Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Siena

We don’t tend to think of the medieval time in Europe as a high water mark of feminism, but female monastics accomplished amazing feats during that time period. Catherine of Siena is one of those female monastics who lived in the later part of the 14th century in a plague-ravaged part of Italy. Despite the patriarchal culture in which she lived, she left behind a collection of accomplishments that would have been amazing for a woman of our day.

Unlike many of the other female mystics of the medieval time period, like Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena didn’t live a cloistered life. She was part of a monastic tradition, but she returned to live with her family so that she could live amongst them and continue to reject them, a much tougher spiritual task. While doing that, she gave away food and clothing, to the detriment of the family wealth. She didn’t care.

Early on, she had mystical visions where she claimed to be wed to Christ and claimed to be fed by him. Often, mystics make me feel further away from God--their experiences are so different from anything I understand. Catherine of Siena is no different. I find myself thinking, well at least her visions don’t involve pain and piercings, like those of Teresa of Avila. Some part of me envies these mystics, who claimed visions sent to them by God and wonders why God doesn’t speak to me this way. Some part of me speculates about the mental health of these mystics with their extreme visions.

Throughout her life, she had trouble eating. Would a modern doctor have diagnosed her with GI trouble or would a psychiatrist have seen anorexia? Perhaps, but she turned her dislike of eating into a mark of spiritual virtue.

Even though she didn’t consume many calories, she burned through her life with amazing energy. She did the actions we would expect from a member of a religious order, like feeding the poor. But she also worked on political issues of her day, lobbying for peace between warring Italian principalities and advocating clergy reform. She wrote numerous letters demanding that the Pope return to Rome from Avignon.

Her writing is seen as an important part of literary history, and not only because we have so few medieval texts authored by women. She wrote The Dialogue of Divine Providence, a discussion between a soul and God. She wrote letters to a wide variety of people, from the Pope down to the common woman. Over 300 letters survive.

Many of her ideas still seem relevant to our own time period. She said, "Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee." During the hectic days, I try to remember retreat to inner peace, even as outer chaos reigns supreme. I may not have a monastic cell to call my own, but if I’m lucky, I can always find one in my brain. Catherine of Siena might have advised me not to rely on luck, but to train my thinking in this way.

We all face constraints of various kinds. The life of Catherine of Siena shows what can be accomplished, even during a time where women did not have full rights and agency. She said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” She didn’t say “Be who God meant you to be within the boundaries of your society.” No, she directed us to strive to find our full potential. She knew the stakes. But she also knew the power of a life directed towards God’s purposes, not human purposes.

We can discover that power too.

Abiding with Jesus, Our True Vine

I made this Facebook post this morning:  "In a few hours I will preach on John 15: 1-8, and instead of focusing on fruit and the fire that non-producing branches face, I will preach on the idea of abiding with Jesus, the true vine. Abide is a word that the writer of the Gospel of John uses frequently, and perhaps even more than we thought. The Greek word often gets translated as "believe," but "abide" might be the truer translation. How would our approach to faith change if we had heard "Abide in me" instead of "Believe in me" through the ages?"

I am thinking of all the scraggly plants I've known, plants I've been sure had died, but suddenly sprouted new leaves. I am taking one of those plants with me for a sermon visual.

Here are the closing paragraphs of my sermon on John 15: 1-8:

The Gospel of John uses the word “abide” more than any other book in the Bible, and there’s reason to think that often when translators have used the word “Believe,” that a better translation might be “Abide.” And this bit of translation goes even wider. Think about one of the more durable ideas of Heaven that we find in John, John 14: 2 where Jesus says, “ In my Father's house are many mansions”—a better translation might be dwelling places, not mansions. The Greek might be key here: Mone—dwelling places; meno—abide—same Greek root.

I am not a Greek scholar, so I’m relying on the work of others. But with that idea in mind, we could also translate the verse this way: “In my father’s house are many abiding places.” I love that language, abiding place. Even though I don’t think of vines and branches when I think of abiding places, they are images meant to convey a similar concept. One Gospel commentator puts it this way: “So the vine image is another way of talking about abiding places (places where one is deeply at home), and both the vine and the abiding places are ways of talking about love.”

These images remind us that there are many ways of being deeply at home with the Divine, in whatever incarnation we envision God. Maybe it’s centering prayer. Maybe it’s Sabbath time, where we turn off our electronics and settle in for a Sunday afternoon with the Creator and the birds. Maybe the Holy Spirit calls us to take the Good News to new places. Maybe it’s spending time returning to the parables of Jesus, thinking about what they mean for the twentieth century.

Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus calls us to abide with him, and that process of being deeply at home with Jesus is ongoing—and it will be incomplete. At some point, we will die, and there will still be work left to do. But when we die, it will be a homecoming, not a withering, not a burning. Jesus promises that if we abide in him, we will bear good fruit. We don’t have to spend time trying to decide what kind of good fruit to bear. We don’t have to evaluate the fruit. There’s no need to judge the fruit of others. God, the master gardener, knows the needs of creation, and does the pruning, the fertilizing, the watering, the nurturing to keep the vineyard fruitful. Our task, our mission—to abide with Jesus, to let Jesus nourish us.

Baptismo Sum

 When we were experimenting with glass etching cream on Thursday, my spouse wanted me to look up the Latin phrase "Baptismo Sum."  We've both been taught that Martin Luther used it as he washed each morning, saying "I am baptized" in Latin so that he remembered this essential truth each day.

So I Googled it and said, "Look, there's my poem."  It was published in Sojourners in 2005, and I am so delighted that it comes up first or second in a search for the Latin word.  True to Google form lately, I couldn't find out what I wanted to know.  But instead of my usual frustration at how bad search engines have become, I had the happiness of being bounced to a poem of mine--a poem that holds up.

I'll paste the poem below, since Sojourners does limit how many articles one can view.  But if you want to see it at the Sojourners site, go here.  Sadly, the artwork that originally appeared with it is not there, but the poem is preserved.

Baptismo Sum

In this month of dehydration,
we keep our eyes skyward, both to watch
for rain and to avoid the scorn
of the scorched succulents who reproach
us silently, saying, "You promised to care."

And so, although we thought we could stick
these seedlings in the ground and leave
them to their own devices, we haul
hoses and buckets of water to the outer edges
of the yard where the hose will not reach.

