God deliver us from having it all together

Nobody likes messing up. When you end up making a stupid decision, or you’re kicking yourself for something you said, or things just don’t go the way you had hoped because of some error you made... well, you messed up, doggone it! It’s a terrible feeling. But there is one thing that feels worse than messing up. And that’s having other people see you mess up.

Who wouldn’t prefer to be seen as someone who has it all together? Those are the people we admire, right? The ones who have it all together don’t make stupid decisions. They don’t say the wrong thing. They don’t crack under pressure. They never show their anger or their tears. They are responsible and competent. They don’t make mistakes. Their lawn is well-manicured. Their children are well-behaved. They don’t get zits. They have no body-fat. You never see them at Walmart in sweatpants with no make-up. Because they have it all together.

The whole notion of the comfort zone is, at its core, about our desire to have it all together. What falls within our comfort zone is the stuff that we know we are competent at doing. When we start a new job, it’s outside our comfort zone. It takes a lot of practice to get to the point of feeling competent but, in time, that new job becomes old hat and it falls within our comfort zone. The same can be said for any new situation. If we have to learn new skills, we're outside our comfort zone. If we have to meet new people, we're outside our comfort zone. If we have to find our way in a new place, we're outside our comfort zone. If we’re introduced to new ideas, we're outside our comfort zone. Being outside our comfort zone also means doing stuff that we don't do well. It’s why I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the tennis court; I’m a lousy tennis player. I don’t know about you, but I expend an inordinate amount of time and energy avoiding situations that are outside my comfort zone. And a big reason for this is that I want to be seen as someone who has it all together.  Living this way can be very limiting. I miss a lot when I rarely journey outside my comfort zone.

It’s always disturbing when people think they have to have it all together within their faith community. They come to church and pretend like they’re someone they’re not; God forbid other people would ever know what a mess they really are. I’ve been in so many churches where people have gone through horrendous things that they didn’t dare share with other people in their church family: their separation and divorce, a child who has a drug problem, a deep depression that sent them to the hospital, trouble with the law, financial devastation, and even homelessness. Why do people living within Christian community go through things like that and keep them to themselves? It’s always puzzled me. It would seem that, if there’s any group where you can be yourself and share your own vulnerability, a church family would be that group.

Since coming to Holy Trinity, I haven’t noticed a whole lot of that. We don’t tend to keep our struggles to ourselves; we’re pretty good about being authentic with one another and sharing our burdens. We can admit that we don’t have it all together, and we need help. And a big reason for that is found hanging on the back wall in our sanctuary where we read the words that summarize our mission, Loving Not Judging. We don’t expect people in our congregation to pretend like they have it all together. We expect them to be human. And when they show their humanity, we hope they can trust that they won’t be judged for it.

This is the way Jesus was with people. He wasn't all that impressed with those who appeared to have it all together. Instead, he was drawn to people who were real, people who messed up. And he reponded to them compassionately, without judgment. They weren’t afraid to admit that they needed help, and Jesus helped them. It still works that way.

Cheese and Little Cheese

My brother’s friends called him Cheese and they called me Little Cheese (because of our last name). When they used to come to our house for Big Time Wrestling on TV, I was afraid to enter the living room because, invariably, one of them would grab me like a battering ram and slam me into the turnbuckle, that is, the back of the couch. My brother Ken did nothing to protect me. But then, how could I expect any help from the guy who thought it was funny to pick me up by the head and lift me to the ceiling? For most of my childhood, the only words I remember him saying to me were, “What’s it to ya, punk?” It sounds like child abuse, doesn’t it? Well, with six years between us, it was just a typical brother/sister relationship.

A year ago at Christmastime, I made the trek to Cincinnati to spend time with my brother and his family. Our sister Wendy and her husband were flying in from Massachusetts so we could all be together, but a snowstorm kept them away. So, for the first time ever, I found myself alone with my brother. Every day when his wife left for work, it was just the two of us. At first I wasn’t sure how to deal with it; I felt trapped. But what a gift this was! We talked for hours on end. We laughed, and we cried. We compared notes from childhood about things we had never shared with one another before, particularly from the time when our father died. I was 6 and Ken was 12 when the event occurred that forever changed us. After our dad died, Ken was a mess. The only thing that saved him was this girl he met in a bowling league back when he was in junior high. He and Judy are still together. And in many ways, she’s still saving his life.

