Category Archives: Christianity

seeing

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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.

 

baseball

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Fear not:  I am not going to blog about baseball, really.

I was thinking about baseball because we have had a guest in the house who played baseball in college and a bit in the minors.  In the course of our conversation he was laughing about his “baseball” ways of organizing life.  They include doing things in the same way every time in order to insure great performance.  Magical thinking and the power of ritual continue to ground his behavior.  He had pre game rituals and activities that were comfort to him as he courted success.  Years after leaving the field, he employs them yet.

We’re all the same way, aren’t we?  I was laughing to myself about that as I was setting myself up to write Sunday’s sermon.  I have my own baseball ways.  I love to collect my materials:  Bibles, commentaries, bulletin, pencils and my lap top.  I park myself in my thinking spot on the couch and savor the gift of reading and thinking and imagining what the text might have to say about living in these days.  I can write sermons in other places and other ways, but my sense of being held by my rituals makes me less anxious about whether the sermonic muse will deign to visit.

And I pray.  Crafting sermons is humbling, terrifying, and so very important.  I am never without awareness that the Word is so very alive and so desirous of heart dance.  I welcome the encounter as I seek to bring scripture to voice.  I am never done learning, that is for sure.  Weekly sermon crafting keeps me grounded and sniffing the air always for the showings of the Holy.

Not a bad lot, that.  So as I settle in to write, I give thanks for the chance to pander to my baseball ways.  The couch is strewn with books, the Word awaits, and I have time to be present.

I think I did everything right…

welcome

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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.

telling a life

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On Sunday a man died.

He grew up in this church.  The details of his being were shared yesterday during a meeting with his widow.

In an hour we will hold his life to the light of our attention through the worship we share at his funeral.  We will unpack memories, gratitude, tinges of disappointments, angers and the sure sense that never will this man be fully known; not to himself and not to those who shared life with him.  We will name the mundane facts of living and seek to name the mysteries and wonders of his being.  There is so much we will never know about him.

And yet, we do believe that he is fully known by God;  not only known, but known and fully loved.

Every funeral I facilitate brings me to the wondering about this art called living.  How is it the telling of my life will go?  What major plot lines will be teased out and shared and celebrated?  What stumblings will those gathered need to name in order to practice honesty?  What foibles will be fodder for good laughs (I have provided so MANY!) and what legacy will be named as being broadened because of my being?

What will the telling of my life mean?

For clergy the question comes around often.  We are faced with the refining fire of mortality as a part of our vocational being.  Dodging just isn’t possible when funerals are planned and unfolded on a regular basis.

Sitting for a time of story telling and sharing it in the context of worship is sacred gift and it is poignant and insistent reminder. 

The day is coming when people will gather to hear a story with your name as lead.

What sort of telling will it be?

cauldron living

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Sometimes it feels like there is a cauldron stewing in my soul.  Have you been there?

There are ingredients to the roiling stew:  impatience with a movement grounded in love that seems intent upon placating over boldness, concern about the front page news, awareness of finitude and the ticking off of days of engagement with life, and maybe most keenly, a felt sense of call to an unknown adventure.

The roil is not a bad thing.  It means that we are alive and ripe and full of life flavor and possibility is.

The issue is keeping the heat even whilst the cooking is going on.

Spiritual practices are not optional during such times of creating.  Going to the gym or listening to music or reading delicious things or laughing and talking with trusted souls;  all of those things keep the awareness of bubbling possibility real but not overwhelming.

Faith is key ingredient;  faith that the Holy Creator who stirred up the soup that we are has a hand in the seasonings of soul.

There’s something going on.  It’s not just in me.  There is an awakening stirring in this world we share.  Hunger for wholeness is being named, awareness of empty and the insufficiency of the tangible is growing, and a sense of kinship with all is coming to consciousness.

From Egypt to Richfield, voices are being found and communities and sanctities being proclaimed.

The roil is real.  God grant us the wisdom to live this time of immense power and creativity.  The world, as the Canticle of the Turning sings it, is about to turn.

This is holy, holy time.

 

 

paradox

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I’m speaking at a rally at the State Capital on Thursday.  It’s a rally in support of a notion that seems a no-brainer:  that all God’s children ought have the ability to live with their beloveds in such a way that they are accorded civic rights assumed by heterosexual couples.

It is a paradox.  In an age and time when our communities are desperate for the living of lives based upon love and mutual respect, there seems an insatiable desire to condemn same-gender-loving people.  Energies and money sorely needed for the growth of grace are expended trying to circle the moral wagons around an institution seemingly under attack from “those people”:  “Those people” who go to work, raise children, pay taxes, and love deeply people of their same gender.

Why the fear?  Will the house of cards based upon culturally mandated roles come tumbling down if same-sex marriages are accorded full rights and respect?  If gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, how does this threaten anyone?  In an age when nearly 50% of heterosexual marriages end in divorce, what would happen if our society’s collective angst were put to use supporting all couples and families?

Some fifty years from now, we will wonder that such injustice against our GLBT brothers and sisters went on.  Our grandchildren will wonder how it was unequal rights were explained and assumed.

In the meantime, rallies are scheduled and advocacy shared because the circle of grace threatens to be made smaller and smaller by the very folk who claim to speak for the heart of our expansive God.