The idea of a desert seduces,
as it did the Desert Fathers, who fled
the corruption of the cities to contemplate
theology surrounded by sand
and stinging winds. My thoughts travel
to the Sanctuary Movement, contemporary Christians
who risked all to rescue illegal aliens.
I admire their faith, tested in that desert crucible.
I could create my own patch of desert in tribute.

Yet deserts do not always sanctify.
I think of the Atomic Fathers
who hauled equipment into the New Mexico
desert and littered the landscape with fallout
which litters our lives, a new religion,
generations transformed in the light of the Trinity test site.

I back away from my Darwinian, desert dreams.
The three most popular religions
in the world emerged from their dry desert
roots, preaching the literal and symbolic primacy
of water, leaving the arid ranges behind
as they flowed toward temperance.

I cannot reject the religion of my ancestors,
who spent every day of their lives
remembering their baptism before heading to the fields
to make the dirt dream in colors.

Leading My First Funeral

This week-end I will help lead a funeral for my mom's cousin, Bob Hughes.  I've been part of the planning of it, and soon I need to type some final edits into the document.

I could have led this funeral even if I didn't have the SAM position, but I did check in with my Synod supervisor, just to make sure I was on solid ground.  My cousin was a beloved part of the community of Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN; several of the members were children in the church with him, and his mom and dad, Martha and Haskell, were deeply involved members until their deaths.

It's been interesting to plan this funeral, which won't be a traditional Lutheran one, while also taking a Foundations of Worship class.  One of the assignments for that class was to plan my own funeral.  The verses that I chose for my funeral are the ones we'll be using for Bob's funeral.  The music will be different; my mom is supplying the music for Bob's funeral, which is another interesting element.

I have prayed a lot, and I have rehearsed it all in my mind.  I really want it to go well, and I think that it will.  It will have elements of a Quaker funeral, where everyone has ample chances to speak and remember Bob.  We will also have a Moravian Love Feast, which is like a Eucharist, but a little more inclusive than some Christian Eucharist celebrations would be.

It will be my first funeral that I'm leading.  I am honored to have been chosen.

The Feast Day of Saint Mark

Today is the feast day of Saint Mark. Looking back through my blog posts, I'm surprised to find out that I haven't written much about this feast day.  It does often fall in a part of the month where I'm more likely to be at the Create in Me retreat.  But it's also because it's hard to know who the real Saint Mark was.  So many Marks, so hard to know for sure who did what.

Was he the author of the Gospel of Mark? The one who brought water to the house where the last supper took place? That strange naked man in the Crucifixion narrative? It's hard to say.

We do give him credit for founding the church in Egypt, and that fact alone seems important enough for him to have a feast day. I think of all the church traditions that can be traced back to northern Africa, particularly the work of the desert fathers and mothers, which led to so many variations of monastic traditions.

I also think of Augustine, the important thinker, one of the earliest Christian philosophers, who lived in Hippo. Would we have had Augustine if Mark hadn't been an evangelist to Egypt? It's hard to know. If Mark hadn't gone to Egypt, would someone else? Probably--but the outcome might have been completely different.

Today is also a good day to turn our thoughts back to those early evangelists, those early disciples. I often say that if you were putting together a team, you would not have chosen those men. But God's ways are not our ways when visualizing success.

So for those of us who are feeling inadequate, take heart. God's plans are greater than our own.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 28, 2024:

First Reading: Acts 8:26-40

Psalm: Psalm 22:24-30 (Psalm 22:25-31 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 John 4:7-21

Gospel: John 15:1-8

The Gospel of John includes several "I am" stories, like the one we find in the Gospel for this week. Unlike the idea of Jesus as shepherd, which might be unfamiliar to those of us who live so far away from farms, the idea of Jesus as the vine, and believers as the branches isn't that hard for most of us to grasp. Most of us have watched plants grow, and we understand that one branch of the plant won't do well if we separate it from the main stalk.

We know what happens when we forget to water plants regularly or when the rains stop, and the yards grow crispy.

Jesus is the one who delivers water and nutrients. We won't do well when we're disconnected from the life source. In fact, Jesus makes clear what happens to those of us who separate from Christ: we wither.

What if we're feeling withered? We might assume that Christ has left us to parch, but maybe we need to meet Jesus in a new place. Maybe it's time to return to our gratitude journals. Maybe we need to plan a retreat. Maybe we need to try an artistic practice. Maybe we need a physical discipline to shape our spiritual discipline: yoga or fasting or walking a labyrinth.

And then it's time to bear fruit. It's in this area that I find this week's Gospel unsettling.

Notice how in just 8 verses, Jesus repeats several things. More than once, we're reminded that branches that don't bear fruit are cut away from the true vine. Look at the verbs that Jesus uses for these non-bearing branches: wither, gathered, thrown, burned.

My brain wants to know what kind of timeline we're working with here. How long do I have to prove I can bear fruit? Is it too late? Have I been cast into the fire already, and I just don't know it yet?

I suspect I'm missing the point. God, the true vine and vinedresser, seems to give humanity chance after chance after chance. In these verses, though, Jesus reminds us that much is expected from us. Where are we bearing good fruit?

Every action that we take helps to create a world that is either more good or more evil. We want to make sure we're creating the Kingdom that God has called us to help create. We're to be creating it here, now--not in some distant time and place when we're dead.

We're in a world where the Good News of the Gospel is that the Kingdom of God is both here now (thus a cause for joy) and not yet (as evidenced by evil in the world). How can we be the vine bearing good fruit?

We don't have time to waste withering on the vine. God has many joyous tasks for us, and the world urgently needs for us to do them.

Systematic Theology Rough Draft Process

 As is usual on a Tuesday or a Thursday, I have less time to write.  Soon I need to get ready to head down the mountain to Spartanburg Methodist College--but today is the last day of face to face classes for me this semester.

Yesterday, I wasn't sure what to expect.  I knew that the tile crew would return.  I knew that I had plenty of tasks to do at my desk, and my spouse has a wide variety of home repair tasks to choose from each day.  I sat at my desk and got to work.

