Pet Blessing Service 2019

We are headed into the Pet Blessing Service zone.  Across the nation this week, many churches will have this kind of service as we celebrate the life of St. Francis (the one of Assisi, not the current pope who has yet to be canonized).

Our church did its Pet Blessing service yesterday.  Some years we do an extra service, but this year we moved the service into the fellowship hall and held it as our regular Sunday service.

At first, I thought we wouldn't have many pets, and I wondered why we did this at all.  But as the morning progressed, we had more pets joined.  And then I remembered that we also bless pets from a distance.  People brought pictures of their pets, and there might have been one or two pets attending remotely, by way of smart phone.

Our organist was away, but we had great music with our other musicians.  We had a meditation about the role of pets.  Afterward, we had pizza for a congregational meeting.

I have often wondered if we might have more attendance if we welcomed pets to our service every week.  I don't know what we'd do about the people with allergies or those who are scared of animals.  If you're the kind of person who would object to random noises by pets, children, and other people, you're likely going to another church already, so we wouldn't have to worry about that.

Still, we won't be the bring your pets to worship church anytime soon.  Or maybe we will.  I've been surprised by various turns of events in the past.  We are a church of radical welcome after all.  This year we're welcoming people of all genders/sexual preferences, so perhaps in a future year, we'll extend that to pets.

The Hinge Holiday of Michaelmas

If we lived in an earlier culture, we would celebrate Michaelmas today.  It's one of the harvest holidays, one of the quarterly celebrations that kept people rooted to traditions of the seasonal cycles.

If we lived in a high church kind of time, we would celebrate the feast day of St. Michael and all angels. The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle, explains that this feast is a celebration of the role of angels in the divine plan.

I am more interested in the idea of a hinge holiday, the way we shift from one direction to another.  In Holidays and Holy Nights, Christopher Hill explains, "In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michaelmas balances that feeling (for) in autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name. We feel like wayfaring strangers... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun'" Summer is the sacrament of natural harmony with God... while autumn we fall away from the dreaming paradise of summer back into the conflict of light and dark" (pp. 36-37).

I am trying to slow down, even as the world encourages us to zoom, zoom, zoom.  I want to savor the way the afternoon light slides into evening from a different angle now.  I want to enjoy the seasonal decorations that we have now.  Two weeks ago, I started the transformation of the front porch:

Yesterday, I bought an autumnal bouquet.

Last night, we lit the candles in the terracotta candle holder:

I love the shadows made by the flickering lights, which I have not been able to capture on film:

A few weeks from now, I'll add real pumpkins to the mix, once they arrive at my church.  First I'll help offload them from the truck.

Of course, we still don't have much in the way of cooler weather.  But that's the nature of these hinge holidays, at least where I've always lived.  I've always had to provide some additional prompts to keep my attention coming back to the seasonal shifts.

High Holy Days and Low Ordinary Days

In later years, I wonder what I'll look back on and wonder why I didn't write more about that.  I go back to my journals that I kept in college, and I'm always very surprised by what huge national and international events get no mention in those pages.

I feel like I should write more about the impeachment proceedings of this week.  Frankly, I imagine that with the advantage of years between the Trump administration and the future, we will look back and wonder why this incident warranted impeachment, while so many other issues slid right by.

It's been the kind of week where I've been working intensely at work to get ready for a mock accreditation visit by Corporate folks today.  I've had evening meetings and a variety of obligations.  Race, race, hurry, hurry.  I've been more frazzled than usual.

When I come up for air, I check the news to see what new part of our long, national nightmare has been revealed.  Some part of me always wonders if I'm not reading some dark satire.  And then I dive deep into work again.

It's not the kind of work for which one will ever be awarded the MacArthur genius award.  Sigh.

These are the days when a variety of cultures celebrate high, holy days.  It's a hinge time between seasons.  It's a time when I wish I could slow down and savor the shift.

Let me look for ways to do that as I move through the next days.

Stewardship Campaigns in a Time of Climate Change

It's been a tough week or two in terms of reports of the future:  declining song bird populations and seas rising faster than we thought and hot blobs of water travelling through the oceans.  And yet down here in South Florida, it's a beautiful morning where it's finally temperate.  I heard more birds this morning than I've heard in a long time.

I thought, it's mornings like this one that lead to climate science deniers.  How can there be fewer birds?  I hear so many of them singing?

And yet, for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, the signs are here.  Even on this morning with the songs of many birds, the water burbles up through the storm drains and seems up from the ground itself, a reminder of how close we are to sea level.

In a hundred years, my house will probably be underwater--literally.  In fifty years, it's quite possible that the house will be gone.  My floorboards are 2 feet above sea level.  I keep an eye on sea level rise, but can't quite figure out what to do.

This week people have been in New York for a UN Summit on Climate Change--of course, just assembling everyone made a big carbon footprint.  I don't have much hope that those folks will be able to come up with a good plan. 

And yet, I remain stubbornly optimistic about the future, although I do think the next 100 years will be one of the more difficult centuries in human history.

