, sound advice.

Theologically, the problem I have with that understanding is that it’s so private. There’s no communal aspect to it, and I think there is something communal intended in the biblical idea of the second coming. In that respect, I kind of like the way the theologian John Dominic Crossan explains it when he says that “The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen soon, violently, or literally. The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with its divine presence.”

That works for me. But the truth is, all of these theories are just conjecture. Jesus was not at all what the experts of his time had expected. They didn’t have a clue what was really going on. And we don’t have a clue today, either. We don’t know what God is doing in this world, other than loving it. Jesus says that even he doesn’t know the day or the hour. So, the only thing we can expect is to be surprised.

In one of my favorite episodes of the old “Dick Van Dyke Show”, it’s Rob’s birthday and his wife Laura has planned a surprise party for him. Unfortunately, Rob finds out about it and the whole episode is about him looking around every corner expecting to be surprised. When his entire birthday goes by and there’s no surprise, Rob thinks maybe he’s been mistaken. There isn’t going to be a surprise after all. And so, he gets ready for bed and he’s in his pajamas when he walks out into the living room to turn out the light. That’s when his friends jump out and surprise the living daylights out of him. The twist is that even though he knew he was going to be surprised, he ends up being surprised after all. The episode is entitled, “A surprise surprise is a surprise.”

It begs the question, if you’re expecting to be surprised, can you really ever be surprised? I don’t know, but I do know that it changes the way we live. Expecting to be surprised turns life into an adventure to be relished rather than an ordeal to be feared. As God’s people, our calling is not to convince the world that we have special knowledge of God’s purpose that they’d best listen to if they don’t want to get left behind. That’s not our calling. We’re called to open our eyes and see how God’s purpose is already being manifested in the world around us, so that, seeing it, we also might participate in it.

Is Jesus coming on May 21? I can can tell you for a fact that many of us will be seeing him on that day. Because Jesus is already here.

Flowers, schmowers

2011-05-08T17:12:00.001-04:00

Before I had the chance to greet anyone at church this morning I already had steam coming out my ears. When I pulled into the parking lot, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The day before, my friend Sandy and I had planted 108 begonias in the church yard and already, less than 24 hours later, at least a dozen were missing. At first I thought the squirrels had been digging in the dirt, but when I investigated the crime scene further it was obvious that someone had come along and stolen the flowers.

Can you believe that?! Now, this is an urban congregation and we have had problems with things being stolen through the years. We’ve already learned not to put flowers out in pots because the entire pot will disappear. And we can’t leave Christmas wreathes hanging on the doors or people will help themselves to the free decorations. But making off with flowers that have been planted in the ground in front of a church? Oh, come on!

Well, let me tell you, I was in an S.N.I.T. while I prepared the sanctuary for the 8:30 service. The first few people who entered the building got an ear-full. I even took them outside to point out the pitiful little gaps in the ground.

The next person who walked in the door was about to hear the news, too, but, before I could start in, she threw her arms around me and wept. I had been so wrapped up in my own little morning drama that I completely forgot about her husband's appointment to see an oncologist last week. But her tears reminded me. “It’s cancer,” she said. He had been diagnosed with liver cancer.

At that moment, while I enveloped her sobbing body with my arms, I remembered what I had preached about on Easter morning. I had proclaimed that Easter isn’t about a gaping hole in the ground; it’s about our encounter with the risen Christ. And while I was busy whining about the empty little holes in the flower garden, my dear friend was crying her eyes out over a loss that was beyond anything she had ever experienced in her life. She didn’t need to see a hole in the ground; she needed to see Jesus. She needed to know the power of the resurrection that comes to us just when all our hopes have been ripped to shreds.

Flowers, schmowers.

That woman was my mother

2011-05-05T20:34:00.000-04:00

When my children were young, I muddled through motherhood as best as I could. Some things I did well and some things, not so much. While I was finding my way, it dawned on me that my mom had done the same thing. As a child, I had assumed that she was all-wise. As an adult, I grew to realize that had never been the case. As I’ve matured, I have forgiven her for being human. That’s an important task of adulthood. We learn to forgive our parents for being human, just as we hope our children will one day forgive us.

I suspect that, as children, each of us saw ourselves as the central character in our parents’ lives. We couldn’t see that they were people with lives of their own who also happened to be parents. Our moms and dads have their own life stories, just as we do. We’re only a part of those stories. What I didn’t realize until recently is how the circumstances of our parents’ life stories may have more to do with the way they parent us than their intelligence, or their temperament, or their innate ability to nurture.

I’m one of six children. It was a yours-mine-and-ours family. Both of my parents had been married before they married each another. My father had two girls, my mother had a boy, and together they had three more: my brother, and then me, and then my sister. There is a huge age spread from the first child to the last. Even among the three of us “ours” kids, there are five or six years between each of us. My father died when he was in his mid forties and my mother died in her sixties, so we’ve been orphans for over thirty years now. Often, when we get together, we’ll talk about our mother. And, invariably, I will hear my siblings say things about her that leave me asking, “Are we talking about the same woman?” It’s as if each of us had an entirely different mother. But she was the same woman. Or was she?

My brother Bob had a mother who was inexperienced. She probably made more mistakes with him than she did with the rest of us. And while he was very young she had to deal with an unfaithful husband, whom she divorced in a time when divorce wasn’t all that common. That was the mother he had. But that woman was not my mother.

My older sisters, Roberta and Lorena, lost their mother to cancer while my father was away fighting a war. Within months of her death, my father came back home to Ohio and with him he brought a new wife from the far-off land of New Jersey. My sisters met the woman who was to become their “new mother” for the first time. It was not a good beginning, but they got past it. And yet, in many ways, it colored their relationship with our mother for as long as she lived. That was the mother they had. But that woman was not my mother.

My older brother Ken, my younger sister Wendy, and I also had three different mothers. We lived through an event with her that changed everything, but we were in different stages of our lives when that change occurred. My brother was twelve when our father died. But he got to spend the first part of his life with June and Ward Cleaver. My mom was the happy homemaker during that time. She sewed our clothes and pulled every weed out of the yard by hand and had a shiny kitchen floor and trailed along with her husband to his softball games and bowling tournaments and fishing trips. That was the mother my brother Ken had. But that woman was not my mother.

My sister was only a year old when dad died, so she never knew him. My mother went to work while she was still a baby and my aunt was the childcare provider who filled in the gaps while my mom couldn’t be there. The only mother my sister ever knew was one who worked outside the home. That was the mother she had. But that woman was not my mother.