Last week I went back to Cincinnati and I stayed at Ken and Judy’s place. In the morning, they were both gone, so I was in their home alone. I walked from room to room, looking at the framed photos, thinking about how my brother has built his life around his family. His three children all have families of their own now, and they live nearby, so he continues to be a big part of their lives. As someone who grew up with a father who disappeared, Ken has been everything his father couldn’t be. He’s provided a stable, abiding presence in the lives of his children. I have such admiration for him. It’s hard to believe that the big brother who tormented me when I was little has grown into the man I now see in the pictures on his mantle. He’s the kind of man anyone would want for a dad, or a husband… or a brother.

Several years ago, they found a tumor in Ken’s brain. It's cancerous. Since then, he’s been doing everything he can to fight against it so he can buy himself more time with the people he loves. For a long while he held the tumor at bay, but lately it’s been advancing. This presents him with some extra challenges. He has lost the use of his left arm, and his ankles and toes conspire against him so that walking is difficult. Two of the things that are as strong as ever, though, are his mind and his sense of humor.

There are some obvious parallels with our father, who died of ALS. Once Ken told me how it bothered him that so many people only remember our dad being sick and he worried that his grandchildren would one day think of him like that. There is so much more to him than his illness. Yes, dealing with the cancer has become a big part of his life. But it is by no means the center of his life. That center continues to be his family and the people he cares about. I hope his grandchildren will always remember that about him.

It’s hard for me to know quite what to do with all this. My family has never been mushy-gushy. We were never huggers growing up, and we didn’t say things like “I love you” to one another. Fortunately, we’re learning to express such things as older adults. Still, I wish there was a way I could tell my brother how proud I am to be his sister and how blessed I have been to have him in my life. A parting hug and “I love you” seem so inadequate. But if I know my brother at all, he gets that. He has developed a deep empathy over the past few years; although his body may be fading, his sense of compassion is in full bloom. So I have to trust that he knows how much he means to me.

Trusting God enough to let him have it

I don’t remember what it was about exactly. But my mom was on my case about something and before I realized what I was saying, I popped back at her, “Shut up!”

Big mistake. She grabbed my arm and escorted me into the bathroom. Then she picked up a bar of soap. As I recall, it was Dove with one quarter cleansing cream. She jammed it into my mouth and pushed up on my chin so my teeth got good and smooshed down into the soap as she said, “Don’t you ever, ever, ever talk back to me like that again!”

Although I had a temporary impression on the bar of soap that day, believe me, that bar of soap made a lasting impression on me. My mother got what she wanted. For the rest of her life, I never, ever, ever talked back to her again.

You don’t talk back to your elders. (I don’t know, do they still teach that?) So, wouldn’t you think that same truth would apply to God? You don’t talk back to God, do you?

When Jesus and his disciples are out in a boat and a great storm comes upon them, they’re scared out of their wits. And they look over and see Jesus, sound asleep on a cushion. Now, not only are they scared, but they’re ticked off as well. They grab Jesus by the shoulders and shake the living daylights out of him. “Jesus, what’s the matter with you? Can’t you see that we’re about to go under? How can you sleep at a time like this? Don’t you even care?”

It’s a common story for God’s people. The circumstances and the characters may change, but the story-line is the same. When it seems that our lives are falling apart, it’s pretty common to get angry with God, to wonder if maybe he’s asleep or not paying attention, to question his motives. What’s the matter with you? What kind of a God are you that you could let something like this happen? We shake our fist at God. We curse him. We demand that he be held accountable for his despicable actions.

This is not at all respectful behavior. In fact, it’s downright mouthy. And yet, God doesn’t send a giant bar of Dove with one quarter cleansing cream down from the sky to remind us that we’d best watch our mouths. He doesn’t tell us to never, ever, ever, ever talk back to him like that again. You can’t find that message anywhere in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is full of stories about people who back-talked God. And I’m not talking about his enemies here. The ones who back-talked God were the ones who were closest to him.

