Some of the things I am grateful for…

A Thanksgiving feast enjoyed by five out of six children and two mothers.

My “missing” child off at a destination wedding (not hers, but a family friend’s of her beloved’s) in Vail, Colorado is in the company of a high school cabin friend.  Who knew?  The world weaves in amazing ways.

Being able to take my mom to church.  The building was empty, and there in the hush of that holy sanctuary space, I could share with her the story of our pipe organ and the ways the church community made beauty happen.

Lunch with my mom and my newly discovered cousin-friend and her kin.  You know how it goes.  Sometimes the people closest via blood aren’t discovered as heart kindred until later in life.  So it has been.

Quiet.  After the orchestration of a mega meal and the hospitality that goes with it, the chance to sit on the couch is gift.

A mother in law who calls in the morning to be sure I read a guest editorial written about the heart-hurt experienced by same-gender loving people who cannot marry.  Last night at the dinner table she challenged us to become knowledgeable and speak up about human trafficking and the upcoming marriage amendment.  She is 89.  Who will be a witness?  Grace Wiggen, that’s who.

Love.  Cooper’s youngest is marrying next summer.  I got a peek at her dress (modern technology is our friend) and the planning is thick.  She is so excited to share life with her guy.  This is good.

More love.  Yesterday twenty-some people gathered around tables and shared a Thanksgiving feast at church.  I wasn’t there, but throughout the day I was aware that the warmth of gratitude and love was being shared by church kin and it moves me, this knitting of people.

Wonder.  Love is grand.  Gratitude is.  And Sunday?  Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent.  It will be powerful to gather in the hush of candle lighting.  To gather, and to continue this giving of thanks for the gift we know to be real but experience in fleeting ways:  the peace of the Christ.  God with us.  Emmanuel.

Gratitude.

We have new computers at work!

We have new computers at work.  Sigh.

While new is lovely, the muttering and foolish-feeling has escalated.  I’m not alone in this.  We do an amazing number of things in a given week:  create power points for worship, write lots of things, field hundreds of emails, send many of same, and send things like sermons from home to church to be printed.

Not a one of the above things that used to be done with ease has been easy these past few weeks.  There has been a seemingly unending stream of ineptitude-proving tasks that take twice as long to get done.

The worst was on Sunday morning.  I write my sermon at home, send it to the church, and print it off from there.  No big deal.  Except that when I got to church I could not get my email to release my oh-so-carefully crafted words.  I was thinking I would have to preach from a manuscript printed in a two (ok, maybe I am exaggerating here) point font.  Luckily I had patient church members who could coach my end-of-my-rope under pressure self and I was able to see my sermon in order to share it.

I know that in a week or so, we’ll be feeling fleet and smug about the new technology in our lives.  But oh, the meantime is endless long.

So, be kind to your techno-blubbing staff, my friends.  We’re doing the best that we can.

So, it’s that glorious day when an extra hour of sleep is given.  People actually get to church early and there is energy aplenty because we are all burping from the extra sleep.

Except me.  Here is how it worked at my house.

I have one of those lovely phones that reminds me of my every obligation.  It does so by way of a beeping alert ten minutes prior to my inputted commitment.

I put Daylight savings into my phone, just so I wouldn’t forget it.  For some reason, I logged it in to commence at midnight.

I sleep with my phone in my bedroom.  Because I have three children and because I am on call 24/7, I plug it into a socket across the room in my bedroom.  Ever vigilant am I.

When I got up this morning, I felt none of the joy of extra sleep. I felt run over by a bus. Cooper too was a bit groggy.  As we swapped “Wow, I feel tired” stories, he suggested that I check my text mail box, since it sounded to him like I was getting texts all night.

That sent my alert mode racing.  I went to my phone to retrieve what I was sure were urgent messages from my kids.

And what I found was that all night long, every ten minutes, my phone had done what it was programmed to do:  remind me that it was the day when a holy extra hour of sleep was possible.

I vaguely remember waking up through the night wondering why my phone was lit up.  But in that sleep fuzzled way of wee hours, I didn’t rouse myself enough to investigate.

Instead, I slept, or didn’t sleep, as every ten minutes my phone spoke its warning message.

Technology is a fine thing, but it is only as good as the humanoids that tell it what to do.

Tonight, I am looking forward to a sleep unaccompanied by lights and beeps and vague wonderings.

I think I’ll like it.

There is no perfect family, this I know.

There is no family where hurt does not happen, no family where mom and dad love everyone best, no family where disappointments don’t bite, no family where stumbles and embarrassments are handled with consummate grace.

And, there is nothing like family to teach us about our own snargles, foibles, shine and being.

