New Year's Eve Morning: "Leaving the House that Held the Asylum Seekers"

 I have never been a stay up until midnight kind of gal.  I want to be.  I like the idea of dancing until the wee, small hours of the morning, but I have also never been a dancing kind of gal.  There are years that I want to stay awake to make sure they leave, but I do realize that time is an artificial construct in so many ways.

The Omicron variant reminds us of this essential life lesson, along with others, like a society can only be as healthy as its least healthy members, which is true of health in terms of disease, in terms of stratification, in terms of violence, on and on I could go.

I started this New Year's Eve morning by reading this article in The Atlantic, a piece by a neuroscientist who seems fit and healthy only to discover that he has a cancerous mass too close to his heart to operate.  It's a sobering realization that we may not have as much time here as we think.

In the past, I might have made lists and thought about goals and plans, but I wrote a post yesterday that explains why I'm not doing that this year.  It's hard to break away from that pull, though, isn't it?  I've traditionally spent the time around the turning of the year thinking about what I did right in the past year, what I did wrong, what I want more of, what I want less of.

This year, let me focus on the what I want more of that I can do.  I want to get back to writing more poetry.  While I would like more publications, I am aghast at the submission fees that seem fairly regular now, but I would like to keep submitting here and there, especially to outlets that have been important to me.

My happiest publication this year was being included in the Syracuse Cultural Workers Women Artists Datebook, which is sold out right now.  Two years ago, they accepted a poem of mine, and the fact that they accepted another one made the whole process seem less like a fluke.  

This poem seems perfect for this hinge moment as we move from 2021 to 2022, so let me repost it here.  Once that poem was called "Exercising Freedom."  Along the way, I changed it to "Leaving the House that Held the Asylum Seekers"; I wrote about its origins in this blog post.   Many thanks to Dave Bonta and Luisa Igloria for their inspirations along the way to this poem's 2021 publication:

Leaving the House that Hid the Asylum Seekers

Once again, you find yourself
on the old revolutionary road
with the houses that once hid
the asylum seekers.

The long road stretches
before you, overgrown
with brambles and struggling seedlings.
You see the fires
ahead, burning cities
or perhaps the lights
of fellow travelers.
Smoke hides the mountains.

The road is lined
with the suitcases of immigrants
who abandoned all the essentials
they once lugged to a new country.

You have kept your treasures
sewn into your hemlines, heirloom
seeds and the small computer chip
that holds your freedom papers.
Your grandmother’s gold hoops dance
in your earlobes and twinkle
around your fingers.

You hear the voices of the ancestors,
colored with both reason and panic.
Go faster, they urge.
You are needed up ahead.

Feast Day of the Holy Family

 Today we celebrate the Holy Family.  This feast day is relatively recent; we've only been celebrating the Holy Family for the past 300 years or so.  Our idea of family, especially a family unit separate from multiple generations, after all, is really rather modern.

It's interesting to take up this feast day after all these days where we've celebrated Mary, and her decision to be the Mother of Jesus.  It's a great counterpoint to remember that fathers have a role in the family too.

I always wonder if these kind of feast days bring pain to people who grew up in dysfunctional families.  I know plenty of people who have been scarred in ways that only family can do.  What do they take away from these feast day?  Despair in all the ways that families can hurt each other?  Hope that families can really be a sacramental rendering of the love of God?

Below you see a huge sculpture, made from a tree that toppled in a storm, of the Holy Family fleeing Herod's murderous intent.  I think of the Holy Family as refugee family, fleeing danger, with only the clothes on their back.  I think of all the families torn apart or torn away from their homeland because of terrible dictators.  I yearn for the day to come when we will not experience these fissures in the family.

Here is a prayer I wrote for this day:

Parent God, you know the many ways our families can fail us.  Please remind us of the perfection in family that we are called to model.  Please give us the strength and fortitude to create the family dynamics you would have us enjoy.  Please give us the courage to minister to those who have not had good family experiences.  And most of us, please give us the comfort of knowing that the restoration of creation is underway, with families that will be whole, not fractured, when all our members will be accounted for, when no one will go missing.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, January 2, 2022:

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14

First Reading (Alt.): Sirach 24:1-12

Psalm: Psalm 147:13-21 (Psalm 147:12-20 NRSV)

Psalm (Alt.): Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21

Second Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14

Gospel: John 1:[1-9] 10-18

When I was younger, the Gospel of John confounded me. What kind of nativity story did John give us? Does he not know the power of narrative, the importance of a hook in the beginning?

I missed the Nativity stories. Where were the humans responding to the good news that the angels gave them? What happened to the baby Jesus?

Look at verse 14, which may be familiar: "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father." As a child, I'd have screamed, "What does that mean? How does word become flesh?"

If we've been alive any length of time, we understand this passage in an intuitive way. Words become flesh every day. We begin to shape our reality by talking about it. We shape our relationships through our words which then might lead to deeds, which is another way of talking about flesh.

Think about your primary relationships. Perhaps this coming year could be the year when we all treat the primary people in our lives with extra care and kindness. If we treat people with patience and care, if we say please and thank you more, we will shape the flesh of our relationships into something different. Alternately, if we're rude and nasty to people, they will respond with rudeness and cruelty--we've shaped the flesh of the world into a place where we don't want to live.

In the past few years, we've seen this passage and the ideas behind it playing out on all sorts of larger stages. We seem to be living in a much uglier world. How can we begin to reweave this frazzled and frayed fabric of our lives?

It's time to think about the New Year, and some of us will make resolutions. What can you do to make your words and beliefs take flesh? How can we do more to make a reality from the wonderful visions that God has for our lives? How can we make God's word flesh in our lives?