It’s a paradox.

not yet

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The men’s bible study at our church is reading Abraham by Bruce Feiler.  It’s an exploration of Abraham, the common patriarch of religions that could use more reminding of our common roots:  Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

One of the great nuggets unpacked in today’s reading is this:  Abraham didn’t even hit the scene until he was 75 years old.  Prior to that, he was that most-to-be-pitied men of his age: He was childless, without heirs, a non-creator in a faith story all about creation.

Imagine it.  Going about our days and making meaning and life and feeling pretty swell (or not) about that and then, at an age when we might be forgiven for figuring we are out of the game, God shows up with invitation.

Leave it all.  Set out.  Trust me.  I’ve got work aplenty for you.  You haven’t seen anything yet.  See those stars overhead?  They will forever more be sign of your willingness to partner with me.

I like this God who is never done with us.  I like the sense that never are we without the ability to participate in creating new life.  I like the sense that no one is out of the game and that God calls each to follow, to move into the unknown, to trust.

The stars twinkle and the call to holy partnership is. 

Living in the “not yet” is soul stretching promise.

doing our work

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The truth is, until we have taken the time to discover and affirm who we really are and what we really want, we are left with only negative identities and negative passion…We are comfortable with rebelling, but fearful of creating. Laurence Boldt

I get a treat delivered to my email box each morning.  It’s a piece titled “Inward/Outward”.  Each day brings a brief quote and reflection.

This morning’s has to do with rebelling or creating.  It’s a glass half full/empty issue.  If we spend our days ungrounded in what it is we want and believe in, we are discontent with near everything.  It will never be enough, since we measure “enough” through the lens of discontent and a sense that something or someone ought fill the space inside that awaits our reflection and vision filling.

I think it is so.  What we’re trying to do at church is provide small groups and study circles with folk who want to make choices about how it is they will organize their lives.  We’re hoping and believing that if life is grounded on the teachings of Jesus, an unfolding into grace and grounding will emerge.

Through gathering at table and opening ourselves to each other and the teachings of our faith, we move into the power of discovering and affirming who we really are.  And we increasingly find supports to choose to live from a place of power and possibility shaped by the who-we-really-are of Jesus living.

Our church is alive and moving into a deeper place of Spirit life.  This new life is amazing grace.

My prayer is that we can evolve into the sort of Body that knows and affirms its identity and in so doing shares it lavishly with creation.  My prayer is that we can invite into communities of small groups the “half-fulls” who will join us in knowing the power of the God who calls us each by name.

The time for creating is now.

niggles

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People who are willing to work at life are glory.

There is this notion peddled by our popular culture that life is meant to be dedicated to the pursuit of happiness.  To be unhappy or challenged or stressed or vexed has come to mean that somehow there is some deep pathology within that must be danced from.  And dance we do:  we shop, we drink, we  over schedule, we watch hours upon hours of television in order to numb the niggle that will not leave us.

The niggle is holy.  The something-is-not-right-here that wakes us in the night or clenches our belly is holy attention clang.  What that niggle means is that we are called to turn and tend and learn.

Lots of folks find ways to dance from that learning.  Others learn to listen and do the sometimes agonizing work of exploring the meaning of the niggle.

Joseph Campbell maintains that the purpose of our life is not to find happiness, but instead to find and make meaning.

There is such grace in the vision of life as meaning making.  It implies journey rather than resolved landing point.  It implies falling down and getting back up and suffering and soaring and leaning into beloveds and our God.

Life is about making meaning.  Growth is optional, I suppose, but to choose soul numbing over growth seems a profound squander of the gift of life.

Jesus walked lonesome valleys.  He taught us we can’t walk them by ourselves.  We walk in the company of the Holy and our soul kindred.  This walk into wholeness in the way of Jesus is exactly why we are church.  Growing soul through the gift of community is why we open our doors each day.

Niggles are learning gift. Thank God for companions on our soul’s journey into meaning.

alive

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Change is tricky business.

It means life and it means stress and it means deep breaths and a remembering of the net of grace always present.

Our church is undergoing changes.  Our sanctuary is changing due to an organ rebuild.  Every day brings new details to tend and take in.  We have an amazing crew of church members who are coming to know each other and (I hope) enjoying the thrill of making beauty in the soul living room of their church.

Yesterday our Associate pastor shared the information that he is to leave us in June.  This is hard, since being pastor in a church means building relationships that bless.  Anxiety surrounds such announcements:  where will he go, how will we craft positions to continue the growth of our ministry, and how do we gracefully bless him on his way?

Churches have often been likened to families:  the good the bad and the ugly of families.  It’s a metaphor that is sometimes helpful.

Because we know that in families, changes have to happen.  Homes get adapted (thank goodness avocado shag carpet is no longer in vogue) and members of the family are loosed into the world with (we hope) grace and gratitude for relationship shared.

When we are healthy, we remember that our call in life is to change and grow, adapt and learn.  We trust the presence of the Holy in the midst of that unfolding.

And on really good days, we remember that anything that does not change in life, be it plant, animal or relationship, dies.  So we name our anxieties and befriend the changes in our lives, because the Spirit moves us to abundant life.

And we like that.