Fall is often the time that churches launch stewardship campaigns.  I suspect that most of them will not focus on the larger stewardship issue:  how will we care for the earth in this time of increasing challenges?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for Sunday, September 29, 2019:


First Reading: Amos 6:1a, 4-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Psalm: Psalm 146

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31


This Sunday, the Gospel returns to familiar themes with the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus is so poor that he hopes for crumbs from the rich man's table and has to tolerate the dogs licking his sores (or perhaps this is a form of early medicine). Lazarus has nothing, and the rich man has everything. When Lazarus dies, he goes to be with Abraham, where he is rewarded. When the rich man dies, he is tormented by all the hosts of Hades. He pleads for mercy, or just a drop of water, and he's reminded of all the times that he didn't take care of the poor. He asks for a chance to go back to warn his family, and he's told, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead."

Maybe by now you're feeling a bit frustrated: week after week of reminders that we shouldn't get too comfortable with our worldly possessions. Maybe you suspect the Council who chose this common lectionary of readings of being just a tad socialist.

Yet those who study (and tabulate!) such things would remind us that economic injustice is one of the most common themes in the Bible. To hear the Christians who are most prominently in the media, you'd think that the Bible concerned itself with homosexuality.

Not true. In his book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis tells of tabulating Bible verses when he was in seminary: "We found several thousand (emphasis his) verses in the Bible on the poor and Gods' response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures Old Testament--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (mammon, as the gospels call it). In the first three (Synoptic) gospels it is one out of ten verses, and in the book of Luke, it is one in seven" (page 212).

And how often does the Bible mention homosexuality? That depends on how you translate the Greek and how you interpret words that have meanings that cover a wide range of sexual activity--but at the most, the whole Bible mentions homosexuality about twelve times.

If we take the Bible as the primary text of Christianity, and most of us do, the message is clear. God's place is with the poor and oppressed. The behavior that most offends God is treating people without love and concern for their well being--this interpretation covers a wide range of human activity: using people's bodies sexually with no concern for their humanity, cheating people, leaving all of society's destitute and despicable to fend for themselves, not sharing our wealth, and the list would be huge, if we made an all-encompassing list.

It might leave us in despair, thinking of all the ways we hurt each other, all the ways that we betray God. But again and again, the Bible reminds us that we are redeemable and worthy of salvation. Again and again, we see the Biblical main motif of a God who wants so desperately to see us be our best selves that God goes crashing throughout creation in an effort to remind us of all we can be.

Some prosperity gospel preachers interpret this motif of a God who wants us to be rich. In a way, they're right--God does want us to be rich. But God doesn't care about us being rich in worldly goods. Anyone who has studied history--or just opened their eyes--knows how quickly worldly goods can be taken away. But those of us who have dedicated our lives to forging whole human relationships and helping to usher in the Kingdom now and not later--those of us rich in love are rich indeed.

From Raggedy Individual Prayers to A Hoop of Prayers

Yesterday, I preached the sermon.  We've been doing a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer, and I got to preach on "Give us this day our daily bread."  As I thought about what I would say, and as I sorted through old possessions coming from the cottage, I got an idea for my big hoop that I bought but have never used for quilting.

As people came into the church, I asked them to choose a strip of cloth that spoke to them. 

In the beginning of the sermon, we thought about what we needed for sustenance as we held the strip of cloth. Then I passed the hoop around and asked everyone to tie their piece of cloth on the hoop. 

I talked about our individual wants and needs and the needs of the larger community--and how our solitary prayers feel like raggedy scraps, but when we add our prayers together, we can transform the world.

I did keep trying to loop back to the ideas of daily bread and what sustains us--but also a larger vision of sustenance. I was pleased that everyone took a strip of fabric and that everyone enthusiastically tied their strip to the hoop.  I talked about what we personally need to for sustenance, but also what the larger society needs for sustenance.

I also added another element.  I wanted a cross in the middle, and I thought about using one of the crosses made of palms that are left over from Palm Sunday.  But in the office, I had lots of crosses to choose from, and I chose the one above.

I really like the way what it does for the hoop:

And now we have a different element to take us to All Saints Sunday.  Here's the larger view:

I'm calling Sunday morning a success, even though my sermon went in an entirely different direction.  I want to say it was the Holy Spirit, but some days I worry that it's sloppiness and my inability to stick to my sermon prep.

Language and Expectation and Equinoxes

Today is the last full day of summer--the autumnal equinox arrives tomorrow.  Some of us have already had some autumnal weather.  I feel like I will never feel cool air outside again, although it has been astonishingly windy.

Down here at one of the southernmost points in North America, I mark the change of seasons differently.  One must be alert to realize that the sun is coming at us from a slightly different slant.  I notice that the sun rises about a half hour later now than it did in early July.  We have a person who comes every other week to mow and edge the tiny bit of lawn we have--the lawn used to be very shaggy in between cuttings, and now it's not.

We're not to winter yet--the yard still needs attention once we approach the two week point.  But I'm not worrying about Code Enforcement getting to us before the yard guy does.

Is it disrespectful to use the term "yard guy"?  I mean no disrespect.  I do know his name:  Jose Sanchez. 

This has been a summer where I'm thinking about language and how it shapes us.  That idea is never far away from my brain.  This summer has been the time where I've shifted from saying "slaves" to "enslaved people."  Does it make a difference?  I'm not sure.  The word "slave" has always conveyed horror and terror to me, but I realize not everyone has that enlightenment.

Similarly, I've been thinking about how many of our housing developments use the word "plantation."  This blog post does a great job of explaining why it's problematic; I confess I hadn't really given the word much consideration before reading that blog post.  What's next:  Auschwitz Acres?

