Category Archives: spirituality

water washed

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My children tease me about many things. 

What is predictable is a tease following baptisms.  I love being able to be a part of baptisms.  The power of enfolding and naming and proclaiming grace and identity on behalf of the movement through the ages makes me near crazy with wonder.  Without exception, I believe with all I am that the babies know well that they are participating in miracle.  They are “right there” with their eyes:  open, aware, present, holy.  So I come home bubbling with the story of how it is holy communion is shared and my children know the ways that their mother’s heart has to tell the story or burst.  So they listen, God bless them.

This past Sunday has me humming yet.  Baptised in the midst of a community of grace and joy were a mom and her three-year old.  Both of them are wise beyond the ages.

The wee one was held by her mother and baptised first.  As an invitation to feel the sweet of the baptismal water, I asked her if she wanted to feel it, knowing that she would.

Her sweet palm was nestled in the water of grace as she was baptised.

And then, when it came time to baptise her mother, I asked her if she wanted to help, knowing that of course she would.

And so we blessed in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sustainer.  Water; gift of earth, flow of life, wash of grace was gentled onto the head of a woman who is already witness of the Way.

She who was nurtured in the water of her mother’s womb used water to bless and welcome her mother to life.

Water washed, wonder full.

again and still: humility

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I am blessed to be colleague with a pastor very different from me.

Phillip was born in Vietnam.  He came to know the power of Jesus and knew from that moment on that he could not be still; even in Communist Vietnam, even at the risk of his freedom and life, even when jailed, even when cast adrift as a boat person, even and thank God, now.

Phillip serves here as the Vietnamese Language minister.  His congregation is new.  Members of his church are first generation immigrants and their children.  Some speak English fluently; many over the age of twenty do not.  They are members of Richfield UMC and there is much to be learned from them about what it means to be thrown into a new culture, language, customs and mores.

And there is much to be learned through them about this thing called being a Christian.

What I am moved by is the power of wonder and how that transforms faith.  For Phillip and his congregation, being a right-out-loud Christian is yet a marvel.  It is gift, this walk with Jesus, and sharing the gift has the urgency of life unbound. 

I am humbled.  I am humbled by the ways my brother Phillip and his congregation share their witness.  The teachings of Jesus are shared with  joy and gratitude and newness of life and when did the mainline church become so bored by transformation that we lost our urgency?

I am humbled.  God sends into our lives those who jiggle complacency and so it is for me.  Again and still, I grow in the rich loam of humility.

holy vexation

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When I came to Richfield UMC seven years ago for my introductory meeting, I was scared and fragile feeling and grief-full.  Could I really make community with these folk, and how was it possible that I could leave beloveds in Duluth?  Would this crazy and audacious process of pairing pastor and congregation to live Christ together really work?

One of the people at the table that night let me know that the Senior Pastor has always led the men’s Bible study, so of course I would do the same.  I asked him if that would be so, given that for the first time their Senior Pastor would be a woman.  He didn’t miss a beat as he assured me that such details didn’t matter.

And so I have gathered every Wednesday at eight o’clock with a dozen or so men who bless me beyond the telling.  We talk about the seemingly unmentionables in church:  politics and sexuality and change and challenge.  We share insights about scripture and life.  We read books and The Book and we laugh plenty, pray, and hold each other when life gets scary.

Today’s epiphany was delivered by the same man who informed me that of course I would lead the men’s Bible Study.  We were finishing up Karen Armstrong’s drink-of-living-water book “The Bible” in which she says over and over that the lens through which we must read scripture is that of compassion and care.  Bible bullets meant to mangle are antithetical to the gifting of God’s invitation to love sung over and over again throughout scripture.

I was bemoaning the ways that hate speech in the name of the Christian movement has moved my children from the lap of church community.  My fellow scholar paradigm-shifted me away from my well-worn lament.

He asked about Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Didn’t I suppose that she too worried about her son challenging and walking away from the organized religious community of his parents?  Look what happened to the movement of God in the world when he set out, challenged, and proclaimed a new way.

I’m still grinning.  Because of course he is right.  Whew.  I don’t have to flop around trying to convince the next generation that we (that would be those of us who claim kin called church) really ought be trusted and joined and worked through.

Maybe, like Jesus, they are listening to a deeper voice and following a broader vision than they have heard sung through the church.

I’m hoping that we listen to them and respect them and allow ourselves to be shaped by their challenges.

Worlds are changed by those who vex their parents.