When my dad got ALS I was five. So, I can remember what he was like before he was sick. But I particularly remember what my mother was like before and after his illness. Not only did the disease take my father’s life from him, it took my mother’s life from her as well. Life as she knew it ended. She had to become someone else. So, when I lost my father, I felt like I lost my mother, too. After he died, she became pre-occupied with survival. Even at the age of six, I was aware of the fact that I was not the main character in my mother’s life story.

When my father was diagnosed with ALS, both he and my mother knew he would not be around to do the things he had been doing for her. So, he had to show her how to write a check and pay the bills. He taught her how to drive a car. He prepared her to provide for herself and her family. This was no small thing for her. On top of knowing that the man she loved would soon be gone from her life, she had the added stress of re-creating who she was in order to prepare for a life she never would have chosen, but had to accept. That was the mother I had. That woman was my mother.

And so, if there is one value that my mom passed along to me, it is to take care of myself. Don’t count on a man to take care of you, Nancy. Have your own career. Be independent. That’s what I learned from my mom. Under the circumstances, what else could she have taught me? Of course, it’s been both a blessing and a curse. Yes, I can take care of myself, but it’s also been hard for me to ever admit I need help. Yet, that’s a big part of who I am. And it’s because of the woman who was my mother.

For thirty years now I’ve been living with the strange paradox of being without the one who will always be with me. I will always remember her courage, her generosity, and her quick wit. But I also can’t forget her brutal honesty and the deep sorrow that weighed her down like a lead apron. Not only do I remember these things about my mother, but I also see them in myself. I would not be the same person if I had the mother any of my siblings had. She is the mother who was unique to me because of the time I entered into her life story. I’m grateful.

Judging Ourselves

2011-05-04T15:12:00.000-04:00

I have a little saying framed in my bedroom that greets me every morning when I wake up: “Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.” I need to be reminded of that because I tend to be too hard on myself. You may be like that, too. Apparently, we humans have what is called a negative cognitive bias, which means that we tend to forget about all the times when things in our lives have gone well but have no problem remembering the royal screw-ups. When your negative cognitive bias kicks in and something goes wrong in your life, you’ll think, “Why do these terrible things always happen to me?” Then, before you know it, the question becomes, "What's wrong with me?" and the judgmental thoughts take on a life of their own.

Of course, not all people have a propensity to judge themselves harshly. Some people are quick to blame others for every stupid thing they’ve done themselves and they never seem to take responsibility for any of their actions.

Most of us are a mixed bag. Sometimes we beat ourselves up, and sometimes we fail to take responsibility for our actions. But we all judge ourselves in some way, and it’s important to examine how and why we do this to ourselves.

Are you one of those people who is unusually hard on yourself? If so, have you ever tried to figure out why? Did you grow up with an overly critical parent? Or were your teachers like that? Your peers? Did you feel like others had high expectations of you that you could never meet? Did you feel like you were never quite smart enough, or good-looking enough, or athletic enough? Were you convinced that you were always lacking in some way?

All too often, the way we see ourselves is a reflection of how significant people in our lives see us. We can allow them to tell us who we are, and believe it in a way that becomes self-fulfilling. I know a guy who once had a music teacher who told him he couldn’t sing and he grew up without ever realizing that he actually had a lovely voice and could sing quite well. It turned out that the music teacher was tone deaf! It’s hard not to let others influence the way we tend to think about ourselves.

And the opposite is true as well. It’s hard not to let the way we think about ourselves influence the way we treat others. People who are especially hard on themselves also tend to be hard on others.

So, how can we keep the way we judge ourselves in perspective? Let me share three ideas for your consideration.

First, we can never really see ourselves as we truly are. Our self-judgment is always distorted. We carry memories around in our brains that we can’t erase, no matter how much we might like to, and they influence how we feel about ourselves. It’s like the juror who hears inadmissible testimony in the courtroom and is then instructed by the judge to disregard it. How can you do that? Our private sense of self is contaminated by all kinds of inadmissible evidence. We need to remember that the thoughts we have about ourselves are not facts. They are thoughts, much like opinions, often distorted by our past experiences. We can never be objective when it comes to judging ourselves. We never have a grasp of the facts; all we have to go on are our thoughts.

Second, it’s important to differentiate ourselves from the messages we may carry around inside us about who we are, whether those have been imposed upon us by others, or they come from someplace deep within us. We like to simplify things by slapping labels on ourselves: I’m a disappointment, I’m fat, I’m smarter than just about anybody I know, I’m a mother, I’m gay. It’s important to recognize that we’re so much more than these one dimensional explanations would indicate.

Finally, know that we all have an inner critic. And our inner critic is not the enemy. It’s healthy to have an inner voice that will let us know when we’ve done something that wasn’t smart, or something that has hurt another person. It’s called a conscience, and to have one is a sign of being human. It allows us the opportunity to feel guilty, something animals have no capacity for. I know guilt has a bad name in our culture. But it’s really a positive thing when it reminds us of our shortcomings that need some attention. It motivates us to grow. Certainly, we all have things about ourselves we don’t like. Our guilt is often be the catalyst we need to do something about it.

That’s guilt. But now, shame is something else. While guilt says “I’ve done something wrong”, shame says, “I AM something wrong.” Shame is about debasing yourself. It’s not about overcoming your weaknesses. It doesn’t lead to growth. It's unhealthy -- self-judgment gone amok.

Self-judgment can be healthy when it includes the ability to accept our weaknesses as a part of who we are, knowing that it’s okay to make mistakes. It's healthy when it transcends the simplistic labels we carry around inside us about who we are. And it's healthy when it acknowledges the fact that the only one who really knows who we are just so happens to be the one who loves us unconditionally as we are.

For when all is said and done, only God’s judgment of us counts. God alone sees us exactly as we are, with all of our strengths and weaknesses, in all of our complexity. And God alone loves us exactly as we are. Unconditionally. Without reservation. Our personal demons may hound us, regrets may haunt us, doubts may hinder us. But those are nothing more than thoughts and they’re unreliable. The never-failing love of God is the truth we can rely on.

Why relationships are worth the effort

2011-04-28T17:57:00.000-04:00

I’m a solo act. That hasn’t always been the case. I was married for a good long while, and it worked for me right up until the time when it didn’t. But since my marriage ended and my nest became empty right about the same time, I’ve been going it alone. There are times when I relish the freedom of not having to check in with anybody, or make compromises, or feel a need to explain my actions to someone who might be impacted by them. And there are other times when I find myself in a dark hole where I wonder how many days I could be dead before another living soul would notice. I don’t know if I’m better off single. But I do know that I need positive relationships in my life. And because I don’t have an automatic relationship to come home to every night, I have to work at my relationships with friends and relatives. I’m not always successful; sometimes a relationship has been the source of great pain in my life, but it's worth the effort.