I am listening to a fascinating On Being episode about the power of the brain--some stuff I knew, and some I don't.  The guest, Erik Vance, talks about the doctor who prescribes going to church as part of a pain relief regimen:  "And one of the doctors, world-renowned researcher who, I think, is established enough in his position to be honest with me, said, 'Look. I’m lucky if I can help 40 percent of my patients. If I’m a baseball player, I’d be making millions, but as a doctor, that’s not a great number.' And he’s the one who actually says — he recommends to patients, 'If you’re a lapsed Catholic, go back to church. Try it,' because, first of all, he’s looking for anything. But second of all, he wants to create a sense — even if they’re continuing treatment with him — that good things are coming, that there is an order — . . . .  And just going back to church and feeling like they’re getting some sort of sense that this will go away, good things are coming, is the first step "

Today I am in charge at church--my sermon will revolve around daily bread and what sustains us and what we need.  There will be fabric and a hoop involved.  More will be revealed in a later blog post.  Now I must get ready.

The Next Garden

Once the path seemed so clear:

Once we assumed that every gate would open:

Now we must consider what's on the other side:

Now we fear we're lost in the weeds:

Maybe we're destined for a different garden than the one our younger selves would have chosen:

Let us rest awhile in this place while we discern the next step:

The Planet vs. the Prom

Long ago, when I started my job at the for-profit art college, I met a woman who was pregnant, and we have stayed friends.  That child that was in her womb is now a senior in high school.  He's been suspended for handing out fliers that informed students about a local rally on Friday to demand that government work on climate change issues.  This newspaper article will tell you more--it doesn't seem that my friend's son got any sort of warning or cease and desist request.

I wrote this FB comment:  "It seems like an overreaction to me--why not have E___ amend the fliers to say that the school isn't sponsoring the event and can't vouch for it--that way the school is covered in terms of lawsuits, and E___'s 1st amendment rights are protected, and everyone gets to go to prom (or pick up extra hours at work when everyone else goes to prom--oh, wait, that's my unremarkable high school prom memory)."

I thought about my own student days--for what would I have risked suspension? 

The big issues in those days were apartheid in South Africa, nuclear weapons proliferation, feminist issues, the threat of Communism, the risk of nuclear reactors, and various Latin American dictators that were repressive in different ways.  In high school, though, I didn't really do much politically, beyond fretting.

In college, I went to some protests and demonstrations.  I wrote letters.  I went to prayer vigils.  I know that my dad worried that I would do something radical that would affect his security clearance, but he needn't have.  I was a good girl at heart, too worried about my permanent record to blunder in that way.

Of course, many students make unanticipated blunders, leaving all sorts of wreckage in the wake.  But I didn't.

I have Baby Boomer friends who bemoan the lack of activism in students these days.  But they are likely remembering their own student days inaccurately.  Students--and older humans--have always been working on issues of social justice, in a wide variety of ways.

It will be interesting to see what happens on this day of protest and what happens next week, at the UN Climate Change Summit.  I have a vested interest in this issue, but then again, we all do.  I'll lose my house before many people are seriously impacted.  My floorboards are two feet above sea level. 

But the last decade has shown us that many more of us are likely to be seriously impacted than we first thought.  It's not just those of us on the coast.

I am heartened by the way that people are waking up.  I am always heartened when the numb become aware.  I believe that God delights too.

Building on the Past

Last week I wrote this blog post about sharing our church building with those who worship differently.  Some will tell you that we're doing this for ecumenical reasons, but we're also doing this because the donation of money that the other groups give us helps immensely.

We may not have to do this anymore.  We've had an offer to buy the front part of the property, and we are likely moving forward with it, unless the congregational vote surprises us.

So we could have all sorts of opportunities to go in a different direction, as a very small church (in terms of membership) with enough cash to keep us going for awhile. So far, we seem to be dreaming of having a similar facility, in terms of building, just larger. We currently share our space with 7 congregations, and there's no conversation that I can tell about changing that. In a way, that's cool--we're committed. In a way, we could be such a different church, one that's not constrained by sharing space. I confess that I'm one of those members that gets irritated by all the stuff that other churches want to store on site, and all the programs we can't do because other people are using the space.

And there's the larger issue--should a church even have a building? But we zoomed right on by that issue. A few church members understand how I feel when I bring it up. Most church members can't even conceive of how we'd be church without a building or with a different building, maybe a cafe or affordable housing or a retreat center in the middle of the suburbs.

Of course, those are my dreams for a building, which during our time of congregational discernment, I realize that our larger congregation doesn't share. Or the larger congregation may simply be overwhelmed at all the possibilities, so we're doing what we've always done. I do understand that. If the congregation said to me, "O.K., Kristin, run with one of your dreams and figure out how we make it happen"--well, I might back away too.

I am haunted by the opportunities we will be missing.  I am always haunted that way.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 22, 2019:

Jeremiah 8:18–9:1
Psalm 79:1-9 (9)
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13


Ah, the parable of the unjust steward. This parable may be one of the toughest to understand. Are we to understand this parable as a pro-cheating text? It seems that this tale is one of several types of unjustness, and it's hard to sort it all out. Let's try.

Much like the parable of the Prodigal Son, which sends up wails of protests about unfair treatment of undeserving children, this text makes one want to wail at first reading. There's the master, who believes the charges brought up against his steward, who seems prepared to dismiss him, based on those charges--let us remember that the charges may be false.

