Memorial Day and the Feast Day of the Visitation

Today is the feast day of the Visitation, a feast day that celebrates the time that Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Both women are pregnant in miraculous ways: Mary hasn't had sex, and Elizabeth is beyond her fertile years. Yet both are pregnant. Elizabeth will give birth to John the Baptist, and Mary will give birth to Jesus.

Some feast days leave me shaking my head and wondering what modern folks are to do with them. Some feast days, like today's, make me wish I'd known about them earlier. I think about my younger self who was enraged that so much femaleness seemed to be erased from Christianity. What would my raging feminist self have done with this festival?

I'm not sure she'd have been appeased. I was also in the process of trying to assert that biology isn't destiny, while also acknowledging that I was one of the first generations to be able to assert that idea.

My middle-aged self is willing to admit that biology is often destiny, although not in the womb-centric way that the phrase is often bandied about. I'm seeing too many people at the mercy of bodies that they have increasingly less control over.

In an odd twist, today is also Memorial Day, a day where we will remember and honor those who have died in military service to the U.S.  It's another holiday where biology is destiny--young men have been expected to serve in this way, and when not enough of them do, they have been drafted.

As I've thought about the juxtapositions between the feast day of the Visitation and Memorial Day, I've thought about how both days celebrate those who are working in service to a vision that's greater than just themselves.  In fact, they may be working in service to a vision that they don't quite understand, but they have faith in the ones who have called them to the vision.

Of course, the difference is that the governments who use soldiers don't always have the best interest of the soldiers uppermost, while God, who called Mary and Elizabeth, was looking out for their best interest.

Nothing drives home the cost of war more than a visit to the Vietnam Memorial and seeing those 58,000 or so names carved into a black scar of granite.

How might our thinking about war change if we also added the names of all the maimed war veterans? What a cost.

And then there are the civilians. And the family members. So much wreckage on so many sides.

I'm thinking of the 2005 trip to France I took with my mom and dad and our stops at a variety of WWI cemeteries. That effect, too, is similar to the one that the Vietnam Memorial--those graves, stretching on as far as we could see.

So, on this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

And on this feast day of the Visitation, let us say a prayer of thanks for elder generations who look out for younger ones, who give them safe space to process what God has called them to do.  Let us give thanks for people of all ages who know what needs to be done to protect the mission that God gives them.  

Let us pray for all who need courage to do what must be done.  Let us pray that in the future, no blood needs to be shed to achieve and preserve freedom.

Of Housing Markets and Arks

 We spent yesterday the way we often spend our Saturdays, talking about the housing market, talking about possible timelines for the end of my job, talking about seminary plans and what path to the future appeals to my spouse right now for himself (teaching?  grad school?  city government work?  something else?).  

I had this article from The Atlantic on my brain, along with the house sale news from our good friends in the neighborhood, who are no longer in this neighborhood.  The article argues for waiting to buy a house; it posits that the blazing hot housing market won't be hot forever, but also that there's not a crash in the offing.  It will be more like a return to normal.

The article argues that we're looking at a classic supply and demand issue that has been decades in the making.   And what do the experts expect?  One expert suggests looking at the supply of houses:  "After crashing to an all-time low in April, active inventory has actually increased for three straight weeks. That’s the good news. The bad news is, at its current pace, the number of houses on the market nationwide won’t reach normal levels for about 14 months, all things being equal."

So maybe it's no surprise that my brain returned to my poem series that looks at modern issues through the lens of Noah, Noah's family, and the ark.  Yesterday another idea for a poem about Noah's wife occurred to me. She sees the ark as a vehicle to a new life, and he sees it as a container to save the old life. How does this post-flood marriage survive?

I thought about also tying it into my idea about the cicadas.  Were they worth saving, if they are only going to be active every 17 years?

I do worry that others will find it tiresome, seeing everything through the eyes of Noah's wife.  But then again, I don't really have to worry, do I?  I'm not even sure I'm going to assemble it into a book.  It delights me, and that's what matters.

What I Read During My May Vacation

While I was on vacation earlier this month, I said to my sister, "This may be the last time I can read for pleasure."  We had been talking about my seminary journey, so I didn't mean it to sound as apocalyptic as it sounds a week later when I type that sentence.

