Well, the last “amen” has sounded and I’m off for a week in the sun.

I love packing.  It is intriguing to see what are the essentials of my life.  The first and most essential travel good is Cooper.  That one I have covered.  Next on the choosing roster is books.  Anticipating the perfect reads for unstructured time is a romp.  I almost always pillage a book store while away, since books bought in exotic places seem even more delicious.  But, leaving home without companion reads is unthinkable.  Next in importance are what it is I will wear that will free and bless.  Given that I am expecting to live with the maximum amount of sun on my skin, the clothes aspect is easy:  not much.

Get-to-know yourself gurus talk a lot about what it is we pack in the bag that is our life.  Vacations bring that whole issue to the front line.  As for me, what I pack for vacation is magnification of what I am blessed to live in my life.

I live in the company of people who remind me who I am.  I live in the company of ideas and poetry given voice by others.  I live in the company of my own being and I adorn it as I choose.  That’s life.

I live.  For the next week or so, I will live in the blow of the wind and the warm of the sun.  I want for every pore to be open.  Not just on vacation, but through every day I am blessed to live.

Today’s Financial Peace lesson was entitled “Buyer Beware”.

Some of the powerful and not so surprising tidbits are these:

• For each hour of TV watched, consumers spend $200 extra a year.
• In 1971, breathing humans were exposed to an average of 560 ads per day.  In 2011, that number has jumped to an average of 3 – 4,000 ads per day.
• We live in the most marketed-to culture in history.

Intuitively we know this.  We’re researched and profiled walking dollar signs for people who want us to buy our happiness their way.

As I listened, I had to laugh at myself.  After years of hearing my kids rave about their Apple computers and years of listening to the lovely sound of the Apple keyboard rattling ever-so-cooly under their fingers, I opted for an Apple MacBook Pro when my old lap top crashed.  And let me tell you, I would rave to anyone about the “Apple Experience”.  From the moment of walking in the door, the service is excellent, the vibe welcoming to even un-cool crones, and the sense of being a part of a distinct culture seductive and pleasing as heck.

I love it.  And, I’ve been skillfully manipulated to love it.

On of the other great bits I heard today was that lurking within us each is that screaming fit-throwing toddler we see regularly at grocery stores.  You know, the one who wants what he or she wants and fit throwing and want asserting commences until the embarrassed or frustrated parent gives in or throws that kid under their armpit and leaves the store.

We want what we want, don’t we?  And we can spin the most outlandishly indulgent and unwise purchase with great creativity; unless we summon the parent in us that knows well that getting everything we want will make us broken.

The list of things my inner toddler wants is so long and lovely.  So what I’m doing was begun by my daughter when she was here last.  She put a list on the ‘fridge (the high holy altar of home).  I add to it the list of things I figure I can’t (or really, the issue is I feel I shouldn’t have to) live without.

Something about doing that has helped me slow the purchase lust.  I look at the items on that list and they lose their power to make me “act out”.  Dining room set?  Lovely.  But crucial?  Nope.  It’s been fun, actually, to savor the making of decision and plan.

And since I am cool enough to have an Apple, I can be patient.

Recently I went to a church gathering that was not my own.  Meaning, it was put together by others and I was largely an unknown.  I had a role to play later in the evening, but for the first part, I was a woman walking into a church function alone.

It was hard.

I was hungry for faces to greet me, words of welcome to be shared, invitation to the meal to be offered.  I was swimming in a sea of culture and people who I did not know and I wanted in the worst way to turn around and run, not walk, out of the door.

Every church member should have to endure this wrack.  Every Sunday there are people coming into the building for the first time and they are not sure of the culture or climate or what is expected of them and if they are not greeted and warmed into the midst of community, no wonder they don’t come back

I wouldn’t.