But the behavior of the steward seems slimy too; accused of unethical behavior, he seems to behave unethically, dismissing debt in an attempt to curry favor for a later time when he is dispossessed.

And then there's the surprise twist--the master approves of the steward's shrewdness.

There are several different approaches to this parable. The easiest approach is to look at the final lines of the Gospel, those familiar lines that so many of us would like to ignore, that we cannot serve God and money. This parable seems to suggest that it's hard to have dealings with money that don't leave us looking slimy.

We might ask ourselves how a stranger would view us if they looked at our budgets. On a personal level, the way we spend money shows our values. So if I say I'd like to wipe out childhood poverty, but I spend all of my extra money on wine, a stranger would question that. If I say that I value a Christ-centered economy, but I only give money to my retirement accounts, what would that stranger say? I will be the first to admit that I want to hoard my money, that it's hard for me to trust that God will provide.

We could ask similar questions about our institutional budgets. What does our church budget say about us? If we give more money to the upkeep of our buildings than to the poor, are we living the life that Christ commands us to live? These are tough questions, and I will honestly say that I haven't met many institutions, sacred or secular, that achieve balance very gracefully--especially not in economic hard times.

Parable scholars might caution us not to adopt the most obvious interpretation. Scholars would encourage us to see the parables in relation to each other. What are the parables that surround the one about the unjust steward?

In the text just before this one, we see the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coins, the lost sons (the Prodigal and his brother are equally lost boys). In the text after the parable of the unjust steward, we receive the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man, and you may remember that Lazarus has a tough life on earth, but a good life afterwards, and the rich man receives his reward early on, and goes to his tortures in the afterlife.

We might see this parable as one more cautionary tale about how we deal with wealth, as with the story of Lazarus. Or we might see the Prodigal Son's dad as similar in his mercy to the master of the shrewd steward--and of course, we could draw parallels to God, who gives us mercy, when we deserve rejection and to be left to our own devices.

It's hard to ignore the sense of urgency in all these texts. The steward must act swiftly, to dismiss debts while he still has the power to do so. The Prodigal Son's father doesn't have much time to decide how to act, once his son appears on the horizon. The rich man pleads with Abraham to be allowed to warn his brothers, and Abraham reminds him that they've had plenty of warning. The parables are interspersed with Christ's various admonitions to pay attention to the way we are living our lives.

Christ commands us not to lose sight of the true riches, the riches that our society doesn't comprehend fully (or at all). We are not our paychecks. There's so much more to us than our job titles. We have been entrusted with so much. We will be judged by how well we show stewardship of those resources.

The Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen

September 17 is the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, mystic, herbalist, musical composer, naturalist, and Abbess. Her life was full of accomplishments, an amazing feat considering she lived in the twelfth century.

Until recently, I had never thought of the twelfth century as a high water mark of feminism, but female monastics did amazing things during that time period. By studying them, I come away with a new appreciation for the medieval Church, where talented women found a cloistered kind of freedom. In many ways, the cloistered life was the only way for medieval women to have any kind of freedom. Cloistered life offered the only protection available to women who lived at the edges or outside the margins of society: widowed, artistic, not wanting to be married, weird in any way.

But Hildegard's life shows that freedom was constrained, since women monastics answered to men. For years, Hildegard wanted to move her group of nuns to Rupertsburg, but the male Abbot who controlled them refused her request.

We all face constraints of various kinds, and the life of Hildegard shows what could be accomplished, even during a time where women did not have full rights and agency. She was an Abbess, and because being in charge of one cloistered community isn't enough, she founded another. She wrote music, and more of her music survives than almost any other medieval composer. She was an early naturalist, writing down her observations about the natural world and her theories about how the natural world heals us. She wrote to kings, emperors and popes to encourage them to pursue peace and justice. She wrote poems and a morality play and along the way, a multitude of theological meditations.

She did all of these things, in addition to keeping her community running smoothly. Yes, I'm thinking about Hildegard as an administrator, a woman who could be efficient and artistic at the same time. It’s no wonder that I find her inspiring.

It's interesting to think about the different types of groups who have claimed her as their own. Feminists claim her importance, even though she didn't openly advocate equality. Musicians note that more of her compositions survive than almost any other medieval composer. Her musical works go in different directions than many of the choral pieces of the day, with their soaring notes. New Age types love her views of the body and the healing properties of plants, animals, and even minerals. Though her theology seems distinctly medieval, and thus not as important to modern Christians, it's hard to dismiss her importance as a figure from church history.

I often say that it's odd I'm drawn to monasticism, as I'm a married, Lutheran female who has all sorts of worldly commitments, and thus cannot fully vow obedience. But as I think about church history, I'm struck time and time again by how often monasticism has offered a safe space to women that no other part of society did. I shouldn't be surprised that it's a tradition that speaks to me still.

It’s a tradition that speaks to many others too: have you listened to the Hildegard of Bingen channel on Pandora?

Maybe today is a good day to tune in that medieval music. We could listen while writing letters to those in charge, letters which demand more work towards social justice. Or we could focus on other writing projects, as Hildegard of Bingen did. We could plant a healing herb garden.

Today, on her feast day, let us say a prayer of thanks for Hildegard of Bingen and other medieval matriarchs of Christianity.

Post Gender Binary Women's Group at Church

At my suburban church, we used to have a more traditional women's group, the kind that most younger women would never dreamed of attending.  For one thing, most younger women couldn't--the traditional women's group met during daytime hours, when most younger women were at work.  And the traditional women's group was made up of older women, primarily widows, who talked a lot about their grandchildren.

