One Week, One Sketch

I spent the last week working on a sketch.  In a way, there's nothing unusual about that.  But in a way, it was different because it reminded me of an important life lesson.  Here's the finished sketch:

On Friday, July 23, I started a sketch.  It was going to be of a woman facing forward with a flappy hat on her head.  But I hated the way I sketched her eyes, so I decided to change it by turning it into a sketch of her back.  I covered the face with marks that I thought would be hair, but it ended up looking like a veil or a shroud.

I don't have a great before picture, because I hated the sketch on the first day and thought I would abandon it.  Here's a not-great screen capture from my morning watch session:

I put the sketch aside thinking I was done with it.  But then I thought about how the hair/veil along with the hat made me think of a beekeeper's headgear.  And so, the next morning, I played with it a bit more.  I added some bees.  I added some beehives in the distance and a jar of honey in the foreground.  On day two, just 24 hours after I was ready to abandon the sketch, I decided that it had potential.

On Sunday, July 25, I added the mountains in the background and started to add some color.  Over the next days, I continued to add color and to think about the area at the bottom of the sketch.  I had thought it would be a fence, but I didn't like my options for fence color.  If I made it a wood fence, I worried that it would blend in with the cat, the jar of honey, and the basket.  So I decided to make it a stone/marble wall.

As I've sketched each morning and as I've spent the rest of the day thinking about what to do next in the sketch, I've thought back to day one when I planned to abandon the sketch.  And as I kept showing up, I found more and more to like, and I had more and more ideas.

Did I execute them all?  No.  Did I perform them perfectly?  No.  But that's not the point.  My skills have improved, but again, not the point.

The sketch has given me delight and made me interested to know what will come next.  And it's reminded me not to give up on a creative endeavor too early.

Online Orientation: the Seminary Edition

For months I have known that I would need to do an online orientation before I was allowed to take seminary classes.  The orientation is not set up so that one can do it way far in advance; for fall term, the online orientation opened Monday, five weeks before classes start.

It's a class that's set up in Blackboard, a Learning Management System, which helps us all learn how to use the system.  Even students who are taking face to face classes in person may need to know how to use the system, so it's good to get us all some training.  And what's even more important about doing this orientation through Blackboard is that we can do this orientation on our own timeline.  When I try to think about how this orientation might once have been done, I imagine having to report to campus a few days early or the week before classes started.    This year, I'm glad we don't have to do that.

For the past few days, I have worked my way through part of the modules.  I have spent the last few months exploring the extensive website, so much of the information wasn't new to me.  One of the modules covered the information that was discussed during the Academic Planning Session that I did back in June.  One of the modules talked about ways to be successful in online classes.

As I watched, I thought about how useful these modules would be if I had never had an online class--I find the whole format overwhelming at times, and I have had many years of experience with a variety of online platforms.  I'm impressed with the way the Office of Community Life has thought of all sorts of things I will need to know as a student taking online classes.

I have made my way through the modules on plagiarism and sexual harassment, through modules that gave me a student handbook and the catalogue. I am intrigued by the information given in the Writing for Seminary module--they must have gotten some pushback on expectations here, as they give lots of information about how the seminary is a graduate school and grad school writing is different from undergraduate writing.

Again, if I hadn't spent so many decades in higher ed, maybe this would all seem new to me.  But even if it isn't new, it's pleasant to be exploring these modules.

And I'm impressed by the depth and breadth here.  I remember the orientations that we put together a year ago as we were pivoting from in-person new orientations to ones delivered virtually.  We did not cover nearly as much, but in some ways, we didn't have as much to cover--some of it had been handled during the Admissions process.  We also didn't have a flexible platform, like Blackboard.  And we didn't have a lot of time. 

This online orientation for Wesley Theological Seminary makes me realize how much better it could have been.  And it makes me grateful that so much care has been taken on my behalf as an incoming MDiv student.

Feast Day of the Bethany Siblings

In the decades/centuries before 1969, on July 29, we would have celebrated Saint Martha, one of few named women in the Gospels.  Now we celebrate not only Martha, but also her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus.

In a way, I think it's a shame, as each of these siblings deserves their own feast day.  But today let us ask if we can we learn something from celebrating all of them together?

In many ways, Martha is the most famous of the siblings, and I've written about her extensively.  Many others have written about Mary.  I'm intrigued by the people who go back to the Greek to try to prove that Mary actually had some authority, that the reason that she wants to sit at the feet of Jesus while Martha gets the meal ready is that she had been out and about in the countryside, in the way that the disciples had been sent.

Lazarus, also famous, is one of the few humans brought back from the very dead.  He didn't just die an hour before Jesus arrived.  He had been dead for days.  I've always thought he deserved a story of his own, a follow up.  I'm not the only one who thinks this, of course.  Yeats is one of the more famous writers to revisit Lazarus after the tomb; I should revisit his play "Calvary."

Depending on how you attribute the various references to the women named Mary (all the same Mary?  Who is the sister of Martha and who is the Magdalene?  And then there's the mother of Jesus), Martha gets more space in the Gospels than her two siblings. We see her complaining about Mary not helping her, and we see her scolding Jesus for not coming earlier to keep her brother from dying.

I have always sympathized with Martha, and I still can feel the shock that come when Jesus doesn't.  But in my later years, I see compassion in the words of Jesus when he reminds Martha that she worries about many things.  It's only been in my later years that I see Martha's anxiety in a more clinical way.  It's only been in later years that I see the harm in Martha's behavior, the way that obsessive anxiety for the ones we love can destroy so much.

Do I know what to do about my own obsessive anxiety?  I know a few tricks, sure.  I haven't explored every possibility; so far, I don't take any meds for my anxiety outbreaks.  When I'm in the throes of an anxious day, I wonder if it's time to find a health care provider who can prescribe them.  When I'm having a normal day, I think that I am managing just fine.

In some ways, I see a thread running through the stories of these siblings.  Christ shows up to tell them that they're not doing fine.  One of the siblings, Mary, is open to Christ's message, while Martha is not.  We might think it's too late for Lazarus, but it's not.

Once again, I find myself wanting to know what happens in a year or two or ten.  Does Lazarus return to regular life?  Having lost him once, does his family appreciate him more?  Does Martha ever get a handle on her anxiety?  Does Mary go out to create the first convent?  Or is she so tired of having to deal with her sister that she finds a solitary existence in a nearby desert?  

The Gospels give us such small snippets, but that leaves us room to find ourselves in these stories.  One of the benefits to feast days and lectionaries is that we have the opportunity to return to them periodically to see if we're finding something new.

This year, I'm reminded that God works in ways that humans don't fully understand, and that we need to resist the impulse to micromanage the miracles.  But even if we don't, God won't go off in a huff and abandon us.

This year, I'm hoping that humans can also model that behavior.  We're beset with anxiety, as are those around us.  Let us remember that resurrection can still occur.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, August 1, 2021:

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Psalm 78:23-29

The LORD rained down manna upon them to eat. (Ps. 78:24)

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35


In this Gospel, we continue to see Jesus hounded by the crowds. They understand what Jesus offers: the miracle of food in an uncertain time. Jesus knows what they're up to. Jesus understands what they seek. But Jesus also knows that they need more than just a meal's worth of food.