I still have the whole summer to read, and I'm aware that the MDiv program may not preclude pleasure reading the way that my PhD in English did.  But still, this last time at a resort by a different part of the Atlantic felt like the last time I will read for pleasure.

So, did I bring the kind of novel that I expect not to have time to read in the near future?  No, it didn't come to the library in time.  I had planned to read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future.  It's 563 pages, and I often need a vacation time to tackle a book like that.  But maybe I can plan for a Memorial Day week-end reading fest.

Instead, I read a variety of books.  For my certificate in spiritual direction certificate program, I needed to finish The Enneagram:  A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, so that work wove its way through the week.  My spouse showed some interest, and I wanted to know what Enneagram number(s) he would assign to himself and to me.  We had some interesting conversations.

I did read one work of fiction, but it didn't take me very long:  Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts.  It's a book for which the word "spare" was invented.  I find my thoughts returning to it, even though as I zipped through it, I thought that I wasn't finding it very compelling.

I read another book that was similarly slender of pages, but deep in content:  Anne Lamott's Dusk Night Dawn:  On Revival and Courage.  I rarely buy her books anymore, since until this one, a lot of her later books seemed similar to me.  But even in their similarity, I enjoy visiting the books again.

This latest book of Lamott's feels different:  less angry, approaching the spiritual stuff from a different angle.  Perhaps that's because the book deals with the navigations that come with a new marriage--and this marriage is one between people who are not teenagers.

Here's one of my favorite parts of this book:  "Most of these prophets were introverts.  Jesus definitely was.  He's never really doing all that much, if you think about it.  He doesn't even tell His own stories.  He'd be fired from most churches today.  He's in a world of great fear, there's evil, violence, and need all around him, so He often finds He needs time along--in silence, in the desert, on the mountain, on the beach, beneath the stars--to get strong and patient enough to go back and face Peter's lame and endless questions for the tenth time:  'Is now when we get to be in charge?  Is now when we take over?'"

I was most thrilled to be able to get Mark Bittman's latest book from the library and relatively quickly.  A book with the title Animal, Vegetable, Junk:  A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal is not one that we might associate with vacation reading, but it was great.  In some ways, it didn't tell me much that I didn't already know on some level.  But it gave me depth and perspective.

It was less about the individual types of food we eat, but more about how the food is produced.  In other words, it wasn't a diet book or a nutrition book, but it was a deep dive into agriculture practices.  It had deep analysis of justice issues.  I realize that's not everyone's idea of a fun vacation read, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

What I enjoyed most about my vacation reading is that I read more on paper, less on pixels.  I had the chance to do some deep reading in a way that I don't when I'm at home where there are so often chores to do and a variety of work for pay that needs doing.

The Kingdom of God is Like a Quilt

Today I was reading Luke 13, in The Message translation.  I was struck by the opening of some of the parables/metaphors; in verse 18:  "How can I picture God's Kingdom for you?"  And then there's the story of the acorn that grows into a tree and after that, the woman baking bread.

This morning, I also thought of another metaphor that Jesus uses in many of his parables:  the Kingdom of God is like a feast.  Jesus also uses work metaphors, like workers in the field.  I wonder if modern readers hear that and think about backbreaking labor, not the abundance of a vineyard.

The other day as I was finishing Morning Watch, I made up my own metaphor:  the Kingdom of God is like a quilt group, where friends decide to get together to work on their quilting projects together.  They bring their favorite foods to share and they enjoy each other's company.  They have such a good time they decide to meet regularly.

I've continued to think about this metaphor.  Would I need to extend it to have the quilt group buy a big house together?

This morning as I read the parables about small things that grow big, I thought about the quilt as metaphor.  How can I explain God's Kingdom for you?  A woman has a bag of scraps that are too small to make into a shirt or a scarf, scraps left over from other projects, scraps from beloved items that have become frayed and worn.

She puts one piece of fabric next to another piece of fabric and delights in the way that they look together.  She chooses a third scrap and attaches it with neat stitches of sparkly thread.  She continues in this way until the collective can cover a bed.  