Scientists have discovered that healthy relationships lead to healthy lives. Of course, that’s something that many of us may have suspected anyway, but now there is research to back it up. Dr. Dean Ornish writes about this in his book, Love and Survival: the Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy. He says: “Love and intimacy are the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing.” He presents overwhelming evidence for the correlation between relationships and health, including the fact that people who feel lonely and isolated have a 300-500 percent greater risk of premature death and physical illness. His overall conclusion is that “anything that promotes a sense of isolation often leads to illness and suffering. Anything that promotes a sense of love and intimacy, connection and community, is healing.”

We really don’t need a scientist to tell us that we need one another. Positive relationships in our lives aren’t just good for our physical health; they are good for our mental, emotional and spiritual health as well. Our relationships with other people are a gift God has given us so that we can have the abundant life he wants for us.

In the movie Shall We Dance? there’s a speech made by the character Susan Sarandon plays that moved me to tears. She had been married for a long time to the same man and she was questioned about it. What’s the point? Why be married? Here’s how she responded:
“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’”

This struck me to the core because it was another way of saying something that is essentially true for us as human beings. If we live out our years devoid of close relationships with other human beings, without someone to share our lives, it’s almost as if they haven’t really been lived at all. It’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.

I’m sounding a little like the old Dean Martin song, aren’t I? “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.” Of course, we don’t have to worry about that because, as children of God, we know beyond a doubt that somebody does love us. But God puts flesh and blood people into our lives to be vehicles of his grace. That’s the blessing that any close loving relationship can bring us. And that’s why our relationships deserve the best that we have to offer.

“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). At their best, our relationships connect us with the love of God. A line from the musical, Les Miserables, expresses this deep truth quite simply: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Yes, relationships are worth the effort.

Why I've never learned how to act like a lady

2011-04-25T16:51:00.000-04:00

We were playing tag and I found myself backed up against a flower bed. I had to make a quick decision. Either I got caught, which would result in me becoming it, or I could jump through the garden. Unfortunately I did get caught – by an adult who saw me cutting through the flowers. As a result, I had to spend the rest of the afternoon on the porch watching the other kids play so I could "learn how to act like a lady."

To this day, I associate acting like a lady with being put in my place. While some women might consider it a compliment to be referred to as a lady, it always gets me riled up. In fact, limitations that are placed on me because of cultural gender expectations, as a rule, leave me feeling like a bird trapped in a paper sack, desperately trying to peck itself free.

I suppose I’ve struggled with gender expectations my whole life. Certainly, this became an issue for me when I felt called to ministry as the result of some mystical experiences in my young adult life. I wasn’t really a church person and had no idea when I arrived at seminary in the mid 70s that ordaining women was a recent novelty in my denomination. With no female role models, my sister seminarians and I fumbled around to find our way. In the beginning, while we were all trying to prove that we could do it like a man, it dawned on me that this approach was denying the distinctive gifts women brought to ministry. I needed to figure out how to become a woman pastor. It took a while, but I did.

Now, my struggle is more with being a person who happens to be female. The older I get, the more I see my life as a journey toward wholeness. And while my gender is a significant part of who I am, first and foremost, I am a person. Culturally bound gender expectations hinder my quest for wholeness. Whether I’m giving in to them or rebelling against them, they mess with me in a way that makes me less than the person God created me to be.

The culture around us is so mired in its expectations of women and men that it has become acceptable for us to settle for partial people. Every time a man who cries over a movie is ridiculed as a wimp, or a woman who stands up for herself is called a bitch, we are all diminished. We can never allow ourselves to fully explore who we really are as long as we allow cultural expectations to render us gender-bound. And we can never become whole people.

I serve in a congregation where there are lots of people who are in same gender relationships, and being with them has led me to think more about the limitations of opposite gender relationships. Sometimes I wonder if the need folks have for a relationship with a person of the opposite gender is a way of seeking the completion they can’t find within themselves because gender expectations have stifled their quest to explore all that is within them. The classic case of the man who needs to have a woman in his life who can emote for him, or the woman who needs a man in her life who can protect her is all too common. Wouldn’t relationships be healthier if they weren’t driven by a need for completion, but by a need for companionship? That way we wouldn’t overwhelm one another with unmeetable expectations, but be present to one another in our life journeys, to love, support and encourage one another along the way. Of course, the gender of the person we are in a loving relationship with becomes irrelevant then. We don’t love the gender, we love the person.

Since serving at Holy Trinity, I’ve also been blessed with transgendered friends who have had the experience of living in both worlds: male and female. My life has been enriched tremendously because they are a part of it. Transgendered folks have helped me to see that I am a complex person who cannot be defined by the world’s labels and expectations. I’ve experienced a growing freedom to explore who I really am, the person God created me to be, in a new way. When I’m with them, I feel like it may be possible for this bird to free herself from the paper sack and fly.

So much has happened in my life since the day I was sentenced to an afternoon on the porch pondering what it means to act like a lady. And the journey continues. The further I travel, the more I realize I don’t have to walk the path that anyone else has traveled before me. My path is my own. It’s the path God has planned for me, and I discover it, one step at a time.

Honoring the one who hung on a cross

2011-04-21T22:39:00.000-04:00

Can there be any doubt that Jesus was all about love? We know that he took the humble form of a servant when he walked this earth. He got down on his knees and washed the feet of his disciples, including the one who would betray him. He taught us to pray, not just for our friends, but for our enemies as well. But the most telling act of love he gave us was his death on the cross. It was love that put him there, and even while he was dying, he remained true to who he was, offering a prayer of forgiveness for the very people who were crucifying him.

How different the story of salvation would be if Jesus had cursed those who nailed him to a cross where he would slowly bleed and die. But, of course, that’s not what he did. Knowing that those who had crucified him were, in a sense, damning themselves by their actions, he spoke on their behalf. He asked God not to hold their sin against them. He responded to their hatred with love.

One of the amazing things about Jesus’ prayer of forgiveness is that he offered it without anyone requesting it. So often we think that forgiveness is offered only after the person who has wronged us comes to us and asks to be forgiven. But no one asks Jesus for forgiveness in this scenario. Instead, he offers it with no self-acknowledgement of their guilt whatsoever. He forgives them when they might not even realize they have anything to be forgiven for.

Is there someone in your life you have had trouble forgiving? Have they done something that has hurt you so deeply you can’t find it in your heart to forgive them? Have you been waiting for them to come to you and apologize first?

Forgiveness isn’t only for the one who is forgiven; it also benefits the one who does the forgiving. Why not honor the one who hung on a cross and offered forgiveness in an act of pure love by praying the same prayer for those who have wronged you? Carrying a grudge is a terrible burden to bear. It’s time to set yourself free.

Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.

In the night in which he was betrayed...