At one point, the crowds ask him for a sign. I have a vision of Jesus sighing and wondering what more he can do. He’s multiplied food. He’s offered them parables and teachings. He’s healed the sick.  He's cast out demons.  What more do they want?

He understands their deep hunger and yearning. They mention Moses, which leads me to believe that some of them miss the deep connection their ancestors had with God. Perhaps they thought it was easier in the desert, where they just went where God led them and ate the food God gave them. Perhaps they grow weary of the distractions of modern life, the diversions offered by Greek and Roman culture. They want to know where they can get some modern-day manna.

We might feel the same way.  We might sigh heavily, thinking of all tasks we must do simply to keep body and soul together. We might wonder how we can find time for one more obligation.  We might miss the simpler lives that we may think believers once enjoyed.  But we can enjoy that easy relationship too.

Again and again in the Bible, we see God, who simply wants to be with us. We don’t have to transform ourselves into spiritual superheroes. God will be content to watch T.V. with us, to have fun with whatever creative play dates we’ve arranged with our children or our friends, to go for a walk in the neighborhood.

The Bible reminds us that God even wants to be with us during the not-so-fun times. When we’re stuck at work, eating microwave popcorn instead of dinner again, God wants to be there. When we’re trapped in traffic, God doesn’t mind commuting with us. When we’re so immersed in child rearing that we wonder if we’ll ever get to talk about adult topics again, God wants that experience too. When we’re feeling lost and lonely, God is willing to endure that too. When we don’t know how we’re going to put food on the table, God will help us sort that out.

The sustaining bread of life is right there, always ready, always fragrant and nourishing. The enduring food is ready to be shared, ready to be multiplied. The table is ready; come and eat.

The Feast Day of Saint Anne

Today is the feast day of Saint Anne, although in the Eastern Orthodox church, her feast day was yesterday. I'm somewhat amazed to realize that I haven't written about this feast day before I came across it last year.

Saint Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary, which means she was the grandmother of Jesus. She's not mentioned in the canonical Bible. The apocryphal Gospel of James mentions her. I haven't read that text, but I am sure that the details I want to know are not there--what did daily life look like? How did Mary and Anne get along? What did Anne think of Jesus?

Anne is the patron saint of many types of women: unmarried women, housewives, seamstresses, women in labor or who want to be pregnant, and grandmothers. She's also the patron saint of educators, which are still primarily women.

As I was researching her this morning, I came across this image from a 15th century Book of Hours, and it's quickly become my favorite:

I love that both Saint Anne and Mary have books in their hands. According to many traditions, Saint Anne taught Mary to read, and she's often seen doing this. As I look at those images, I wonder if the artists realized what a subversive image it is: a woman teaching a girl to read.

Anne is sometimes depicted in scenes of Jesus as a baby, but so far, we have no image of her at the cross. I suspect that's because so many of this artwork comes from centuries ago, when it would have been very unusual for grandparents to survive to see their grandchildren in adulthood. Plus, one tradition around Saint Anne has her having Mary when she's very old--another story of the impossible coming out of improbable wombs!

So today, let us celebrate all the miracles which seem so impossible. Let us ask Saint Anne for protection, the way that Martin Luther did in the thunderstorm that terrified him. Let us know that all for which we yearn may yet be delivered to us.

The Feast Day of Saint James

Today we celebrate the life of James, one of the 12 disciples, the first to be martyred (Acts 12:1 tells us by Herod's sword). He's known as James the Greater (to distinguish him from James the Lesser, James the son of Alphaeus). He's the brother of John. He was one of the first to join Jesus, and Jesus chose him to go up the mountain to witness the Transfiguration. He is the patron saint of veterinarians and pharmacists, among others.

Lately, I've heard more about St. James, as more people become aware of the pilgrimage that involves walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points. Walkers who cover 100 km or cyclists who cover 200 km get a compostela, a certificate, and a blessing.

St. James is associated with scallops, and if you look at a map, you'll see that the pilgrims arriving from a variety of beginning points to the same end point does look like a scallop shell.  There are now travel agencies that will help pilgrims, but I've been told that it's not hard to set up one's own journey.  There are all sorts of lodgings along the way, all sorts of support.

I'd like to see the Martin Sheen/Emilio Estevez movie, The Way, which features this pilgrim's path. I'd love to actually walk part of it. Years ago I heard an NPR piece on modern pilgrims. It sounds intriguing.

I'm not the only one who finds the idea intriguing. In 1985, only 690 pilgrims made it to the end point, the Cathedral of Santiago de Campostela; last year 179,919 pilgrims completed the journey. The most hardcore pilgrims walk barefoot. I would not be one of those pilgrims.

A few years ago, one of my good church friends figured out how to walk part of the Santiago de Campostela, how to make sure her pets and children were taken care of for 2 weeks, and off she went with her husband.  I found her journey so inspiring.  She kept a blog while walking and has continued to keep writing posts in her "regular" life.  I got lost in it a bit this morning.

Let us remember that we're all on a variety of pilgrimages, even if we're not leaving the house.  Let us remember that God is with us.

Grace and Good Teeth

 As a lifelong Lutheran, you'd think that I'd have any number of ways to explain the concept of grace.  I might even go so far as to argue that the Lutheran idea of grace can be vastly different than ones you might find in other flavors of Christianity.

As a child, I found the concept of grace to be extremely unfair:  "I could spend my whole life murdering people, and I can still go to Heaven?  Why should anyone be good then?"

Now that's a point of view that's easy to counter, but in some ways, it's not really about grace.  I have found that grown ups have a parallel problem with the idea of grace.  It's unfathomable to many of us that God would love us just the way we are.

Most of us can believe in a God that will love us if we behave the correct way.  If we can't behave the correct way, most of us can believe that God will forgive us, if we ask, if we change our ways, if we improve.

But God loves us exactly as we are right now.  We don't have to become the new and improved version of ourselves to earn God's love.

This morning, I was thinking about my good teeth.  I am surrounded by family members who are having issues with their teeth, but I'm not.  But it's not because of anything that I do.  I floss daily, but I can be somewhat careless about it.  I'm lucky to have been born when I was, in an age of fluoride in the water and regular dentist visits, but so are many of my peers who are in the process of replacing many of their teeth or replacing fillings or undergoing treatments to straighten teeth.

This morning, my good teeth reminded me of God's grace.  I've done nothing to deserve my good teeth, and likewise I've done nothing to deserve God's love.  

The metaphor falls apart in some ways, unless I manage to keep my good teeth my whole life.  Most of us are subject to decay on some level as we move through life.

Happily, God's love for each and every one of us will never decay.

Sixteenth Visit to the Spiritual Director

This time, I tried something different:  an 11:00 a.m. appointment.  From the point of view of traffic, it was better.  I didn't shave much time off my trip, but it wasn't as stressful with fewer cars on the road. 

The last time I went to my spiritual director, it was exactly 2 months ago.  Amazing to think about what all has happened since then:  I've registered for my seminary classes and gotten approval from the Candidacy Committee.  But I was surprised to think about the development which seems like the largest in many ways.

