Category Archives: relationships

Advent 18

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My mom is coming for Christmas.

It’s a seemingly simple sentence dense in power.

We are, we two, not unlike lots of moms and daughters.  We have spent the 55 years of my life clashing wills and life views.

My mother is a woman who knows with certainty what is seemly and what is not and her surety has extended to the needful state of cupboards (pristine!) and planned menus for each meal.

Her daughter?  Not so much.  For some reason my mother was presented with a girl-child who resisted blacks and whites and rebelled against imposed order.

We have lived, we two, a challenge.

I don’t know what it is about mothers and daughters.  The desire to protect, the temptation to create in our own image or the image of what we wish we had been able to able to call our own; so many things swirl beneath the surface of this elemental heart dance.

What I know is that my relationship with my mother affects my daughters and will affect their daughters.  If there is work to do, running from it robs not only me and my mom but the generations that follow.

So we have worked.  When it might have made sense to let it go and play it safe, we have engaged with each other and risked the hurt and vulnerability of letting each other know that it matters.  Our honest hearts won’t let go of each other.

My mom is coming for Christmas.  She will be in the midst of the feasting and the laughter and I know full well that she will bite back comments about how things might be better organized and I know full well that sometimes those comments will slip their way out of her mouth and into my ear.

But they don’t have to take up space in my heart.

What takes up space in my heart is profound admiration for the mighty mite that is my mom.  She has endured much, lived much, and loved much.  She has not let go of me.

Gathering for Christmas means readying our hearts.  We will mourn those absent, mark in our hearts the shifts and losses and remember years gone past when things were different.

But oh, the chance to be present to the wonder of the Word Made Flesh in our midst is stunning gift.  We get to learn what it is to love.

My mom is coming for Christmas.

Thanks be to God.

 

Advent Day 12

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Rejoice in Christ always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  Jesus is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.     Philippians 4: 4 – 7

Here is what I see:  I see gentleness being lived in community.

Every Wednesday at 8:00 AM I meet with men from the church for bible study.  They have been at this for years.  They are seasoned souls who have lived a lot of life and they are beautiful.

And, they are getting on in years.  We check in with each other weekly and the list of bodily challenges is as varied as the men around the table.  There is a constancy in the sharing:  Growing older involves the deeply spiritual discipline of letting go.

Some of the men around the table have “had the talk” with their children.  In a poigniant and circular playing out of love, their children have asked to share with them a fact of life: they are worried about their parents driving.  They believe that getting behind the wheel of a car is not safe any longer.   They love their dads enough to share their concerns.

It is hard to go from being the co-maker of family law to the recepient of same.

The beauty that I see is their willingness to reflect upon the changes they are experiencing.  There is laughter thrown in and there is a lot of grace.

What moved me in the “let your gentleness be known to everyone” department happened as I was leaving for a meeting directly following bible study.  Out in the parking lot, the men who drive were loading up their cars with the bible study members who no longer drive.

They ushered each other into the waiting chariots with a sense of reverence and care.

The promise of “Jesus is near” was made flesh in the parking lot of our church.  Ninety-three year olds drive the snowy streets of South Minneapolis in order that their brothers might sit at table and unpack scripture.

Jesus lives.

Advent 11

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Tonight at 6:00 PM we gather for worship.  The service is one of the most powerful we offer at Richfield UMC.
We call it an Advent Service of Hope and Healing.
While around us the culture seems intent upon denying and sidestepping places of loneliness and loss in this season, we pause as faith community and mark the wisdom of our heart aches.
There is something about the Advent season of purposeful waiting for the light of hope that stirs in us awareness of loss.  We miss the physical presence of people in our lives who have blessed and vexed us.  We miss the ways we used to encounter life in a way that felt simpler and less tentacled.  We miss our children’s footie-jammied presence in our daily life.  We miss, we mark, we name, and we are present to all of the major and minor losses that make for honest living.
Tonight during worship we bow before those losses and ask for them to lead us into wholeness and wisdom.
We will savor scripture and silence.  We will allow the singing of Silent Night to move us.  We will light candles to mark our questions and we will know the power of giving over to God the burdens and beauty of our souls.
I hope you will join us.  If you cannot, I hope you will pause at some point on this day and listen to the wisdom of your heart.
Folded into the power of community or sitting in a moment of mindfulness, may we each name the power of stumble and question, healing and hope.