2011-04-18T13:00:00.000-04:00

In the night in which he was betrayed… They’re the words we always use when we consecrate the bread and wine for the sacrament of Holy Communion. Have you ever thought about why the Words of Institution begin like this? Why couldn’t we change it up a bit and set the stage with, In the night when Jesus gathered with his disciples before he was arrested and killed…? Would it make any difference?

In the night in which he was betrayed… The betrayal Jesus experienced in the context of his last supper cuts right to the heart of what this meal means for us whenever we receive it. If Jesus had instituted this sacrament at any other time, it wouldn’t mean what it does for us. It had to happen in the night in which he was betrayed.

Have you ever been betrayed by one of your closest friends? After opening yourself up and becoming vulnerable to another person, to have them abuse the trust you placed in them and stab you in the back can cause more pain than if that person had beaten you to a pulp. If a person claims to love you and turns around and hurts you deeply, you probably want to do what most of us want to do in that situation – you want to hurt them back.

You wouldn’t choose to spend your last night alive with that person. Especially if you knew it was his betrayal that was going to lead to your death, a death you didn’t deserve. You wouldn’t include him on your guest list as you gather your loved ones for one last meal together. You wouldn’t treat him with all the love and compassion that you show to all the other guests at your table. You wouldn’t get down on your hands and knees and wash his feet. You wouldn’t break bread with him and offer him the same blessing you give to all the others who have left everything to be with you. Certainly, you wouldn’t give yourself, your very body and blood, to this one who betrayed you. But that’s what Jesus does, isn’t it?

He offered the wine, his blood, to all of them, including the one who had already betrayed him to the chief priests. Judas had gone to them and asked, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” And they paid him off with thirty pieces of silver. From then on, he was looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus. No doubt, that’s what Judas was thinking about as he sat down to eat that night with Jesus and his friends. He felt the weight of the silver coins in one hand while he received the broken body and the spilled blood of Jesus in the other. Judas was wondering if this might be a good time to betray the one who was handing him his very life.

It’s hard to believe that Judas could have turned on Jesus like this and gone through the charade of participating in Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. What’s even more unbelievable is that Jesus himself knew exactly what was going on, and he still gave himself to the one who already had been paid to have him arrested and killed. But, as the story unfolds, we watch Jesus making a point of letting Judas know that he knows.

“Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me,” Jesus tells his disciples. When they want to know who it is, he says, “It’s the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So he dips the bread in the dish and gives it to Judas. Now, only one of the disciples understood what was really going on at that moment. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” So Judas got up from the table and left.

I’ve often wondered why Jesus didn’t dismiss Judas at the beginning of the meal. Why did he wait until after he had shared such an intimate time with his closest friends? I imagine it might be like having your family gathered around your deathbed and seeing your arch-enemy standing there in the midst of them. A deeply personal last time to be with the ones you love the most would be ruined. In the same way, Judas had defiled this holy moment. If Jesus knew what was going on, it would have made more sense for him to ask Judas to leave earlier, so he could have been excluded from this loving encounter with his followers. But Jesus intentionally chose to include Judas.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Judas isn’t the only person present at the meal who will betray Jesus. One by one, they will all fall away from him. When Jesus is arrested, three times Peter denies even knowing him. After Jesus is crucified, they all hide out for fear of being recognized as his followers. Not only did Jesus share his last supper with the one who would betray him, he shared his last supper with all who would betray him. And yet, he loved every one of them enough to give them his very self, his body and blood.

This same Jesus loves us enough to give us his body and blood, too. Just as he didn’t turn any away at the table on the night when he was betrayed, he doesn’t turn any away at his table ever. Even for the one who may be holding thirty pieces of silver in one hand, Jesus still gives his body and blood to be taken in the other.

Lest any of us think ourselves unworthy of receiving the body and blood of Christ, we need to go back to the night when Jesus gave us this holy meal. From the very beginning, it was shared with people who were unworthy of the gift. And that’s what makes it a sacrament, because it is all about God’s grace poured out for the undeserving.

No matter how strong or weak your faith may be, no matter how much or how little you read your Bible or pray, no matter how well you’ve done at following Jesus or how miserably you’ve failed, no matter who you are or what you’ve done – Jesus offers you his body and blood. And the more unworthy you may feel about receiving it, the more it has been given for you because it is given for the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins isn’t for perfect people. It’s for people like Judas, who betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. It’s for people like Peter who promised he would never leave Jesus and then turned around and flatly denied even knowing him. It’s for people like the disciples who cowered in fear as soon as Jesus was taken from them.

It’s a meal given for the unworthy, and no one is excluded. It’s a meal where all are loved and forgiven. It’s a meal where all are offered the gift of Jesus himself.

And lest there be any doubt about it, we’re reminded of this fact every time we gather around the table to receive Christ’s body and blood and we hear again the words that recall for us how this meal came to us from the beginning. In the night in which he was betrayed…

What happens to pastors when they die?

2011-04-14T16:04:00.001-04:00

Unless you’re also a pastor, or a funeral director, you probably don’t spend as much time at funerals as I do. And you may not know that there is a tradition about the placement of coffins for church services. If the deceased was a lay person, the head is toward the congregation, so they are looking up to the front. But if the deceased was clergy, the head is toward the chancel, so they are looking out into the congregation. This way they’re facing the same direction that they faced for worship during their time on this earth. It’s a peculiar tradition that speaks volumes to me. Certainly, it shows a respect for those who preach. But, as one of them, it makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Is the separation between pastors and the people they serve so definitive that it must continue even beyond death?

Among my peers I’m something of an oddity these days because I actually went from college to seminary and was ordained at the not-quite-ripe-enough age of 26. This is the only life I’ve ever known as an adult, so sometimes I’m not sure who I am apart from the role that I fill. I’ve struggled with this throughout my life. While I feel blessed to be in ordained ministry, and am thankful for the rich life I’ve enjoyed because of it, I also am keenly aware of the fact that this is what I do and it’s not who I am. There is so much more to me than the role I fill for other people as their pastor.

I have relished those moments in my life when I have been with people who either: (a) didn’t know that I had a “Rev” in front of my name, or (b) couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it. While serving my second parish, for a time I played with an orchestra in the next city over and enjoyed being known as “Nancy who plays the piccolo.” After seminary, when I returned to school, it was in a public university setting where I was simply another grad student. And one of the reasons why I love contra dancing these days is that for the people I dance with I’m just another middle-aged woman who tries to twirl around in a thrift-store skirt. Without these treasured people in my life, who don’t know me as “Pastor Nancy”, I’m afraid I might lose myself completely.