Many of those women have died, and the group fell apart.  And now, we're thinking about pulling a group together again.  We will meet after church, which is the only time most of us can make it to a women's group.

We still haven't solved the age issue.  Although we're younger than the traditional group that came before us, a college student in her 20's would still feel out of place, I imagine.  The youngest one at our meeting yesterday was in her 40's.

As we gathered yesterday, a few men joked, "Do you have to be a woman to join."  We said, "No--join us."  Nobody did, but it made me wonder about having a woman's group in this age where we're exploding the idea of a gender binary in all sorts of ways.

Does a women's group in church even make sense anymore?

I can make the argument that it does--just look at the statistics of how women's lives are still different from the lives of men, from everything from earning power, to caretaking pressures, to homemaking expectations--the list could go on.  I understand wanting a group where we don't have to explain so much--or worse, to have a man "explain" things to us.

But I could also make the argument that to segregate by gender is to perpetuate these differences.

I also think that being part of a small church gives us a different perspective--we have so few members, and it's so hard to know where we should put our energies.  When we looked at the organizing ideas from the national membership, it's clear that other groups don't have the same pressures.  The literature assumes lots and lots of women are there to take on a variety of responsibilities.

Sigh.

But we will continue to forge a way with the people that we do have.  Right now, most of them are women (the way we've traditionally defined women)  over the age of 45.  Two years from now, it will be interesting to see what's different.

What Does Active Discernment Mean to You?

Earlier this week, one of my favorite pastors sent me a private message to let me know that this past summer had been her last summer at camp. She said that she and her spouse had been in a time of "active discernment mode."

I knew that this time was not far away, the time when she announced her retirement. Still, it was a week of many pangs, many realizations of how many "last" times are coming.

I wrote back to my pastor friend, "You said you and Pastor Tim were in "active discernment mode" this summer. I would love to know what that looked like. I have this vision of a breakfast of beautiful summer fruit, followed by writing in your journals, then a silent hike, and then a sharing of what you heard that morning. I have an idealistic vision of you two doing this all summer. But I know that there are many routes to discernment, and this retreat seems like a theme that fits with teaching people some of the ways to do that."

The next morning, I wrote a poem that explores what active discernment mode would mean to me in the best of circumstances.

Unfortunately, lately my active discernment often comes through frustration followed by weeping and gnashing of teeth and repressing the urge to throw a few things in the car and drive far, far away. And yes, that has been my discernment message delivery system since I was about fifteen years old.

Clearly it's time for a new method of active discernment. So, let me try an alternate approach.

When I heard my friend's news, my first thought was to write the camp to ask if they might be interested in hiring a person who would be in charge of adult and online programming. My heart sang out at the thought of that job.

That's a much more pleasant method of discernment than the one I usually use!

Are We Ecumenical or Enabling?

Earlier this week, we had a conversation amongst church members about the 7 other church groups who use our space.  Some of those church groups have very different theologies, although they are all ostensibly Christian groups.

Some of us chafe about how filled our church space has become.  Scheduling a wedding for a church member takes a herculean effort, for example.

Some of us see the sharing of space as an essential part of our mission.  Over fifty years ago, our ancestors gifted us with a church building.  Now we have a resource to shepherd and to share.

I will be blunt and honest, since only about 7 people are likely to read this blog post.  I am not sure I want to share resources with people who won't allow a woman to preach.  I am not sure I want to share resources with people who believe that homosexuals are headed to hell.

I am also not sure how many of our groups have more repressive beliefs.  One group is Seventh Day Adventist, so I'm pretty sure at least one group is more repressive.

We could argue about ecumenism.  I would say that we have not had that many years of openness in the Lutheran church; it's easy to lecture about ecumenism when you've been allowed to control the pulpit for the last two millenniums.

I wonder when ecumenism becomes enabling.

I know that I might be more comfortable sharing our worship space with Hindus or someone radically different in another direction than with sharing our resources with those whose Christian fundamentalism will restrict the personal possibilities of so many.

I realize that I'm risking being judgmental and closed off.  I am trying to have an open heart and an open mind. 

But I also know that I don't want to be part of oppressive structures when I can avoid it.  I don't want to support those oppressive structures.

I am ready for the new society, the beloved community, even as I feel our society slipping back to a shadowy past.

Hurricane Refugees and How We Help

On Tuesday night, I got a Facebook post to a group from a neighborhood friend asking if we'd help a pair of Bahamian refugees who had just arrived.  While most of us in South Florida have been moved by tales of Hurricane Dorian survival, she's one of few people I know personally who has opened her house.  She wrote to the neighborhood group seeing if we had gift cards, clothes, food, anything we wanted to donate.  She also talked about the possibility of hiring the couple.  They're hoping to save money to go back to rebuild.

She has a cottage, which they've been using as a home office and the occasional guest room.  On Tuesday, she went to the Palm Beach airport to pick up a couple who had left the island with literally only the clothes they were wearing during the storm--everything else is washed away. In South Florida we're hearing these stories. Planes and choppers land where they can, and take as many people as they can safely carry away. People are coming over even if they don't know anyone, even without papers, even without any resources.