I got grading done and e-mails done and a bit of writing revision, the tinkering just before a paper gets turned in kind of revision.  I went for a walk in the chilly Spring air--chilly, but in a crisp way, not in a kill the plants way.  The sky was so blue, and the landscape is filling in; soon we won't be able to see much beyond the roadside but green, green, green.

As I came to the end of the road by the lake, I had a vision for how to write my final paper for Systematic Theology.  I've had lots of ideas for what I want to say, but no idea for how to organize it.  I came home knowing what to do, and I sat down to do it.  I organized it by doctrines of the Church that have worked together in a less good way than they could have:  Soteriology (salvation), Ecclesiology (the Church), Eschatology (end times), and Creation.  To sum up:  our focus on salvation for individual sin coupled with our belief that we're just here as a holding place before heaven has left societal "sin" running rampant, putting all of creation at risk.  

I have a complete rough draft!  I just need to go back to add some quotes, and do some polishing.  I didn't think it would come together that easily.  I expected to have a skeleton at the end of the day, 4 pages that could be expanded later.  But I have nine full pages, so getting to the 15-20 page requirement will not be a problem.  

It's a relief.  In some ways, this should be an easy paper to write; we have a lot more latitude since it's our final paper for the two semester Systematic Theology paper.  But that latitude made me cautious.  I also have a paper to write for my Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class, so I don't want to use similar ideas and get flagged for plagiarism--that, too, made me cautious.  

The paper I just wrote is not likely to overlap with the paper I will be writing for my EHC class, which is due May 11.  I'll be using different outside sources for each.

It feels good to have a rough draft.  I still have much work to do;  with all the classes that I'm teaching and taking, I have at least 5 deadlines to keep in mind, with smaller deadlines along the way.  But in some ways, that's easier than if they all came crashing to an end during the same week.  Steady, steady, and it will get done.

Hearing Voices--Or Not--A Children's Sermon Success Story

 My day is quickly filling up as the various ends of semesters all come into sight.  But let me record a moment from yesterday's worship service at Faith Lutheran that went really well.

Yesterday's Gospel was John 10:  11-18, which talks about the sheep hearing the shepherd's voice.  For the youth sermon, I wanted to demonstrate how hard it can be to hear individual voices when there's so much noise, and how hard it can be to hear God's voice in the midst of all the noise.

Before the service started, I wrote statements on paper slips, like "Hey, sheep, come here and I'll make you a star."  "Hey, sheep, I can make you rich."  At a moment in the sermon, I orchestrated the adults in the background to say all their lines at once, and if they didn't have a line, they could say, "Hey, sheep, over here."  The youth would listen and try to decide which voice to follow.

I was surprised by what a cacophony happened when everyone spoke/shouted at once.  When I had the congregation stop, I asked the youth which voice they would follow, and then I asked if they could hear any individual voice.  They could not.

It worked beautifully to demonstrate my message.  And then, we were able to talk about how we hear God's voice:  in silence, in church, in songs, in reading, in being in community with people who want the best for you, in prayer.

I felt like my adult sermon went well too, and what makes me happier is that I was feeling very stymied on Saturday morning.  By evening, after much prayer and thought and writing and discussing with my spouse, I had two sermons that worked.

It won't always be that way, I know.  But I'm always grateful when inspiration comes, even if it's at the eleventh hour.

Today's Sermon: Listen for the Voice of the One Who Really Loves You

I'm really pleased with how I ended my sermon that I will preach in a few hours.  The text is John 10:  11-18, a text which meditates on shepherds, sheep, and what the shepherd does that the hired hand doesn't.  Here's the ending:

Let’s use the language of the 23rd Psalm as we analyze whether or not we’re hearing the Shepherd’s voice. Are we being called to green pastures and calm water? Does our cup run over? Are our souls restored?

Once we determine that we’re hearing God’s voice, hopefully it will be easier to follow our Good Shepherd along the right pathways. And when we do have to go through the valleys of death—and there can be so many valleys of death in a single human life—when we do have to go through the valleys of death, we will know we do not need to be afraid. We’re not walking alone. We’re not abandoned. The one who loves us and claims us will lead us home.

Don’t follow the voices that will abandon you, running away to leave you to be devoured by wolves. Listen for the voice that calls you to resurrection, to new life, to loving community—to new life.

Communal Poetry Project

 Two years ago, I was part of a seminary class that studied Jericho Brown's duplexes.  As part of my final project, I wrote some duplexes of my own.  I went through my poetry notebooks looking for lines that didn't make it into a poem, and I created a Word document of them.  I ended up with lots of abandoned lines in a big document, and I return to the document periodically when I need inspiration.

This week, I used those lines in a different way.  I needed something different to do with my English 100 class.  I decided to celebrate National Poetry Month with a communal poetry project.  Along the way, I talked about how doing different kinds of writing can make us feel refreshed when we return to academic writing, so it wasn't only a diversion.

I took the document that I created a few weeks ago as part of my internship.  I was trying to create a Mad Libs kind of thing to prompt people to tell their spiritual stories, and I modified it for the poetry project.  I knew that these students needed something to get their creative ideas flowing--or to have something to use in case they didn't get any creative ideas at all.  I created a fill in the blank document that would prompt them to make a list of nouns, verbs, emotions, and then a different fill in the blank document with words missing from lines from famous poems ("Hope is a thing with ______"), hymns ("Oh for a thousand tongues to _____") and pop songs ("You turn me round and round like a _______").

Before class, I cut up the lines from my abandoned lines document and put them in a bowl.  We had a time of taking those lines and adding lines.  If nothing came to them, they could use one of the items from the Mad Libs documents.  At one point, I collected slips with my line and the student line and gave them to a different student to write a new line.  Students ended up with 9-15 slips of paper on their individual tables.

Before class, I had rearranged the tables (I love a classroom with tables that are mobile!).  On the back tables, I taped blank paper, which created 9 blank documents for my analogue cut and paste.  I brought tape with me to class, and I gave students a piece of tape and had them go tape a slip to the longer sheet of paper.  It wasn't as chaotic as I thought it might be. 

We ended up with pieces of paper that were fairly full, but still had space.  I mention this because I wasn't sure how many blank sheets to create.  And as students walked back and forth, they had plenty of room.  Ten students participated, so I'm not sure how this would work with larger groups.  I'd probably have a few more blank documents.

