I was handed a gift yesterday at church.  The woman who handed it to me shares my love of words and seems to have an uncanny sense of what will resonate with me.

The book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  I had heard someone else mention how good it was, but the title seemed too cute to make for an interesting read.  Plus, it was hardcover and I have pledged myself to only buying paperbacks if the wait at the library is too long.  Most times I stick to that pledge….

I read the book in one day.  It has a power hard to describe.  And for me on this day, it was just the sort of soul food I was hungry for.

The gift was given on Mother’s Day.  I received it after having led worship at two services where moms and children were sitting side by side on a Sunday morning worshipping God and giving thanks for the life of the other.  My mother on Mother’s Day was three hours north in Duluth.  My three children were off doing what they need to do on such a day:  studying for finals and working miles from their mother’s side.  I will admit to a bit of wistful loneliness.  I was missing my mom and I was missing being the mom of kids I could sit in a pew with.

And then I got a gift.  With an amazing card with a message I was graced to hear.  And suddenly, Mother’s Day became a celebration of the power of connection shared through the cords of love we weave in our lives.

The gift of life comes in ways sometimes visceral and sometimes ethereal and we who are reborn through the gifting are meant to give thanks.  And so I do.

Somehow we don’t hear much about how grief is a total body experience.

When we lose things:  dreams, beloveds, a sense of solid, the wham of grief is sudden guest in our life.  Uninvited, to be sure, but guest none the less.

In the rounds of pastoring, grief is a language that is spoken often.  Those of us who are able to be present at such times feel the honor of such sharing.  To be witness to tears and thrashings and wonderings about how such weight is to be borne is holy work. 

And it is work powerfully shared.  Sometimes people come out of worship flowing with tears.  They are apologetic and embarrassed.  Sometimes they aren’t sure what triggered the deluge.  Sometimes they know well the source:  a parent’s favorite hymn, the dangerous power of stillness and its ability to surface pain, the challenges and wrangles of life that just seem overwhelming and too much to bear.

When such tears are shed in the company of others, they are gift.  They bear witness to the power and safe of community.  They are proclaimers of mystery and sign of soul work.  They are language deeper than words.

My prayer is that for each of us, there is a pair of eyes, a presence, a place where tears and grief and confusion are safe to share.  Companions on our spirit journey are there for us, even when we feel less than lovely.  Even when we are so confused we cannot speak coherence.  Even then, especially then.

And my prayer is that the awareness grows in us each that in all of our griefs, we are companioned by the Holy:  Breathing, pulsing, and loving in all of the wet.

It was as if all the flavors of the earth were out to play in the May sunlight.

I’ve lived in Minneapolis for over five years now, but somehow didn’t get over to experience the May Day parade and revelries near Powderhorn Park.  This year my daughter Leah was pretty insistent.  I HAD to be a part of this.  She was right.

The parade begins before the parade begins.  Rounding the corner onto the street where the parade was going to pass, I was treated to the sight of blocks of people on their hands and knees drawing on the street with chalk.  The barricades were up, the cars were gone, and the play began.  Every manner of bike tooled past.  Costumes meant to celebrate spring were worn.  There were ribbons dancing and bodies freed from months of hiding from the cold.

The parade itself, when it passed us, was a story wrought by Heart of the Beast creativity.  Every year there is a theme.  This year it was how it is we are called to build a better world through a compassionate global economy (at least that’s what I got from it).  The story was told by an array of enthusiastic folk willing to give time and talent and energy to tell a story that needs telling.

I sat in the sun.  Leaning up against my guy, nestled next to my eldest, immersed in the celebration that is life,  glad to be alive and embodied and ready to play.

I drove halfway across the state of MN today to watch my daughter fly.

Rachel is a senior at the U of MN Morris.  She is a biology and environmental science double major.  As part of their graduation requirement, students are asked to prepare and present a lecture on a topic.  The lecture is to last forty-five minutes or so, with ten minutes for questions from students and faculty.