So, do I really want to be marked as a pastor even after I die, as if that’s the essence of who I am? The very idea of having my coffin turned in a different direction than the other dear saints in my church disturbs me and it gives me one more reason why I’ve chosen to be cremated. After my vital signs have ceased, they can harvest any body parts that might be of use to anybody and then freeze-dry the rest of me. Please know that when they do, I will not become pastor dust, thank you very much. I will just be dust!

Of course, in whatever life that follows this one, the fact that I served as a pastor won’t amount to a hill of beans. In fact, I suspect that in the next life the most useless job of all will be that of the professional holy person. I mean, why will anyone need to have someone pointing them toward God when they’re in the actual presence of God?

So whatever will I do with myself? Who will I be? I suppose it’s possible that many of the things I’ve been preaching about will turn out to be true and I could strut around telling everybody, “I told you so” but who would really care at that point? I’d rather bask in God’s glory with everyone else as we experience the breadth and width and depth of God’s love for all creation in a way our narrow minds could never comprehend in this lifetime. That’s when I’ll know that I’ve finally become the person God created me to be.

Yes, this gives me something to look forward to -- the day when my body will be dust and Pastor Nancy will become absolutely useless. Oh, yeah!

But I’m not in any hurry. I’ll wait my turn.

God save us from our need to be right

2011-04-13T22:16:00.000-04:00

When I was in college, my roommate was dating a grad student who was way smart. I always thought I was well endowed in the brains department, but he had it all over me. His mind sucked up facts like a vacuum cleaner. Every night during supper, when Jeopardy came on TV, he enjoyed sharing his vast knowledge with us. I listened and silently gnashed my teeth, never daring to challenge him because he was just about always right. But when I was handed an unexpected opportunity to stick it to him, I couldn’t resist.

I happened to watch Jeopardy while I was home for Christmas break. Then, when I returned to school, lo and behold, an exact same episode that I’d already seen the week before was being aired on TV. It was like a dream come true! I pretended that I had never seen it before, as I called out all the right questions, including a few that he missed. Although I acted as nonchalant as possible about it, inside I was whoopin’ and hollerin’ and jumping up and down. Yes! It felt so good that I never told him the truth. To this day he thinks that I mopped the Jeopardy board with his face that night. Actually, he’s probably forgotten all about it. But not me! I will never forget it. At the time, I thought of it as an impressive victory. Now I look back and I realize it was NOT one of my finer moments. How could I have been so deceptive?

I wonder how many people in a similar situation would be able to resist such an opportunity? I mean, isn’t being right a rush for all of us? There’s something about it that satisfies us on a basic level. Why is that?

I suspect it’s a competitive thing. If you’re right, that means you’re superior to the person who is wrong. And who doesn’t love feeling superior? If we can point to someone else and say, “I’m better than she is!” it’s proof positive that we’re worthwhile.

Maybe this is one reason why some of us are so offended by the notion that God unconditionally loves ALL people. In the church we call it grace. It’s love freely given, with no strings attached. It’s loving someone just because. That’s exactly the way God loves us -- just because.

For those of us who have a need to feel we’re special, and I suspect that’s pretty much all of us, the undiscriminating grace of God can leave us feeling slighted. Of course, to God, we’re special, and that’s fine with us. But the problem is that, to God, EVERYONE is special. How can anyone be special if everyone is special? And how can we feel superior to other people if God loves everyone the same, whether they’re perfectly right or terribly wrong? Now, I realize that’s a very human perspective and I think it’s safe to say that a God of grace doesn’t see things that way.

Certainly, our need to be right takes on epic proportions when we align our rightness with God’s. It’s not so much a problem when we try to think like God; it’s when we convince ourselves that God thinks like us. And when we’re so hell-fire sure that God thinks like we do, well, we have to be right, by God! We’ll fight to the death to prove that we’re right because so much is at stake. It’s a scary place to be. And, ironically, it is exactly what a life in relationship with God is NOT.

To be in an authentic relationship with God, we have to be able to utter three words that so many of us find it pert near impossible to say: I was wrong. Until we can acknowledge that we’re not always right and quite often we might actually be wrong, we’ll have so much invested in proving we’re right that we can never let God be God.

Do you have an aversion to the words, I was wrong? It’s a true spiritual handicap that isolates you from God, as well as other people. And it keeps you from growing into the person God created you to be. That’s why, as painful as it is, every once in a while it helps us to be reminded that we can be wrong. You might say that an occasional serving of crow is good for our spiritual health.

As we head into Holy Week, I’ve been thinking about how Jesus ended up on a cross because he didn’t need to be right. As the hymn from Philippians tells us: “He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the worst kind of death at that – a crucifixion.” (The Message)

On the other hand, it was the need those in authority had to be right that nailed Jesus to a cross. And it may be the way we still nail him to a cross today. Whenever we refuse to admit we could be wrong, or when we link our rightness with God’s, or when we put being right above being loving… when our need to be right becomes that overpowering for us, we are pounding nails into the cross.

God save us from our need to be right.

Coffee & Some Serious Brain-pickin'

2011-04-07T17:35:00.000-04:00

“So, what makes you think there really is a God and he isn’t just a social construct created to fill a need?”

It was the logical question for her to ask. Raised in a conservative church and steeped in Biblical literalism, now that her critical mind had been awakened, the house of cards she had constructed to contain her faith was crumbling. If she could no longer believe what she had been taught about the Bible, how could she believe in God, who, for her, had always been somewhat synonymous with the Bible?

She had asked me to meet her for coffee. For someone who doesn’t drink coffee, I’ve been meeting quite a few people for coffee lately. It’s a comfortable venue for younger adults, so I'm glad to meet them on their own turf. I realize that coming to the pastor’s office for a conversation may be a little too churchy. And I’ve come to expect that meeting a young adult for coffee means I’m in for some serious brain pickin’. They’ll sit across from me, gently stroking their paper coffee cups with their fingers, asking me the questions that are keeping them awake at night. Basically, these are the same questions that keep me awake at night. And they consistently challenge me because I can’t hide behind a pulpit, or offer pat answers, or toss theological jargon around when I speak with them.

As I sat with her, I was thinking about another young woman I met for coffee/brain pickin’ just a few days before. Like this woman, she wasn’t a member of my congregation and she was smart as a whip. But the woman I met with a few days prior had no faith background at all and she came to me mystified by a church culture that was so far removed from her experience. Now today, my brain picker was the exact opposite. She had been thoroughly indoctrinated with all the “right” answers. It occurred to me that both women were blank slates so far as faith was concerned, but in different ways. One was a blank slate that had never been written upon, and the other’s slate had been completely covered in writing that she had erased. Both were sincere in their search. And both made me squirm a little, like a bug under a magnifying glass catching the sun’s laser sharp heat.