I then read each of the communal poems out loud.  It was interesting to see how the lines spoke to each other.  I talked about the kinds of academic papers we might write if we were asked to write about poems like these.  I also asked about their process.  Only three students read the slips that were already there as they thought about where to tape their own slips.  The process for most students was fairly random, and I was amazed at how the poems held together.

At the end of class, I had students write about the process to tell me what they thought.  Three students said that their favorite part was when I read each poem; that made me happy, because I felt a little unsure of that part.  And the best part--one student talked at great length about how amazing the experience was, the whole process.  Hurrah!

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post confessing that I was failing National Poetry Month.  Yesterday, I feel like I succeeded.

Internship's End

 Last night, my internship experience came to a close--it was a natural end, nothing dire.  But it does feel like an event worth noting.

First, some background.  Wesley handles internships differently than some  schools.  It's a part-time job coupled with a class where we meet each week to process our experiences together as a group.  The part-time position can be in a church, the typical learning to be a parish pastor kind of job.  But it could also be in any number of other settings, from prisons to hospitals to non-profits.  If a seminarian has a specific vision, as I did, she can file the paperwork to have her site considered.

I was lucky to have this flexibility.  When I was thinking about possibilities, I wasn't sure where I would be living.  The campus housing was slated to be torn down, and I was mulling over options.  I decided that an internship that I could do remotely made sense.  I had been impressed with the way the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA offered online options for spiritual growth, so I reached out to them.  They were agreeable, and happily, the paperwork was not too onerous.  I know that Synod staff are busy folks, and I hated making paperwork requests.

During my seminary journey, I've never been too worried about traditional classes:  I know that I can write, and I can read rigorous books and journal articles, and I have little problem meeting class deadlines.  But the internship process worried me a bit, with its additional parts:  class instructors, internship staff from the school, and Synod staff.  Happily, everything went smoothly.

When I first started at Wesley, the internship stretched over two years, with the class meeting every other week.  I prefer the more intense model that I just completed.  Much can go wrong over two years, and I would hate to have to start over.  Much can go wrong over one year, and I'm glad to have this requirement completed.

When I talk about much that can go wrong, I know that may sound like I'm being a bit of a drama queen.  But I've seen classmates derailed by events, like the death of the mother who was providing childcare or a pregnancy that turned problematic or any number of other health problems.  I know that internship sites that seem fantastic can change.  I feel fortunate that I didn't have any stumbling blocks.

I also feel fortunate that my internship journey has been filled with wonderful people, people I worked with directly and indirectly at the Synod level, faculty, classmates.  I have felt supported and nurtured at every turn.  I know that not everyone gets that experience, and I am so grateful that I have had the experience that I just completed.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 21, 2024:

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. (Ps. 23:1)

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Here's another familiar set of images in today's Gospel, ones that are so familiar that we neglect to see the strangeness. But read the passage again and notice how many times Jesus says he's the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. At first, knowing the outcome of Jesus' life story as we do, we might find that a comforting thought.

But imagine that you're a little lamb with a scary wolf nearby. Maybe the good shepherd kills the wolf while laying down his life for you. But does that leave you protected from the other wolves that are out there? No. At a Create in Me retreat years ago, pastor Jan Setzler pointed out that a dead shepherd is no use to the sheep. I hadn't thought about this parable from that angle before he pointed it out in a Bible study. Most of us don't raise livestock these days, so we forget how strange this metaphor would have seemed to an audience of people who knew shepherds.

The people of Jesus’ time who heard him speak in this mystical way would have been more puzzled than comforted. I suspect that would have been their usual reaction to him. His parables are familiar to us, so we’ve lost sight of their strangeness. Two thousand years ago, people would have said, “What good is a dead shepherd?”

They might have been more like me. I want a shepherd who will remind me to come out of the rain. I want a shepherd who will tilt my head back down so that I don’t drown in the rain because I’m too stupid not to inhale the rain. I want a shepherd who will gather the flock together and kill the predators with a skillful shot from a sling. I want a shepherd who leads us to safe pastures.

And the good news of the Gospels is that we have such a shepherd.

These verses serve to remind us that the world we live in is a scary one. You may think you can make it on your own, but you can't. Notice that Jesus doesn't compare us to cats or horses--no, we're sheep, some of the dumbest animals ever domesticated. You may be able to make it on your own up to a point--but where will that point be?

No, we need the safety of the flock, the safety of a shepherd. We need someone who will train us to recognize his voice. The good news of the Gospels: we have that shepherd in Jesus.

A Different Approach to Responsive Readings

Last week at the Create in Me retreat, we did some worship planning. In a way, it's a familiar aspect of the retreat. But this year was different: we had one person who had done the prep work in advance (choosing texts and music, thinking about the order of worship, recruiting some leaders) and worship prep was an afternoon option, not a morning requirement.

We didn't have as many people who wanted to participate, so some approaches wouldn't work as well. For example, in the past, a Word team might have acted out the Bible reading, but with just one person, that's not as viable. In the past, the Movement group might have put together a performance or brought silks for the congregation to use, but not this year.

In some ways, the final worship service was more participatory, which I didn't anticipate. We didn't have a Movement group, so we adapted one song to have movements that the whole worship congregation would do--and it worked.

I was in charge of the Word team, which was one other person. She read one passage, which was fine. But I wanted to do something different with the other two Bible passages. I thought about drafting people to help me act out a scene, and there probably would have been people who were willing. But in the worship prep afternoon session, we came up with a different idea: a responsive reading.

Most of us probably think of responsive reading as something we do with a Psalm. But I was happy to experiment, and so I spent an hour with the Ruth and Naomi text and the David and Jonathan text (our retreat had a friendship theme this year) and created the following. I'm posting it here, because the responsive reading went well, and I wanted to remember that it worked:


The Story Ruth, Read Responsively


Right Side

All our men have died, husbands, sons, and we are left alone.

Left Side

I advise the women who married my dead sons to go to the house of their mothers. Perhaps they can marry again. We cry together.

Right Side

We know that I am too old to remarry, but they are not.

Left Side

I cannot give them new sons. They should find someone else to marry.

Right Side

Orpah leaves, but Ruth does not.

Left Side

Ruth says, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live.

Right Side

Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.

