It’s Valentine’s Day!

I am sitting in a coffee shop in the booming metropolis of Moose Lake. Having been rendered a ski widow (Cooper took off with friends for a much-good skiing weekend) I decided to visit my mom after church on Sunday.

Being in Duluth is always good soul medicine for me.  My mom has an apartment feet away from the bay (Lake Superior, for the geography impaired).  This means she never has to close curtains.  The presence of the lake and its power and mystery are constant companion.  Sitting in her living room the lights of the ore boats and harbor are all the entertainment I need.

And, being in her company is a bit of crawling into the lap of letting go.  She likes me.  I like her.  Together, we get to talk about things that years have made possible.  It is good.

On my way home to Minneapolis, I did a swing-through hug of my little sister, and then find myself here.  I tell myself it is for a coffee fuel-up before the drive, but really, it is hard for me to rush through the land of my cabin.

As I entered the coffee shop, I ran into a retired clergy person and his wife.  They are members of the church I used to serve.  On my window sill in my office sits a bird he carved out of wood scavenged from the cabin lake I have so long loved.

It was good catching up with them.  They had health tales to relate and we caught up a bit.  Most precious to me was the shine in their eyes and the mutual appreciation we shared.  We were worship kin for years.  That kind of dance never dies.

In parting, they had this to say:  God doesn’t put anyone in our lives that isn’t meant to be there.

On this Valentine’s Day, I say “amen” (or “ah-women”).  The people put in our lives are those who are the very best teachers of love we could ask to encounter.  Our teachers are not always of our choosing, but teach they do, if we are willing to open ourselves to their lessons.

So I give thanks.  I give thanks for a coffee shop that allows me to linger a bit in the holy land.  I give thanks for eyes that light and hearts that remain connected.  I give thanks for the teachers of love in my life.

Blessed am I among women.

And – get this – it is Mocha Monday!!!!!!

Some have said that the church lost much of the ground of people’s hearts when it lost its place for the unfolding of ritual.

We need it, we human folk.  We need soul containers that help us to mark the marvels and transitions of our lives.  Churches have not lost all ritual.  We worship at least weekly, and we continue to mark the moving from one stage of being to another:  baptisms, marriages, funerals.  What we have not held as sacred stage for soul growth are the “smaller” transitions: starting school, moving from grade school to middle school, puberty, graduations, leaving home, making babies, menopause (both men and women), divorce, and other shifts in our being that are no longer ritually marked in community.

I’m prompted to think about this because of Valentine’s Day.  When I was growing up, this was a big deal.  We spent time as a family decorating a box for our living room table.  In that box went cards for each family member to be opened together at dinner on Valentine’s Day.

The box was promise.  For a night, we could let go of the jousting that is living family life.  We could be assured of the love that grounded the swirl of our family.

Opening the Valentines was heart-racing good.  But preparing for the love exchange by decorating that box and placing it on the family altar was as powerful.  We were acknowledging that sharing affection was worthy of care and creativity.

I have time today to indulge in unhurried card browsing.  I can get cards out to family far from home, and I’m deciding that I’m going to take the time to create a box for our table because I’m finding that the ritual of sharing love matters to me.

What are the markers in our lives?  What are the signs and slowings that remind us of who we are and what it is that we value?

And how do we acknowledge that in the hurry and buzz that is the living of our days, our souls know a deep wisdom: rituals remind, ground, and hold us.  Living them in community makes for meaning.

The scissors will feel good.  As I cut and create, I’ll be home again.

Below is the text of what I will share at the State Capital at noon.  I’ll be speaking at an interfaith rally advocating equal rights for all God’s children; rights which include marriage of same gender loving couples.

My name is Elizabeth Macaulay and I serve as Lead Pastor at Richfield United Methodist Church in South Minneapolis.

I’m here today because I long to live in a state where hearts are not broken by strictures and structures that  deny life and love fully lived.

My father, the Rev. George Mackenzie Macaulay III was a UCC pastor.  He was a man committed to the justice and compassion vision of Jesus and he worked in the movement for decades.  He sought to live the wisdom taught by Jesus and all great religious teachers:  practice compassion, celebrate and honor the spark of the Holy that dwells within each, love your neighbor as yourself.

My father died young of a massive heart attack – her heart was broken – because for decades she lived the desert reality of being transgender in a world that could not, would not know the fullness of her beauty. She was that terrifying and beautiful thing in this world:  a God creation not bound by human constructs.  She was a God creation fractured by human constructs.

Her heart broke.

And mine continues to break.

I’m here because I believe that the heart of the Holy celebrates love; love lived, love practiced, love celebrated through the wild courage it takes to join heart, one with another.

And while our God longs love, our world, our nation, our state, our communities, our homes are being inundated with messages and movements stirring up fear of love lived by same-gender-loving couples and fear breaks hearts and it breaks families and

we are capable of so much more.

Jesus taught that he came that all might have life, and have it abundantly.

I no longer get to share life with my father.

But I do get to live and work and preach and believe that in the years to come, no more daughters in Minnesota will have parents die of broken hearts.

All families who live the language of love are sacred gift.  Scripture is alive, leading us to live the ways of love.

God knows we live with an awareness of what it means to live in a frozen land.

God calls us to be people of awakening and living hearts.

Let us celebrate as Minnesotans the life-giving power of love.

Let us pray and vote and live into being a state where hearts break no more.

I want to give a shout out about spiritual direction.

We have two spiritual directors “in residence” at Richfield UMC.  The Rev. Ruth Phelps and the Rev. Jim Dodge are both retired clergy trained in the fine holy art of being present with people as they seek to listen to the Holy with  the ear of their heart.