All the Herods, both Inner Ones and On a World Scale

On Dec. 28, we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear. The magi tell him of a new king that has just been born, and he feels threatened. He will stop at nothing to wipe out any rival, even one who is still a tiny baby.

We like to think that we wouldn't have reacted that way. We like to think that we'd have joined the band of wise men and gone to pay our respects. We like to think that we'd have put aside our worries of not being good enough and our doubts.

But far too many of us would have responded in exactly the same way, if we had the resources at our command. You need only look at interpersonal relationships in the family or in the office to see that most of us have an inner Herod whom it is hard to ignore.

If you're old enough, you've had the startled feeling when you realize that the next rising star at your workplace or your congregation or your social group is a generation younger than you. It's hard to respond graciously.

Many of us are likely to respond to our feelings of inadequacy in unproductive ways. If we hear a good idea from someone who makes us feel threatened at work or in our families, how many of us affirm that idea? Instead of saying, "How interesting," we say, "How stupid!" And then we go to great lengths to prove that we're right, and whatever is making us feel inadequate is wrong.

So often I feel like I will never escape middle school, that particular kind of hell, where the boundaries were always fluid. Kids who were acceptable one day were pariahs the next. Many adolescents report feeling that they can't quite get their heads around all the rules and the best ways to achieve success.

Adult life can sometimes feel the same way. We fight to achieve equilibrium, only to find it all undone. Most of us don't have the power that Herod had, so our fight against powerlessness doesn't end in corpses. But it often results in a world of outcasts and lone victors, zero-sum games that leave us all diminished.

But feelings of inadequacy can have lethal consequences, especially when played out on a geopolitical scale, the powerful lashing out against the powerless. We live in a world where dictators can efficiently kill their country's population by the thousands or more. Sadly, we see this Herod dynamic so often that we're in danger of becoming jaded, hardened and unaffected by suffering.

Now as the year draws to a close, we can resolve to be on the lookout for ways that our inner Herod dominates and controls our emotional lives. We can resolve to let love rule our actions, not fear. We can also resolve to help those who are harmed by the Herods of our world.

Thinking of Herod might also bring to mind the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family turned into refugees. We remember the Holy Family fleeing in terror with only the clothes on their backs -- and we remember that this story is so common throughout the world.

As we think about Herod, let us pray to vanquish the Herods in our heads and in our lives. Let us pray for victims of terror everywhere, the ones that get away and the ones that are slaughtered.

The Feast Day of Saint John

The day after we celebrate the life of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, we celebrate the life of the only one of the original 12 disciples die of natural causes in old age. Tradition tells us that John was first a disciple of John the Baptist, and then a disciple of Christ, the one who came to be known as the beloved disciple, the one tasked with looking after Mary, the mother of Jesus.

There is much debate over how much of the Bible was actually written by this disciple. If we had lived 80 years ago, we'd have firmly believed that the disciple wrote the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and the book of Revelation. Twentieth century scholars came to dispute this belief, and if you do scholarly comparison, you would have to conclude that the same author could not have written all of those books.

Regardless, most of us remember St. John as the disciple who spent a long life writing and preaching. He's the patron saint of authors, theologians, publishers, and editors. He's also the patron saint of painters.

Today, as many of us may be facing a bit of depression or cabin fever, perhaps we can celebrate the feast of St. John by a creative act. Write a poem about what it means to be the beloved disciple. Write a letter to your descendants to tell them what your faith has meant to you. Paint a picture--even if you can't do realistic art, you could have fun with colors as you depict the joys that God has to offer.

Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: "Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

The Feast Day of Saint Stephen

Today we celebrate the life of St. Stephen, the man who is commonly known as the first Christian martyr. What does it mean that we celebrate the life of a martyr so soon after we celebrate the birth of Christ? After all, it's not like we know the birth day or the death day of St. Stephen. Our ancient Church parents could have put this feast day anywhere. Why put it here?

If you pay attention to the Lectionary readings, you will see that the issue of death is never far removed from the subject matter. Time and time again, Christ is quite clear about what may be required from us: our very lives. And we'd like to think that we might make this ultimate sacrifice for some amazing purpose: rescuing the oppressed from an evil dictatorship or saving orphans. But we may lose our life in the midst of some petty squabble; in some versions of St. Stephen's life, he is killed because of petty jealousy over his appointment as deacon, which triggers the conspiring which ultimately ends in his martyrdom.

Many of us live in a world where we are not likely to die a physical death for our religious beliefs. What does the life of this martyr have to say to us?

We are not likely to face death by stoning, but we may face other kinds of death. If we live the life that Christ commands, we will give away more of our money and possessions to the destitute. We will end our lives without as much wealth and prosperity--and yet, we will have more spiritual wealth. If we live the life that Christ commands, we may have uncomfortable decisions to make at work or in our families. We will have to live a life that's unlike the lives we see depicted in popular culture. That's not always easy, but in the end, we can hope the resistance to the most damaging forms of popular culture will have been worth it.

And history reminds us that events can unfold rather quickly, and we might find ourselves living under an empire that demands us to live a life different than the one Christ calls us to live. We may face the ultimate penalty. Could we face death? Could we pray for the empire that kills us? As Christians, we're commanded to pray for our enemies, to not let hatred transform us into our enemies.

Let us take a moment to offer a prayer of thanks for all the martyrs who have come before us. Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: "Almighty God, who gave to your servant Stephen boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that I may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in me, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Pivoting on Christmas Eve

December 24 was a work day for me--not a work in the office day, but a getting ready for Christmas kind of work day.  I didn't mind.  