Welcome the stranger, Jesus teaches.  Welcome welcome welcome welcome because you don’t know what they carry in their hearts and the courage it took to walk through the doors and the beauty they have to share and the ways they will shut down but good if they feel invisible.  Welcome the stranger because you too once knew what it was to be a wanderer; lost, untethered, hopeful and longing for connection.

It is in our faith DNA, this knowing of the pain of being stranger in the midst of community.

So too is the mandate to welcome (have I mentioned this yet?).

I didn’t run out of the room.  I stayed.  But I didn’t eat, because I wasn’t invited.

How many people are hungering and thirsting for the meal that is grace and they come through our doors and leave without being invited to feast?

No wonder they don’t come back.  I wouldn’t.

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42

Last night a group of us met at church.  We gathered around to savor the gift of the Beatitudes; the group of teachings found in Matthew 5: 1- 12.  They are a part of that great set of teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount.

Last night’s portion had to do with hungering and thirsting for righteousness with the assurance that such hunger will result in being filled.

Like so many words in our faith tradition, “righteousness” has become a hitch word.  So often we automatically include the word “self” in front of that righteousness word, and the result is a flee-from-it sense that we want none of it.  Self righteous people make for soul curl.  We’ve felt their scathe, and want nothing to do with righteousness.

But the unpacking of the word leads us to claim a longing that is real.  Righteousness has to do with knowing our hunger and thirst for Holy communion.  To be in righteous relationship with the Holy is to know our need for God and our thirst for God steep and we want that right relationship embedded in the word we resist.  To be righteous is to know our utter need for and dependence upon the Holy.

And, to be righteous is to know our longing for soul fill.  We find it in different ways:  The loves we embrace, the beauty we soak in, the savor of words and sound that hum our beings, the sweet sound of silence through which our God may breathe grace.

We are like deer that skittishly leave the wrap of the woods.  Thirsty we are, and tired of lurking in the shadows we are, and the sun is sparkling on the water of grace and so venture out we do.

Because our souls thirst for the living God.

We’re tired of being thirsty.

Wow, there are lots of headlines and lots of spin these days.

It seems as though the peeling back of veneer in Wisconsin has touched us all.  It has been a wake up call of sorts, calling us each to consider what it means to vote, to thrive, to be.

Never have I seen the number of Facebook posts dealing with the union scrap.  Commentators from around the nation are weighing in on the happenings in Madison and in many of the states in our nation.

We’re broken.  Somewhere along the way, we got lulled into the sense that we could happily borrow our way into middle class life.  For many, the wake-up call has been piercing:  foreclosed homes, college educations tenuous, jobs for entering youngins not forthcoming, and no clear sense of how long this readjustment time will last.

And who and what will be standing when we are on the other side?

For years we have believed that we didn’t have to really pay attention to what was going on around us.  We handed over power to those only too happy to take it up.  We mortgaged our future to banks and corporations only too happy to accept our allegiance.

And now?  Now we are coming to understand that money and power vested in faceless entities eventuates in abetting what faceless entities do:  they protect their power and their ability to wield it.

The facts are clear.  The divide between the wealthy and the poor is growing by alarming rates.  Is it government’s job to correct that?  If not the government of the people by the people, then whom?

In my fantasy world, followers of Jesus would “use the power that God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” (from our UM vows of membership) in order that we might right the growing fractures in our nation.

So how are we called to respond?

Lobbing opinions and playing pile-on serves us not at all.

What we are called to consider is this:  what will we do with the one wild and precious thing that is our life, our liberty, our happiness?  What will we do to insure that in this land of plenty our teachers and public servants are allowed to join voice?  What will we do to stand our convictions in such a way that they participate in building up rather than ripping apart?

Who are we in these days?  And how are we called to be?

My beloveds are out trying to find the reassuring clunk of metal under piles of snow.  Rachel needs to get to work.  Her car is in the midst of a snow mound somewhere.  This we believe.

We got socked with yet another snow slam.  The week before had been warm and the hope of spring was real.  As true Minnesotans, though, we knew better than to believe that the days of down coats were behind us.  We were right.