We spent time talking about the decision to sell our house and the condo that we've found to rent.  Why does this decision feel bigger than the seminary decisions?  I was already on a path to seminary.  But the last time I met with her, my spouse was deeply conflicted about what to do in terms of housing.  We talked about all sorts of options, like renting out the cottage or moving into the cottage and renting out the larger house.  There are many days when I'm surprised by how we are both on board now with selling and moving.  In April, I would not have foreseen that we could get to this point, or at least not by July.

The house is not on the market just yet.  We've both been feeling overwhelmed, so we are focusing on the move first and then we'll spruce the house up a bit and put the sign in the yard--fingers crossed that we're one of those stories of the house selling in one week.

I still feel an odd mixture of emotions when it comes to the house, a bit of guilt, a bit of shame, a bit of sadness, a readyness to move on and a bit of guilt about feeling that way.  But today, sitting with my spiritual director, I framed it differently:  I'm ready for someone else to have this house, someone who might have the time, energy, and resources to help it realize its full potential.

At the end of the session, I asked my spiritual director if we should keep meeting.  I wanted to give her the option of moving on.  I don't know why I worry that she's getting tired of me, but that is a worry of mine.  I sometimes hear myself going over ground that we've discussed in prior sessions, and it irritates me--why haven't I improved yet?  

Happily, she doesn't seem to feel the same way about me.  We've decided to keep meeting, even though our last 10 minutes were spent with her congratulating me for making progress in controlling my control freak self--she used much nicer language, of course, talking about my willingness to be open to possibilities and to see where paths might take me.

Neither one of us used this language that comes to me now:  I'm not rushing the Holy Spirit.  May I continue to be able to live in this reality.

Staying Behind and Staying Rooted: The Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

On July 22, we celebrate the life of Mary Magdalene. Take a minute with the reading for her feast day: John 20:1-2, 11-18.

There are many approaches to Mary Magdalene. Some people focus on her notorious past, while a variety scholars remind us that she might have been painted with the brush of prostitution to discredit her. Even to this day, she is rarely mentioned outside of the fact of her demon possession. For some, these are the demons that bedevil many woman, both ancient and modern, the demons that come with a patriarchal culture. Others might think that demon possession was how ancient culture understood mental illness.

Why hasn't the Church focused on her healing and subsequent steadfastness, rather than what might disqualify her from worthiness? Whole books have been written on that.

As I've been spending time with female saints, both the kind recognized by popes and the ones far from canonization, I've been thinking about how these centuries of church history might be different if we had treated women differently. Let's begin with Mary Magdalene as an example.

The theologian Cynthia Bourgeault wrote a book about Mary Magdalene, and she notes that Mary's presence at the resurrection is mentioned in all four gospels, either alone or in a group, but always there, always named. Most scholars agree that when a detail is present in more than one Gospel, it demands our attention and deeper consideration.

Mary Magdalene's presence at the resurrection is so important that all four Gospel writers include it. Why do we so rarely consider this in our modern churches?

Bourgeault calls our attention to this passage from Matthew 27:61: “And Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained standing there in front of the tomb.”

She says, "How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if even that one sentence [from Matthew 27: 61] was routinely included in the Good Friday and Palm Sunday Passion narratives? What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave?—for surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?" (found in this meditation)

As I have settled into midlife, I've had similar thoughts. What if we had celebrated Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection? What if we celebrated her as the one who was first to
tell of the resurrection?

For that matter, what if instead of celebrating the evangelizing apostles who went out with very little in their pockets, we celebrated the ones who stayed to build up the communities that the apostles created? We rarely celebrate settling deep roots into a community and staying put. We often see those churches as stagnant and out of touch, even if they're the ones supporting the local elementary school and teaching new immigrants and running the food pantry.

Most of us can't be the kind of disciple that leaves family and commitments behind to traipse the country. Many of us have been raised to believe that's what Christ wanted us to do--there's a Great Commission after all that tells us to go to all the lands and make disciples. We don't hear about the families that the apostles left behind. How are they supposed to cope?

The lives of Mary Magdalene and other saints show us that there's more than one way to make disciples. There's more than one way to be missional.

Throughout our lives, we will suffer all sorts of death and loss.  The world will give us many tombs.  Today, let us focus on the ways we can remain steadfast and true to our callings. Today let us remain at the tomb alert for resurrection.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, July 25, 2021:

First Reading: 2 Kings 4:42-44

First Reading (Semi-cont.): 2 Samuel 11:1-15

Psalm: Psalm 145:10-19 (Psalm 145:10-18 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 14

Second Reading: Ephesians 3:14-21

Gospel: John 6:1-21

It's easy to understand why the people who had just been fed from 5 loaves and 2 fishes would want to make Jesus king, as this Sunday's Gospel tells us. Most of us, even if we haven't experienced food scarcity ourselves, are only a generation or two removed from it.

And even if we haven't experienced food scarcity, we've experienced that scarcity consciousness. Most of us don't operate out of a place of abundance. We have our little piece, and we clench onto it. We're not open to the grace of God's expansive love. Unlike that little boy who shared his lunch, we hold tight to whatever little shares of the good life we've claimed for ourselves.

Or worse, maybe we're like the disciples, who are so focused on the numbers that they aren't very open to the possibilities Jesus offers. I'm often like that. I get so focused on the way that I would solve a problem that I'm not open to other solutions. Worse, I get so focused on the way the world would solve problems that I forget that I'm worshipping a revolutionary God that doesn't need to be tied down by the ways we've always done things, by the accountant's ledger.

So, what does this passage tell us about Kingdom living? It's not about power. We're not preaching, teaching, healing, feeding, and gathering together so that we can consolidate power and win elections and do whatever we want once we take over the world. Again and again, Jesus rejects that model.

The Gospel reminds us of what Jesus can do--but first we must be open. We can't be hamstrung in our imaginations. We have to remember that we've thrown in our lot with a God that wants to transform the world so that everybody has enough and that there's enough for the next day.

The first step towards that reality is to share. When we share, we're less clenched about our possessions, and it's easier for God to do the transforming work for which we all yearn. When we share, we short-circuit our imaginations, which are busy envisioning the worst: we'll be poor, we'll have to eat grass, we'll run out of money before the end of the month, our children will have to wear clothes that we find in the dump--on and on our gerbil minds whirl around.

No, God has promised that we will be provided for. Again and again, God tells us that there will be enough. We can rely on God. We can share our lunches, confident in the knowledge that there will be more, there will be plenty, and there will be leftovers. We can share our lunches, knowing that we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity.

Nostalgia for Summers Long Gone

I find myself missing so much of my past.  That's one of the hazards of clearing out memorabilia.  But let me make a list, and since I'm writing on my theology blog, let me focus on the church aspects of what I'm missing; let me focus on summers of my youth:

--I found pictures of a group of us attending the first Lutheran youth event, back in 1981, when we all went to Purdue and stayed in the dorms.  It was my first glimpse of what college life might be, and it gave me the hope that my life might improve after high school.

--There were other summer events that brought large groups of Christians together.  In my college years, the Lutheran Student Movement gathering happened in early August.  There were Global Mission Events for both youth and adults.