The day was punctuated with trips to the grocery store.  I went to the grocery store 3 times; I did the big shopping early, before 8 a.m., when I would usually be the only one in the store.  Not yesterday, but I got in and out fairly quickly.  I got home to realize I forgot to buy lemons, so one more trip.  I made this delicious fish dip, which made me realize we would need more baguettes and white wine, instead of as much red as I bought.  I resolve to call my fish dips rillettes from now on.  Late in the day, I went back to the grocery store for more baguettes and white wine.

I met my pastor at 10 at the church.  I had offered to help get the worship space set up for Christmas Eve.  I arrived to a variety of poinsettias and red ornaments with no hanger to attach them to the tree.  We took off the blue ornaments and used the hangers for the red ornaments.  Unlike past years, we did not scamper up ladders.  This is not the time in the life of our nation to risk a fall and a trip to the emergency room.

The local grocery store had gotten our poinsettia order wrong.  We ordered all red; we got some red, some white, some pink/variegated.  We ordered big; we got 1 big variegated plant and the rest were the smaller plants.  The local grocery store felt so bad that they gave us 6 wreaths made with real greens.  Granted, they weren't likely to sell them yesterday.  But still, I liked the gesture, even as I wasn't sure where to put them.

I decided to begin with the easy task, the putting red balls on the trees and taking off the majority of the blue Advent balls.  As I did that, I thought about the poinsettias.  Often we've put them at the railing, but they were so tiny, I thought they might not be seen.

And so, we went with a different approach, and it was lovely.  From a distance, one couldn't see how puny the poinsettias are, and the non-Christmas colors of the paper wrapping the pots blended into the background.  We decided not to use the formal candelabras and just rely on the white candles.  

I would have been happy to spend the Christmas Eve service in silence and candles, just soaking in the beauty.  

 

But we had a service of readings and singing and a homily, and the Eucharist.  We had to pivot here, too, with soloists out because of sinus infections and COVID exposure.  I thought of all the weeks of drama about who would sing which song, and in the end, we had to switch some of the music.

I am not immune to the life lesson contained here: the ability to pivot, the beauty that is possible if we can let go of our preconceived notions of what the experience and the space should be.

Second Christmas Eve in a Global Pandemic

Here we are at Christmas Eve, a very strange Christmas Eve as a much more contagious variant of COVID-19 is ripping across the country.  As far as I know, our Christmas Eve service will go on as scheduled.  We can likely spread out across the worship space and keep the in-person crowd safe, and we'll livestream for the ones who need to stay away.

It's a very strange Christmas Eve, but humanity has had a variety of strange Christmas Eves.  In some ways, the message of Christmas Eve is even more important during times of stress.  Many of us hear the Christmas Eve message as something warm and cozy, but surely something warm and cozy was not the kind of message delivered by the angels to the shepherds.

Earlier this month, I made this sketch.  I hadn't intended to include the manger and the stable that appeared:

Do you see the descending dove in the picture?  The dove appeared before the manger.  I've returned to this picture often in December, meditating on the message it contains.  I'm also intrigued by the river rolling through the middle of the picture, the river that contains planets.  Or do we just see circles?

But I digress.  Back to the Christmas Eve message, God incarnate, God wanting to know us so deeply that God takes on human flesh.

God come to be with us in person?  God choosing to be born to poor peasants living at the edge of a powerful empire?  What can it all mean?

Here's what Richard Rohr said in his daily post this morning:  "I believe it’s all a school. And it’s all a school of love. And everything is a lesson—everything. Every day, every moment, every visit to the grocery store, every moment of our so-ordinary life is meant to reveal, “My God, I’m a daughter of God! I’m a son of the Lord! I’m a sibling of Christ! It’s all okay. I’m already home free! There’s no place I have to go. I’m already here!” But if we don’t enjoy that, if we don’t allow that, basically we fall into meaninglessness."

That message, too, is not one that worshippers will likely hear tonight.  Perhaps worshippers won't hear a sermon at all or maybe it will be a Christmas pageant.  Maybe, like the Peanuts gang, we'll hear the story from the Gospel of Luke, no homily necessary.  Maybe we'll get our message in song.

I am grateful for times of quieter contemplation, so off I go, a Christmas Eve walk in the morning coolness, a time to think about the twinkly lights, the sun that rises every morning, and the ending of a year.

Psalms of Lament

In the pre-Christmas season, is it unusual to find our mind turning to lament?  Perhaps not in this pandemic season--and perhaps every holiday season brings with it an undercurrent of sorrow.

My seminary class, Spiritual Formation for Ministry, ended with a module on mourning as a spiritual practice.  Most of us hadn't thought of mourning as a spiritual practice before, but it led to interesting conversations.  We did the module in early December, which is an interesting time to talk about mourning and grief.  Those of us who have been alive for any amount of time are aware that holidays bring pain along with the joy.

Our professor reminded us that even when we feel like we don't have words, we can probably find the words we need in the Psalms.  Most of us are more familiar with the happier Psalms, but the Psalms go through every emotion.  In times of grief and mourning, she recommended that we turn to these Psalms of lament:  44, 74, 79, 89, 102, 106, and 137.

In these days just before our second Christmas in a time of pandemic, I thought I'd list them here, for those of us feeling sorrow and grief and needing words to pray our lamentations.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 26, 2021:

First Reading: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Psalm: Psalm 148

Second Reading: Colossians 3:12-17

Gospel: Luke 2:41-52

How quickly the children grow up! Could this Jesus in Sunday's Gospel really be the same baby we just saw in the manger? Can this boy be the same Jesus we'll be meeting soon? We spend so little time with Jesus as a young boy that it's strange to get these glimpses.