“What makes me think there really is a God? Well, that’s a good question. It depends on the day you ask me. I don’t always believe in God. But, I guess here’s where faith comes in for me… I know that God doesn’t need me to believe in him. God is. And I trust that even when I don’t know if there is a God, God is never going to stop loving me. That’s what I trust in. My feelings come and go. I can’t trust them. What I believe comes and goes. But I trust that God’s love is bigger than all that.”

“How do you know that God loves you?” she asks me.

Now, the stock answer would be some verse from the Bible like John 3:16. But that’s not how I know God loves me. I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe anything just because the Bible says so; it has to ring true by my own experience. And I couldn’t lie to her. So I said, “I know God loves me by the God glimpses I experience in my life. Again and again, something will happen in my life that reminds me that I’m not in charge, that God is. And my experience shows me that God is loving and good and I can trust that. Often it’s something little, but if I’m paying attention, I experience God’s love. And it always seems to come to me through other people.”

It may be heresy. I may not have been approved for ordination if I had answered in this way, but it’s what I have experienced in my life. It’s the God glimpses that get my attention. That’s where I start. I don’t find truth in the Bible just because “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.” I find truth in the Bible because it resonates with my own experience of God.

So, we’re sitting there in a Panera in the suburbs at lunchtime. The table next to us is about two inches away, which means that your neighbors can’t help but hear your conversation. And, wouldn’t you know that a man sits down at the next table right about the time we’re talking about salvation, which, of course, I explain in a way that my brain pickin’ friend seated across from me has never heard it explained before. Apparently, my neighbor is disturbed by our conversation because he gets up in a huff and moves to another table.

Then the conversation comes around to hell. Do I believe in hell? she wants to know. In the course of my explanation, I mention Rob Bell’s new book that has raised the ire of so many evangelicals. I ask if she has read it and she hasn’t. Well, neither have I and, for that reason, I’m a little sorry I brought it up. But I tell her that he seems to have something to say about the existence of hell that has a lot of people all riled up and she might want to check it out.

Right about then, two men sit down to eat at the vacant table next to us and I hear one of them say, “Pastor Nancy…” I look over and see a young man, also not a member of my church, with whom I had a similar coffee/brain pickin’ meeting a couple of years earlier. I recall that he is a Rob Bell junky and think --- this is too good to be true! So I explain to him that we were just talking about Bell’s new book, Love Wins, and I ask if he could tell us a little about it. He looks toward the man sitting across from him and explains to me that he is having a business meeting and really needs to take care of that, but if his lunch companion doesn’t mind, he could give us a brief synopsis. The guy sitting across the table looks a little surprised, but nods his consent.

Now, this is pretty amazing! Here I am sitting with this woman, for some reason talking about a book I’ve never read, and all of a sudden this guy appears who may be one of the only people I know who has actually read the book. Just a little weird.

So, after the book report is finished, the man turns to his business associate and apologizes. Of course, they were sitting close enough that I could hear their exchange. “I hope you don’t mind,” he tells his business associate, “… church stuff.” He pauses and takes a sip of his coffee. Mixing church and business can be a little touchy, I know. But then I hear him ask the man sitting across the table, “Do you have a church you go to?”

“I go to Christ Lutheran,” the man replies. And I about fall off my chair. The young man he is speaking with, his business associate across the table, also is a member of Christ Lutheran. They work together and they had no clue they went to the same church.

And all the “what ifs” start clicking through my brain. What if I hadn’t come here to meet this brain pickin’ young woman on this day? What if she hadn’t asked me if I believe in hell? What if the first neighbor hadn’t moved to another table? What if the second neighbor hadn’t sat in that chair? What if it had been someone else? What if I had never met him for coffee two years earlier and learned about his faith journey and his interest in Rob Bell’s writing? What if I hadn’t remembered that and hadn’t asked him to tell us about the book? What if he hadn’t asked his associate if he has a church? If none of that had ever happened, the two men never would have come to Panera for lunch that day and they never would have learned they were a part of the same faith community. Too darn weird.

I smile at the young woman seated across from me. “How do I know there’s a God? This is exactly what I was talking about.”

Did God make all that happen? I don’t know. Does it prove to me that there is a God? I don’t know that either. But it was one of those God glimpses that bring me to the conclusion that the question isn’t something I need to spend a lot of time worrying about. It used to keep me awake at night. It doesn't any more.

Tickling God

2011-04-01T08:16:00.000-04:00

Has anyone played an April Fool’s prank on you today? If you’re reading this early in the morning, maybe you can beat them to the punch and catch them off-guard. I always appreciate a day that’s dedicated to silliness. But then, I’m one of those people who enjoys laughing; finding the humor in most circumstances has gotten me through tough times in my life. It’s also gotten me into trouble at times. Especially when I’m in a situation where laughter is completely inappropriate, and if I get to giggling, I just can’t stop. The fact that I shouldn’t be laughing just makes it funnier to me.

I wonder if Sarah felt that way when she heard that, as a dried up old woman, she would be giving birth. It was so ridiculous that she burst out laughing. Even though God was promising that her deepest longing would come to pass, she thought it sounded silly and she couldn’t control herself. The thing that bothers me about this story is that when she laughed and the Lord heard her, she denied it. She was ashamed of her laughter. Why couldn’t she have said, “Yes, Lord, I laughed because it’s so darn funny?”

The theologian Karl Barth wrote, “laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” I believe that when we laugh, God is there. And I know beyond a doubt, from looking at some of the things and people God has created, that God has a sense of humor. I wonder why we don’t include more humor in our prayer lives. We’re not afraid to come before God with our tears, so why would we be afraid to come before God with our laughter?

Do you think God is ticklish? I like to believe that I tickle her on a regular basis.

Why this preacher needs to do more yard work

2011-03-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

I’m as faithless as they come. Really I am. Case in point…

After living in my house for five years and never doing diddly to the yard, I decided that this year I needed to take action. So, a few weeks ago I went to Lowe’s to pick up some fertilizer and grass seed. I had a chat with the young woman at the store and told her that I wasn’t messing around, I was serious about growing grass. She pointed me toward the most expensive grass seed on their shelves -- the kind that is 99.9% pure and has some fancy-schmancy thing done to the shell so that it retains water longer than any other seed. I had to have it.

I worked on my yard for a couple of days and threw grass seed all over the place. I watered it. On the bag it said that I could expect grass to appear in 6 to 14 days. So, I started examining my yard every morning, beginning at day 2. By day 13 I had come to believe that I had been had by the woman at Lowe’s. These things weren’t going to grow. They just sat there decorating the dirt like the dust on my bedside table. When I bent down close, I could swear I heard them laughing at me.