Left Side

Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

Right Side

May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”

Left Side

If Ruth wants to come, I will not stop her. We go to the land of my people, Bethlehem. We get home just before the barley harvest.



The Story of David and Jonathan read responsively


Right Side

Jonathan loved David—the bond was immediate. They made a pact.

Left Side

To seal the pact, Jonathan gave David his robe, his tunic, sword, bow, and belt.

Right Side

David was successful in war—too successful.

Left Side

Jonathan’s father, King Saul, vowed to kill David.

Right Side

Jonathan warned David and came up with a plan to save him.

Left Side

David hid, while Jonathan reminded King Saul of all the good David had done.

Right Side

King Saul changed his mind and vowed that David would not die but live.

Left Side

In this way, Jonathan saved both David and his father.

A Different Kind of Lectio Divina

Before we get too far away from the Create in Me retreat, I want to make sure I record our experience with Bible Study, which was different from any we had ever done.  We had as our text Luke 5: 18-25, the story about a paralyzed man lowered through the roof where Jesus was teaching and healing.  We did some Ignatian types of meditation, imagining ourselves as part of the story.

Then we did a different kind of encountering of the text.  We were divided into groups, five to a table.  We listened to our leader read the story again, and we circled words that leapt out at us.  We listened to the story again, discerning the one word that was important.  Each member of the group shared their word, and we put them into an order.  It might have been a sentence that made sense or perhaps not.  Then we were given big sheets of paper and a stick of charcoal and we wrote the words over and over again.

My group's words were:  friend glorifying their faith friend.  My word was "their"--I was interested in faith as a collective action in verse 20:  "When he saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, our sins are forgiven you.'"

Here's the drawing on the first day:

I tried to fill up all the space, but we didn't have to do that.  I was interested in words on top of each other, but we didn't have to do that.  The member of our group that wrote words in a circle on the page ended up with a very different sketch that was also pleasing.  In fact, I liked everyone else's better than mine, but that's not an uncommon feeling for me.

The second day, we did a different interpretation of the story from Mark, and then we returned to our sketches.  We drew some more.  We were trying to be alert to see if shapes emerged, shapes or anything else.  I thought my paper looked like a big mess, so I did some smudging.  I took my finger and wrote the word "Friends" across the smudging.  Here's the result:

I wanted to play with color pastel, but those weren't the instructions.  In the future, I would add color.  I really enjoyed the meditative aspect of the work.  It reminded me of cutting paper, which I can find oddly soothing.

I thought this worked well as a group activity at a creativity retreat.  I wonder how it would work in other settings.  The charcoal can be very messy--a bonus and a drawback, depending on the group.

Did it provide deeper insights?  I'm not sure.  I preferred it to the Ignatian imagining.  But I do confess that today, just six days later, I couldn't remember which words we chose.  I remembered the word "friend" but not the others.

I am trying to come up with something to do with my English 100 class next week.  Maybe we'll try a version of this.  Hmmm.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 14, 2024:

First Reading: Acts 3:12-19

Psalm: Psalm 4

Second Reading: 1 John 3:1-7

Gospel: Luke 24:36b-48

In this week's Gospel, we have another appearance story, and what an odd story it is. In the post-Resurrection stories, Jesus has taken on supernatural capacities that, with the exception of some of his accomplishments with his miracles, he didn't really demonstrate before his crucifixion. Here, he suddenly appears; a few verses earlier, he has vanished after eating.

The disciples, rooted in the rational world, can't make sense of what they're seeing and hearing. Those of us who spend our secular lives surrounded by people who are disdainful of the mystical might find ourselves more sympathetic to their plight.

I find myself coming back to verse 41, the disciples who “disbelieved for joy.” In Eugene Peterson’s words, it seems too good to be true (The Message version of the Bible).

So many things get in our way of believing in good news: despair, fear of hurt, joy, our commitment to what our senses tell us. Even as the disciples see Jesus standing in front of them, even as they touch him, even as they share a meal together, they can’t believe how lucky they are. They literally will not believe.

How much we are like the disciples, buffeted by bad news, unable to see the Divine standing right there in front of us. How nice it would be to have Jesus there to help us understand all these mysteries: “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures” (Luke 24: 45). So many weeks we have minds that have snapped shut. I find myself envious of these disciples who are there at the beginning, with open minds and joyful hearts and a soul that finally understands.

I remind myself that I have an advantage that these disciples didn’t have. I know that this Good News will be spread far and wide. I know how the world has received it at various times. I have seen regular humans who are able to transform their corners of the world with an ability that seems almost superhuman—but it is a power that comes from Christ.

I want to be part of that community. I want to be a resurrection human, one of those lights who doesn’t let the drumbeat of bad news drown out the Good News of Jesus.

Jesus is still here, reminding us of his scars and of the capacity to overcome those things that scar us. Jesus is still here, waiting to share a meal with us. Jesus is still here, reminding us that we are witnesses and co-creators of the Kingdom, that we are called to a far greater destiny than our tiny imaginations can envision.

Eclipse Regrets

I now have eclipse regret.  Perhaps I should have gone on a quest for totality.  I knew we were going to be at 85% totality, and I thought that would be enough.  But now, seeing other people's pictures and reading about their experiences, I'm wondering if I should have made more of an effort.  After all, we won't have these opportunities often, at least not in driving distance.

I'm also feeling a tinge of sadness for other reasons.  I made this Facebook post yesterday afternoon:  "Strange to think about how much has changed since August 2017, the last time I viewed a solar eclipse. Back then, I wrote this conclusion to a blog post: 'Make plans now: August 12, 2045, my house will be on the path of full totality. If the rising seas haven't washed it away, you're all invited to my house. Full totality will be at 1:37 p.m.' That was my Florida house, now someone else's Florida house, and that post was just a few weeks before Hurricane Irma."

We stayed in that house for four more years, many of them years of trying to stay sane in the midst of home repairs from hurricane damage.  Sure, we were one of the lucky ones--our insurance paid for the repairs, with minimum struggle to get them to do it.  We thought it was going to be a struggle, with a need to send documentation about our contractor and to get said contractor to fill in reports periodically to get the funds released periodically--and then, out of the clear blue sky, the funds were released in one big check.

I spent the next four years expecting the insurance company to come and demand paperwork or demand their money back or somehow make my life more difficult.  Happily, they did not.