--I miss the smaller gatherings too:  church picnics and such.  I miss the days when the whole church would head to a park.  I remember that my grandmother's church would go up the mountain to Lutheridge, a church camp that was 90 minutes away.

--And of course, there's Lutheridge in all its summer splendor to miss.  When I think about what I got to experience as a child, and just because I went to camp one year a week:  music, worship, the thrill of the Arts and Crafts lodge, hikes, sliding rock, canteen . . . on and on I could go.

--I am missing Vacation Bible School, but more the VBS of my youth than the VBS of some years ago when I helped as an adult.  I miss the lazy days of hanging out at the church most of the day for 2 weeks.  I don't remember much about what we did, but I remember it as a time of fellowship and feeling included.

--But I'm also missing the relaxed feel of the summer.  We still went to church each Sunday, but there weren't activities throughout the week, like there were in the school year.

The Loops of Time

It has been a strange week-end.  My week-end really began with my interview with the Candidacy Committee on Friday at 3:30 (for more on that experience, see this blog post).  The interview itself only lasted 45 minutes, and then there was the waiting for the results, and the short final session where I got the positive results.  I was on my way home by 5:00 p.m., feeling like the world had shifted a bit, but all those other people in their cars had no idea.

On Saturday, I sorted, sorted, sorted.  For years, I had resisted looking at my boxes of memorabilia, but last week-end, after seeing how many photos I held onto for reasons that are beyond me now, I decided it was time to tackle the memorabilia.  In my younger years, I kept an assortment of notes, cards, receipts, all sorts of memorabilia, in shoe boxes.  

It was interesting to take a quick look through the notes and cards, to think about the people with whom I am still in contact, the people I've lost to the ages, and the ways that Facebook helped some of us find each other again.  It was interesting to come across a stash of letters, agendas, retreat worship services, and publicity from my Lutheran Student Movement days in undergraduate school.

While the shoe boxes were loosely organized by years, I didn't put them in the larger box in any organized way, so I looked through my memorabilia in ways that were out of order:  here's the stuff that 9 year old Kristin wrote and kept, here's the stuff from undergraduate school, here's a bit from early married life, and now we're back to high school; here and there is a random picture, young parents with a baby, and I know that the baby is grown now.  I look up, the sun is setting, and some part of me can't comprehend what year it is, or how the concept of linear time even makes sense at all.

Yesterday at church, the choir sang "Here I am Lord" as Gathering Music.  I have always loved this song, with its lyric of God calling in the night, and being willing to be called.  I first heard/sung it at a Lutheran Student Movement gathering in 1984 or so, and we continued to sing it long before it showed up in our Lutheran hymn books.

That song always makes me think about our ideas of what it means to be called, how we interpret that out in the world (and now, I will always think about answering that question for the Candidacy Committee).  I thought about all the people I have known who have experienced a call from God differently than I have--off they went to seminary, right after undergraduate school, convinced that serving in a parish was what God needed them to do.  I thought of all the people who are finally finding/taking time to go back to school at midlife, and how many of us are headed to seminary, not other types of school.

I thought back to our Lutheran Student Movement days, when some of us were convinced that the churches of our childhood had value, and others of us wished that church could be more like our LSM groups.  I still wish that, and I am glad about the changes that have come to the churches of my childhood.  When my fellow college students were discerning our calls, Lutheran churches had only grudgingly begun to allow women's ordination, but the path to a pastorate was difficult.  One of my female friends went to a Baptist seminary in 1987, only to be told midway through that women would no longer be ordained.

I'm not sure that the situation has changed for Southern Baptists, but for many other Christians, the churches that existed in the mid-1980's are very different now.  It will be even more interesting to see what the coming decades bring, and how we'll answer those calls.

Pastoring an Intentional Community

Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from Richmond Hill, an intentional religious community who holds as a founding goal the commitment to pray for the city of Richmond, Virginia.  The e-mail was bidding good-bye to one of the co-pastors, and it also mentioned that the community would now be looking for a new co-pastor.

I clicked on over to the job posting.  I was struck by the requirement that one lives on site,full time, in community.  Actually, I was struck by all of it:

"Applicants should: • Sense a calling to residential community life at Richmond Hill • Be ordained (preferred) as a minister in the Christian faith • Have at least 5 years’ experience in a ministerial leadership role • Exhibit a passion for ministries/programs like those offered by Richmond Hill (I'm inserting a link here in case a blog reader wants a sense of their mission) • Demonstrate the ability to convey and inspire commitment to an organization’s mission, including through effective written and verbal communication • Evidence a proven commitment to social justice and racial healing, and an ability to successfully work in an ecumenical environment with people from different backgrounds 

Compensation includes room (an on-site apartment) and board, a modest stipend, health and dental insurance, generous retirement contributions, paid time off (including study leave), and a sacred workplace."

Clearly, I'm not qualified at this point.  But I wanted to record the job posting so that in later years, I'll remember how my heart leaped up as I read this posting.   I want to remember that there are pastoral opportunities like this one.

A Meeting with the Candidacy Committee

 More than one person has been confused by my seminary journey and the role that a Candidacy Committee plays in it all.  Here's a way to think about it:  Wesley Theological Seminary has determined that I'm a good fit for grad school. The Lutheran church is the one who gives guidance about what one does with that training, for those of us who are Lutheran, and that guidance is done by way of Candidacy Committees that each synod creates.  

In an ideal world, the seminarian is in touch with the Candidacy Committee before seminary begins.  One can go to seminary without approval of the Candidacy Committee, but in the Lutheran church, one won't be a pastor without that approval at some point along the way.

In pre-pandemic years, the Committee would have met in person.  Seminarians-to-be would have driven up for the 2 hour interview, but they wouldn't have stayed for the whole week-end.  From that standpoint, a virtual meeting is much easier.  However, I was surprised by how exhausting it was--and I only had the 1 meeting.  The Committee was meeting with many candidates.

I was feeling less worried about the interview itself than I was about the many moving parts of technology that needed to work--happily, they did work.  I gave some thought to the types of questions that they might ask me.  Would they be questions about belief, about creeds?  Happily, they were not.

We talked a bit about what had brought me to this crossroads.  I talked about how I moved into administration, but I was ready for a change.  I talked about the times I have preached and how much I love it and the good feedback I get.  I talked about the similarities I see with preaching and teaching:  the analysis of a text, the realization that a student/parishioner is really more gifted than the individual may have originally thought about themselves.  I talked about eucharist experiences as being similar to the moment when a student realizes that they know what to do to make a piece of writing work--that world cracking open kind of experience.  I can't quite capture what I said, but I found it very moving.  I felt my voice cracking a bit.

Later in the interview, one of my interviewers said that my face really lit up when I talked about teaching, and I did realize that.  I wouldn't have been surprised if the Committee recommended that I find a teaching job, not a spot in seminary, but that's not what happened.

Some of the other questions were about the challenges facing the church, and I talked about the coming months of the pandemic, and then the larger questions that the pandemic will leave with us will give the church opportunities for ministry.