Those of you who live around teenagers will probably find the Jesus in Sunday's Gospel familiar. He's so self-absorbed. He doesn't worry about his parents' feelings and anxieties. And yet, he's mostly obedient, mostly a good kid.

We think of Jesus as a special case. We tend to focus on his divine aspects and overlook the human ones. Yet any child arrives with his or her own agenda. In the end, most children are a bit of a mystery. We wonder where they get that quirky sense of humor, or those interests that are so unlike any others in the family. If we're honest, most of us have moments, maybe quite a lot of them, where we wish those children would just conform, just be the little people we wish they would be.

The relationship that Mary and Joseph had with Jesus was no different. We might protest, "But Mary and Joseph knew that he was special!" Every parent feels exactly the same way: this child is born for greatness. Yet in how many ways our children will break our hearts.

And it often starts with education. Notice that Jesus has ditched his parents to stay behind with teachers and scholars. He has his own business, and Mary has her wishes, and they will likely clash. Read Mark's Gospel (go ahead, it's short, it won't take you long), and you'll get a different view of Mary and her view of the mission of Jesus; she's not always happy, and in several places indicates that Jesus is embarrassing the family.

But in the end, this week's Gospel is also a story of nurture. God comes to be with us in human form, and not just grown-up, self-sufficient form. God becomes the most vulnerable of creatures, a baby, and thus becomes, the second-most vulnerable, a teenager. Those of you who struggle with a teenager may not find comfort from the Good Friday outcome of this story. But maybe you can find comfort from the fact that even Jesus could be a pain-inducing teenager.

And we all can find comfort from this chapter in the Christmas story. Hear the Good News again. God comes to be with us, in all of our brokenness. God loves us in spite of, because of our brokenness. God lives with and mingles in our human messiness. We might even say that God glories in our messiness, that out of our messiness salvation comes.

The Winter Solstice, the Omicron Variant, and the Feast Day of Saint Thomas

Today we celebrate the life of Saint Thomas. It's also the Winter Solstice. It's the time of year for doubting, as we finish a year full of doubts and dread, a year that many of us thought would bring some kinds of closure (in terms of politics, in terms of disease).  But here we are, at the end of the year, dealing with disappointments and more pivoting to be done. Those of us in the northern hemisphere may feel that the dark will never recede. It's a good day to celebrate the most famous doubter of all.

Who can blame Thomas for doubting? It was a fantastic story, even if you had traveled with Jesus and watched his other miracles. Once you saw the corpse of Jesus taken off the cross, you would have assumed it was all over.

And then, it wasn't. Thomas, late to see the risen Lord, was one of the fiercest believers, legend tells us, Thomas walking all the way to India.

I wonder if Thomas is near and dear to the heart of the more rational believers. We're not all born to be mystics, after all. I worry about our vanishing sense of wonder. We've all become Thomas now. We don't believe anything that we can't measure with our five senses.

We've spent significant amounts of time recently even doubting what we can measure with our five senses. We've spent even more time arguing about what it means to measure. We seem to be in a time when we can't even agree on some basic truths, let alone more complicated information.

The more I read in the field of the sciences, the more my sense of wonder is reignited. I continue to be so amazed at the way the world works, both the systems we've created and the ones created before we came along. The more I know, the more I want to shout from the rooftops, "Great show, God!" (long ago, when my friend had small children, they would shout this refrain whenever they saw something beautiful in nature, like a gorgeous sunset; I try to remember to shout it too).

So today, as the earth leaves its darkest time and inches towards light, let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to St. Thomas, who showed us that we can have doubts and still persevere. Let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to solstice celebrations and all the ways that the natural world can point us back to our Creator. Let us pray that our rational selves live in harmony with our sense of wonder. Let us also offer a prayer of gratitude to those around us, Divine and ordinary humans, who don't cast us away for our inability to believe, to trust, to accept.

Here's a prayer from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Winter for this day: "Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son's resurrection: Grant me so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that my faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen."

Meditation for Christmas and Beyond

As we move through the end of the Christmas season, let us take some time to think about this baby in the manger.  Let us think about God who decides that the best way to be with us is to take on human form, not the human form of someone powerful, but a baby born to peasants.  Let us marvel at this kind of vulnerability as we think about ways to be vulnerable ourselves.

But let us not leave the baby in the manger, as my pastor put it in a Christmas season almost 10 years ago.  Babies are so cute, and Christmas is so lovely.  No wonder we see such increased attendance on Christmas Eve.  But as my pastor said years ago, if we leave the baby Jesus in the manger that we've missed the important point.

So what is the point?  For some Christians, it's Christ on the cross.  There are all sorts of reasons to focus on the cross.  The cross for some of us is as potent a symbol of God's love as the manger.  For some of us it's a powerful reminder of what we risk when we try to embody God's love in the world,  the cross as capital punishment, the forces of empire pitted against the forces of love.  But if we leave the savior on the cross, we've missed the point too.

We are Easter people, after all.  We say we believe in resurrection, the empty tomb.  But do we?  Resurrection in this life?  Do we only believe that Jesus gets to experience resurrection?  If we focus on the empty tomb, we continue to miss the point.  And if we focus on Heaven, we miss the point.

I've had more than one friend snort when I say that.  "If it's not about Heaven, then what is the point of religious faith?" one friend asked in a mix of disgust and disbelief.  I would argue that it's about our life right here and now.  Christmas reminds us that God breaks through into our regular lives in amazing ways.

God didn't come to earth to give us a ticket to Heaven.  Many theologians would tell us that Jesus comes to show us how we can be fully human--not so that we can get into Heaven, but so that we can begin to create Heaven right here and now.  Let us remember the message of the Advent angel messengers and the angel choirs and the new star:  the Kingdom of God is inbreaking, right here and right now.  We don't have to wait until we're dead to experience that union with the Divine.