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, May 30, 2021

First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm: Psalm 29

Second Reading: Romans 8:12-17

Gospel: John 3:1-17


As we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday on May 30, let us pause to consider the power of three. You probably learned from your Composition teachers that three main points have a greater chance of creating a solid essay; not one point, not two points, not seven, but three. If you've arranged objects on a mantel or a sideboard, you've probably noticed that three objects most often leads to balance; more looks cluttered, less looks sparse.

If you're a breadbaker, you've probably experimented with braids and twists. There's something beautiful about a braid of bread:

Consider the braid, how much stronger it is than the individual strand. You can easily pluck individual hairs out of a scalp. It's much harder to yank a braid of hair loose from the body.

We worship a God in three persons, as we commonly understand it; I have long suspected that our God contains multitudes, but our human brains can scarcely comprehend a God-in-three, much less a God-in-millions, so we stop at 3.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about communities of all sorts, and I love this idea of God as a communal God, God dwelling as 3-in-one. Throughout our Scriptures, we learn all sorts of lessons about community, and in the New Testament, we begin to perceive that God, too, dwells in community. And God who dwells in community invites us to be part of that community.

On Holy Trinity Sunday, we might spend some time thinking about all the aspects of God whom we've met: Creator, Mother, Redeemer, Savior, Fellow Traveler, Inspiration, Father, Breath, Mystic, Provider, Healer, Leader, Spiritual Director, Dreamer . . . the list could go on and on. Which incarnation of God speaks to you most?

Which incarnation do you need to invite to be part of your life?

Sermon Recap: Our Pre-Pentecost Hinge Moment

Earlier this week, our church got the go-ahead from our insurers and our bishop to have more participation in the worship service, meaning we can now have others at the lectern as part of the worship service.  My pastor asked me if I wanted to preach on Sunday, and I said yes.  It's Pentecost, after all--the sermon practically preaches itself.

For the first part of my sermon, I talked about knowing Easter people and Christmas people, but no one says that Pentecost is their favorite church holiday.  I said that lately, the time between Easter and Pentecost has been speaking to me, with the disciples not being sure what to do with themselves, so they go back to doing what they had been doing before--witness the end of John, where the disciples go back to fishing.  I talked about the disciples hiding in a room before Pentecost--sound familiar?

I talked about the disciples as traumatized people--we tend to forget or underplay the trauma that they have experienced.  We know that traumatized people don't snap back immediately or automatically.  I talked about our current age as one of traumatized people and that we should be gentle with ourselves.

But the Holy Spirit doesn't come to leave us there.  The Holy Spirit makes it possible to go bigger.  I talked about what that would look like, in terms of the first believers:  going out 2 by 2 and bringing the good news, being part of the community that is open to the message, being the type of disciple that has resources to share, being part of the community that does the hard work of staying rooted and growing the seeds that the disciples plant before they move on.

I talked about the hinge moment where we find ourselves.  We've been through a huge trauma, and we shouldn't undercount that.  We have an enormous opportunity to reshape our world--and there's the danger that we'll go in the wrong direction.  I talked about God's dreams for us, that we're here not just winning our entrance into Heaven, that God announces the inbreaking Kingdom, right here and right now.  What would that look like as we move forward?

I finished with a sort of prayer, although I don't know that the congregation realized that I was praying:

Give us comfort as we cope with our collective trauma.

Give us a vision of the better world that is possible.

Give us the energy to begin what the vision requires.

Sustain us to see our vision to completion.

Lurching Towards Inclusivity

Two weeks ago, we'd have awoken to the news of the election of Megan Rohrer, the first openly transgender bishop in the Lutheran Church (ELCA version), the first transgender person to serve as bishop of any mainstream Christian denomination.  My family was together in Hilton Head, SC.

Why is this fact significant?  Back in 2009, my spouse and I spent the week with my mom and dad in Hilton Head while the national assembly of the ELCA met.  That was the assembly that passed the historic sexuality statement, the one that provokes so many people in so many different ways.

But that imperfect statement did pave the way for the ELCA to recognize officially the call of Rohrer; a year later, seven pastors were reinstated and churches welcomed back to the ELCA.

Maybe my family should meet in Hilton Head more often.  I say this in jest, of course--and yet, it's so striking to me that my memories of family reunions in Hilton Head will always be connected to memories of the ELCA lurching towards inclusivity.