The Healing Time

                                                Finally on my way to yes
                                                I bump into
                                                all the places
                                                where I said no
                                                to my life
                                                all the untended wounds
                                                the red and purple scars
                                                those hieroglyphs of pain
                                                carved into my skin, my bones,
                                                those coded messages
                                                that send me down
                                                the wrong street
                                                again and again
                                                where I find them
                                                the old wounds
                                                the old misdirections
                                                and I lift them
                                                one by one
                                                close to my heart
                                                and I say    holy
                                                holy.

                                                   © Pesha Joyce Gertler

waves

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I thought I was done, except in a bittersweet way.

Preparing for a sermon this past Sunday, I was thinking a lot about heritage and the presence of the unseen guests at all of our Thanks Giving tables.  The text had to do with a faith forewoman so it gave great opportunity to consider witness and how it sounds through the ages.

I had my sermon set to go and had the perfect ending for it.  Some thirty years ago, my dad was interviewed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  It was a column about Thanksgiving and in it he reflected upon being a pastor and the gratitude he felt about being able to love and be loved wrapped in community.

The long ago article ended with a Thanksgiving prayer.  It hangs on my refrigerator at the cabin.  I knew that Leah was there and could relay it to me.  Except that she didn’t have her phone on.  As the night dwindled and there was no word, I knew that I was not going to be able to speak words written by a heart I so miss.

And then the grief swooped.  The ache in my heart over my dad’s death was so raw.  It has been sixteen years ago but I so wanted to “hear” his voice and share it with a people I get to be in ministry with.

And the empty place of his friendship and his not knowing of my beloved and and and all those things fell into my heart and I missed my dad and mourned the huge space left by his death.  All the little and large sharing of life we don’t get to share; it hurts.

It hurts.  And, it humbles.  I barrel along my days and sometimes I am brought up short and reminded that life and love are tender precious fierce things and I am blessed to live them, I am.

So may I share his prayer with you?

Dear God it’s me.  Remember?

And it is Thanksgiving time and turkeys and football games and family gatherings and all sorts of special things are here and so am I and so are you.

I know that we must be an abomination to you.  Our existence is a continuing, helpless pollution of your world.  

We are terribly concerned with messy affluence, the insane rains of our bombs keep falling.  It’s easy to mask who we are.

We clatter with heavy shoes over the lives, the sensitivities, the joys and heartaches, the realness of our brothers and sisters.

Appearances, of color, of dress, even of hair have a strange importance to us.

We talk of love and forget to do it.

But it is Thanksgiving time.

And I would like to thank you for everything I have and everyone I know.

For family and home in now and past, for friends.  For those who touch my life with love.

For letting me love others,

For a world of maybes,

For smells and touches and eyes that meet.

For my job, my car, the little things I take for granted.

And they are all from you, and thank you God.

Can I ask a little favor?

My thanks are so special, so big, so real –

Will you arrange it so I won’t have to say a table grace right out loud?

That would be so predictable, so polite.

I would far rather babble and shout.

Rev. George Macaulay

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

salute

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I caught up with a woman via email this morning.

She was connecting around the recent election.  In her note was news of her mother.  It seems her mom is very ill.

Her mother is around the same age as my own mom.  We got to know each other in the course of living life and I love this woman.  We have scrapped and we have enjoyed each other’s minds and differences.  She is a theologian as sharp as any I have met and my books still bear post-it notes in her hand, through which she shared her questions and challenges in conversation with the author.

She has struggled openly and frankly with decisions I have made along the way of my life.

And, I love her.

What is it about people we encounter?  Sometimes the most unlikely folk become our life’s companions in ways precious and rare.  Surely a more unlikely friendship couldn’t much be imagined.