I was mad, mad, mad! And I was preparing to march myself into Lowe’s with receipt in hand to demand my money back. I was absolutely convinced those god-awful-expensive seeds were duds.

Then, lo and behold! This morning I was completely surprised to see needle-thin blades of grass popping up out of the soil like whiskers on the face of a 13-year-old boy three days after his first shave. What a glorious sight! Now, you may be thinking, “Well, duh, Nancy, you should have expected grass where you planted grass seed.” But somewhere in the midst of waiting for those seeds to grow, I became convinced that this time it wasn’t going to happen. I know it sounds crazy, but I really did.

Well, guess what? Those seeds didn’t need me to believe in them before they would grow. In spite of the fact that I was convinced all my efforts had been futile, they grew.

Now the “Parable of the Sower” has grabbed hold of me and won’t let go. You know, it's the one about the sower who scattered seed in the rocky soil and along the path and in the thorns and, of course, some actually made it into the fertile soil. It was only the seed planted in the fertile soil that stood a chance and, in the end, it produced 100 times what you would expect. This meant that, despite the fact that the seed didn’t do squat in most of the places it landed, the bumper crop in the fertile soil more than made up for it.

The story should really be called the “Parable of the Seeds” because it doesn’t tell us very much about the sower. We don’t know anything about what he believed or how well-versed he was in the scriptures. We do know that he wasn’t very well-versed in the finer points of agricultural engineering because he wasted most of the seed by throwing it where it stood absolutely no chance of growing. But neither his lack of faith nor his lack of skill mattered. All the sower needed to do was throw the seed around. God did the growing.

I take great comfort in this truth. As someone who preaches God’s Word on a regular basis, I am just about as faithless as they come. I scatter the seeds on a Sunday morning and can’t imagine that they’ll produce anything more than a bunch of dead seeds laughing at me in the pews after everyone has gone home. But my lack of faith is irrelevant. God is gonna do what God is gonnna do. And I continue to be surprised by what God does. It’s happened so often that I’ve come to trust in it, despite my faithlessness.

The words of Isaiah 55 continue to ring true:
10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

God grows them; I just sow them. I need to be reminded of that. That's why it's a good idea for a faithless preacher like me to plant grass seed every once in a while.

Holy Ground Indeed

2011-03-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

It was one of those times in my ministry when I felt like I needed to take off my shoes because I was standing on holy ground, and it happened today while I was visiting with Perry in the hospital.

Perry: Well, Pastor, I’m ready to go.
Me: Do you think it’s time?
Perry: Oh, yes. It’s time. And I’m not afraid.
Me: Well, just because you think it’s time doesn’t mean that God thinks it’s time. We’ll have to wait and see.
Perry: Yes, but there’s nothing more for me to do. I’ve lived a good life. I’ve been blessed.
Me: That’s good to hear. We should all be ready to go like that.
Perry: Please just don’t tell Ev I said that.
Me: You haven’t said this to her?
Perry: She takes such good care of me. I don’t want to upset her. Every morning I wake up and I get out of bed and I get washed up and that’s all I have to do all day. She takes care of me all day long. She’s the best wife any man could ever have. I’ve been so blessed.
Me: And tell me again how long the two of you have been married.
Perry: I can’t remember. I think it’s something like 80 years.
Me: 80 years? Well, how old are you?
Perry: I’m 84. Is that right?
Me: If you’re 84, I’d say you haven’t been married for 80 years.
Perry: Well, no, that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?
Me: Not unless you got married when you were four.
Perry: (looking up at me with a broad grin, eyes glistening with tears) Well, thattud been fine with me as long as I coulda married the same woman.

And I lost it. Right there on the 10th floor of Carolinas Medical Center. Perry wasn’t the only one in that room whose life has been truly blessed by God. Who else has a “job” where they regularly get to hear people say such things?

So often, members of my congregation think of me as the one who speaks for God. What they don’t realize is how often I hear God speaking to me through them. Holy ground indeed.

Nudist Churches?

2011-03-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

How do you feel about standing naked before another person? Little kids don’t seem to have a problem with it. In fact, I can remember when my kids were little, in the summertime in particular, I had trouble getting them to keep their clothes on. But, most of us, as we get older, aren’t really into being naked in front of each other. Yeah, there are nudists, and there are exhibitionists, and strippers, but those people are considered somewhat on the fringe of society. It’s not normal to parade around naked. That’s why, when we go to church on Sundays and sit in the pews, we’re wearing clothing. (Can you even get your head around a nudist church? You might think such a concept would really pack the pews, but, in truth, I suspect it would be very difficult to get people to attend such a church. As observers, perhaps, but not as participants!)

Most of us reserve our nakedness for a select few people in our lives. They would be the people we can trust to love and accept us even though we might not look like the airbrushed centerfolds of a Playboy magazine.

In the story of Creation, Adam and Eve experienced an intimate relationship with God. They stood before God naked and didn’t think a thing of it. But then, when they made the decision to separate themselves from God, immediately, what was the first thing they did? They made some clothes so they could hide their nakedness.

To return to the people God created us to be, people who are in an intimate relationship with God, it’s important to stand naked before God. That is, to be who really are: without pretenses, without fear, without shame. And the only way we can do that is by trusting that God loves us with all our imperfections.

Psalm 32 is the perfect way to begin the Lenten season because it’s about a journey from fear to trust. It tells the story of one who had separated himself from God. He was afraid and hid himself from God. He stubbornly held his feelings in and shut himself off until it felt like there was going to be nothing left of him and he couldn’t stand it anymore.

Then, he finally broke down and came to God in honesty. He quit pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He confessed to God who he really was -- someone who had made a royal mess of his life and someone who desperately needed God.

The Psalmist opened himself up to be in an honest relationship with God. And that’s all it took. Because God was there all along. It was only his stubborn refusal to come to God that had caused the separation. God wasn’t looking for reasons to punish him. God was waiting patiently for him to open himself up to receive forgiveness. That’s who God is. Knowing that makes it a lot easier to stand naked before God.

Nudist churches? Probably not a very good idea. But it definitely would be a good thing for more of God’s people to be seen naked.

Is Your Church a Holy Holding Tank?

2011-03-11T16:43:00.000-05:00

Most faith communities are all about belonging. Their goal is to increase membership, to get people to belong. The church serves as a holy holding tank. When belonging becomes the emphasis of a congregation it’s easy to become judgmental because it is all about who’s in and who’s out. That’s what happens in a holy holding tank. And when a community’s emphasis is on judging, the community sets the standard for who you need to be and you can strive really hard to become that person.

The problem with that kind of striving is that it means becoming someone you’re not and your life becomes a lie. You’re always trying to please other people, to meet the standards someone else has set for you. Talk about living in bondage to sin. But it’s not God who binds us, it’s the judgment of other people as well as the judgment we might impose upon ourselves.