We talked about logistics, about the fact that the seminary is in DC.  At one point, when I talked about having family in DC and my parents in Williamsburg--one of the Committee members said, "Wait, I'm just putting the pieces together.  Are you Ina Berkey's daughter?"  I said, "I sure am."  We all laughed, and she said, "Well, your Lutheran credentials are solid."  I wanted to say, "You have no idea" but I didn't because I didn't want to talk about my relatives and their positions in the historical Lutheran church.

We talked about what I would need to do as a Lutheran going to a non-Lutheran seminary.  I talked about how none of the Lutheran seminaries had a track in Theology and the Arts, and if one had, I'd be going there.  I talked about my dream of being part of a team that could create such a track at a seminary somewhere.

Along those lines, one of my favorite questions had me thinking 5 years into the future:  what job would make my heart sing?  I talked about being at a retreat center leading opportunities for people to meet the Divine through creative processes.  But I also talked about doing something similar at a local level; after all, not everyone can go to a retreat center, and living in S. Florida, I know it takes a long time to get to a retreat center.  Maybe churches should meet people where they are.

The interview lasted about 45 minutes.  I know that some Candidacy Committees operate as gatekeepers, looking to trip up potential candidates.  Thankfully, that was not the experience I had.  I loved all the topics we talked about, and I felt able to address all the questions.  

After the interview, I went back to a break out room with the chaplain and waited for the results.  They talked for about a half an hour.  I felt so exhausted at that point.  And then I was brought back to the group.

They told me right at the beginning that they had happy news, that they were recommending me for candidacy.  Hurrah!  They gave me feedback on my interview, feedback which they will send to me in writing.  They talked about my passion and about how articulate I am.  The rest I will have to remember when I get their written feedback.

I know that I'm not necessarily home free--there are other points where I'll check in with the Committee.  But even if at some point they withdraw their support, I'll still be glad to have made this journey.

The Morning of a Candidacy Committee Meeting

Today at 3:30, I meet with the Candidacy Committee of the Florida-Bahamas Synod of the Lutheran Church (ELCA).  We will meet by Zoom.  

I have now had many Zoom meetings, and my main concern is that the technology might fail.  I'll stay at my school office for the Zoom session, since my school's internet connection is more stable than my home connection, but I also got a phone number, just in case I'm having trouble and need to let them know.  My church is nearby, so if it's solely an internet issue, I can zip over there.  If we're having a huge storm and lose power, I'll use my cell phone to call the group to let them know.  Hopefully they won't hold tech stuff against me; hopefully, I won't have issues.

In pre-pandemic days, I would have driven to the center of the state and spent two days with the committee.  I'm not sure what we would have done with the extra time.  I know we'd have eaten together and prayed together.  A Zoom session can't replicate those opportunities to get to know each other.

I'm not sure if we would have all met in conjunction with other synodical business.  It would have been done outside of Synod Assembly.

I have spent the week re-reading the documents that I created back in February as I applied for both candidacy and seminary.  I have been taking moments to remember to breathe deeply.  When I created those documents and sent them in to the various people and institutions, I knew that I might be setting lots of changes into motion.  But I knew that I was ready.

I'm not taking anything for granted today, as I meet with the committee.  I think that I'm a good candidate, but I know that the committee might disagree.  I want to be open to their wisdom.

I also want to be open to the movings of the Holy Spirit--I'm firmly convinced that I've been brought to this point for a reason, a reason that is only slowly being revealed to me.  I have heard God saying, "I have need of you."  I have felt that tugging at my soul.

Let us see what the day brings.

The Vinedresser's Greenish Thumb

This morning's readings in Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours included this reading from John:  

"Jesus taught us, saying: 'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you.'"     John 15:1-3

I thought about this vine that's in my office.  

A year ago, a colleague brought me this orchid, and another colleague brought in a cake.

They had heard me talking the day before on the phone, when my parents called to wish me a happy birthday.  I hadn't let my work colleagues know it was my birthday, because I didn't want anyone to feel like they had to do anything special for me.

That orchid was in full bloom then, and it has never been without flowers in the year that follows.  I don't know much about orchids, but I do know that's unusual, for orchids or for any plant.

Is it something I'm doing?  I give it some water or some cold tea (when the tea in my mug cools) once or twice a week, and that's it:  no special fertilizer, no orchid food, no compost.  

I have never thought of myself as having a green thumb--in fact, just the opposite.  But perhaps it's time that I change that narrative.  A few months ago, I noticed some almost dead plants on a windowsill that had been abandoned during one of the layoffs in the fall.  I brought them to my office and gave them some water or cold tea once a week.  Now they are flourishing:

I wish I had some before pictures.  Imagine this aloe plant, but about 2/3 less length on the spines.

This plant once had more brown leaves than green.  I trimmed them off, and look at how it's thriving:

Yes, I see the life lessons here--trimming back to facilitate growth, a small bit of care goes a long way, on and on I could go.

But I also see it as an important reminder about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.  For years, when people asked me if I had pets or children, I would joke, "Oh please, I can't even keep a houseplant alive."

And I believed that story I told about myself.  I believed that it was a hard thing to do, to keep a plant alive, and I believed that I was not capable.

But it turns out, I have a green thumb, or at least a greenish thumb.  I've met people with amazing abilities to nourish plants and grow things out of the most non-nourishing soil.  I'm not sure that my skills are up to that level.

But I'm not sure that they aren't--both in terms of plants and in terms of many other possibilities.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, July 18, 2021:

First Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-6

First Reading (Semi-cont.): 2 Samuel 7:1-14a

Psalm: Psalm 23

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 89:20-37

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:11-22

Gospel: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56


This Gospel has lessons for us. One of the most important lessons that it has for busy 21st century people is that even Jesus needs some down time. Jesus routinely goes on retreat. Jesus routinely withdraws to pray.

I hear the howls of protest even now. "Jesus wasn't trying to work remotely during a pandemic while also monitoring the school progress of children working from home while hoping that the internet connection holds together."  "Jesus didn't have a parent with a monthly health crisis to disrupt all of our plans."  "Jesus didn't have all this home maintenance to do.  Jesus could just look at leaky plumbing, and it would be healed."

But the ministry of Jesus has much to teach us, and one of the most important lessons is that we can't take care of others when we're not taking care of ourselves. Jesus prays, Jesus takes retreats, Jesus shares meals with friends--these are the activities that leave him ready to care for the masses.

Our mission is the same as Christ's. Like Jesus, we're surrounded by hordes of hungry people. Broken people need us. Perhaps, like Christ, you feel pursued by all the people who want so much from you.

Yet we will not be able to complete our mission if we don't practice basic self-care. The message of today's Gospel is that it's O.K. to take time to pray. It's O.K. to retreat. It's O.K. to eat a slow meal with friends.  It's O.K. to do those activities that refresh you and renew you, even if you're the only one who understands why these activities bring you joy.

Not only is it O.K., it's essential.

Christ, the incarnation of God on earth, needed to take a break. What makes you think that you are any different?

And then, once we've done the work of caring for ourselves and each other, we can do the work of healing the larger world.

Clowning for Christ

On Saturday, we sorted through our photo albums.  For more on that process, see this blog post.  I've found myself thinking about some of those photos as I've moved into the week.  This one, in particular, keeps coming back into my mind, faded as it is:

That's me on the left, along with a friend from our campus Lutheran Student Movement group.  I remember that we did clowning here and there, and we were part of an Egg and Dairy Festival parade in the spring of 1984 or so.