But we have shared life and mutual admiration and a mutual recognition of a slew of differences and that sharing on this day I know as gift.

As it will be; always.

teachers

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Tomorrow during worship we will name the saints of our church who have died in the year gone by.

We will name them and see their faces and feel their continued presence in our midst and we will know for our own selves the reality of our own naming someday.  We too (we pray) will be remembered by a community that acknowledges the witness we bore through the gift of our life.

I am mindful of the power of teachers.  This morning I met a beloved teacher for coffee.  We had not seen each other for nearly a decade.  Life happened and while we stayed connected the chance to savor each other’s presence in the flesh has been long in coming.

Mary is a few years older than I.  When I began college I auditioned for the choir there.  I had always been a band geek but was encouraged to see myself as a singer.  Wonder of wonders, I made the top choir and was terrified and amazed at the full-body miracle that is singing in the midst of talented and soulful singers.  I remember yet the first rehearsal I went to.  I was born again.

Mary was the queen of the sopranos; not in the Pit-Bull with jewelry on sort of way, but in such a way that the grace of her being sang through her body.  Her voice was (and is) sublime.  I wanted to be like her.  I wanted to sing that freely and laugh that fully and practice grace that deftly so I apprenticed myself to learn this way of voicing soul.

She taught me well.

She still does.  Encountering a kindred with whom beers and tears and so much life have been shared is like entering sanctuary.

Did she know she was my teacher?  Probably not, and therein lies the power.

St Francis enjoined fellow disciples to “Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words”.

We are preachers, each one of us.  My prayer is that our lives are witness to the power of the gospel.  As we sing and scrap and love and bumble, may we preach grace.

Some day our name will be read and our spirit will echo with the sound of a bell rung to mark our passing.

May we also be a place in hearts we have touched and taught.  For surely, as a gospel preaching people, we know the power of resurrection.

 

 

 

forgiveness

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I’m still digesting the feast laid out by poet David Whyte yesterday at a gathering held at Hennepin Ave UMC.

In talking about the wild learning project that is living and loving, he spoke of the power of forgiveness.

Whyte said that if a friendship has lasted over the years, each individual has had opportunity to forgive and be forgiven through the years.

In order for relationship to be, forgiveness is a crucial ingredient.

What gift it is to greet and name forgiveness as necessary in relationship rather than trying to dodge the reality that there will be bumps and hurting through any companionship that is real.

The acknowledgement of the sometimes heartbreak and disappointment that is living in relationship is a unique gift given by the teachings of Jesus.

According to an insight shared by some wise person I encountered in my reading, while all religious traditions teach a version of the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), Christianity is unique in that Jesus was specific about how it is we are to practice the soul art of forgiveness.

I’m grateful for that.

This morning I sat over coffee with two women I have known as friends for over twenty years.  As I took in the gift of their being I was aware of gratitude for forgiveness given and received.  I can’t remember that we’ve gotten into major scrapes through the years, but I know that hurts and challenges have accompanied our relationships.

Yet there we were, the forgiving and the forgiven, reveling in the miracle of years lived in each other’s company.

Being human is no solitary pursuit.

Soul gifts come in the stretch and song of loving.

Forgiveness frees, teaches, and waters the tender bungle that we are.

Thanks be.

 

 

 

 

wonder

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Desks and seemingly must-do tasks can run my life.

Maybe you know something about that.

When I look up from the emails and phone calls and clamorous things that need tending, I find that time and energy have zipped by yet again.

So it feels especially crucial to me to get out and spend time with people.  Flesh and blood heart beating people are what center me and my work.

I spent near two hours (where did the time go???) with a woman who has long called RUMC home.  She is one of those members who have given so much to their church and who struggle to get moving early enough to catch the church bus to attend worship and who has seen so much change and who feels increasingly invisible in her church.

Many of her friends have died.  The people she knew and so very importantly, the people who knew her by name are no longer in the pew beside her.  She sang in the choir.  Her husband was an accomplished soloist.  The pictures in her home feature eyes eagerly engaging the world and energy to embrace adventure.

