miracle

Posted on May 27, 2011 by emacaulay

Tribe and heart are amazing things.

I come from a line not so different from many. In the growing-up years of the generation before me, feelings were kept tightly held. Like all things kept in the dark of self, contained feelings made for inner roil and outer censorship.

And then, through the soul-task that is living, feelings get named and shared and lives and hearts are changed forever more.

As she lay dying of cancer, aware beyond a doubt that her days were numbered and her heart desirous of open, my aunt said to her adult daughter four words that thrum yet in my soul: Love is a miracle.

Love is a miracle.

Miracle is.

I stood tonight at the airport waiting for the arrival of my son. He has been in New Orleans working for AmeriCorps. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. As I waited I was witness to the arrival of a man coming home after serving for over a year in Afghanistan. I watched miracle as his family swooped him up and held onto his precious and whole flesh. Theirs were not the only weeping eyes. Those of us who bore witness wept along with them.

And then my son was there and my arms were filled with his sweet being and my heart near broke with the miracle of loving.

Love is a miracle. We get to live it. My aunt spoke its power to her beloveds and her words bespeak the ways she became willing to apprentice herself to the art of unclenching.

It is art for the courageous, this thing called loving.

My tribe is courageous.

saints

Posted on May 4, 2011 by emacaulay

Today we celebrated the life of a brother. The Rev. Jim Dodge lived life with an honest and searching heart.

At his funeral today we named our love for him and the real challenge that is living as people fully aware of the power of grace.

And we sang and prayed our gratitude for having known such a one as Jim.

One of the traditions of the UM church in MN is that at funerals for our colleagues, we sing as a clergy choir. This tradition never ceases to humble me. When it came time to sing for our brother and from our own need to witness, the front of the church became packed with people who have opted to give their lives over to ministry.

I’m proud to be one of that number.

And, I am so grateful that our lives are held by the hand of the Holy and we walk our days in the company of so much that is good.

The squirrely and painful days are real. But oh, to be able to come together and name our gratitude is soul tonic. The grief is real, but it is shared and stirred into a huge pot of grace and for that on this day I breathe thanks.

God speed, Jim. And, thanks for your touch on the lives of the so many who call you teacher and friend.

soul weave

Posted on April 1, 2011 by emacaulay

I am preparing for a women’s retreat.

Thirty-one of us from church are spending a weekend apart from the things that claim and name us.

This year, we are learning from a yoga teacher the ways we might imagine and live integration of our beings. This is no ordinary teacher. Deborah is a friend of many years, and watching her unfold into the teacher she is has been constant reminder to me that we each are called and we get to choose to answer. Deborah did. She is now running a thriving studio, writing books, and crafting life in such a way that others come to soak in her presence.

We get to soak in presence. The presence of each woman on the retreat is unique and remarkable. It is no small gifting, this time apart. We are presented with the chance to claim and name our own beings.

As I am readying myself for this year and the thirty-one who will make community for a weekend, I am reminded of the yearly groups who have gone before. I have led retreats some twelve times or so. Each time I am wondered; how is it God creates such complex and stunning beauty? How is it we are allowed the chance to grow and learn and laugh together?

I’m aware that each woman who has gone on retreat through the years is with me yet. I think of them as I pack and ready. I remember and give thanks and pray that this weekend will bring rest and stretch for this year’s batch of beauty.

We walk in community always. The chance to be apart to remember strengthens our being. Each woman, unique and beautiful and seeking and open is woven forever into the story that is life.

Amazing grace, that.

not here

Posted on March 24, 2011 by emacaulay

I have heard tell of people soaking in the splash of seed catalogues as a reminder that the earth is capable of soft.

As for me, it is the REI catalogue that wings my imagination.

I got my dividend check in the mail yesterday and it has sparked a delightful run on summer thoughts. I page through the catalogue wondering what kind of gadget simply must be mine.

Maybe this year is the year of the new tent. Every year I take teens into the Boundary Waters. We have a great crew of adults who know the rhythm of it all and together we make village together on the edge of the big wilderness. Last year began a yearly tradition of taking a group of women in. It is yet another excuse to be on the water in the midst of wild. Creation is teacher and therapist, both.

For years I have wanted my own tent. I’ve borrowed Cooper’s (this is love, to allow another to borrow their tent) for years. It’s a fine tent, but for a long time there has been a longing for a tent of my own in which to dwell for a time.

So the REI check and catalogue have me examining tents. What color, what style, what weight; what matters? I know before too long I’ll be at the store clinching the deal.

And in the meantime, I am no longer in the midst of winter. I am setting up camp in some impossibly beautiful site, savoring coffee and sparkling water and the reassuring zip into the tent of my dreams after a day spent living in my body.