On Sunday next I am escaping.  Cooper and I will be in Florida for a week.  We’re assessing the book stock that needs to travel with us and imagining the way it will feel to smell air that has that lovely essence of growing things.  I am so ready.  About this time of year my skin longs for sun and my soul clamors for unbundled being.

But where else could I live but here?  The snow makes for great reminder of humility.  The clean cut of the air and the sense of gumption it takes to go about appointed tasks are great reminders that we live in the midst of a creation far beyond our manipulation and control.

I can be philosophical about all of this because awaiting me at the end of the week are warmth and sun.  I know it’s a privilege that years ago, in the thick of baby raising and life making, I only dreamed about.

Now, in my doddering older age, I get to frolic for a time.  So digging out cars, navigating snow dumps and summoning the energy it takes to meet the winter are temporary hurdles.  This too shall pass.

Do you suppose it’s too much to ask that it be melted by the time I get home?

Today I preached about living as Christians.

Not a new concept, but a challenging one.  It is relatively easy to wear the name of Jesus when things are going well.  When we have money in the bank and when the world is going along nicely, thank you very much, it is less challenging to live the teachings we say we believe.

But when life gets bumpy:  when political muck is thrown and anxiety is ratcheted in Madison and the Middle East, living the ethical teachings we are given by our faith is hard work.

And it is even more crucial in such times that we remember who we are.  The text this morning was from the book of Leviticus.  The teachings shared in chapter 19 are moral guidelines given us by a God who believes we have the power and heart to live in such a way that we love our neighbors as ourselves.

How will we live?  Will we enter into the disparaging-of-others fray, happily roiling up the indignation of ourselves and others, or will we remember that all createds are kin?  What does it feel like to walk in the shoes of the other?  How do we make a difference when the challenges facing our country, our communities, our families and our hearts are so vast?

We choose life.  Life in the way of Jesus is about building up, not gleefully tearing down.  Life in the way of Jesus is standing up and speaking against oppression and injustice; speaking our truth while never forgetting that the ways we speak and the ways we encounter those different from ourselves matters.

I’m troubled.  There is rage not too far beneath the surface of our lives.  It is precisely in such times that we ought challenge ourselves to not only pay lip service to the gospel.  It is time to try to live it, with God’s help.

It’s hard work.  God believes we can do it.

It’s Valentine’s Day!

I am sitting in a coffee shop in the booming metropolis of Moose Lake. Having been rendered a ski widow (Cooper took off with friends for a much-good skiing weekend) I decided to visit my mom after church on Sunday.

Being in Duluth is always good soul medicine for me.  My mom has an apartment feet away from the bay (Lake Superior, for the geography impaired).  This means she never has to close curtains.  The presence of the lake and its power and mystery are constant companion.  Sitting in her living room the lights of the ore boats and harbor are all the entertainment I need.

And, being in her company is a bit of crawling into the lap of letting go.  She likes me.  I like her.  Together, we get to talk about things that years have made possible.  It is good.

On my way home to Minneapolis, I did a swing-through hug of my little sister, and then find myself here.  I tell myself it is for a coffee fuel-up before the drive, but really, it is hard for me to rush through the land of my cabin.

As I entered the coffee shop, I ran into a retired clergy person and his wife.  They are members of the church I used to serve.  On my window sill in my office sits a bird he carved out of wood scavenged from the cabin lake I have so long loved.

It was good catching up with them.  They had health tales to relate and we caught up a bit.  Most precious to me was the shine in their eyes and the mutual appreciation we shared.  We were worship kin for years.  That kind of dance never dies.

In parting, they had this to say:  God doesn’t put anyone in our lives that isn’t meant to be there.

On this Valentine’s Day, I say “amen” (or “ah-women”).  The people put in our lives are those who are the very best teachers of love we could ask to encounter.  Our teachers are not always of our choosing, but teach they do, if we are willing to open ourselves to their lessons.