She gracefully shared her sense of grief about her sense of growing invisibility.  That is no small trick.  The hurts of being unseen can fester and erupt in bitterness.  Not so for her.  She cares enough about her church and her pastor to name her heart.  It is honor to be in the company of such a one.

Through her I am blessed.

Often we talk in churches about how vital it is to greet visitors.  I was reminded on Friday how vital it is that we greet each person we encounter in church.  In the body of each beats a heart longing for recognition and acknowledgement.

I talk often of the wonder of parents of young children who go through the considerable challenge of readying all of their charges and themselves for worship.

What my sister in Christ reminded me of is the importance of experiencing wonder and appreciation for each person who goes through the considerable challenge of readying themselves for worship, particularly when bodies are reluctant to move because years have been encountered.

Tomorrow is Rally Sunday.  My prayer is that all feel welcomed and all feel wondrous about our shared call to transformation in Christ.

 

roots

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We are rooted.

Today the Roto-rooter team is coming to pulverize our basement floor in order to tame the roots that have taken over our sewage system.

@#$% indeed!

Cooper spent a fine Wednesday dealing with the geysers that erupted in our basement.

Today we live into the healing of the problem, complete with a 24 hour no-water-use edict.

This root addressing comes on the heels of a wedding weekend that still has my heart humming.  Family came together to celebrate the wedding of Cooper’s youngest and on the dance floor and throughout the weekend we were a weaving of those who have gone before us and so very powerfully we participated in weaving that which is yet to be.

Blending families is no small adventure.  Those seeking to create the new are rooted in systems unquestioned and ways of being passed on from generation to generation.  In coming together through divorce and re-marriage, the ground shifts and sometimes it feels like nothing will ever feel stable again.

But oh, the fruit of years of negotiating and breathing and praying is heart luscious!

We are a different people now.  Somehow, in marking the powerful rite of passage that comes in joining families and hearts, we know ourselves to be rooted and grounded in amazing grace and we are whole and we know this.

We know this.

So the roots strangling our pipes?  They can be dealt with and matter not much (except for the obscene amount of money leaving our house with them).

The roots that ground and nourish heart are alive and well and we are family and thank you thank you thank you God for roots.

Ground is good.

 

home

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I am freshly back from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota.

I was part of a group of nine women from the church who planned and packed and set out on a woman-powered adventure.

I’ve never gone in this early in the summer.  It was different, as in cold.  We were a layered crew, humbled by the basics of keeping warm and dry.  It rained.  We had one day without rain but the others kept us aware of the need to stay dry.

We were ambitious, planning a route that included a 169 rod portage,a 90 rod portage and two smaller portages as well as river and lake paddling.  We figured that if we didn’t have the energy to push to our goal, we could rest for a night on one of the two lakes between.  We forgot, though, that a major burn had gone through the fall before and the two lakes that might have given us rest were eerie charcoal.

So push on we did.  Going there was hard.  We figured that coming back might be a bit easier.  We were wrong.  On the day we broke camp the rain poured down.  Before we made it off the first lake we were soaked and shivering.  I was grateful for the portages, because they allowed our bodies to pump some warmth through our systems.

And then there was the wind.  We paddled back into white caps and cross winds that prompted deep digging for what felt like hours of paddling.

At the end of the last long portage, feeling relieved with only two short ones to polish off, I landed in a full body (complete with pack on my back) sprawl in the water.  It was thankfully a move witnessed by only one of my paddling sisters.  She was good enough to help me get the darn pack off my back while I was pinned on my hands and knees by exhaustion and a great good laugh.

We made it out.

And I am now home where water runs from taps and heat is more than available but home is a funny thing.

While sitting on a rock watching may flies hatch in the dusk, I was home.

In the cocoon of a tent sharing heart and laughs, I was home.

In the whip of wind and power of white caps, I was home.

The moveable temple of at-oneness calls me home.

Always.