God came to be with us so that we can be part of the redemption of creation.  We move into 2022 in a world that needs to be redeemed in so many ways.  How can we say yes to God's invitation to be part of that redemption? 

Six Weeks of Sketch Responses to "Crisis Contemplation"

 Today I will turn in my last paper for my first semester of seminary.  It is written, but I want to take one last look at it.  But today, I want to write about a different class that I did for the past 6 weeks.  I joined a group organized by the artist Vonda Drees.  Together we read Crisis Contemplation:  Healing the Wounded Village by Barbara A. Holmes and did journaling, which was often in the form of sketching.  We had a once a week meeting to discuss the book and the journaling that we did.

One of my compatriots rearranged her sketches on a tabletop so that they were no longer in chronological order, and interesting patterns emerged.  My sketches are in a spiral bound book, and I don't want to destroy it.  But I think that putting the sketches here, with the quotes that inspired them, will yield some useful insights.  In past journaling groups, I wrote the quotes on the sketch, but this time I didn't.

I began by posting a picture of the markers I would use:

A first sketch--first I was undecided about having a blue marker, but I remembered the power of blue to create green. This morning, I added the bowl of flame shape, as I tried to see how deep an orange I could create. As I was creating the image in the bottom left, I was thinking about arrows and arrowheads, broken treaties and different directions, but I haven't started the book yet.

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This afternoon, on p. 13 in the Preface Practices, how we came to know our family histories. For me, it wasn't in the genetics or DNA, but in the stories we tell or were told, the connection to both farms and mountains, the faith that gets seeded (or lies in fallow soil) for each generation to sprout/grow/harvest in new ways:

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Here are two sketches that I worked on at the same time, inspired by this quote on p. 12:

"Once the unthinkable crisis has us in its clutches, we have no choice but to let go of our false sense of control and ride the waves of destiny. On the other side of this wild ride awaits extinction, resurrection or rebirth."

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I don't have a sketch to go with this quote, but here's what jumped out at me from my lunch reading; her words from the acknowledgements demanded to be written down and shared: "When I look back on a lifetime of teaching and learning, I am thankful that I earned my degrees later in life. By then, I understood my gifts and my shortcomings, my call and my communities of accountability. Although I recognize the dynamic nature of the word 'understanding,' my point is that I pursued graduate studies when it was far too late to indoctrinate me into systems thinking" (p.16).

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I am at a Lutheran women's retreat at a conference center by a lake in the middle of the Florida peninsula. This morning's walk brought spider web after spider web, some small, some draped across several surfaces, all spectacular. Then I read the first few pages of chapter 1 and thought about "freefall through our carefully woven safety nets of 'normalcy'" (p. 20):

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"Rather, we are reminded that human beings are a part of a community of inspirited life" (p. 27). I love the word inspirited (one picture with flash, one without):

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"The truth of the matter is that we live on a mysterious planet, with other living beings, whose interiority and spiritual realities that are just beyond our cognitive reach.

If life, as we experience it, is a fragile crystal orb that holds our daily routines and dreams of order and stability, then sudden and catastrophic crises shatter this illusion of normalcy" (pp. 19-20).

These words, along with the ones I wrote down earlier on Saturday, about safety nets and spider webs, were ones I was thinking of as I created this sketch. I was remembering the quote mistakenly, thinking that life was held in a fragile crystal cup, an image I also like.

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I, too, was haunted by this idea:

"Slowing down is...about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots. Slowing down is taking care if ghosts, hugging monsters, sharing silence, embracing the weird...the idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions. It is about staying in the places that are haunted. " Bayo Akomolafe, p. 39

Process Note: My first idea was for a haunted house and I would put all the regrets that haunt me on the boards of the house. But I made the house too big, with no room for all the ghosts and monsters that I envisioned circling the house. And then these other aspects appeared: the woman on the side of the house, the stuff going on in the attic (not exactly sure what's going on there), the plants and pumpkins and cats and the table inside that's ready for tea. So instead of writing regrets on the house boards, I wrote parts of the passage.

I'm posting 2 versions of the same drawing, one with flash and one without.

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I have not made much progress with my reading. But this sentence did leap out at me: "In the darkness, we can gather in Spirit and be filled by this Source" (p. 44).

It's not the sketch I saw in my mind when I started, but it has some appeal (same picture, one with flash, one without)

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". . . we fall headlong, together, into the power of divine intention and the mystery of an inner and outer cosmos" (p. 50).

Solar systems, the mind of God, inner wisdom, what the mind knows, what the body knows . . .

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I was short on sketching time and short on connectivity last week. I did work on this sketch, which is less of a response to a specific passage from the work, and more what emerged as I thought about wounds and what it takes to heal (stitching, partners on a path, a way out of no way, protection of our soft spaces):

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I haven't made it far into chapter 4--the first sentence made me reach for my sketchbook: "It takes a village to survive" (p. 83).

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Although I hadn't read any further in the book, I needed to keep my hands busy and my face neutral during a boring/aggravating meeting yesterday. So I worked on this sketch. This morning, as I read this quote, the sketch seemed to fit: "The child has recently come from the realm of the ancestors and the grandparents are on their way. There is much wisdom and special knowledge to be imparted between these generations" (p. 85).

I also see some Advent themes: unlikely wombs incubating improbable miracles, marginalized women saying yes to God's invitation.

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I confess that I was once again sketching without having a specific response to the text in mind. Today, as I looked at the sketch and text, this sentence jumped out at me: "Art opens a portal to new realities" (p. 98).