Churches aren’t meant to be holy holding tanks that people can belong to. They are meant to be places of transformation that are always growing into a Jesus Way of being in this world. Never static, the community is always moving. We’re engaged in a journey together. The kind of transformational life we’re called to as God’s people is not about being converted into people we’re not. It’s about truly becoming the people we are. The people God created us to be. And there’s a huge difference between becoming the person God created you to be, the person you truly are, and the person other people tell you you have to be in order to become acceptable.

For those of us who are on a journey toward becoming the people God created us to be, the challenge lies in discovering who that is. We often mistake our past behavior as an indication of who we are. But our past behavior doesn’t define who we are. In fact, it may only serve to mask our true selves. Especially if we have a history of allowing others to judge us or perhaps judging ourselves. Judging never leads us to an understanding of who we really are as children of God. The only way we can grow to understand who we really are is through love. Because we’re not defined by what we’ve done, whether good, bad, or ugly. Who we are is defined by whose we are. We’re defined by our relationship with the God who loves us.

The challenge and adventure of life is in discovering who we really are. It takes faith, courage, and imagination. Because God created us for so much more than we realize. To live well is to grow into the person God created you to be. That’s what our life’s journey is about. I know it’s a worn out cliché, but it really is true that it’s not the destination but the journey that matters in life. The journey of faith is one transformation after another for us. Some big, some small, but we’re always being transformed. That’s why we can say that God’s purpose for the church is not about belonging, it’s about transformation.

Removing Our Masks

2011-03-07T12:47:00.000-05:00

Mardi Gras, which literally means Fat Tuesday in French, is one last day of revelry before the solemn season of Lent begins. One of the traditions of Mardi Gras is wearing masks. It’s not just a fun thing to do, but it actually has some religious significance. For the day after Mardi Gras ends, Ash Wednesday, the day when Lent begins, is the day when we remove our masks.

Back in ancient Greece, when they had plays, the actors wore very large masks to portray their characters. That way, even in an enormous Greek amphitheatre, people could see the facial expressions of the actors. The theatrical mask was called a persona. It’s a word that has been adopted in modern psychology to refer to the self that we present to the world around us. Our persona is our psychological clothing. Carl Jung said that “the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.” It’s a mask that we can hide behind.

We all wear these masks. In many ways they’re useful. They can define the role we fill in the world around us and help us feel comfortable with one another. Sometimes we also wear masks to protect ourselves from being too vulnerable to others. That’s not such a bad thing either. We learn what we need to do to protect ourselves in life, and that includes knowing the appropriate masks we need to wear in different settings.

But our masks become a problem for us when we use them to hide who we really are from other people so that no one ever really gets to know us. Our masks become an even bigger problem for us when we use them to hide the truth about who we really are from ourselves. And, our masks become the biggest problem of all when we use them in an attempt to hide who we really are before God.

The truth is, despite our best efforts to hide behind the masks we wear, God knows who we really are. The point of Lent is to return to the relationship we have with God. The first step on our Lenten journey involves removing the masks so that we can be honest about who we are. On Ash Wednesday, when we go home after worship and look in the mirror, we will see a reminder that we are mortal, that our time on this earth is limited and that our lives belongs to God. Our masks will be gone and on each of our foreheads we’ll see an ashen cross.

The life of faith is not about the masks we wear that make us look like good, moral people. The life of faith is about the relationship we have with God, and that relationship doesn’t stand a chance unless it’s honest.

So many people miss this. They tend to focus on Lent as a time to clean up their act and they’ll engage in pious activities like fasting and good old fashioned groveling in confession for their sins. Those aren’t bad things to do, but they don’t necessarily lead us to a more authentic relationship with God. In fact, they can actually become yet another mask that we use to hide behind. For as long as we approach Lent with our agendas, we’re presenting a false self to God. We’re filling a role that we have created to God and we’re not the authentic people God has created us to be. We’ve become the religious person praying on the street corner when God longs to meet the person we are in the privacy of our room with the door shut, in secret.

So, how do you do that? How do you remove the mask you hide behind so you can have an authentic relationship with God? You won’t get there by directing how your relationship with God will go. You can’t make it happen by talking to God or searching for God. You can only meet God by getting your persona out of the way. It happens in moments when you’re open, undefended and immediately present.

God isn’t a commodity you can control. You can’t tell God what to do or invite God to be a part of your life because God is already present. The priest Richard Rohr has said: “God’s Spirit is dwelling within you. You cannot search for what you already have. You cannot talk God into ‘coming’ into you by longer and more urgent prayers. All you can do is become quieter, smaller, and less filled with your own self and its flurry of ideas and feelings. Then God will be obvious in the very now of things.”

It can be scary to stand before God, stripped of all pretenses. But it’s the only way to a genuine relationship with him. God doesn’t want our religiosity, God wants our authenticity. As Psalm 51 reminds us, “God takes no delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.”

So, are you ready to get serious about your relationship with God? Are you ready to stop controlling that relationship by insisting on your own spiritual agenda? Are you ready to remove the mask of the false self you wear to keep your distance from God so you can open yourself up to an honest relationship with the one who knows you better than you know yourself? It’s time to stop trying to prove you’re someone of value by all your doing doing doing, and just be. Be the person you are, God’s beloved child. It’s time to stop pretending. It’s time to get real.

Should I Be Concerned?

2011-02-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

If I’m at home doing housework on a beautiful Saturday morning in February and I get overheated and take off my t-shirt and continue to work in my bra, should I be concerned? If, sometime later, I see the mail delivered and walk out to the mailbox, should I be concerned? If I sort through my mail and go back to my housecleaning, moving next to the bathroom, and if I look in the mirror and notice that I’m shirtless, in my bra, and suddenly realize that I walked out to the mailbox and back like that… I’m just wondering, if I should do something like that… should I be concerned?

I could blow it off the same way I did when I picked up a sheet cake I had ordered at Harris Teeter and walked out of the store without paying for it. Or the way I did when I went to a drive through, paid my money at the first window and drove off without stopping to pick up my food at the second window. (And I have done this, not once, but a half-dozen times, at least.) Or I could blow it off the way I did when I headed off to work in the morning and ended up in the parking lot of my former church two years after I stopped working there. I tell myself it’s nothing to be concerned about because I am an interior kind of person. Most of what’s going on in my life is happening within me, where I’m thinking deep thoughts. Okay, sometimes they’re not so deep. But they’re thoughts. And they seem to supersede whatever is going on in the world around me.

But then again, perhaps these interior-superseding moments are a part of the growing body of evidence that my children can collect and one day use to have me sent away somewhere so they can take my vast fortune from me. Should I be concerned?