Last night I met the couple.  I have put off moving a lot of stuff from the cottage back to the house, but we're expecting my sister-in-law to move in this week-end.  She's bringing stuff of her own.  So when my neighborhood friend wrote to the group asking if we had odd jobs for the couple to do, I immediately thought about hiring them to help with the moving of the boxes. 

When I got that e-mail on Tuesday, I felt this odd sense of relief.  I've been beating myself up for not getting the cottage ready, and by Tuesday, it was clear I wasn't going to make it.  I had decided that I would get the sheets and towels clean and clean the bathroom.

With their help last night, the cottage is much closer to being ready than it was this time yesterday.  Hurrah!

We also had a chance to talk to them.  Their story of the storm is truly scary--they talked about being able to hear the nails of the roof being sucked away by the winds, for example.  But they also had determination to put their lives back together again.

One might argue, what choice do they have?  But we know that lots of people don't survive this kind of trauma, especially in the face of such overwhelming loss.

When I sat down this morning, what I really thought I'd write about was my friend who saw the stories and reached out to do more than most of us will do.  She's not one of my church friends, but she has a stronger moral core about some issues than many of us do.  I've been interested my whole life in an essential question:  can we be good people without going to church?

That's not really the question.  Of course we can.  The real issue that intrigues me is a larger one:  how do we decide to be faithful to our positive moral foundations and what makes us fall away?

I have said before that if we can find a wholesome church community, then we'll have more support in our quest to stay faithful than we might otherwise--and that's especially true if we live during times when the larger culture doesn't agree with our positive moral foundations.

I have been distressed about many of the decisions of the Trump administration, but the idea that we would deny Bahamians temporary protected status baffles me.  I suppose the couple I met last night might be lying about their losses, but it seems like an extreme way to swindle people.  They have no desire to stay here forever, but they need to earn some cash so that they can return with a generator and a well to rebuild from nothing.  They can't stay on the island--there's very little in the way of shelter, and the infrastructure (electricity, clean water, roads) is gone. 

I tend to be more sympathetic to refugees of all sorts than this current administration.  We've got a huge country and lots of resources.  I also understand those who worry about the long term consequences of opening our borders to everyone.  But sheltering people who are suffering a certified humanitarian crisis--who could argue with that?

Sadly, our president can argue/tweet/bluster.  And people of faith and conscience will do what we've always done in the face of a culture of callousness--we will open our homes, share our resources, pray for the larger world, and maintain hope for a better future.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 15, 2019:


First Reading: Exodus 32:7-14

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Psalm: Psalm 51:1-11 (Psalm 51:1-10 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 14

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Gospel: Luke 15:1-10

For Sunday's Gospel, we have the parables of lost things: lost sheep (1 of 99) and a lost coin (1 of 10). Let's consider what Christ is trying to teach us about the quality of being lost and the quality of being found.

Some will look at the last sentence and see this Gospel as being about repentance, but when we look at it as part of a series of parables, it's less clear that repentance is the point. After all, the coin doesn't have to do anything to be found; it just sits there. The sheep might repent, but if you've ever tried to wrangle sheep, you know that repentance is not a sheeply quality. And if we kept reading in Luke, we'd get to the parable of that Prodigal Son: is he really sorrowful about his actions? If he hadn't descended to such a state of poverty, would he have had his epiphany?

We could look at these parables as tales of precious resources lost and then found. These two parables revolve around an economic resource: a sheep and a coin. In some ways, the metaphor might be lost on modern readers. I've heard more than one reader talk about how ridiculous it is to get so excited over a lost coin.

But imagine a modern spin: the person who loses 1/3 of a retirement portfolio, but it is restored before the golden years descend. Or perhaps the person who was facing foreclosure, but home values rebound and the mortgage can be refinanced. Rescued from desperate economic circumstances, would we not rejoice?

We know that God rejoices when we return, even as God must know that we will disappoint again. We know that if we're lost, God will look under every shadow for us. We know that God will go to great lengths to find us, even taking on human form and suffering crucifixion.

We worship a God who will not rest until we’re all present and accounted for. That’s Good News indeed.

Shelter from the Storm

At times, it seems we have no shelter from the storms that hurl their way to us:

We wonder why we strive, when all we love may be flattened.

September storms separate loved ones from each other.

We long to know that our lives inscribe themselves in a timeless way.

We stretch out our hands, hoping to be held in return.

We put our trust in the God who created the laws of chemistry and physics, the one who calms the chaos.

Hurricane Fuzz Brain

I am feeling a bit brain-frazzled.  A week of keeping tabs on a slow moving hurricane will do that to a soul, I guess.  I am also feeling an odd stress hearing all these stories of storm survival (or lack of survival) coming out of the Bahamas.  It's a bit of PTSD, but it's also something different--that shiver that says that we lucked out this time, but at some point, our hurricane survival luck may run out.

I feel like I should claim any PTSD--have I really had trauma?  Not in the ways that Bahamians just did--but yes, we've had lots of destruction through the years, and while it's survivable, it's taken lots of time and energy and phone calls and money.  Does that count as trauma?

So, yes, we've had trauma, but I don't know if our response to it really rises to the level of a disorder. It seems normal to me, and it's not the life-disrupting kind of response to trauma.

I mention all of this because yesterday I discovered that I had completely forgot to go back to the church to make the bank deposit.  Usually we do that on Sundays, but because of the impending hurricane possibility, the overnight deposit box was sealed.  I volunteered to make the deposit when we all returned to work.