For the classic talking-back-to-God story, we turn to the book of Job. Job was the best of the best. He was a good, righteous man and things were going great for him. He had a prosperous business, a loving wife, great kids, everything a man could want. But then, he lost it all. It seemed that the only thing he had left were his friends, such that they were. They showed up to help him make sense his tragic life, and actually only ended up making him feel worse.

In the course of the story, a theology unfolds that addresses the age-old question, How can an all-powerful, all-loving God, allow such terrible things to happen to his people? Especially good, faithful people like Job.

The theology of the book of Job can be understood by considering three corners of a theological triangle. In one corner, you have the truth that God is good. Then, in the second corner, you have the truth that Job is a righteous man. And finally, in the third corner you have this belief that God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. In other words, if good things come your way, it’s because you’re a good person and if bad things come your way, it’s because you’re a bad person. You get what you deserve. Now, the thing about this theological triangle is that only two of these truths can stand; you have to throw one of them out or it makes no sense. You can’t look at what happened to Job and say that God is good and Job is righteous and good things happen to good people. All three of these corners can’t be true.

In the book of Job, there are three main speakers and each of them resolves this dilemma by throwing out a different corner of the triangle. First, there are Job’s friends who say that since God is good and God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, Job must not be so righteous after all. He must have done something to deserve all that’s befallen him. So, they throw out the corner that says Job is righteous and then everything that’s happened to him makes sense. God is good, and God rewards the righteous. You just weren’t good enough, Job. Too bad for you.

Well, Job knows that just isn’t so. He knows he’s a righteous man and has no doubt about it. So, if God rewards good and punishes evil, then it stands to reason that God must be the problem. Maybe God isn’t so good after all. Job would make the theological triangle work by throwing out the corner that says God is good.

And, of course, God’s answer is to nix the simplistic idea that he rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. That’s the corner God throws out. It’s bad theology because it just isn’t true.

Now, that’s the theology of the book of Job, in a nutshell. But what’s most significant for us as God’s people isn’t so much the solution to the theological triangle, but the way we get there.

It’s typical that, in times of tragedy, we struggle to make sense of this triangle. In the process, we can make some pretty outlandish theological statements that we know don’t hold water, but at the time, it sure feels like they do. God must have been asleep in the boat. I must have done something to deserve this. God must be testing me for some reason. Maybe God doesn’t love me after all. Perhaps God just doesn’t care.

Well, Job goes through all those feelings and then some. He goes on whining and complaining to God for chapter upon chapter. He really gives God a piece of his mind. And finally, it’s God’s turn.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. "Who is it that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" In other words, "Job, you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about."

"Gird up your loins like a man." Back when men wore long robes, if they were going to get down to business, they’d tuck the hem of their robe up into their belt so they could move freely. One seminary professor says this reminds him of his days as a camp counselor, when the campers would whine and complain, and one of the other counselors would say to them, “hike up your diaper.” Isn’t that a great way to tell someone to quit whining. “Hike up your diaper!” Well, that’s what God’s saying to Job here. “Job, quit your whining and hike up your diaper. Cuz you and I are gonna rumble. Now I’m going to be the one asking the questions.”

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when all the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? – when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped?'"

He’s saying, “Job, you don’t get it. You’ll never get it. Because you try to put me in some little box. But the truth is, I’m bigger than anything you can ever imagine. You will never be able to see things the way I see them. You will never be able to understand why I do the things I do. It’s beyond your ability to comprehend.”

God is calling Job out. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Once God gets started, he really lets Job have it. And when it’s all over, Job seems to be satisfied. Not because he understands any more than he did before, but because God didn’t dismiss him or walk away from him. God engaged him.

So, here’s the deal. In Job we have a model for a faith under fire. When it seems that life is falling apart and you’re not at all happy with God, what God wants is for you to be in relationship with him. He doesn’t mind if you yell at him, if you get angry with him, if you curse him and back-talk him. What’s important is that you stay engaged with him, that you’re in a relationship with him.