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I created this one as I was thinking about lament. Before I started filling in the circles with color, my thought was that each circle would represent a lament. I also had in mind a tear (as in the drops one cries, not a torn spot) to the right of the page. The sketch went in different directions than I planned, but I still think it's an interesting response to the idea of lament.

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"Although relief seems to be an impossibility, we know that we are embedded in a quantum world with nothing but possibility" (p.118).

"A liminal space is the time between the 'what was' and the 'next.' It is a place of transition, a season of waiting, and not knowing. Liminal space is where all transformation takes place, if we learn to wait and let it form us" (Jon DeWaal and Shonnie Scott quoted on page 128).

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"What is called for in times like these is a deep dive into unknowing, a trusting, and a liminal float in spiritual depths that sustain our collective wellbeing" (p. 129).

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"We leap, trusting the glory of ancestral guidance, the blessed hope of the dawning of a new world order, and the promises of God" (p. 137).

The leaping didn't turn out the way I envisioned it, but I offer this sketch because the quote really speaks to me--what a way to close the book!

Seminary Classes Come to an End (Tomorrow)

Last week as I drove home from work, I thought about all the changes that have happened just in 2021, and for a brief few seconds, I couldn't breathe.  I should know better than to let my brain go down this path while I'm driving.

Then I parked the car, came inside, had some homemade mac-n-cheese for dinner, and settled in for my New Testament seminary class, the last one of the term.  

I see this as a metaphor for what life has been like lately.  The pace of change has been dizzying, and the types of changes have been even more staggering.  For a brief moment when I let myself think about that, it's like getting too close to the edge of a mountain path with a steep drop off, and I back up quickly.

This morning is not the morning that I want to move closer to that edge, so instead, let me focus on this last week of seminary classes.

I have been grateful for the solid internet connectivity in our condo building.  It has made me reflect on the poor service that I settled for (thanks, Comcast!) in our old house.  Back then, I said that at least I had reliable internet at work, and then, this year, we had 3 weeks of no internet at work, followed by a mifi hotspot, which is fairly reliable, but not as good as in the condo. 

This semester of seminary would have been much more difficult without reliable internet.  I've been amazed that I could attend class, meet in small groups, access the library resources that I need, meet with my advisor--in short, that I could live in all the online ways we live now.

There was a 2 week time in early November when my computer was sloggy after an automatic update.  That time gave me a window of insight as to how difficult life is without a decent computer.  My computer has gone through this cycle before, and I never know how to fix it.  After a week or two, it sorts itself out, a most unscientific and unsatisfying answer.  I know that at some point, it's likely not to sort itself out.

Even with the sloggy computer, I could still participate in Zoom classes, although my image was about 3 seconds behind my audio, so I'd speak and then my lips would move.  I found it distracting, and I was so relieved when the problem went away.  It wasn't a result of slow internet speed, since it happened both at work and at home.  It was clearly a computer issue.

My classes have been a combination of Zoom meetings for virtual classes, complete with small groups, and recorded lectures.  The recorded lectures are rich and full, but I prefer the Zoom meetings.  I am now on my 3rd legal pad; yes, I take notes by hand on paper, even as I'm accessing it all electronically.  It helps me concentrate on the presentation.

However, I do see the advantage to electronic notes--much more searchable.  Would the advantages justify buying another laptop, so that I can take notes on one computer while information is flowing from the other?  The thought of lugging another laptop everywhere I go exhausts me.

I am not done with class, not really.  I still need to write my papers, which I'm doing on the laptop. So let me finish this reflection now.  Maybe when I'm truly done with class, I'll do another look back.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 19, 2021:

First Reading: Micah 5:2-5a

Psalm: Luke 1:47-55 (Luke 1:46b-55 NRSV)

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 80:1-7

Second Reading: Hebrews 10:5-10

Gospel: Luke 1:39-45 [46-55]


Finally, we have moved away from John the Baptist--although he's there, in utero, leaping at the sound of Mary's voice.

I love this Gospel vision of improbable salvation: two very different women, yet God has need of them both. I love the way this Gospel shows that even the impossible can be made possible with God: barrenness will come to fruit, youthful inexperience will be seen as a blessing.

Take some Advent time and look at the Magnificat again (verses 46-55). Reflect on how Mary's song of praise sums up most of our Scripture. If we want to know what God is up to in this world, here Mary sings it for us. He has raised up a lowly woman (who would have been a member of one of the lowliest of her society). He has fed the hungry and lifted up the oppressed. He has continued to stay with Abraham's descendants, even when they haven't always deserved it. We can count on our strong God, from generation to generation.

Take some Advent time and think about Mary's call to be greater than she could have ever expected she would be. She could have said no to God--many do. But she said yes. That acceptance didn't mean she would avoid pain and suffering. In fact, by saying yes, she likely exposed herself to more pain and suffering. But in saying yes, she also opened herself up to amazing possibilities.

Think about your own life. Where do you hear God calling your name?

How can we be like Mary? How can we be like Elizabeth, who receives an even more improbable invitation? Where would we be led, if we said yes to God?

God has a greater narrative for us than any we can dream of. Let this be the year that we say yes to God and leave our limited visions behind.

Unlikely Advent Places

Here is a quote that spoke to me today.  I found it in James Lumsden's blog post, which is worth reading in its entirety.  The quote is from Henri Nouwen, a favorite theologian across all of my ages.

We expect God to show up in “spectacles, power plays, significant and extraordinary events” that will change the course of history in their grandiosity. We, ourselves, are often taken-in by wealth, prestige, and sparkling things that glitter and shine. We can be so easily distracted. Perhaps that is why God chose to come to us as a small child of Palestinian peasants in an insignificant stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. This way we see that God’s kingdom is humble, simple, small, and very vulnerable. One of the gifts and surprises from Jesus is that he shows up for us in the most unlikely little places – and if we refuse to look for holy in what is small, we will likely give-in to despair.

