Category Archives: church staff

Gather Us In

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There is a bit of scripture that pictures God as mother hen gathering her chicks.  (Matthew 23:37)

I have always felt the power of that image.  Chick-gathering is in my wiring in ways fierce and strong.

And I cannot much do that gathering in these days of pandemic living.

You join me in this ache, I know.

My biological chicks have issued the mandate that their “elderly” parents (when did THAT happen) are to stay home.

My church is connecting in ways that don’t involve physical gathering.  My gratitude for a staff that can support this frontier of cyber-connecting is immense.

And, leading worship in an empty sanctuary hurts.

How do we live, we who miss the sense of gathering in our body selves?

I find that I have become connection obsessed.

Our church staff is moving into largely distance work.  We shared a “Last Supper” of pizza and appreciation yesterday.  We will meet via Zoom every day but how to name the grief of not sharing ideas and laughter in the flesh?

My children are reaching out daily.  This I like.  And, the role-reversal of their concern for their vulnerable parents pierces my heart.  After years of being the mother hen I find that my chicks have powerful capacity for tending.

Who will we be when this pandemic loses its power?  How will we connect our hearts and passions for the good of all while we shelter in place?

While I cannot open my wings to embrace, the Holy can and the Holy does.

I pray for us all the creativity and heart to continue to know our connection.

Even as we know the fear, grief and anger of this time, we are profoundly gathered in.

 

 

 

 

 

all saints

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dad paver

Every year the church pauses to name the saints who are no longer physically with us.

This year we will be shepherded into and out of worship by bagpipes. The blast of sound will serve as a musical rupture of the thin veil separating the living from the dead.

The service is so very alive. We name church members who have died in the previous year and project their faces onto our screen as we savor the ways they have blessed and changed us.

This year our church has been changed by 20 deaths. While the grief around their passing is so very real so too is the pleasure of saying their names and remembering their being.

The seminary that I attended offered an opportunity to memorialize beloveds through buying a paver for a newly finished chapel courtyard. Since my father was for a time adjunct faculty at UTS and since my heart longs for places and times where his name can be in the hearts of the now, it felt so good to create a reminder that once he was, even as he still is in the hearts of many.

And of course during this thin veil time, I wonder about my own death and the day when it will be my face on the screen, my name on the lips, my being bookended with birth and death dates.

Poet Mary Oliver asks : “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Tomorrow we name those who answered that question every day they were given.

And so it comes to us.

How is it we plan to enter fully the wild and precious gift that is life?

Mindfully or no, we live our answer.

shout out!

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I wove my way out of church tonight.

There was a fourth step training going on.  There was a band practice and an Adult Council meeting and piano lessons and connecting and church was doing what it is meant to do: hold people as they unfold.

Our church is alive for so many reasons.  One of them is because we have an amazing staff.

We’re in the blessed season of asbestos abatement and new boiler(s) installation and new pipes and summer program launching and community carnival hosting and each of these things is midwifed by the best staff a church could hope to call their own.

Our staff encounter all manner of things in their work.  They handle walk-ins and myriad requests.  They strategize and equip and pray and laugh and field grumblings and all of this they do knowing that at any given moment the things they had planned to do could get sidelined by what might come through the door or over the phone.

To a person they are committed and generous gifts.

It’s good to work with people you like.  It’s even better to team up with deep souled folk who lend heart and grit to Richfield United Methodist Church in order for grace to shine.

Oh, we are blessed.