Spiritual direction is not therapy as we usually think of it.  Often when we see therapists, there is some sort of diagnosable issue we want help understanding.  Often we go to therapists to deal with what we perceive to be a malady.  Thankfully, therapists are fabulous gift in our seeking self understanding and healing.

Spiritual direction is a practice that affirms the holy that speaks and walks and moves through us each.  When we meet with a spiritual director, we bring the dense gifting (on good days we can call it that!) that is our life, and we sit with a companion who encourages us to listen deeply to what it is God would have us know about our selves and our being.  As any good mental health practitioner, they know they don’t have the answers, but that having a deeply listening conversation partner helps us come to know our own wisdom.  They are soul midwives.

I have found that navigating life as pastor, woman, and seeking child of God, is made infinitely more grace-filled with the Spirit gift of a spiritual director in my life.  I have been blessed by spending time monthly in a space and time set apart for holy listening.  There is no judgement or agenda beyond knowing my unfolding as sacred birthing.

Jim and Ruth are present in our church to provide spiritual direction for anyone needful of a good listen.  You can contact them by email (their email and contact info is on the back of our bulletin) or by getting their phone number through the church office (612-861-6086).

God longs for us to bring to life the fine holy gift of our being.  It’s good to have birthing coaches in our midst.

Yesterday I did a wildly unusual thing:  I cooked.

One of our kids was coming through.  She has the great good sense to be a vegetarian.  We don’t speak vegetarianism as a first culinary language at my house, so I wanted to have plenty on hand to welcome her home with.

I stuffed peppers, pureed soup, grated carrots, and walk yet with the smell of minced garlic on my hands.  It felt good to provide edible love for one of my loves.

And then the best feast of all: conversation and catching up with her and with Cooper’s good buddy from Brooklyn, New York.  We sat around a Scrabble board sharing stories and reflections about life as we sipped tea and shared imaginative maybe-I-can-score words (Cooper is outrageous in this regard) and laughter.  The dance that is great conversation was so fine last night.  It is grace to like the companions found along the journey that is life.

What I like about the people gathered:  Liz, Romer, Cooper, and Rachel, is the awareness that life is a constant unfolding and there is so much yet to be understood, explored, and taken in.  We share our questions and our leanings, the discoveries we have made since last we sat at table, and the discoveries we seek to give our energies to as we live into our futures.

There is unspoken alliance between soul kin, don’t you think?  There is a sense that we breathe with each other as honesty, courage and unfolding are embraced.  We can’t do each other’s work.  But we can cheer each other on and believe in the power of goodness that is.

We like each other.  Even if I won at Scrabble, we like each other.

I sat in a church basement on a Friday night.  It was great fun.

Minnehaha UMC (my husband’s church) was offering an evening of one-act plays and dinner.  It was a fundraiser for their UMW.  There were some 150 or so people there, happily drinking bad church coffee (no offense…), chowing down on lasagna and key lime pie, and loving being church.

Richfield used to do lots of theatre.  It was a big deal.  What I am thinking is that the time for such things is ripe.  We have lots of talented kids and adults, space that is perfectly set up for performances, and a wildly appreciative congregation.

The plays last night were pure goof.  That was the fun of it.  The actors were clearly having a great time, the audience behind them, and the pure gift of being in a place where real unplugged people were sharing their gifts for other real people was pure power.

Who’s in?  I say we do a night of dinner theatre.  No big deal.  Just a director, a crew of willing thespians, some dinner makers, and a great evening for being church.

Anyone interested?  This soprano has a theatre itch that needs scratching.  And, this pastor thinks we have a church hungry for fun, food, and goofiness to support a powerful cause.

Let me know…

Every Saturday for a bizillion Saturdays to come, I gather around a table with some fifteen other seeking souls.

What we are seeking is a healthy relationship with money.  In a world where marketers would have us believe that what we wear somehow defines who we are, we are seeking ways to learn to say “yes” to our future by saying “no”.

One of the comments grounding the class is that as a culture we have come to be convinced that dessert ought not be denied.  We want what we want and we want it now and if having something when we want it means we sabotage the main course of our days, well, so be it.

The “so be it” is ransoming our present.  We are living with increasing debt.  That debt means that we are living with past choices that constrict our present choices and rather than learning to say “no” to dessert (cars, vacations, meals out, palatial homes) we whistle in the dark of our financial reality and keep piling on debt.  And, we are miserable.

Learning how to say “no” in order to fully say “yes” is a spiritual discipline.  Learning to say “no” is a taking into ourselves and our behaviors the belief that we are enough and we have enough.  We don’t have to have the magical thing that will somehow convince us and our world that we are worthy.

We have enough.

I’m playing around with this in my own life.  I’m creating a budget.  Before anything else happens to my money, I give.  I give 10% (the biblical teaching about tithing) to my church.  I pay my bills, and then, before the temptations of unplanned spending takes me, I put money in savings.

Financial Peace teachings advocate for an initial goal of having $1,000 in savings ($500 if salary is less than $20,000) and then working toward the creation of an emergency fund of six months worth of expenses.

I have some work to do.  But I have to say that spending time with paper and pencil, creating a budget, saving money, and giving money has changed my way of living.

No more am I hostage to the anxiety that accompanies bondage to debt. Having a plan means claiming the “power God gives me to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” (UM membership vow).

The oppression of a sense of insufficiency and debt are real.  Throwing light on the dark that I and so many of us have whistled in is claiming power.

“No” power is feeling power full.