That picture made me think of the whole Clowning for Christ movement, which was around during my childhood and adolescence but seems to have faded now.  Now when we think about clowns we probably are more likely to think of any number of menacing clowns from popular culture.  Did we have the whole scary clown theme back in the time of Godspell?

Yes, when I think of Clowns for Christ, I think of Godspell, the original Broadway version followed by the movie, which has the group singing on the Trade Center site when it was just being built.  I remember how radical Jesus as clown seemed at the time.  Ah, the Jesus soaked 70's:  Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Up with People, all those Jesus freaks tramping around. 

In the picture above, were we part of the parade as LSM members or because we were also part of the theatre group?  I honestly don't remember.  The two frequently merged in my small, liberal arts/Lutheran campus of Newberry College.

Plenty of our compatriots went off to seminary, but the two of us didn't.  I've already spent some time in this post pondering why in this blog post.  In my own case, I didn't have the sense of call that all of my male friends did.  In those years, it wasn't very long since the first woman in the ELCA was officially ordained, and I was in no mood to be part of the group beating the door down.  I had a dream of being a poet, teaching English in a liberal arts school just like my undergraduate school, so off I went to grad school.  My clowning friend spent decades teaching special needs kids.

And now, here we both are, headed off to seminary in the fall.  On Saturday, when I found the photo, I made this Facebook post, which seems a good way to conclude:

"In 1984 or so, our Lutheran Student Movement group at Newberry College participated in the Egg and Dairy Festival parade. Now, almost 40 years later, at least 2 of us are headed off to seminary to become Lutheran (ELCA) ministers. We were clowns for Christ then, and although we've got different make up and clothes these days, we're still clowns for Christ all these years later."

Notes on a Confirmation Service

Yesterday, we had a long delayed confirmation service.  We didn't have one in 2020, and I don't remember having one in 2019.  We have a small church, with an even smaller group of parents with confirmation age children, so there are years when we don't have a group getting confirmed.

I have now been in this church long enough that I've watched some of our confirmands grow up, and I've been part of Christian Ed initiatives through the years that gave me more interactions than I might otherwise have had.  One of them I know more as a member of a Girl Scout troop that works with our church than as a church member.  A few of them aren't familiar at all, but that, too, isn't unusual.

Let me take a moment to appreciate my pastor, who meets people where they are.  He hasn't insisted that confirmands participate in the life of the church in specific ways, like the pastors of past generations would have.  That flexibility has been a great gift during this past time of pandemic, but in truth, it's always been a gift.

Today, I lit the candles while I listened to our pastor prep the confirmands.  He reminded them not to feel stress, that there weren't going to be any special tests, that they should just relax.  That was so different from my pastor.

My pastor met with each of us individually to make sure we were really able to make the vows we were about to make.  Of course, none of us could drive.  We had that conference with my mom waiting for me.  Was I sure about my vows?  No, of course not.  But I said that I was, because all of my extended family had come to see me get confirmed.

And let's talk about those vows.  We had to recite the Nicene creed and affirm that we believed all the elements.  Now I would get around that by saying I do believe in that creed, but my interpretation may differ from yours.  And if I wrote a creed, I wouldn't focus on the things that those ancient writers of creeds did.

Today, our pastor's sermon focused on God's love for us, no matter what we do, no matter how we feel.  It was a very different kind of confirmation than the one that we had.  My confirmation day felt like turning 18, when we knew that suddenly if we screwed up, we would have a record that would follow us forever.

I often feel weepy during Confirmation services, and yesterday was no different.  I'm sure that some of that was mingled with the fact that we were having the first Confirmation service after the pandemic disrupted plans for the last one.  Part of it was feeling weepy about what these youngsters will face, about what they are already facing.  Part of it was feeling weepy about myself and how many years it's been since my own Confirmation.  Part of it was missing people, thinking about those relatives who shaped me, and how many of them aren't here anymore.

But I am glad that we were able to have this Confirmation service.  I am glad for this opportunity to reflect on my own Confirmation and the spiritual development that came later.  I am happy to be headed to seminary, where hopefully I can continue to be part of Confirmation services, part of helping them evolve to be less about whether or not a Confirmand is worthy and to be a reminder of God's grace.

I Will Call, and Fish Will Answer

I want to remember a moment of wonder from the past week, an incident which if it appeared in a movie, viewers would say, "That would never happen in real life."  Yet it did.

One of the advantages of walking very early in the morning, before the sun is up, is that I can sing if I feel like it.  One of the other advantages is that I get to the small lake near my house in time to see the beautiful colors of sunrise.  Sometimes, the two happen at the same time.

A few days ago, I had the song "I Will Call Upon the Lord" in my head, and I sang it a bit.  At the bank of the lake, I sang the first line, "I will call upon the Lord."

And then, a group of small fish jumped out of the lake, in a perfect circle, as if they were doing a performance for a synchronized swimming contest.  I thought about the fact that they were fish, an important symbol in the Christian faith.  I thought that I was at the side of the lake just before sunrise, when the light sent color not only across the sky, but also across the water.  I thought about the water, another supreme symbol in the Christian faith.

I thought about putting it all in a poem, but no one would believe it, or people would find it trite and overdone.

But experiencing it in the moment, in real life, was a form of living poetry, and in many ways a sacrament:  a tangible symbol of God's grace and presence in the world.

Thinking Ahead to the Seminary Books I Will Need

Yesterday, I wrote this Facebook post:

"Before ordering the books for my fall seminary classes, I just wrote to the professors to see if there had been any changes. Why does writing a polite e-mail of inquiry to my seminary professors-to-be feel like one of the more daring things I will do this week?

To be clear: I'm delighted about the book list, and I'd happily order the books--but if they've all changed, I want to find out in time to order them and have them shipped to my house."

I've worked in academia for decades, so I know that book lists can change:  the professor for the class might have changed or the registrar might have a standard list of books to attach to the course (I found the book list as part of the registration portal, which seems to be a registrar function at my seminary) or any number of circumstances could result in me ordering a bunch of books that we won't use.

I decided to be big and brave and proactive and write to the two professors with the longest book lists attached to their courses.  And they wrote back the same day!  They both wrote very kind e-mails confirming that the book lists are accurate, and the one professor who has recommended books along with the required books elaborated on the recommendations.

I will order the books in the next day or two.  Another complicating factor is our impending move in August, and I want to make sure I have the books and that I know where they are as I start classes at the end of August.  

It's been the quiet kind of week at work, the kind where I hope that I get a seat in the class that I'm waitlisted for.  I honestly can't decide how much of a load I can handle.  There are moments when I say to myself, "I'm taking how many classes, along with my full-time work and teaching online?"  And then there are weeks like the past one where I see how it may all come together.

Brunch with a Purpose

At the end of our spiritual certificate program intensive in June, our small group talked about the future of church--will members come back to in-person church in buildings?  Will members decide they'd rather continue to stay in their living rooms, drinking good coffee, and participating that way?  Will they decide that brunch is more their thing, once restaurants open back up fully?