Thinking about 2017 makes me sad for all sorts of reasons.  Even though I didn't have the amount of leave accrued in my new job that would have let me go on a quest for totality, I was happy in that job at that moment.  We had just had a successful accreditation visit.  Our new president who was in charge of two campuses was still mostly at the Ft. Lauderdale campus, still mostly not concerned with my campus, the Hollywood campus.  It was all going to go badly in many different ways in the coming years, but if I had any sense of that fact, it was only a glimmer.

There's also some sadness because we spent that 2017 eclipse in and near the pool in our backyard; my sister and nephew were down for a visit, and we were having a marvelous time.  We still have a marvelous time together, but it's different now, in the normal ways that everything changes as we age.

I have spent time trying not to look back, but every so often, I'm stopped in my tracks.  Usually, I'm stopped for happiness.  If I could go back to 2017 Kristin and tell her how life has changed, she would be amazed:  a home in the mountains, almost done with an MDiv program, a part-time preaching position, and a teaching job at a small, liberal arts college.  That list represents lots of dreams coming true.  It also represents some severances:  something we don't always remember when we think about dreams coming true, that dreams coming true mean some dreams fade away.

It is time to get ready for that teaching job--off I go, soon, down the mountains to teach English at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I teach, while the bathroom install is happening here.  It will be good to be away.

Let me close with another Facebook post from yesterday:  "Today I looked at the sky and looked at the ground, hoping for interesting shadows during the eclipse. No interesting shadows, but I did realize for the first time that one of our spindly trees is a dogwood, one of my favorite trees."

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Preservation through Prose: Spiritual Memoir for Yourself or for Valued Elders

Instead of doing a big post looking back at the Create in Me retreat, I am much more likely this week to write a series of smaller posts.  This morning, we are hoping that our bathroom remodel gets underway, and I still have to go to campus this week.  In short, it's not going to be a week of lots of downtime.  I'm hoping for some downtime in May.

But before we get too far away from the retreat, let me remember my writing workshop on Saturday, a workshop called Preservation in Prose, a spiritual autobiography/memoir workshop.  It was a delightful group, even though there were only two people in addition to me and a person who came late.  And even more delightful--I got some writing done too.

What we did is adaptable for individual writers and for larger groups.  It's good to capture our own stories, and it's also a way to capture the stories of other people who aren't as interested in writing.

I began with a collection of objects on the table:  quilt squares (one old and tattered, one a take-away from Quilt Camp), a nail, a game piece, an Easter bunny sticker, a Scrabble tile--in short, anything I could find on various tables at the Create in Me retreat, plus some goodies from an Easter Egg hunt bag of treats prepared for kids.  We each chose one and wrote about why we chose it.  Then we discussed.

We moved to a different kind of imaginative writing.  First we imagined ourselves twenty to thirty years from now.  It's a variation of asking my students to imagine themselves as 80 year olds.  I had them write a letter from their older selves to the people they are now.  Then we did the same thing in reverse.  Have your late adolescent self write to the person you are now.

Then we made some lists like this one:

6 natural objects

6 humanmade objects

6 ordinary actions

6 art materials

We talked about metaphor, simile, and imagery--how can our concept of God change if we compare God to something on the list?  

From there, we filled in this list on one side of the handout that I created:

Detail of shift from one season to another ________________________________

Type of noise ________________________________________

Element of nature _____________________________________________

Type of emotion _________________________________________________

Favorite flower __________________________________________________

Something very tiny ________________________________________________

Floor or wall covering ______________________________________________

Something nourishing ________________________________________________

Favorite fruit __________________________________________________________

Element of self-care ______________________________________________

Something only found in a park _________________________________________

Something that oozes _____________________________________________

Favorite treat ________________________________________________________

Something that turns _______________________________________________

Favorite musical instrument ________________________________________________

Something that grinds ___________________________________________________

Something huge_____________________________________________________

Something only found in a big city ____________________________________

Favorite food made for you by an older generation ___________________________

Then we filled out this list with the items from the first list:

--A commitment to God helps us offer __________________________________.

--We yearn for the day when justice covers the earth like ______________________________.

--We are crushed into bits smaller than _____________________ by Powers and Principalities, by the forces of the world, by Satan.

--Truth rolls down through the valley like ________________________________________.

--When I work with God, it’s as if _______________________________________.

--When I think of redemption, I think of __________________________________.

--I first heard God’s call as __________________________________ .

--Evildoers cover their rotten foundations with _____________________________.

--We burn with __________________________________for the vision of new life that Jesus offers.

--I have seen the Holy Spirit moving through world like ________________________________.

--My spiritual history is like ___________________________________________.

--Injustice grinds us like a giant ____________________________________________.

--The____________________________ of justice turns slowly, but the turning does occur.

--The community of God is like _____________________________________________.

--The ___________________________of justice has found fertile soil in my heart.

--A partnership with God is like _________________________________________.

--_________________________grows in the garden of redemption.

My brain created some poem fragments that had nothing to do with the two lists--that was a delight too.

Sermon Conclusions and the Unexpected Blessings of a Retreat

I will write more about the Create in Me retreat when I have more time tomorrow.  Soon I will need to put on my presentable clothes and drive across the mountain to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  One of the blessings of the retreat:  yesterday, it gave me a way to conclude my sermon on the disciples in the locked room and doubting Thomas:

God meets us where we are. I was at a creativity retreat at Lutheridge this week, and at the creative writing workshop I offered one woman said of her spiritual journey, “Jesus knocks on the door. All we have to do is answer it.” This week’s Gospel reading tells us that we don’t even have to open the door. If we’re too tired, too full of doubt and despair, Jesus doesn’t need us to do a dang thing. That’s the nature of grace. Before we even realize we need to open the door, Jesus appears, offering us what we need, getting us ready for what’s ahead.

Retreats and My Current Life

A few weeks ago, I was at Quilt Camp at Lutheridge.  This week I'm at a different retreat at Lutheridge, the Create in Me retreat.  Both of them make me happy, but in different ways.  Create in Me has a variety of activities, with workshops and Bible Study and much more involved worship services.  Quilt Camp gives us lots of time and space to work on our own projects that we bring with us.