And here is a sketch I've been working on for the past week.  I didn't begin with an intention to draw a stable and a manger.  Those appeared as a surprise, distressing at first, because the page wasn't what I envisioned.  But as I've worked with it, it's become one of the highlights of my week:

Now it's back to finishing grades for my online classes and finishing papers for my seminary classes.

The Feast Day of Santa Lucia

 December 13 is the day that Scandinavian countries celebrate Santa Lucia day, or St. Lucy's day. There will be special breads and hot coffee and perhaps a candle wreath, for the head or for the table.The feast day of Santa Lucia is one that’s becoming more widely celebrated. Is it because more Midwestern Scandinavian descendents are moving to other climates? Are we seeing a move towards celebrating saints in Protestant churches? Or is it simply a neat holiday which gives us a chance to do something different with our Sunday School programming and Christmas pageant impulses?

In a time of ongoing global pandemic, I wonder how people will be celebrating this year. They will probably celebrate the way that I almost always have, in their own houses, with their own family members.

But it wasn't always this way.

I first heard about St. Lucia Day at our Lutheran church in Charlottesville, Virginia. As the tallest blonde girl, I was selected to lead the St. Lucia day procession when I was in my early teen years. The grown ups placed a wreath with candles on my head and lit the candles. The younger children carried their candles. I walked up the church aisle and held my head very still.

I still remember the exhilarating feeling of having burning candles near my hair. I remember hot wax dripping onto my shoulders--I was wearing clothes and a white robe over them, so it didn't hurt.

It felt both pagan and sacred, that darkened church, our glowing candles. I remember nothing about the service that followed.

A year or two later, Bon Appetit ran a cover story on holiday breads, and Santa Lucia bread was the first one that I tried.

A picture from that cover story

What a treat. For years, I told myself that baking holiday breads was a healthy alternative to baking Christmas cookies--but then I took a long, hard look at the butterfat content of each, and decided that I was likely wrong. I also decided that I didn’t care.

I still bake that bread every year, and if you’d like to try, this blog post will guide you through it. If you’re the type who needs pictures, it’s got a link to a blog post with pictures.

As a feminist scholar and theologian, I’ve grown a bit uncomfortable with virgin saints, like Santa Lucia. Most sources say we don’t know much about her, which means that all sorts of traditions have come to be associated with her. Did she really gouge out her eyes because a suitor commented on their beauty? Did she die because she had promised her virginity to Christ? Was she killed because the evil emperor had ordered her to be taken to a brothel because she was giving away the family wealth? We don’t really know.

The lives of these virgin saints show us how difficult life is in a patriarchal regime. It’s worth remembering that many women in many countries don’t have any more control over their bodies or their destinies than these long-ago virgin saints did. In this time of Advent waiting, we can remember that God chose to come to a virgin mother who lived in a culture that wasn’t much different than Santa Lucia’s culture: highly stratified, with power concentrated at the top, power in the hands of white men, which made life exceeding different for everyone who wasn't a powerful, wealthy, white man. It's a society that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Or we can simply enjoy a festival that celebrates light in a time of shadows.

I love our various festivals to get us through the dark of winter. When I lived in colder, darker places, I wished that the early church fathers had put Christmas further into winter, when I needed a break. Christmas in February makes more sense to me, even though I understand how Christmas ended up near the Winter Solstice.

So, happy Santa Lucia day! Have some special bread, drink a bracing hot beverage, and light the candles to light up the darkest days of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere).

Holiday Treats

 While I have not done any holiday baking yet, I have had some treats.  Let me make a list so that I remember later:

--I've been enjoying the holiday lights.  Each morning, with each block of my walk, there's at least one house that has lights on.  Delightful!

--We also had a holiday light tour of a different neighborhood on a golf cart--fun!

--Last night, we were spontaneous.  I came home from work and said, "I'd really like to go over to the beach to the Hollywood Brewery and have a burger and a beer."  And that's just what we did.  I get off work at 3 on Fridays, so we got there before the crowd arrived.  We enjoyed our food and drink and the view of the ocean.

--Early this morning, I made this Facebook post: "Kitchen alchemy: craving a Starbucks peppermint mocha but not wanting to drive to the closest store that's a few miles away. I have milk, peppermint extract, coffee, sugar, and cocoa. I have tried this experiment before, and I know the dangers of peppermint extract. This time, the smallest amount, added to the milk first. It's a different take on peppermint mocha, less sweet and cloying, with more dark chocolate depth. Yum."

--One of the biggest treats of the week:  I've been writing some poems.  Hurrah!

--Let me also record a poem idea, in case I don't get a chance to write it next week.  Here is the title or the first line:  On the feast day of Santa Lucia, I pay the credit card bill.

--It has also been a week of good sketching.  Here's my favorite of the week:

The Blogging Poet-Seminarian Who Teaches First Year Comp

 Before I started seminary, for the decades before I started seminary, I worried that I wasn't smart enough.  As the years marched on, I worried that my brain had turned to mush.  As I've been in this first semester of seminary, I'm realizing all the ways that I've been preparing, even as I was doing something else:

--I am not one of those English Ph.D.s who got her degree and stopped writing.  I've still done some academic writing here and there.  But more importantly, I've done other writing on a daily basis.  In 1997, I started doing morning pages, the kind recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way:  3 pages, by hand, every morning.  That practice prepared me for my current practice of daily blogging.  Most days, I write 500-1,500 words each morning.