Sam and Gwen’s marriage was all but over and they had asked to meet with me. I had spoken with each of them and I knew that they had different reasons for wanting to see me. Sam was hoping that he could still convince Gwen to give their marriage another chance. Gwen just wanted closure so that they could both move on. In the course of our conversation, Sam kept pushing hard, making accusations and calling Gwen out. He was clearly trying to provoke her. But she wasn’t even remotely interested in arguing with him; she had already psychologically checked out. Finally, an exasperated Sam asked, “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you fight with me any more?”

I’ve spent a lot of time through the years with couples who are on the verge of splitting up and when they won’t even fight with each other, that’s a sure sign that the relationship is over. There’s nothing left.

When you’re in the middle of a raging storm and it looks like your boat’s about to sink, it’s only natural to have words with God. It might not make a whole lot of rational sense, and it might not be good theology, but when you’re in a relationship with God, it’s what you do. Can you imagine what it would have been like if the disciples would have pretended like Jesus wasn’t even in the boat with them and dealt with the storm without even bothering to wake him up? That would have meant that they had no real relationship with him at all.

At the very end of the book of Job, after God has words with Job, then he lambasts his three friends. The bottom line is that they didn’t engage God in the conversation. They had all kinds of things to say about Job and to Job, but nothing to God. God tells them that they should have been more like Job in that regard. He didn’t walk away from God when he could have. But he stayed in relationship with God, and he hung in there. He yelled at God. He whined and complained. He talked back to God. But he remained in relationship with God. And that relationship was honest. He didn’t just brush it off as if it were nothing. He didn’t deny his anger. He let it fly. And God praised him for it.

The way to honor God in such a situation is not to walk away, but to stay in relationship with him. It’s not to pretend like everything is all right when it isn’t, but to tell God how you feel.

Of course, that’s where our human relationships can’t compare to our relationship with God. Because when you’re really honest like that with another human being, you end up saying things that are hurtful, or things that are misunderstood, things that can irreparably damage the relationship. You might even get your mouth washed out with soap! But you never have to worry about that with God. God loves you unconditionally. There’s nothing you can ever do that will make God love you any more than he already does. And there’s nothing you can ever do that will make God love you less. He can take whatever you dish out, and then some. You don’t have to worry about bruising his ego.

God doesn’t want your sugar-coated flattery doled out in an attempt to gain his favor. He doesn’t want you to pretend like everything is cool between you when it isn’t. He certainly doesn’t want you to leave him out of the conversation when you’re struggling. He wants a relationship with you. An honest relationship. You can trust God enough to let him have it.

Why is it so hard to go home?

This week I’m driving to Hamilton, Ohio for a Kraft family reunion. I’m a child of the oldest Kraft boy, Bob,  who had two brothers, Jack and Gordon. All three of them are gone now, but their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children will be gathering Saturday under a picnic shelter at a park where I attended day camp as a little girl. Back in those days, we had no need for family reunions. We saw one another regularly for picnics. But we are a family in diaspora now, scattered all over the country. So this reunion is a really big freaking deal. It’s the first one I can remember. Ever.

People who never move away from their hometown don’t quite understand how it feels for those of us who have moved away to return to the place which once was our home. They have something that I have grown to envy – a sense of place. They have the assurance that there is someplace in this world where they belong. I lost that somewhere along the way. I’m a homeless person; I’ve lived a nomadic lifestyle as an adult and there is no place I call home. It leaves me feeling restless. With retirement looming before me, it’s been on my mind quite a bit. I would love to end my days in a place I can call home, but I don’t know where that is.

