Category Archives: spirituality

ahh, vacation

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I am readying myself to rest.

What this means is that many bulletins must be prepared and many phone calls made in order for things to be tended while I am gone.

It’s worth it!

In the midst of all the getting ready, the stack of books intended for vacation reading is growing by the back door.  They are legion.

Too, I have the great good of feeling into days of unstructured being.  In the midst of the stretch of days will be a weekend with my children and bike rides and tennis games and walks and swims and time with my guy away from phones and did I mention, books to read.

I love my work.  I get to be engaged with amazing people doing work that gentles the world to a better place.  It is creative and meaningful work, this ministry.

And, in order to be fruitful, fallow times are crucial.

So, come the final “amen” on Sunday I am off seeking Sabbath.

Holy work, that.

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.

 

seven years

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Seven years ago today I married Cooper Wiggen.

We stood by the shore of a lake, attended by three others, and promised to love one another in covenanted and holy ways.  We eloped, since life being what it was we were buying a house, Cooper was commencing with a new church community, and we wanted to begin our living-together life as those allowed to marry in this state.

A month later we had a church wedding where we again spoke words of commitment; this time in the presence of our children and communities.

It has been a heart stretching endeavor, this marriage.  We each brought three children into this new thing.  We each tend two goodly-sized churches.  We each carried the wounds of divorce.  We each are a jumble of past hurts and core longings.

And we are yet alive, together.

I encountered awhile back an interview with an ardent feminist who had been in a marriage for decades.  She was nuts about her husband.  The interviewer made mention of her surprise that one can be an ardent feminist and a profoundly grateful lover of her male mate.  How could that be, the interviewer asked.

The answer was this:  in all the years of their life together, the woman never could predict what her husband was going to say or what he was thinking.  This to her was passion elixir.

I get it.

Through all the rips and wonder of blending families and life, I have been married to a man who fascinates and draws me.  The tender human to whom I have pledged my troth is gift.

On this day, I am remembering the joy and sometimes trudge of making this life we now share.  Seven years of meals and tears and laughter and love.  Seven years of stretch and soar.

Seven years.

Gratitude sings.

 

terrified

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I love the long ago disciples of Jesus.  They spent a lot of time clueless and terrified.

And yet those bunglers are the best kind of teachers because in our lived solidarity with their ineptitude there is such hope.

Easter and Eastertide are such a wallop of emotional power.  There is such despair and such hope and such desperate need to find something that makes sense that might be future-shaping and given the body-wriinging of crucifixion and resurrection and road walking, Jesus is so patient!  When encountering the lot of them after his resurection, the first thing he says to them is “Peace”.

It seems he knows that while terror bound it’s near impossible to allow anything in.

I’m feeling such gratitude for the power of a Holy heart that knew that what is needed is a beat or two of peace.  What he taught those disciples after he rustled up something to eat is that when we allow ourselves to be open to peace and to hope and to the good of unclenching, there is room for breath;  deep and grounding and freeing breath.

I’m feeling a deep sort of compassion for the clench of the world.  We all want, we all need, we all ache for peace and all along?

That peace is.   One breath at a time.

prep

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Leaving town is a spiritual practice.

Whenever I am making preparations to be gone for a time, the worries raise their voices.

For example, I seem to be convinced that if I am in close proximity to my beloveds I can keep them safe.  It’s a fine fantasy.  If I’m in my zone, somehow my people are safer.

Church details feel monumental.  Our church has the best staff bar none and a wondrous crew of retired clergy.  There should be no worry.  Should is the operative word.  Worry I do.

Like so many other things, I suspect thriving happens when space is made.  Offspring turn to each other or their step-Coop.  Pets are tended.  Church folk know the power of community.  All these things are good.

And for me?  Stepping out of my self-appointed role of keeper of well-being is flat-out crucial.

I’m off for five days.  Preparing to leave has lessons to lend.

Perhaps the spiritual discipline most necessary for digesting a magnificent Holy Week is the sacred revel of fun.

I can work with that.

team

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I was held by two churches in one day:  both I have given my heart to.

I spent the afternoon in Duluth at the funeral of a beloved spiritual guru.  Armas was 95 when he died.  The place was packed with huge hearted people who came to give thanks for the ways he breathed questions and spark in the world he so loved.

In the front row was his Men’s Bible Study group.  In the congregation were people who had shared the work loves of his life: justice making, question asking, meaning making and savoring.  His heart team was there to name his glory and give God thanks for the privilege of sharing life with him.

I motored back to Minneapolis for two church meetings.  Around each meeting table were members of teams (in church speak, we call them committees) who give their time and their hearts in order that ministry can happen.  We are varied in opinion and sensibilities, but we are woven together in order to set the stage for transformation.

It is no small thing, this being a part of a team.

Tonight I am full of wonder and gratitude.  Paying tribute to a man who knew the need for community, followed by encounters with circles of folk who live that need in order to share it.