By the time we went back to work on Wednesday, it had completely slipped my mind.  I didn't remember until the series of e-mails that I read yesterday morning that wondered what had happened to the deposit.

Happily, it was easily fixed.  I made the deposit, and all is well.  But it haunts me, this failure of memory.  It makes me wonder what else I've forgotten to do.

But let me end on a hopeful note.  This morning, I did work on my novel first thing.  If I can do that most days, I will be happy.  At least my hurricane fuzz brain isn't making it impossible for me to write.

Poetry Friday: "Strange Communions"

This week's hurricane coverage has taken me back to the time after Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The church to which we belonged sustained massive damage. I spent much of the next 6 weeks cleaning up that church. It was a church of older people, and there weren't many hands to do that work.
One day, about a week into the recovery time, I had spent the day hauling wet carpet to the curb after ripping it out of the floor, and I was wet, dirty, and bloody. The Bishop of our Synod appeared, dressed in casual clothes, an assistant by his side. I said, "Are you the carpet guys?" Oops. The men bristled a bit.

Like I said, I'm fairly sure they were dressed in casual clothes. If the bishop had come wearing his purple shirt and his impressive cross, I'd have known he wasn't the carpet guy.

Later it occurred to me to wonder why I should be expected to know what the Bishop looked like, to recognize him by sight. He had never graced the church with his presence before. And unlike the South Carolina synod conventions, which don't cost much to attend, our Florida synod conventions are astonishingly expensive. Even though I was church council president of that church, I never went because I knew the state of the church's books. We could barely afford to send the pastor.

The Bishop looked at our damage, took notes, and left us with a case of bottled water and some tarps.

At the time, I remember wishing for a bit more help with the physical labor, as I went back to ripping up carpet and hauling it to the curb.

But later, I got a great poem out of it. That poem was published by North American Review.

It's part of a series of poems that imagines what would happen if Jesus came back in our current world and moved amongst us today. Long ago, a Sunday School teacher asked us what we thought would happen if Jesus came back today (today being 1975). Little did she know that I'd still be playing with that question decades later:


Strange Communions


Jesus showed up at our church to help
with hurricane clean up.
“The Bishop was so busy,” he explained.
“But I had some time on my hands,
so I loaded the truck with tarps and water,
and came on down. What can I do?”

“Our roof needs a miracle,” I said.
“Do you know a good roofer?”

“I used to be a carpenter.
Of course, that’s getting to be a long time ago.
Let me see what I can do.”

I set to work ripping up the soaked
carpet in the sanctuary.
As I added a piece of dripping padding
to the pile, I noticed Christ across the street,
at the house with the fallen
tree that took out both cars and the porch.
He walked right up to the door to see
how the household was doing. I dragged
sopping carpet, trip after trip, while Jesus sat
on the porch and listened to the old woman’s sad
saga. The rough edges made my hands bleed.

Good smells made me wander down the dark
church hall to our scarcely used
kitchen, where I found Christ cooking.
“I found these odds and ends and decided
to make some lunch. Luckily, you’ve got a gas stove.”
I shrugged. “Why not? Otherwise, it’s just going to rot.”
How he made the delicious fish stew and homemade
bread out of the scraps he found
in our kitchen, I couldn’t explain.
We went out together to invite
the neighborhood in for a hot
meal, even though they weren’t church members.
We all spoke different languages,
but a hot lunch served by candlelight translates
across cultures.

I dragged drywall, black with mold, to our dumpster,
and noticed Christ walking by the cars in line
for the gas station on the corner.
When I got closer, I noticed he handed
out fresh-baked cookies and bottled water.
“Have some sweetness.
Life is hard when you can’t get necessities.”
Some drivers stared at him, like he was one of those predatory
scammers they’d been warned against.
“What’s the catch?” they growled.
“No catch,” he said with that convincing smile.
“Just a gift of grace, freely given. You’re free
to accept or refuse.” A strange communion.

Jesus left while there was still
much work to do: new carpet to be installed,
drywall to be hung, fencing to be constructed
around church grounds. I watch him drive
his empty truck, followed
by some of the neighbors, away from the church.

The next time it rained, I noticed
that the long, leaking roof had healed.

Charitable Contributions in the Wake of a Storm

I wonder if other communities have moved quickly to disaster relief for the Bahamas.  It's been less than a week since the storm moved on, and South Florida is already planning a variety of efforts.  Various sites are collecting all sorts of items and figuring out ways to get them there.  There's been announcements imploring people to donate their unused hurricane supplies to the Bahamas.   I've heard of several benefit events already planned.

Are other communities doing this, or do we see more activity here because we have so many relocated Bahamians here?  Or because the Bahamas are so close?  Or because of a sort of survivor's guilt?

In these post-disaster times, many will feel the urge to help--and predators will come out of the woodwork too.  It's important to know that our charitable actions will benefit the right people.

Money is one of the easiest ways for many of us to donate, but here too, we should be cautious.  There will be fake websites set up to look like real ones.  There will be fake organizations who will take our money but not give it to any disaster victims.

Churches are not immune, of course, but I like the disaster relief from my Lutheran group, the ELCA.  ELCA groups commonly stay in an area struck by disaster long after other groups leave.

You can donate to the ELCA hurricane disaster relief here.  Lutheran World Relief also does hurricane recovery, and you can donate here.