When we are in the midst of tussles and hurt, it feels impossible, this thing called “family”.  We cannot imagine a time when ease will be.  We cannot imagine getting past the elephants of disappointment and betrayal that loom so large.

But time?  Time, she is great gift.  If we can hold on to the sacred and tricky threads that are blood and shared history, we can sometimes find our way back into hearts softened by humility and grace.

When we come home to each other, the real that is shared is precious.  We know the pain of distance, and we trust each other enough to learn the unique nuances of heart that beat between us.

We are kin, true.  And, with time we learn that we are different from each other and our stories vary widely and this is good.

On this day, I am praying thanks to God for the challenge and blessing that is family.

The ways we learn the stunning power of love and forgiveness from and with each other make me crazy grateful.

A year ago I was on my way to Scotland.

And, I am still there.

Land and ancestry are cellular things.  I have long felt a natural affinity to rocks, wind and water.  After traveling to Scotland it is clear to me why that is.  While I was there, the hum of recognition was real.  I was in the land of home.

My grandfather emigrated from the Isle of Lewis.  A dear friend brought home a photo of the Macaulay homestead on Lewis.  The photo showed a dome of hewn stone once occupied by others until the Macaulays decided it ought be theirs.  They didn’t negotiate for ownership:  they set fire to heather, put it over the smoke vent in the roof, and smoked out the competition.

So it goes.

I am serving the church of my forebears.  After arriving at Richfield UMC, I discovered that my great great grandparents had been committed members of that church.  In the chapel there is a memorial window marking the life of a thirteen year old girl who died after contracting pneumonia.  The young girl is my grandmother’s cousin.  How is it possible I had no idea of my Methodist heritage?  How is it possible that as an adult I fell in love with the piety and justice combo platter that is the United Methodist Church (I grew up a UCC preacher’s kid) and made my life in my ancestral denomination?  How is it I went to Richfield having no idea that being appointed there meant a home coming?

Home is a cellular thing.  It is a moveable temple.  It is known in the deep wisdom of our beings and when we find ourselves in that place, the song of our ancestors sings welcome.

So, a year ago I went home.  Today I am home.

So it goes.

A friend posted a provocative image on Facebook.

It is a photo of a billboard.  On the billboard in huge print are these words:  Who stole Jesus?

It’s a question much on my mind these days.  I’m preaching a sermon series called “CSI: Christians in Search of Identity” and we’re asking “Who are you” (okay, now you too have the song from The Who stuck in your head for eternity).  Tomorrow we’ll take to our hearts the question of how we live The Way of Jesus.

I mean, the Jesus of Scripture.  The Jesus who insisted upon preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom from oppression for all.  I mean, the Jesus who was intentional about sitting at table with those deemed outside the pale of polite society and taught his disciples that God’s vision for creation is built in just such ways.  I mean, the Jesus who believed we could live with heart and compassion and invited us to find communities of support in order that we might practice a bit.

The “Jesus” who is the front man for a  movement that proclaims hate without engaging in the hard work of love?  The “Jesus” that lends credence to the amassing and hoarding of wealth?  That “Jesus” can be stolen and hopefully never returned to this sorely aching world.

Jesus has not been stolen.  The teachings of Jesus have been domesticated and manipulated  and powdered and saccharined in order to justify piracy and complacency.

Perhaps the billboard ought best ask:  Who stole the Heart, Minds, Imaginations and Passions of the People of Jesus?

It’s not about “them”; those Jesus thieves.  It’s about us.

There are days that give and give.

Wednesdays in the life of most pastors are near marathons.  We engage just about every facet of ministry that is engage-able.  And while the pouring out is real, the pouring in is profound.

Yesterday, I began my Wednesday as I always do.  At eight, a group of men wise and willing to engage gather around a table and chew on the Word.  We are currently studying the book of Isaiah.  “Study” is a one-dimensional word that isn’t quite accurate.  We are letting Isaiah challenge and bless.  The poetry is exquisite and the summons to just living clear.  The text prompts conversation topics wide-ranging and provocative.  This is good.

Following that, I was able to meet with a top-notch group of leaders.  We’re seeking a comprehensive look at how to tweak ministry.  It is so good to have hearts engaged around a common call.

Cooper and I were fed delicious food and fine conversation at a lunch with parishioners.  Jesus was on to something:  sitting at table together makes for powerful community.

I prepped for an evening class and then was off to meet with three others to craft a long overdue curriculum for the Annual Conference about how it is we have much to learn about the ways of poverty and its eradication.  It’s important and good work, this seeking to move upstream and stop the carnage that is want.

Back at church, students from the Hennepin County school of culinary arts were cooking up dinner (really, it’s the most amazing deal in town).  We sat down to a feast, and then adjourned for a class about Wesley and this thing called “grace”.  Reading Wesley’s own words around the table is powerful reminder that we are grounded in a heart full theology.