--Because I'm an English major at heart, I write in complete sentences with correct spelling.  While some part of me believes that we should give permission for rough drafts to be REALLY rough, my rough drafts don't have grammar or spelling errors.  Is that important?  I think that it is--less to proofread and catch later.

--I write every day, which means I know that I don't have to wait for inspiration.  I know that writing brings inspiration.  And because I write every day, I'm always on the lookout for things to write about, and my brain is already working on it on some level.  I know how to compose before I've ever approached the page/blank screen.

--I have taught Composition since 1988, which means I have not forgotten how to document outside sources.  Based on some of the comments of my professors, some seminarians have forgotten the basic rules of documentation.  I got a compliment on my Works Cited page for one paper.  That page was not anything special.

--I have not continued to read academic writing in my Ph.D. fields of 19th and 20th century British Literature.  In fact, I haven't continued to read the primary texts of those fields, although I have occasionally returned to them.  Instead, I started reading theology, and much of it's pretty deep.  I remember going home to see my folks and going to lunch with them and a group of their church work friends.  One of them asked what I was reading, and I talked about the Henri Nouwen book that I'd brought with me.  The response was, "That's pretty deep stuff."  On some level, it was deep theology, although it was a slim volume.

--As I look back to what I've been reading and writing, it's clear that I've had a love of theology for decades.  You may or may not be surprised to find that some seminarians do not share this love of theology.  There are other reasons to become a seminarian, of course.  But if one doesn't love theology, I think it's harder to slog through some of the courses, and it's harder to write those essays for class.  When I got this comment on my first homework assignment for New Testament class, I thought I was going to be OK:  "This shows that you've got quite a bit of background in biblical studies (you mentioned the Babylonian exile, work by Walter Wink, etc.)."

--It's been interesting to be writing my final papers for seminary classes while also grading the final papers of my students.  I've always been a fairly generous grader, so I don't think it's impacted me that way.  I have been the kind of grader that didn't put much in the way of comments on A papers.  As a woman who writes A papers, I'm realizing that a more developed comment might be appreciated.  Have I written that more developed comment as a teacher?  Not yet.

--I am a poet who delights in making interesting comparisons.  I am aware of that personality trait of mine, and I try not to let that part of my brain run wild while writing papers for seminary.  Still, I think my poet brain sees things that other might not, and my seminary papers are stronger for it.

--I am a woman who has juggled many activities through the decades:  teaching, reading, writing, administrator work, church work, a variety of volunteer jobs, family, friends.  I am used to grabbing every scrap of time.  If I only have 15 minutes, I'll write a chunk of seminary paper or read the next part of the text.  I am not waiting for huge swaths of time to get things done.  Huge swaths of time are not coming.

Speaking of getting things done, it's time to get ready for work--and all the other activities of the day.

Sermon Notes: December 5 Sermon on Mary and Elizabeth

Before we get too much further away from Sunday, let me write up my sermon notes.  We're using Dr. Wilda Gafney's A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church.  On Sunday, the Gospel reading gave us Mary's visit to Elizabeth.  Here are some of the points I made.

I began by saying that thought about bringing Mary from the creche to serve as a focal point--but what if she breaks?  Of course, a broken Mary also fits into a certain approach, about how God can use us in all of our brokenness.

I talked about this time of year as being one of the only times in the traditional church that we hear about women at all.  Mary has a starring role, often the only starring role for women throughout the church year.  I talked about my experience of church Christmas pageants when I was a child, when every girl wanted to be Mary.  As a tall, blonde girl, I never got to be Mary.  But at least I got to be an angel.  Less lucky children had to be animals in difficult costumes.

Mary and Elizabeth are marginalized in all sorts of ways.  They are women in a patriarchal society, they are Jewish in a Roman society that would see Jews as lesser.  They live far from the center of power.

Mary and Elizabeth are constricted by biology:  biology of being female, biology of being older.

Who would be the best bearer of the message that God wants to get out into the world?  The Roman emperor would be the likely choice:  rich, powerful, a way to spread the message.  But no, God doesn't go with the obvious choice.  In fact, God chooses one of the least obvious choices.

Look at creche Mary:  look how clean and pretty she is.  She would have been much dirtier and raggedy.  Think about Elizabeth, who has failed at the one thing she was supposed to do, which is bear a child.

I talked about my difficulty with the text:  women as incubators.  But it was the first century and the text was written by men.

I talked about this Women's Lectionary project written by Wilda Gafney who tried to correct the male focus of centuries of Christianity:  what would a lectionary with women at the center look like?

Mary and Elizabeth have a longer conversation than the conversation with the angels.  Intergenerational support!  In past years, that aspect of the story would have been the part that spoke to me.

What is speaking to me this year?  God issues invitation to Mary and Elizabeth, and they say "Yes."  And here we are in the 3rd year of the pandemic.  It is a good time to hear this message, of God's invitation.  God appears over and over again, with an invitation to be part of God's creative plan, to be bearers of the miracle.  Often in the most difficult circumstances, God appears with an invitation.

No matter how broken we are, God can create something beautiful.  Even though we're not in the blazing good health of our youth, God invites us to be part of the work of creation.  God asks, and if we say no, God will reappear with an invitation.

I concluded the sermon this way:

Stop listening to the part of your brain that tells you that you're inadequate.  Scripture tells us again and again of God choosing the most unlikely person and doing something miraculous.

I am here today to encourage us--because so many of us are tired, so many of us are thinking of all the opportunities we missed, all the ways we've screwed up, all the things that are left undone--we have declared ourselves barren, and God comes to us to say, "I am doing a new thing.  Come and be part of this new thing I am doing."

I encourage us to use the words of Mary to say yes:  let it be with me according to what you have described.