And if you can't donate now, sadly, I'm sure that the Bahamas will be needing help for years to come.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, September 8, 2019:


First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 18:1-11

Psalm: Psalm 1

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 (Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 NRSV)

Second Reading: Philemon 1-21

Gospel: Luke 14:25-33

Here we have another tough Gospel, where Jesus seems to knock all our defenses out from under us. With his reference to the person building a tower, he seems to be telling us to think very carefully before we leap onboard his Kingdom train. We may have to give up (or at least transform our relationship to) much that we've held dear.

First, he tells us that we have to hate our family. Notice that I'm not exaggerating--hate is the verb Jesus uses. He doesn't use a verb that would be more palatable, like reject or leave or forsake. No, we have to hate them. Many of us have spent much of our lives struggling against a certain human tendency towards hating others--now we're instructed to hate our family?

It gets worse. In that list, Jesus includes our very lives. We have to hate our own lives? What's that all about?

Many scholars would tell us that Jesus is telling us that we can't have the same lives when we're Christians as we did before we came to Christ. Our relationships will have to be transformed. Many of us place our relationships with our family members above all else. Many more of us place our own self-worth above everything else. 

We've spent the last several weeks listening to Jesus telling us that we can no longer behave that way. We have to transform our world of relationships. For those of us who have been used to hiding away with our families, we are called to treat the whole world as our family, especially the poor and the outcast. For those of us who put no one's needs above our own, we can no longer behave that way. The only way towards the world for which we yearn is to place the needs of others ahead of our own.

Our relationship to our possessions is not exempt from this discussion. Here is Christ again telling us that we have to give up all that we have. For some of us, it might be easy to hate our family and give them up. For some of us who are filled with self-loathing anyway, it might be frighteningly easy to hate ourselves. 

But to give up our possessions too? How will we ever feel secure? Again and again, Jesus reminds us that we rely too much on the things of this world, the things (and people and our own egos) that pull us away from God.

At this point we might feel despair about our ability to walk this pilgrim path.

But as our spiritual forebears would tell us, if we would listen, this all gets easier the more we practice. If we think of all that we own as being on loan to us, it's easier to pass our stuff along. If we simplify our lives, it's easier not to clutch to our money as much. If we spend our time in prayer and spiritual reading, it's easier to rely on God. If we spend our time practicing inclusivity, it's easier to expand our idea of family. The world is filled with lonely people who would like to be invited to dinner or coffee.

And some day, we might look up and realize that the life we once lived was living death. We might realize that by reorganizing and reforming that life, we've gained a life worth living

Shelter at Camp

When I need to feel optimistic about the future of humanity, let me remember how many people posted offers on Facebook to shelter people fleeing from Hurricane Dorian--and the offer was often open to friends of friends.

Some of those offers were made in a post, while others were made in comment threads.  Most of the offers were a guest room or space on the couch or floor.  One person offered a mountain cottage that wasn't being rented out right now--so it was clean, but not rental ready.  I might call that spartan or monastic.

Yesterday, I noticed this Facebook post from my favorite church camp:

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Lutheridge Camp & Conference Center, in Arden, NC, is now open for those who are required or choosing to evacuate in the path of Hurricane Dorian. Housing is free of charge. Availability is limited, on a first come first served basis. Housing is available through Friday, September 13th. Guests are asked to please bring bedding and sheets as circumstances allow. Pets are permitted for those staying in cabin housing. Reservations must be made in advance of your arrival by calling Lutheridge Registration at 828.209.6328.

“It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.” – Isaiah 4:6

---------------

Lutheridge has made this offer in past storms.  I did a quick search this morning of some other camps in the area, and if they're open to storm refugees, they're not publicizing it in the same way.

What a gift, this sharing of resources.  It's one reason why I continue to support camps.  I'm not sure that sleep-away camp is a model that will be as important in decades to come.  But there are many ways towards spiritual formation.

Being a shelter in the storm is one of them.

Worship Service in the Face of Storms

On Saturday, it looked like the worst of Hurricane Dorian would stay away from us.  Yesterday morning, the forecast was similar, but the hurricane was forecast to be a bit closer to the coast.  In short, we will probably not experience a direct hit in Broward county, but with a huge storm that close, it's hard to predict the impacts.

We went to church anyway.  I was expecting attendance to be light, but it looked fairly normal.  Our pastor had already been at work taking some of the smaller garden objects inside, but the church is far enough inland that we didn't need to do much storm prep for the building.

Our pastor had made a Sunday morning decision to switch the approach of the sermon.  He was going to start a 4 Sunday series on The Lord's Prayer.  Instead, he chose 6 Psalms that talk about storms and God being a constant source of refuge.  Six of us read the Psalm and talked about a time when God was a refuge.

We had a variety of stories, as you might expect.  The stories spoke for themselves, and I was glad that our pastor just let them stand without much commentary.

I was one of the reader reflectors.  I went after several people had shared stories of miracles.  I talked about some of the smaller times I had requested the presence of God, like during a job search or the home renovations after Hurricane Irma.  I used the opportunity to remind us all that God is interested in every facet of our lives.  We don't need to face a huge, life altering event to ask God for help and strength.

The rest of the service remained the same, which made a certain sense.  The bulletins had been printed with the hymns.  We don't have hymnals at the pews.  I did spend part of the service wishing that we were singing some of the songs with weather themes.

It was a good reminder of how something as structured as our liturgical worship service can be refigured and rather quickly.  It was a good reminder of how the Psalms have something to say about almost every situation we might face in the 21st century.