When I'm at one, I'm missing the other.  Having gone to both for several years now, I know to expect this feeling.  I'm also missing past years, past people.  Again, I know to expect this, but it often makes me feel strange.

It's not a new revelation:  I'm happier when I'm not comparing experiences.  Still, it's so hard for me not to compare.

I've also been thinking about past years, about how sad I was as I made my way home to the flat land of Florida.  I've been thinking about how astonished past Kristin would be to find out that I had finally found a home in the mountains.

Of course, one of the disadvantages of a house here at Lutheridge is that I don't really feel like I'm on retreat, like I've been away, when I return to my house each night.  Of course, one of the advantages of my current life is that many of the elements of retreat life are present in my daily life.

Eclipse Glasses and Easter

I thought about crafting a sermon for the adults around the ideas of Easter and the eclipse.  But I decided to use the ideas for my children's sermon--in the church where I am Synod Appointed Minister, the adults listen to both the children's sermon and the one for the adults.

I ordered enough eclipse glasses for all, children and adults, and before the children's sermon, I gave each child a pair, had them put them on, and took a picture.  I've edited these pictures to protect the privacy of minors.

Then I had them take the glasses off.  For those of you who haven't gotten your eclipse glasses yet, these are very dark, as they should be.  If you put them on and can still see objects as you look through them, they won't protect your eyes when you stare at the sun.

I told the youth to be listening in the post-Easter readings, because people would have this same experience when they met the risen Jesus.  They wouldn't recognize him at first.  Then something would happen, usually involving food, and it would be as if they took their eclipse glasses off--suddenly they'd be able to see what was right in front of them.

Our lives are the same way.  God is at work in the world, but often, we can't see it.  Maybe we're wearing our eclipse glasses of grief, despair, or cynicism.  Maybe we're too anxious to look.  Maybe we're focused on the wrong thing, while something of celestial magnificence is happening.

Jesus appears, and gently, he reminds us to take off our eclipse glasses.  In the breaking of the bread, we recognize divine love.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, April 7, 2024:

First Reading: Acts 4:32-35

Psalm: Psalm 133

Second Reading: 1 John 1:1--2:2

Gospel: John 20:19-31

This week's Gospel returns us to the familiar story of Thomas, who will always be known as Doubting Thomas, no matter what else he did or accomplished.  What I love about the Gospels most is that we get to see humans interacting with the Divine, in all of our human weaknesses. Particularly in the last few weeks, we've seen humans betray and deny and doubt--but God can work with us.

If you were choosing a group of people most unlikely to start and spread a lasting worldwide movement, it might be these disciples. They have very little in the way of prestige, connections, wealth, networking skills, marketing smarts, or anything else you might look for if you were calling modern disciples. And yet, Jesus transformed them.

Perhaps it should not surprise us. The Old Testament, too, is full of stories of lackluster humans unlikely to succeed: mumblers and cheats, bumblers and the unwise. God can use anyone, even murderers.

How does this happen? The story of Thomas gives us a vivid metaphor. When we thrust our hands into the wounds of Jesus, we're transformed. Perhaps that metaphor is too gory for your tastes, and yet, it speaks to the truth of our God. We have a God who wants to know us in all our gooey messiness. We have a God who knows all our strengths and all our weaknesses, and still, this God desires closeness with us. And what's more, this God invites us to a similar intimacy. Jesus doesn't say, "Here I am, look at me and believe." No, Jesus offers his wounds and invites Thomas to touch him.

Jesus will spend the next several weeks eating with the disciples, breathing on them, and being with them physically one last time. Then he sends them out to transform the wounded world.

We, too, are called to lay our holy hands on the wounds of the world and to heal those wounds. It's not enough to just declare the Good News of Easter. We are called to participate in the ongoing redemption of creation. We know creation intimately, and we know which wounds we are most capable of healing. Some of us will work on environmental issues, some of us will make sure that the poor are fed and clothed, some of us will work with criminals and the unjustly accused, and more of us will help children.

In the coming weeks, be alert to the recurring theme of the breath of Jesus and the breath of God. You have the breath of the Divine on you too.  In our time of awareness of how disease spreads through breathing, it will be interesting to see how we respond to this imagery.

But God's breath transforms creation in ways that viruses can only dream of.  God's breath can transform us too.

One Last Look at Easter 2024

Before we get too far away from Easter Sunday, I want to record some memories.  It was a whirlwind day, in many ways.  But compared to other church folk, my day was laid back:  no sunrise service, no Easter egg hunt, only one service.  

In some ways it was like any other Sunday.  We got up early and got ready for church at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  I had a decent enough Easter outfit, but as always, I didn't like my shoe options.  I decided to wear my special Easter socks that come just over my ankles with sandals.  It was warm enough for bare feet, but my feet are in rough shape--Maundy Thursday feet, not Easter feet.  It usually doesn't concern me, but Easter felt different.  In the past I've solved the problem with toenail polish, but I hadn't planned ahead.

I found a way to solve my sermon, did a bit of polishing, and printed it out.  We put our stuff in the car and headed across the mountains, which looked soft and furry in the early morning light.  I couldn't get a good shot of them, but this gives you an idea.

And later, when we stopped at the Tennessee Welcome Center where we always stop, I saw this glow in the mountains.  I knew it was a trick of clouds and sunlight.  But it had an Easter morning vibe that this view doesn't usually have.

We got to the church early-ish, before most folks, because we had no Sunday School.  The wooden cross sat outside, wrapped in chicken wire, empty.  But it wasn't long before people arrived and started filling it up with flowers.  When a parishioner offered to take our picture in front of it, we couldn't resist.

My spouse had suggested that in addition to unboxing the alleluias, we have noisemakers for everyone to shake when we say or sing an alleluia.  Faith Lutheran hadn't done that before, and it worked beautifully.  There was an energy in the church that isn't always there.

My sermons went well, both the children's sermon with eclipse glasses (more in a later blog post) and my sermon on the Gospel (if you want to read that sermon, I put it in this blog post).  There was a moment near the end where I felt like I might get a bit choked up at the idea of Jesus waiting for us further on up the road.  But I pulled myself together and finished the sermon.

After the service, several people told me I had done a marvelous job.  That might have just been the Easter energy.  Still, it was great to feel the Easter energy taking us all out into the world. 

