Category Archives: progressive Christianity

head on a pike

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I woke this morning to half-page headlines:  Bin Laden is dead.  Beneath the headline was a picture of jubilant Americans thrilling to the news that the shadowy nemesis was dead.

It is cathartic, this news.  The most powerful nation on earth has brought to justice the cypher of treachery that cost the lives and complacency of the world.

I find myself torn in the midst of all of this.  Extremism brought down those buildings and extremism planted fear in our hearts and full-body searches to our airports and extremism brought an awareness that a way of life lived mindlessly by many is deeply hated by so many more.  Bin Laden was the poster boy for extremism run amok.

And now he is dead.  And the streets of the Land of the Free are places of jubilant delight because now we have the corpse of the man who has come to epitomize evil.

Who are we?

We are people humbled by the efforts of Americans who spent years risking life and limb to ferret out Bin Laden.  We are people sigh-breathing because the notion that with all the power of our nation we could be thwarted; that notion was galling. We are a people happy to create larger-than-life heroes and villans, both.  We are a people desperate for a sign that our convictions are godly and our hearts true.

And we are a people sick of heart that while there have been evolvings aplenty through the centuries, we still seem to long for the heads of our enemies on a pike outside our city gates.

So yes, the headlines proclaim a victory.

And yes, as followers of The Way the benchmarks of our ethical success are measured by the ways we live beatitude lives.

soul weave

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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.

If

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If you hate injustice, tyranny, lust and greed, hate these things in yourself.                 Gandhi

It feels sometimes as though we are consuming ourselves.

I read last week that the state of Minnesota is considering harvesting trees from state park lands to sell at the market to bail us out of financial woe.

I read this morning that cuts are being made to health care for the poor in our state.  They will be shifted to private health care in order for the state to cut its costs and while surely cuts must be made we know beyond a doubt that many will fall through the health care cracks.

Schools are fighting for survival, infrastructure is unraveling and the words being traded across public airwaves are hate and fear speak.

And most troubling to this mother’s heart is this report from my daughter.  In checking her voice mail upon entering her work day, she heard on the recording the sound of automatic gun fire.  Just that.  Just that.

She works for NARAL.  She works with an organization that works to insure that all women retain the decision-making power over their own bodies.

Evidentally the work of her organization inspired someone to spew the deadly sounds of hate and fear into her office and most fearsomely, into her heart.

How do we, as a people grounded in a movement insistent upon care for creation, get honest about the health and honesty of our own hearts? How do we root around and name the resentments, fear, injustices and tyrannies that lurk in our own hearts?  Once found, how do we exorcize them, making room for the cultivation of belief in a peace that generates life?

Rather than grinding the seed corn of our future, we are called to mulch the soil of that which we tend first and foremost:  our own hearts.  From such tending, the future of creation is made verdant.

Rather than consuming ourselves, we choose to grow grace and peace and hope, assured that there is enough for all:  enough compassion, enough food, enough care, enough.

We choose.

not here

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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!

death by paper cuts

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Someone once said that the practice of ministry is like death by a thousand paper cuts.

It was belly laugh material, that quote.  It was belly laugh material because it hit a spark of true deep within.

The world is a changing.  In the midst of the changes going on around us, the role and function of local church pastors is changing as well.  It is a challenging time to be a church leader, because the needs of the job today often disappoint those who have a vision of what the ideal church pastor of the past was called upon to do.

First and foremost, pastors have to be gifted organizers.  In a culture where most couples are both working outside the home and the claims upon time and energies is seemingly relentless, churches have to figure out how to mobilize volunteers in ways that bless.  We are run by the members of the church.  Increasingly church members are stretched overly so keeping an organization alive that relies upon the passion and gifts of volunteers is no small trick.

Secondly, the financial realities are relentless.  Running a building, supervising and funding staff and program are clamorous challenges.  In an age when the gospel of scarcity is being pounded into our beings, lifting a vision of the good of giving to an organization designed to give itself away is full-time must.

Thirdly, remembering why we exist takes spiritual discipline.  The interpersonal jabbing and squabbling that happens in Bodies is sometimes demoralizing.  Perhaps the greatest place of heart ache for me is the demeaning and denigrating of what is without helping to create what could be.  It’s a lot easier to sit on the sidelines lobbing in criticism than joining in to build a vision that transforms.

After church on Sunday I was exhausted.  It wasn’t the preaching and conversing and worshipping that got me.  It was the paper cuts.  One at a time, comments thrown my direction are easy to slough off.  But collectively?  Collectively the effect was an oozing pastor desperate for Sabbath.

We are doing transformational work at our church.  Transformation asks us to move into a different way of being and on most days that movement hums in the very air we breathe.

On other days I become aware that my own spiritual practices are not optional.  Moving into a new day and being church in a new day requires naming of paper cuts, conversations about how to facilitate healthy communication, and a goodly and endless sense of being grounded in grace.

We get to do this thing called church.  It is gift.  It is messy.

It doesn’t have to be fatal.