So I give thanks.  I give thanks for a coffee shop that allows me to linger a bit in the holy land.  I give thanks for eyes that light and hearts that remain connected.  I give thanks for the teachers of love in my life.

Blessed am I among women.

And – get this – it is Mocha Monday!!!!!!

Some have said that the church lost much of the ground of people’s hearts when it lost its place for the unfolding of ritual.

We need it, we human folk.  We need soul containers that help us to mark the marvels and transitions of our lives.  Churches have not lost all ritual.  We worship at least weekly, and we continue to mark the moving from one stage of being to another:  baptisms, marriages, funerals.  What we have not held as sacred stage for soul growth are the “smaller” transitions: starting school, moving from grade school to middle school, puberty, graduations, leaving home, making babies, menopause (both men and women), divorce, and other shifts in our being that are no longer ritually marked in community.

I’m prompted to think about this because of Valentine’s Day.  When I was growing up, this was a big deal.  We spent time as a family decorating a box for our living room table.  In that box went cards for each family member to be opened together at dinner on Valentine’s Day.

The box was promise.  For a night, we could let go of the jousting that is living family life.  We could be assured of the love that grounded the swirl of our family.

Opening the Valentines was heart-racing good.  But preparing for the love exchange by decorating that box and placing it on the family altar was as powerful.  We were acknowledging that sharing affection was worthy of care and creativity.

I have time today to indulge in unhurried card browsing.  I can get cards out to family far from home, and I’m deciding that I’m going to take the time to create a box for our table because I’m finding that the ritual of sharing love matters to me.

What are the markers in our lives?  What are the signs and slowings that remind us of who we are and what it is that we value?

And how do we acknowledge that in the hurry and buzz that is the living of our days, our souls know a deep wisdom: rituals remind, ground, and hold us.  Living them in community makes for meaning.

The scissors will feel good.  As I cut and create, I’ll be home again.

Below is the text of what I will share at the State Capital at noon.  I’ll be speaking at an interfaith rally advocating equal rights for all God’s children; rights which include marriage of same gender loving couples.

My name is Elizabeth Macaulay and I serve as Lead Pastor at Richfield United Methodist Church in South Minneapolis.

I’m here today because I long to live in a state where hearts are not broken by strictures and structures that  deny life and love fully lived.

My father, the Rev. George Mackenzie Macaulay III was a UCC pastor.  He was a man committed to the justice and compassion vision of Jesus and he worked in the movement for decades.  He sought to live the wisdom taught by Jesus and all great religious teachers:  practice compassion, celebrate and honor the spark of the Holy that dwells within each, love your neighbor as yourself.

My father died young of a massive heart attack – her heart was broken – because for decades she lived the desert reality of being transgender in a world that could not, would not know the fullness of her beauty. She was that terrifying and beautiful thing in this world:  a God creation not bound by human constructs.  She was a God creation fractured by human constructs.

Her heart broke.

And mine continues to break.

I’m here because I believe that the heart of the Holy celebrates love; love lived, love practiced, love celebrated through the wild courage it takes to join heart, one with another.

And while our God longs love, our world, our nation, our state, our communities, our homes are being inundated with messages and movements stirring up fear of love lived by same-gender-loving couples and fear breaks hearts and it breaks families and

we are capable of so much more.

Jesus taught that he came that all might have life, and have it abundantly.

I no longer get to share life with my father.

But I do get to live and work and preach and believe that in the years to come, no more daughters in Minnesota will have parents die of broken hearts.

All families who live the language of love are sacred gift.  Scripture is alive, leading us to live the ways of love.

God knows we live with an awareness of what it means to live in a frozen land.

God calls us to be people of awakening and living hearts.

Let us celebrate as Minnesotans the life-giving power of love.

Let us pray and vote and live into being a state where hearts break no more.