And then, full of gratitude for an engaged class and day, I arrived home to all three children in the house!  They were doing what they do:  making dinner, checking email, bouncing off each other and Cooper.  We settled into a movie and I savored the sweet hum of gratitude that sounds in me whenever I am snuggled in with my beloveds.

All in all, it was the sweetest of days.

It’s one of those things feared greatly:  a mammogram technician wanting more.

After the first go-round with my mammogram, it was decided that I needed another.  There was something there they needed a closer look at.  They commenced yet another flattening.  And then, they wanted an ultrasound done.

Shuffling from one room to another with heart refusing to engage with “what ifs” (yeah, right) it was determined that I needed a biopsy.

So, a day later I was back on the table for a slice and a snip.

And then the waiting commenced.  I had the procedure done on Wednesday.  I would find out on Friday.

The hours between were long.  While I knew the odds were great and my own sense of things positive, those words I long to keep far from me and mine:  “biopsy”, “cancer”, “abnormal”.  Those words would pop into my consciousness often.  The feeling of vulnerability was exquisite.

After making many phone calls on Friday, I got the news I longed to hear:  no cancer! Things are fine.

My life as I know it is handed back to me.

The mystery that is life and the wonder that is body health is too much for me to comprehend on most days.  On this day, I feel like I want to sit in the lap of the Holy and have a fine cry.

Tonight the organ at our church is being re-dedicated.  I will have a chance to sit in sacred space and open myself to the wonder that is resurrection; ongoing, always, eternal.

For now, on this day, the stone has been rolled away.  Alleluia indeed.

One of the child scroungers who live in this house found a relic from my past.

It is a tape from a band their dad and I were in for four years.  The band was called “Northwind”.  We were a five piece band playing all the hot spots in Stevens Point, Wisconsin in the mid ’80’s.

Oh my.  I hear the tape and I’m transported to another place and time nearly 30 years ago.

That band was a flat-out hoot.  We were good.  We loved to have fun.  We played as a house band at the Holiday Inn in town, which meant that we played six nights a week until 2:00 AM, got up and went to work, and did it again the next night.  We played weddings and New Years Eves and company parties and in bars and making music with good people was good good work.

Watching my son experience this tape is great fun.  He’s trying to be appreciative between guffaws.

What it does for me is remarkable.  I’m torn between laughing, wincing, and weeping.  So much has happened in the between years.  Babies were born, cities moved to, degrees earned, and so much life lived.

But I think that if I were able to be on stage with those men again, I’d know every song, every harmony, and love every minute of making that music again.

But I’m not sure playing the trumpet was the grooviest best idea…

Here’s a quote I came across whilst sermon crafting:

“The chief fantasy most of us served as we left our parents was that we would be decent, moral beings, that we would not hurt others, least of all our children.  Who would have thought that just by being who we were, we would hurt our children, our mate, and ourselves?”  (Creating a Life, James Hollis)

Hollis maintains that our work in the second half of our life is to turn and face the places that we don’t want to trot out publicly:  our shadows.  Those places we most fervently and cleverly seek to hide are where our salvation lies.  They have much to teach us, if we would allow their wisdom.  There is soul gold amidst the oh-so-human muck of our being.

If, that is, we allow ourselves the compassion to know ourselves.

Imagine.  People get hurt and they hurt each other.  It’s the cost of being human, this hurting.  No matter how pristine our intentions or how tightly we seek to present only the lovely, our humanity does what it does – it messes in the emotional humanity of others.

Somehow, this seems to be surprising.  A bump in relationship happens and we are outraged or astounded or furious or hurt hurt hurt and we take up our stance of habit which can be tears or silence or ice or shouting or artful shunning or… you get my meaning.  There seems to be a sense inside of us that surely if people around us truly loved us, hurt would be no more and surely people would know the fine gold of our intentions and would never be hurt by our being.

Crazy making, that.

We hurt people.  They hurt us.  We can spend sleepless nights fretting about our woundings of our beloveds (why is it always at 3:00 AM that the recrimination gremlins frolic?).  We can drag the sack of our naughties behind us and know that it will grow to epic proportions.

Or, we could experiment with forgiving ourselves for the human ways we bumble about. We can explore ourselves with a sense of curiosity and oh, with a sense of tenderness.

And, we can turn to our beloveds and learn from them and with them.  Being in love and being a beloved of others provides us with the best teaching staff we could ask for.

Jesus had much to say about this thing called being human.  Love, forgiveness, grace and courage make for messy blessing as we explore ourselves through the tutelage of others.

Sometimes we give thanks for the flinch and the grow of life.