It may be spring/winter outside, but inside, I have canoe paddle in hand and I’m off on adventure.

Not a bad dividend!

big boom

Posted on March 17, 2011 by emacaulay

I was driving my guy to the emergency room this morning (he is fine) when I got a call from a church member. Since I was intent upon my wifely task, it took me awhile to figure out who was calling and what it was that was going on. I could tell there was anxiety in her voice and I worried that she had health emergencies in her family.

No, that wasn’t it. What it she was worried about was that five blocks from our church, a major gas leak sparked a major explosion. She was concerned about the safety of folk at her church. She wanted to make sure that we were alright.

I called the church right away and they had heard nothing about it. Thankfully, the explosion was contained to the one site. Thankfully, in a very busy commercial area, no one was hurt. The odds of an explosion and geyser of flame leaving no victims is wonderment.

We live in a time of enhanced awareness of mortality. Radioactive waftings from Japan, tsunamis gulping lives and infrastructure crumbling are realities. We are no longer able to blithely go about our daily lives sure that the catastrophic won’t touch our lives; it does.

So what are we to make of all of this? Well, for this woman given assurance that her husband is safe from harm on this day, the need to hold and savor beloveds is great.

What we are given in life is the relationships into which we pour our love. Being able to enter church and poke my head into a St Patrick’s Day party (complete with cloggers!) hosted by our elders and attended by our day care was almost sacramental. Watching our choir director at the organ console while the new pipes are being tuned was assurance that while explosions are real, so too is the voicing of praise and belief in the power beyond chaos.

We build in the midst of crumble. It has always been so. During these days when so much around us feels tentative, we get to tend the foundations of our world by loving fiercely and crafting with heart.

The church got many calls throughout the day. People reach out. They care. It matters.

soul song

Posted on March 15, 2011 by emacaulay

This Step

Somewhere

around the middle of your life

you understand that

it is not the destination.

Nor is it what is waiting

where the road turns next.

It is the step that you are taking now,

or maybe what has stopped you.

It is this soft light, sifting

through the leaves,

the red-winged blackbird

calling from the mountain ash.

It is the secret whispered

in this breeze…

this breath.

Deborah Cooper

One of the gifts of crafting worship at RUMC is choosing a poem or bit of soul song for the front of the bulletin. My hope is that the words chosen will dance well with the text for the day, creating deeper soul nestle. I also hope that sometimes those bulletin covers make it to the vaunted place of proclamation: the refrigerator of parishioner’s homes.

The poem above was written by a Duluth poet; a woman near in age to my own. It speaks so powerfully to me because I am in the midst of that mid-life assessment of all that is and it is one wild ride.

I am always looking for thought companions and guides on the way. One of the books that has reappeared in my life is “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife” by James Hollis. It is a gentle and powerful speaking of the sometimes tectonic plate shifting and readjusting that mark this middle passage.

It is good and holy work, this being present to what is. Hollis writes that “the Middle Passage presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask the sometimes frightening, always liberating question: “Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?”…(it is) a rite of passage between the extended adolescence of first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality.” Eventually, through the hard work of jettisoning the societal and parental teachings that have kept us from knowing our full selves, we discover that “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”

Well, no easy work, that. While preaching Sunday, I reflected on the invitation that Jesus gives us to be “born again”. In some sense, the work of the Middle Passage is to allow fullness of life, rebirth, and newness of being.

We aren’t alone in our labor. We partner with the Holy; a midwife longing for the emergence of our good. If we are wise, we find partners who remind us to breathe and trust this new life and its emergence.

And please God, we remember to savor breath. This breath.

The welcome of wisdom and the song of soul.

homecoming

Posted on March 8, 2011 by emacaulay

Wherever you go, there you are.

I took myself to a sun drenched place. And there I was; surrounded by water and wind and steeped in the reality that where I am is gift.

Somehow changing physical location helps me always to name as sacred my spiritual location. Taking the time to breathe sans responsibilities for the machinations of church and home makes room in my being for the Spirit wind to wake my awareness of the “where I am”.

One of the rituals I treasure about vacation is allowing a book to be spiritual partner. This vacation, I picked up a book entitled “Broken Open: How difficult times can help us grow” by Elizabeth Lesser. The book serves as birthing coach for its readers. Times of pain and sorrow are real and given and they are priceless opportunity for soul to ground and grow. The book is laced with real.

Sanibel Island was our vacation host last week. It is a seeming Mecca for people hungry to be connected with the land and the beauty of creation. It was so for me last week. And it was so for me fifteen years ago when I was there with my family. My children were young and under my roof, and I was married to their father.