I can’t remember when I was in Hamilton last. It’s been a lot of years. I tend to avoid it. There have been times when a simple trip to my hometown provided limitless fodder for me to chew on with my therapist. Why is it so hard for me? I’ve struggled to get my head around it. Nothing traumatic happened to me in my childhood, no more than childhood itself tends to be somewhat traumatic for all of us. In fact, I have fond memories of my life at 435 Edwards Avenue. But it was so long ago that sometimes I wonder if it was only something that I dreamt about. Whenever I return, it becomes one of those dreams where nothing is quite the way it should be. Some of this is because I have distorted the truth in my memory, and some of it is because it has literally changed. The railroad tracks that always held us up in the middle of town are gone. My shiny new elementary school looks like it should be condemned. The restaurant where I hung out with my friends has been replaced with a discount store. It’s disorienting because I wasn’t there to see the transition. So, when I go back to Hamilton, I feel a lot like Rip Van Winkle confronted by all the changes that happened while I was sleeping.

I’ve come to realize, though, that what bothers me the most, when I return to the place of my childhood, is not the way Hamilton has changed. It’s the way I have changed. I am no longer the skinny little kid who climbed the mulberry tree in the backyard. I’m not the girl who played her piccolo in the marching band at Taft High School. I’m not the young woman who necked with her boyfriend on the front porch. I’m an adult. I can stay out as late as I want now. I clean my room without being told. Hell, I even have money in a pension plan, for God’s sake. There are two amazing adults in the world who call me Mom. I stand in a pulpit and preach every Sunday to people who take me seriously and care about what I have to say. How does the person I’ve become fit into a place where she never lived? There is a disconnect that is hard to explain to people who never moved away. They became adults in the same place where they had been children. I didn’t do that. I left the place of my childhood and became an adult somewhere else. I’m not sure who I am when I’m in Hamilton, Ohio. And I suspect that’s why it’s so hard for me to go back.

Well, I’ve been working on this for a long time, and here’s what I think I’ve figured out. It’s not healthy to leave behind the person you once were so that you can become someone new. That’s what I’ve tried to do. Of course, it’s been unsettling. It has left me feeling unsure of who I am. Yes, I’ve grown through the years. I’ve experienced many transformative moments, large and small. I’m not a child anymore. But I didn’t just toss that child aside when I moved away from Hamilton. It’s been dishonest for me to pretend that I have. I brought her with me. She’s not just someone I used to be. She’s still very much a part of the person I am. And I can’t move away from myself. Not if I really want to be myself, my authentic self, my complete self. I can’t look at my life journey and say, that was then and this is now. Then is a part of now. There would be no person I am now without the person I was then. Yes, I’ve moved on from Hamilton, Ohio. But I carried the little girl from Hamilton with me. This weekend, I’m bringing her home.

The way God happens

She grew up in a family that didn’t go to church. She didn’t even know what people did when they went to church. But she had heard about God. And she had heard about heaven.

When she was six, her father died of a long, drawn out disease that turned a fun, vibrant man into a person who scared her. After his death, she imagined his corpse waiting to jump out at her in every dark place, and she was terrified. She desperately wanted to believe that her father was in heaven, but it all sounded so far-fetched to her. God seemed like a fairy tale adults had created to keep children in line, kind of like Santa Claus. If you’re a good little girl, someday God will take you to be with him in heaven. Yeah, right.

She used to cry herself to sleep at night. And she would pray to a God she really doubted was even listening. “God, please let me know if you’re real.” It was her prayer for years. She wanted to believe in God, even though she knew he probably didn’t exist. Eventually, when God didn’t respond, she felt like she was talking to a wall and gave up.

She did go to Sunday school a little bit in elementary school, when her neighbors took her. And she was carted off to Vacation Bible School with her cousin a couple of times. Then, during junior high, she had two best friends she did everything with. Together they were like the three musketeers. It just so happened that the other two went to the same church. When they attended confirmation classes on Saturday mornings, she tagged along. This was also when she learned about what people did in a worship service. At the end of three years, she was confirmed with her two friends. In fact, she was baptized on the same day because she had never been baptized before.

After that, she rarely attended worship and didn’t really believe the stuff they said in church, anyway. But a big part of her still wanted it to be true.

Then came college. She ended up rooming with three other young women she didn’t meet until the day she arrived at her dorm. As it turned out, they were all a little weird for college students back then; they went to church on Sundays. But she never went with them. By now she was convinced that religion was for people with weak minds, people who needed a crutch to help them deal with the harsh realities of life. As she became involved in late-night debates over pizza about the existence of God, she took on the role of the skeptic. 