I said, "Maybe we'll find a way to combine it all:  a meal together, intentional conversation, the sacraments.  We could call it 'brunch with a purpose'!"  My small group expressed their approval and said they hoped I'd create something like that.

Out on the other side of the U.S., Lenny Duncan is doing something along those lines.  I saw this Facebook post/invitation from him:  

"It has been a long time coming but we here at the Collective are excited to finally start in person worship and we can’t wait to see you at the YWCA Clark County starting August 7th at 10 am.

This is Brunch Church.

Beloveds: Brunch Church is a simple liturgy designed to walk in conversation with the Table Fellowship practices of 1st century Palestine that Jesus was commonly demonstrating in the Gospels. It’s simple. You show up. We feed you. Someone will preach. We will commune. Maybe some LGBTQIA+ baby gets baptized. We go out into the world with that love embedded in our hearts."

Let me see if I can post the picture:

I love the tag line:  "sacraments.  mimosas.  liberation."  I look forward to seeing how this develops.  I would love to see Brunch Church as a movement that sweeps across the nation.

Women in Their 50's, Headed Off to Seminary

Future historians and ethnographers and sociologists, take note:  in the time immediately after the pandemic of 2020-2021, many women in mid-life and the older side of mid-life decided to go to seminary.  I can't tell you how it all turned out, because we're in the very early part of this process.

Some of us are picking up stakes and moving across the country.  Others of us are doing online classes with an onground intensive here and there.  Others of us (me!) will begin by taking online classes and then go to the seminary to take onground classes at a later point.

Some of us are taking advantage of job losses and the other kinds of losses that come at this point in our lives.  Some of us have come to a point in our family duties where we can finally focus on ourselves.  For some of us, the pandemic served as a wake-up call and reminder that we're not going to live forever.

But here's what's really interesting, future historians and ethnographers and sociologists:  I don't see a similar motivation in my male friends and acquaintances.  Right now, it's all women heading off to a different life.  I wonder what you will make of that, future historians and ethnographers and sociologists.

I do wonder why more of us didn't go back to seminary right after college, when it would have been more traditional.  Is it because women hadn't been ordained for very long at that point, back in the 1980's, when we would have been making these decisions?  Did we leap right into marriage and a family life that didn't leave room for seminary?  Did it take longer for us to discern our call?

I don't have the answers; I suspect the answers are as varied as the group of us heading off to seminary.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, July 11, 2021:

First Reading: Amos 7:7-15

First Reading (Semi-cont.): 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

Psalm: Psalm 85:8-13

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 24

Second Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14

Gospel: Mark 6:14-29

I've always been fascinated by the people who see God as a sort of cosmic Santa Claus. I had one friend who claimed that if she prayed to God for a parking space, one would open up. She believed that if your life wasn't working out, it was a sign that you needed to pray harder. I heard a colleague declare that he wasn't worried about economic downturns because "The Psalms tell us that the righteous will never beg for bread on the streets" (ironically, he was fired a year after he said this). I wonder what these two people would tell John the Baptist.

Surely John the Baptist is a righteous man. It's hard to imagine such a grisly end to such a powerful prophet is justified.

Of course, it's not justified. There's nothing just about what happens to John the Baptist. He's killed on a whim, to please Herod's lover. It's not like he had a trial and was found guilty and therefore had to be beheaded.

This rejection is not an unusual outcome for the prophets, although they don't all lose their lives in such a gruesome manner. Rejection is not an unusual outcome for Christians throughout the centuries. We are not promised riches and fame if we follow God. On the contrary, our sacred texts are quite clear that we may face great suffering, and we see this suffering following believers through the centuries.

Rejection is one of the themes in our recent Gospel readings. Last week, Jesus isn't accepted by his hometown. Then we saw the disciples sent out two by two, sent out with nothing but what they wear, and they're told to expect rejection. If we follow Jesus, we can't say that we haven't been warned.

So, why follow the risen Christ? What's in it for us, besides suffering and martyrdom?

The rest of the Scriptures remind us of the promises and rewards. The world would tell us that we should look for wealth or fame or power, but those aren't the kinds of rewards the Scriptures promise the faithful. However, it's not hard to find examples that offer a cautionary tale about how empty a reward fame and riches and power can be.

Jesus offers us a life of fellowship: fellowship with each other, fellowship with God. Psychologists would tell us that humans long for fellowship and that feeling that love and acceptance can be what keeps us healthy and whole, and it's a much safer bet than money or fame.

Jesus offers us a chance to be part of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom where everyone has enough and everyone feels that love. Of course, the catch is that the Kingdom isn't here yet. We have to help build it. We've caught glimpses of it breaking through. It's both now and not yet, this elusive Kingdom. But when we feel/glimpse/experience/live it, we know that it's worth whatever we must endure for the sake of it.

Pharisees, My Grandmother, and Me

This morning, I'm thinking of my grandmother, of all the rules that governed her life.  I remind myself that she was born in 1914 and all the changes that she saw.  At some point, it's no wonder that she clung to her rules to feel safe.  

But to a woman (me) born in 1965, some of her rules seemed incomprehensible to me:  don't drive at night if you're female, don't earn more money than the man in your life, don't work or shop on a Sunday (that included washing the car) but do prepare a big meal ready to eat right after church.  My grandmother believed in ironing and making a dessert from scratch every day; later I found out that she made a dessert from scratch every day because my grandfather thought a meal wasn't complete without sweetness at the end.  

I think of my grandmother who fumed about the neighbor cats who used her flower beds as a litter box.  I think of her keeping her kitchen scraps separate from the rest of her garbage and digging those scraps into the strip of earth by the back unattached garage, long after she stopped having a garden or a flower bed.  I think of her making fig jam, even though she didn't like figs or fig jam, but to leave the figs to the birds seemed wasteful to her.

I think of Jesus, who was surely preaching to people like my grandmother, and reacting to people like my grandmother who wouldn't be able to abandon the rules that gave her life structure or meaning.  My grandmother viewed the developments of the 60's, 70's, and 80's with some amount of fear and horror, not by seeing the potential for human growth and development.  One of her highest priorities would be keeping families together, and women leaving the home to earn money began the dissolution of that family structure that she saw as the higher good.

Once I learned about the back story of the Pharisees, the back story that the Gospels don't give us, I have had more sympathy for them.  They believed that by followed rigid rules and staying true, that the Jewish community would be safe.  They didn't see themselves as hidebound and rigid--most of us don't.

In some ways, the Pharisees were correct--if everyone had followed the rules and kept their collective heads down, they probably could have avoided the wrath of Rome.  Likewise, my grandmother was correct in certain ways--if I had followed her rules, I might have had a more peaceful marriage, but I would have been smothered in ways I might have never realized.

Jesus comes to call us to living in a new way--to leave the structures that would keep us safe but smothered.  Jesus comes to remind us that the structures that proclaim that they are keeping us safe are often making us less safe in ways that we don't realize until it's too late.

Many of us congratulate ourselves for the ways that we've left those structures behind, but we don't realize how we've embraced other systems of rules that are similarly stifling.  Happily, Jesus is there, again and again, reminding us to leave those rules behind and follow a new way, an inbreaking community of God kind of way.