And then we hopped in the car and drove back across the mountains--still beautiful, a subdued set of blues.  We stopped by the local grocery store just before we got home, and we picked up our Easter meal:  steak, potatoes, mushrooms, and red wine.  Not exactly traditional Easter, but we don't have traditional Easter meals in our house.

It was a good Easter, and I am guessing that in much later years, when I look back, I'll see it as one of the best Easters.

Easter Sermon 2024

I was really pleased with how my Easter sermon went--the written copy will be lacking a bit of the energy, but you'll get the general idea:

Mark 16: 1-8

Are you wondering what happened next? Are you wondering if we forgot to copy a paragraph or two as we prepared bulletins? I assure you, we did not. The Gospel of Mark ends here.

Are you feeling shortchanged at this point? We might say, “Don’t we even get to see the resurrected Jesus?” It’s much more common to hear the Gospel of John on Easter Sunday, and I see why. The writing teacher in me sees the other Gospels as much more developed. The ending is more satisfying. We get a first hand resurrection, not news of the resurrection.

You might be remembering different endings of Mark, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Most Bibles include a few more verses to develop this story in ways that are more similar to the other Gospels. But those verses were added much later, in the second century or later, and those endings were based on the endings of the other Gospels which had been written by then.

My New Testament professor would say that we’re missing the Resurrection appearances, but the Resurrection is here. We’ve got an empty tomb, after all. We know we have the Resurrection because of what happens after the women run away. They may have been too terrified to speak in the closing moments of the Gospel, but clearly they got over their fear. We’re here, in a church, hearing the story, with other versions of it if we want something different. We can infer that although the women ran away amazed and terrified, that amazement won the day. Or maybe, as other events happened to corroborate what they heard at the empty tomb, the women found their voices. That’s often how it works when we experience a traumatic event.

After those earliest days, people went out to all the ends of the earth to tell that story. They wouldn’t have done that if there had been no resurrection, if they had just lost a teacher who told them interesting parables in a poetic way.

In so many ways, the original ending of Mark, which we have here, is a fitting end to this particularGospel. The Gospel of Mark is short, and the pace is quick, even hurried. There’s an urgency to Mark, and the ending fits with this urgency. “Go, tell”—and the women do. No one lingers as they try to sort out who this man is and how he knows so much. They run away in both amazement and terror.

Amazement and terror might be a shorthand way of summing up the whole Gospel. Throughout the Gospel, we see people amazed and terrified—baffled and frightened and amazed and terrified. People don’t know what to make of what they’ve seen Jesus do, and of all the Gospels, this one shows a Jesus who is more reticent, more likely to tell people NOT to tell what they’ve seen. This ending fits the rest of the Gospel, with women leaving in a state that is both amazed and terrified. And it fits the story—Jesus raised from the dead? Even now, thousands of years later, it’s a profoundly disturbing ending. Think of our own lives, all the times we’ve prayed for a different ending. We might pray for a miracle cure, but once our loved ones die, we understand that act as final. The women in the Gospel of Luke have been through a trauma, witnessing the crucifixion of Jesus—and now, news of resurrection, along with an empty tomb. The urge to run away makes sense.

The women are sent back to Galilee, back to where the ministry of Jesus began. Jesus waits for them there, for the ones who watched him die, the women. You may remember from our reading last week that the women watch him die on the cross from a distance. Mark doesn’t give us the crucifixion scene of support at the base of the cross. Jesus dies alone, but he comes back. The women are told to tell the men, and Peter by name, Peter, the one who denied Jesus. Jesus waits for them there, in the place where it all began, waiting for the ones who ran away, for the ones who denied him, for the ones who deserted him along the way. Jesus waits for us too. Nothing we have done is too awful for redemption.

Some Bible scholars point out that the men are headed towards Galilee, and one Bible scholar says that they were probably running for their lives. But Jesus has gone on ahead of them. This detail, too, fits nicely with the resurrection message. We may think we’re on the run, but Jesus waits just a bit on up the road. As always, Jesus is one step ahead.

This ending speaks to the mystery that we proclaim each week: Christ has died, Christ has risen. The ending, both of the Gospel of Mark and of the work God is doing in the world, is open ended, a work in progress. The women are sent out with a message and a task—and so are we. The story is not complete—why do we think we should get a tidy ending?

Some Bible scholars see this ending as elegant. The women run away, too terrified to tell anyone. But clearly, something changed. We don’t get to hear the particulars, and that leaves us free to imagine a different ending, or to imagine all the ways it might have happened. More importantly, this bare bones ending invites us to enter into the ending. The story ends this way—with a non-ending—and that invites us to insert ourselves into the story.

In some ways, Easter is about endings. The Roman empire kills Jesus and believes they have rid themselves of a rabble rouser, an insurgent. The religious authorities kill Jesus and believe that they will win favor with Rome. But Easter reminds us that earthly powers don’t have the final word. Earthly empires don’t get to write the ending. Earthly empires aren’t nearly as powerful as they would want us all to believe.

We may find it hard to believe, this idea that good will prevail, that love wins in the end. We live in a world where it seems the rich will prevail. We live in a world where the rich evade justice and the poor are punished. But Easter promises a different ending.

Like the women in today’s Gospel, we may have trouble processing this idea. Life changes, and often faster than we can process the information. We're left struggling, grasping for meaning, refusing to believe the good news that's embodied right before our eyes. We don't recognize the answer to our prayers, our desperate longings. We're stuck grieving in the pre-dawn dark. Or we are too terrified to even talk about what we’ve seen.

That’s O.K. Jesus waits for us, back in the place where it all began. Jesus waits for us to catch up, just a little further on up the road.

Each and every day, God commits to the forces of creation and resurrection. Each and every day, God invites us to gather together, to begin our ministry anew, to join God in overthrowing the forces of brutality with the force that is love. Each and every day, I hope we say yes, even if we are terrified, even as we are amazed.

Empire is so much more fragile than it seems. Chaos always lurks at the margins—and sometimes chaos moves front and center. But God has a larger vision and invites us to be part of it.

Today and every day, I hope we say yes.

And rest assured that if we say no, we’ll get more invitations. God will not abandon us. No—God will wait for us, on up ahead, and when we get there, we’ll realize that Jesus has been by our side all along.