During her sophomore year, she met a young man who was really cute. As she got to know him, she realized that he wasn’t your typical college guy. It wasn’t until she fell in love with him that she learned the reason why he was the way he was. He was a deeply committed Christian.

Suddenly, it seemed like everywhere she went, people of faith were in her face. She sat down to eat in the Student Union and the students at the next table were engaged in a discussion with their Bibles open. She went to the park, and a group of people were having a prayer meeting under a picnic shelter. She walked across campus on a Sunday morning and a young woman was being baptized in the pond beside her dorm.

Mind you, this was not a church college; this was a state university. Everywhere she turned, God was saying to her, “Here I am.” It started out as a gentle nudge, and happened more and more forcefully until,  eventually, she felt like God was giving her a smack upside the head.

She decided to give church another try and started with the flavor of Christianity she had known when the three musketeers went to confirmation classes together back in junior high -- a Lutheran church. But she also went to other churches, as well. Most Sunday mornings she worshipped twice. Once at the Lutheran church and once at some other church.

Whenever she went to the library to study, she managed to wander into the stacks of religious books and spent hours searching for answers to the questions she had been carrying around for years. By the time she graduated, she was being drawn to seminary. Completely clueless about what the church taught, she had no awareness that back then, in the ‘70s, it was a new thing for women to go to seminary.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that the she I’m speaking of is me.

Each of us has a faith story. Yours may be more traditional than mine. You may have grown up in a churched family and have always been a churched person. Or you may still be in a place where you’re not so sure about this guy called Jesus. But the fact is, no one would be a follower of Jesus today if those who came before us had failed to respond to the Great Commission, Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples of all nations.”

When I consider my own story of faith and how I came to adopt the Jesus Way of being in the world as my own, I know that God sent all kinds of people into my life who were evangelists to me: neighbors who took me to Sunday school, friends who brought me to confirmation classes, the people I saw reading the Bible in the Student Union, a college roommate who faithfully said her prayers every night. Not one of them ever sat me down and tried to convince me to become a Christian. But, all together, they were God making God’s self known to me. Most of them have absolutely no idea they did that and many of them don’t even know I exist. That’s the way God happens. God comes to us through other people. Not one person, but all of them together.

When you hear Jesus commanding us to go and make disciples, don’t think it has nothing to do with you. Even though you may never use the word evangelist to describe yourself, if you are a follower of Jesus, it has everything to do with you. You’re a part of the communion of saints that opens the way for other people to follow Jesus long after you’ve moved on from this earth. As preposterous as it may be, the world will come to know God through people like you and me.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Table ready for Frankenstein

Lest you think I’m just drifting along without any definitive goals for my life, I hereby declare to all who read “Inside Nancy’s Noodle” that I do indeed have high aspirations for my remaining time on this earth. Recently, I’ve issued a challenge to myself and, as God is my witness (said with clenched fist raised to the sky), I will honor it.

I’m changing the way I make reservations in restaurants. Henceforth, when I go to a restaurant and they ask for my name, I will be calling forth my creative powers. (In other words… I’m going to lie.) As I recall, this concept was introduced to me by my son Ben, some years back. (I could be way off, but that’s the way I remember it.) When we went out to eat, it was his idea to choose a very ethnic name that obviously isn’t our ethnicity. So our very WASPy-looking, blue-eyed family would make a reservation for Chu or Rodriguez or Mohammed. It was good, silly fun.

After all, who says you have to give your real name when you make a dinner reservation? It’s not like an airline reservation where someone is going to check your i.d. and they won’t seat you unless you really are who you say you are. So, why not choose an alias?

The goal of this exercise is to get people’s attention when they hear the host or hostess announce that your table is ready. “Vandalay. Table ready for Vandalay.” The really challenging part comes when you get up to walk to your table. You have to act completely nonchalant about it. If you laugh, it ruins the moment.