A Sermon on Independence Day

Yesterday my pastor was away, and I was in charge of the service.  I knew that we wouldn't do much with the fact that it was Independence Day--no patriotic music, no coffee hour with cupcakes iced with red and blue frosting.  I was happily surprised that we had some folks show up for service.

The Gospel for yesterday was Mark 6:  1-13.  I talked about the first part of that Gospel, that part about people not being appreciated in their home towns.  It was even worse than a modern reader would suspect.  Jesus was referred to as his mother's son, not his father's son--we know it's Mary, the chosen one, but people of Christ's time did not.  I talked about Jesus not being able to perform the kinds of work he wanted to do, and referred to last week's Gospel and discussion about the miracle that happened with the bleeding woman.  How much was Jesus in control of the miracles?

I talked about the rigidity of the patriarchal culture of Christ's time, and the Europe that the colonists had left behind.  I talked about the new colonies and how some of them had been formed with idealistic ambitions, and how quickly the new societies became rigid in similar ways to the Old Country.  Jesus is calling us to a new way, and then, now, and in the time of the colonists, we have a hard time leaving the old way behind.

Then I talked about the second part of the Gospel, where Jesus sends the 12 disciples out to do their work, 2 by 2, bringing very little with them.  It's an anti-colonial approach:  go and give good news, and if you're accepted, great, and if not, move on.  I returned to a topic that I bring up occasionally, that we celebrate this approach to discipleship and evangelism, but there are other approaches.  It's important to see this call in this Gospel as specific to these people, these men, and specific to a particular time and place.  But we have a different call.

I had been listening to the choir rehearse before the service, and I knew that they would sing a song about seeds, and I asked the congregation to think about seeds as they listened to the song:  where are we planted and what are we planting?

I reminded people that we are called too, and that it's never too late to respond to a call, as the dean of Southern Seminary reminded us at the last Synod Assembly in 2019.  I asked people what God was calling them to do.  I reminded people that it is not too late.  My spouse said that the faces of the congregation lit up at this reminder.  I returned to the metaphor of seeds and plants:  some times, plants look dead, and then they have a second or a third or a fourth life of blooming.

I finished with a nod to Independence Day by saying that on a day when we celebrate Independence, it's worth returning to that Declaration, particularly the end, where the men pledge their lives, their fortune and their sacred honor--where do we pledge our sacred honor?  How can we commit to a vision of that life that God calls us to create, a life where we will be free?

States of the Union

I have been going back over old blog posts for July 4; it's interesting to me how my mood has shifted through the years.  After the election in November, I might have thought I would be writing a 4th of July blog post about how democratic processes and procedures worked as they should.  But I continue to be worried about how these tests may have weakened democratic processes and procedures.

I do hope that now that more of us are paying attention, maybe there will be more protections.  But as with the recent condo collapse, I know that just because we pay attention, we can't always do what's needed.

I think about people across the globe who struggle to achieve the kinds of freedoms that so many of us in industrialized nations take for granted. It's a cliché, to be sure, but it's important to remember.

History reminds us that those liberties can fairly easily be taken away, and most of us will never blink an eye--at least until it's too late. We live in precarious times--perhaps we always live in precarious times, but I'm more aware of it in recent years.  Perhaps I feel even more the precarious times, in light of the January 6 insurrection.

But let me not get bogged down in fears. Instead, let me be inspired by those men who signed the Declaration of Independence on this day in 1776. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, so great was their belief in what they were doing.

I realize that those men were committed to freedom for a much more narrow section of society than many of us would want to believe.   It's good to remember how slowly those freedoms came for the majority of us, a good day to remember how much effort (and money and blood) it took.  It's a good day to think about our commitments, our values, what we hold most true.  

Of course, it's always a good day to do that--let me always be trying to live a life that's in sync with my truest values. Let me always be ready to stake my sacred honor on principles that are that important.

Preaching on July 4

I am preaching tomorrow, while my pastor enjoys a last few days of vacation.  Ordinarily, I might stress about the fact that it's July 4, and how on earth can one please all the folks?  There will be the people who want to sing patriotic songs, and the people who want to mourn all the ways that the country went wrong.  Or at least, once upon a time, that's what I would have expected.

Tomorrow I'm expecting a very low attendance.  Our in-person attendance is about half of what it once was, and that number was never very large.  Now we rarely have more than 20 worshippers, and last week, it was considerably less.

I'm expecting attendance to be even lower tomorrow.  Attendance dips a bit when our pastor is out of town, and it dips a bit when there's a holiday week-end, and we still have a pandemic.

Still, let me finish my thoughts for my sermon.

Is There a Kinder Way to Think About This?

In an e-mail newsletter, I read about a great practice in spiritual direction, a great question to ask in all kinds of situations.  Rev. Jemma Allen says, "In my work as a spiritual director and counsellor I often ask whether there is a kinder way to think about whatever it is we are discussing. Can we be kinder about what has helped us get through? Can we be kinder about the things we find difficult? Can we tell the story of the difficulties of the day/ month/ season with greater kindness?"

She's talking about the practice of self-compassion.  I am much kinder to others than I am to myself.  I will give others the benefit of the doubt, while still berating myself for all sorts of things.

I've gotten better at self-compassion.  Now I can see myself starting to spiral down into self-loathing and negative self-talk.  Does this observation mean that I stop?  Some times.  If I've had enough sleep, I'm better at interrupting the downward spiral.  If others are being kind to me, it's easier to be kind to myself.  If I'm doing creative work in addition to other kinds of work, it's harder for my brain to convince me that I'm worthless and stupid.

In a Facebook post, Rev. Jemma Allen posted more resources for self-compassion, which I'm going to paste here so that I can find them again.  I will keep the formatting so that the links work:

"Here are some resources if you are wanting to explore self-compassion more. Dr Kristin Neff is a pioneer in this field. Her website is https://self-compassion.org

 She has some guided practices and exercises on her webpage that are a great place to start.

I also find Christopher Germer’s work really helpful. Here’s a book of his: Germer, C. K. (2009). The mindful path to self-compassion: Freeing yourself from destructive thoughts and emotions.New York: Guilford Press. His website is https://chrisgermer.com

And here is the Centre for Mindful Self-Compassion. https://centerformsc.org/learn-msc/"

N. T. Wright on "The Kingdom of Heaven"

I have spent a lot of time thinking about what Jesus means when he uses the language "Kingdom of God" and "Kingdom of Heaven."  I think that they mean the same thing, and I don't think Jesus is referring to a place where we go when we die.

I am reading my way through N.T. Wright's works on the Gospels, and I'm currently on Mark for Everyone.  In his commentary on Mark 1:  9-13, Wright says, "Heaven in the Bible often means God's dimension behind ordinary reality" (p. 5).  He elaborates, "It's more like an invisible curtain, right in front of us, was suddenly pulled back, so that instead of trees and flowers and buildings, or in Jesus' case the river, the sandy desert, and the crowds, we are standing in the presence of a different reality altogether." (p. 5).

And then, of course, we have to live in the tension of knowing about the different reality while living in the ordinary reality too, with people who have never seen the alternate reality.  The gospels are written partly to tell us how to live in this tension.

May we see behind the curtain, today and every day--and then, may we find a way to live into that totality.