My children are no longer young and under my roof and I am no longer married to their father. The grief of divorce is a panging constant. It was hard at times to be in a place that had been a part of the “there you are” that was my life for 23 years.

So Lesser’s book was partner as I considered what it is to grow and release and allow and affirm and choose to be broken open in order to be born. Paying attention to grief is important soul work. So too is tracing the places where the cracking open of excruciating pain has allowed flowering and new life to be.

I am blessed, this I know. Blessed by a making of life that created three amazing people and 23 years of partnership. Blessed by living the dark nights of the soul that led me into a love and life that hum with meaning and wonder. Blessed by the presence of the Holy, breathing with me as new life insists on being born.

Blessed by the daughter who picked us up at the airport and merrily brought us home to a cleaned house. Blessed by the courage of my children and the dance of their lives. Blessed by a former partner who is friend. Blessed by a church willing to do the hard work of seeking to see the Christ in all. Blessed by a now partner who knows my foibles and sees my soul.

I took myself to a sun drenched place and I come home warmed by living life.

Here I am.

seeing

Posted on February 22, 2011 by emacaulay

Our church mission statement says that “We Seek to see the Christ in All”.

Sometimes the seeing is easy.

It seems like Jesus is all over the place these days. From the cupcakes that are left on pastor’s desks (amazingly beautiful and ALMOST too pretty to eat) to the many conversations speaking heart, I am walking in wonder.

People are beautiful.

There seems to be an attitude in the air these days; an attitude of “why not?”. Our sanctuary is being loved into new life. Because we are in the midst of bringing a new organ voice to lead us in worship, we are ripping up carpet, putting down hard wood floors, soliciting favorite scripture verses and having the children and youth write them on the concrete to ground us (fear not, it will be covered with the new carpet put in this week) through the decades to come. We will have a general cleaning party this Saturday when we all can get our hands on the place we call home and shine it up for its new life.

We have hauled pulpits from here to there on Sunday mornings. We have adapted and made friends with chaos and we have embraced the unfolding of what will be.

Laughter rolls often within our church and the Spirit seems to be a loosened and sparkling presence.

It is one of those days in my heart where I wonder how it is I get to do this work. We are many, heaven knows. We are many of opinion and temperament and person. And, we are one. One in the vision and power and presence of the Christ.

The issue for me throughout this redressing of our worship space adventure has been relationships. Are we better for this adventure? Have we learned things that further ground us in Christ? Have we practiced forgiveness and grace and trust and discipleship?

I’m thinking we have had plenty of opportunity to practice. That’s what life is for. And I’m thinking we are better for it.

Every study you can ever imagine speaks of the clear good of being a part of a community of faith. There are vexations by the boat load, God knows. And, there are Jesus sightings that are shared and savored and marked and held and when one of us needs to remember what it is to feel hope in the Holy, Jesus in the form of a community member sits down and shares grace and we remember who we are.

It isn’t hard going to see the Christ in all.

It makes for holy sight-seeing.

welcome

Posted on February 17, 2011 by emacaulay

At a meeting today those present were asked to draw a card and respond to it.

My card had this question: What blessing do you want to be a part of sharing?

My answer? Welcome. I want to be a part of a movement that shares the blessing of welcome.

My answer was prompted by two recent blessings I experienced. One was the Freedom to Marry rally at the State Capitol. There were hundreds of God’s children of faith gathered to speak about and respond to a vision of welcome to full participation in all facets of life, including the welcome to name sacred and covenanted relationships “marriage”. The rainbow of beauty and heart in that rotunda lights my heart yet.

Last Sunday at church we held a luncheon for new and prospective members. Gathered in the room were people ranging in age from their teens to their eighties. There were same-gender-loving couples making life together seeking faith home to grow in and raise their babies in.

We ate and talked and shared and at the end, we stood in a circle, hands clasped, and I asked them to share what it is they are seeking as they throw in their lot with Richfield UMC.

Their answers move me yet. They are seeking community, Jesus, and the people of Jesus who will move beyond the walls of the church and into the heart of the community with welcome.

Jesus invites all who are weary and heavy burdened to hitch themselves to the Holy and to Christian community in such a way that broken hearts mend and lives are transformed.

It turns out that our new members believe that through our church, they have found partners to help them plow the fields of their lives. They welcome the yoke and the opportunity to experience and share the vision of Jesus.

Sometimes the gifting of parish ministry is profoundly humbling. To welcome into our fold others willing to name their hunger and hope is amazing grace.

It is sacred trust, this building of the Body.

All are welcome.

Living Waters

Celebrating the Sacred

Category Archives: celebration