It was good.  It is good.

hard work

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Palm Sunday is a lot of work.

I don’t mean planning for it or soaking in the wild good of children processing with palms waving.

I mean it is hard emotional work, because it is so very real.

We begin worship singing the wild hopes of the gathered – now and then.  Surely this Jesus will save us.  We join in the singing of “Hosannas” and feel ourselves swept into the shout of it.

And then the rest of the story commences.  The part about betrayals and silencing.  The part about the slinking away of the hopeful and the firing up of the machine of fear prompting the very ones who shouted hope to shout death.

It’s hard work.

Because it is so real.

Newspapers are packed full of this drama as it unfolds day after day after day.  We want our President, our mothers, our please-God-SOMEBODY to save us when all along the answer to our heart clamor can be found within and among us.

A figurehead who does all our work for us will never save us.

Jesus came to teach us a new way, a way grounded in the hard work of lived compassion and justice through our very selves and we seemed then and seem now to prefer that he would do the work for us.  The work seems too hard.

It is.  But we’re not alone in it.  The power and presence that took to the back of a donkey is in our midst yet.

Oh, may we be a people who take to our hearts and actions the living of “Hosanna”.

The world is sore in need of a break from “Crucify”.

full

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My head and heart are full.

My head is full of fluids intent on silencing my world.  I’m on the second go-round of antibiotics for ear infections.  So it goes.  It’s brought to my heart a whole new compassion for those with hearing loss.  Restaurants are brutal, as is any place where ambient noise reigns supreme.  Reality feels swaddled.  I’m learning new things.

And my heart?  My heart is full of wonder.  Love is an amazing force for healing.  At my uncle’s funeral, the pain and joy that comes with family and loving was named, the holding of story was shared, and the power of healing and gratitude was passed from heart to heart.  I share family with an amazing crew of varied explorers.  From grandparents Keith and Helen came four children full of soul and zest and they made families and together we each hold a piece of our shared story.  It’s a wonder.

Church too is a coming together of each of our stories.  When we gather to name our dependence upon and grounding in the Holy, we swirl our beings into a weave of remarkable strength.  Each of our bumps is held, each of our triumphs is present, and our questions and wisdom conspire to lead us into the story larger than our own in order that we might know it to be our own.

How wonder-full is that?

 

play

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It was a three date week.

Since Cooper and I didn’t think ahead to get reservations for Valentine’s Day, we dined out on Monday.  It was snowing lightly while we wandered downtown Minneapolis.  Being out and in the midst of city life was good.  A Barnes and Noble browse iced the cake.

On THE day (Valentine’s, don’t you know) we had no evening meetings.  Amazing.  So, we took ourselves for a stroll around a lake and got really wild and cruised the deli at Lund’s for our dinner.  The place was a zoo, filled with the likes of us who had procrastinated buying for the big heart dinner.  We came home with delectables and savored a night at home.

And, wonder of wonders, on Thursday we were again without evening meetings to contend with.  We were gifted with tickets to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert.  Daughter Leah knows of my love for soprano Dawn Upshaw, so we found ourselves in downtown St Paul.  Again, we had time to wander a bit before being treated to a crystal clear voice and an amazingly heart-connected ensemble.

We found ourselves a bit giddy.  Shared meals, time to be and time for reveling in the Twin Cities we call home was grace.

Today over lunch with a beloved friend, we found ourselves naming the scarcity of play in our lives.  Competing claims on time and energy somehow put frolicking on a back burner.  That’s just dumb.  It’s hard to claim fullness of life when it seems the main objective is keeping way too many balls in the air.

As for me, I’m thinking I’m on to something.

The question is, what’s next?

I’m ready to play!

 

so good

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One of the under sung gifts of shared ministry is laughter.

In ministry, we work with people.  People (and God knows that includes those called ordained ministers) are a wonderful collection of stories and quirks.

Sometimes, when life is good and healthy and precious, we get to laugh.  We laugh at ourselves, at the foibles of others, and at the ridiculously sublime thing it is to seek to live in the way of Jesus.  I sometimes want to call us “Stumblers Anonymous”, except that we aren’t all that anonymous about our stumbling.

Today I met with two of the gifts of our church.  We were talking about this and that and in the midst of it the tickle of funny took us over and we howled with laughter.

Oh, what gift!  Now, each time we see each other, we will remember the words and hearts shared during our time together.

And we will know this too:  we laughed.  We laughed at ourselves and at the goofy good world we share and this laughter will live in the web of our relationship always.

Sometimes we get so darn serious and intent on this thing called Christian Discipleship that we forget that Jesus didn’t bring people to him and his movement through deadly serious harangue. He invited people to join a movement made up of bumbly people blessed by God who believe that together they can be healers.

I figure they laughed a lot together.

That works for me.