The last time I ate out, I used the name Frankenstein, only I pronounced it Fraunkensteen. “Fraunkensteen. Table ready for Fraunkensteen.” I loved it. Now there are others I’m considering for the future. Yes, this is something I think about. Really. I keep a working list on my computer so I can refer to it before going out to eat. You have to imagine each of these aliases being announced in a restaurant to get the full effect. “________. Table ready for ________.” So how about… ?

Fido
Table
Crapper
Catastrophe
Gluttony
Bond, James Bond
Behemoth
Hitler
Goodwench
Bloodsucker
Criminetly
Typhoid
Fungus
Obama

Restaurants that give you little electronic pagers ruin all the fun because they don’t call your name out when your table is ready. So, my quest now is to find those restaurants where you wait to hear them call your name out over a p.a. system.

Of course, this is an experience that’s best shared with friends. Friends who have a very high threshold for embarrassment. Dinner, anyone?

A perfect gift for the woman who has... feet

I was not in a good place and I did something that is always risky. I wrote a blog about it and posted it on Facebook. I’m not sure why I went public with my funk, but I think I was feeling very alone and wanted to experience a connection with other people, even in my depressed state. If you are a Facebook user, you’ve probably noticed that, should you post something that is less than cheerful, you may be inundated with comments from your “friends” who feel compelled to cheer you up. Although this kind of superficial bullshit just ends up making me feel misunderstood and even more alone, I suppose I was asking for it. But this time that didn’t happen. Nobody tried to fix me or offer me advice. Instead, my friends responded as true friends. They told me that they heard me, and it was okay to be in a funk. I was impressed.

I suspect we all have a need for community in our lives. We long for connection with others who genuinely care about us. The church is that kind of community for me. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why I was first drawn to ordained ministry. But lately I’ve been thinking that the way I’ve always defined “church” is  far too narrow. The people at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on The Plaza are only a small portion of my church. My family, scattered all over the country, is also a part of my church. And all the people who have ever been in congregations I have served as a pastor through the years are included in my church. So are dear friends from my past who continue to be so much a part of me. And colleagues in ministry I’ve worked alongside, sometimes within the same congregation, and other times not even of the same faith. And then there are those people God seems to place in my life for reasons that I can’t begin to understand. They’re all a part of my church.

I was reminded of this in a big way last Monday night when I went to my local contra dance. There’s a young man at the dance named Matt who has become a good friend to me since I’ve become part of the dance community in Charlotte. He is always supportive and caring. When he read on my blog that I was in a funk, he told me that, if I came to the dance that night, he had a gift for me. I thought, now that’s a clever way to get me to dance, which is probably just the medicine I need right now. So, I went to the dance, and when I saw Matt, I called his bluff. Or, so I thought. “Where’s my gift?” I asked him.

“You have to sit down and take off your socks and shoes,” he told me. Not what I was expecting, but since I asked for it, I obliged.

Matt placed my feet in a plastic basin and opened a thermos he brought that was filled with hot water. It was actually a little too hot, so he scurried off to the kitchen to get some cold water to mix with it. And I realized, Matt is going to wash my feet here. Right in the middle of a dance at Chantilly Hall, this delightfully crazy kid is going to wash my freaking feet! And so he did, as he knelt before me. He produced some soap and thoroughly scrubbed them. Then he carefully dried them. And as a finishing touch, he massaged them with lavender oil.

It was one of those rare occasions when I was speechless. Not only was I someone who could appreciate the significance of washing feet, as a pastor. But as a dancer, the symbolism of renewing my feet was not lost on me. For a long time, health issues have kept me from enjoying contra as I once did, and it's been a source of great angst for me. To have another dancer wash my feet like that, while people were dancing all around us, was an extraordinary, holy moment for me. It touched me on a visceral level and I still don’t know how to describe it with words. But this much I can tell you. After Matt finished, and I sat smiling from head to toe in the afterglow, I knew one thing, beyond a doubt. I had been to church. And I realized that I don’t always have to go to church; sometimes church has a way of finding me. And yes, Matt, that is a "gift" to be sure.