I’d be hard pressed to say exactly what her paper was on.  It had to do with how it is mercury is spewed into our environment and taken into the most basic lifeforms and transmitted up the food chain to humans.  It was informative (who knew that all those chemicals and the ways they bond would translate into tremors for the health of creation) and it was clear to me that she not only knew a lot, but was excited to share it with her peers and instructors.

How is it that this is so?  How is it that we gestate and give birth, raise and love, bless and send, and observe flight?  How is it that children morph into adults who have such passion for their worlds and such conviction that they can create better and saner ways of encountering it than the generations that preceded them?  How is it that a mom can bounce across the state and land in her daughter’s world and watch there a miracle unfold?

I’m in awe.  Somehow that girl ended up in my life.  Somehow I got to hold her and sing to her and breathe the air she breathed and now, in flight, she thinks to invite me to share the loft.

Blessed am I among women.

We have unpaid ministerial staff at our house.  Unpaid, unless you count bread gulps, mountains of Purina, and catnip baubles.

The heart ground of our clan is Zoe, our black lab (mostly) dog.  She has not always been appreciated.  While a puppy, she was BAD.  Furniture still bears witness to her penchant for tearing and ripping and chewing.  She was wild and excited most of the time.  We wondered what kind of crazy lunacy led us to take on a puppy with three small children.  There were thoughts of throwing in the towel.  But we prevailed, figuring that we didn’t want our kids to get the message that if they misbehaved, they would be shipped off to another home.

Thank goodness for that.  As she has aged, Zoe has blessed us beyond the price of any piece of furniture or vexation.  She is the first to greet anyone coming home; tail wagging and a slipper or shoe in her mouth as gift.  She is the warm heart always available to my children.  When tears and the huge challenge of living have swept them through the years and some of that challenge had to do with parents, Zoe was the go-to for steadfast and uncomplicated love.

She smells, yes.  She gets wild about garbage trucks and newspaper deliveries, yes.  And she is teacher of love.

The cat?  Well, that’s another story.  We got Ball as a chance for Jamie to have “his own” critter.  Foolish was that notion.  Because as we came to learn, cats are no one’s own.  They are their own.  And so it is with Ball.  He is insistent that he be treated with a flow of food.  He makes the dog cower because he is one bad hombre.  And yet, when the day has been long and the soul wrung, Ball finds his way to laps and shares his warmth and rumble.

I read in the morning’s paper about what goes on in designer puppy mills.  It sounds foul.  What I know is this:  the dog that was born under a trailer in rural Duluth and the cat that was taken in from a shelter in Minneapolis are grace in our lives.   In the choreography that is life in our home, hearts walk on four legs.

It’s Earth Day.  Today on the calendar, anyway.  But the reverence and mindfulness meant to surface on this day toward the gift of the cosmos must become so much a part of our being that we know each day to be Earth Day.

On this day we stop and give thanks –

For the places in our childhood that taught us awe and holding:  the lap of trees and the loft of sitting above the ground in the midst of the music of leaves.  The lakes that taught us to trust their hold as we relaxed and learned to float.  The mud crafted into pies and cakes and flung.  The stars singing a song of belonging to a child flat on back in the midst of the awesome “what is”.

For the places in our adult life where we are reminded that God’s artistry is life blood:  the cabins, the woods, the tree buds that promise that winter will leave for a time, the smell of growing and green and its partner the decay and crisp of fall.

For the awareness that all that is has been wrought from the imagination and heart of God and we are witnesses to the fragile and precious gift that is creation.

May we tend it with reverence.  May we tend it with gratitude.  May we breathe with our creator the breath of life upon this world.

In the flurry of life it’s easy to loose your heart wisdom; the kind of wisdom that reminds you that good friends are without price.

I spent Sunday night in the company of two women who have long been beloveds.  We have been busy, we three.  Two of them run their own businesses:  one a yoga studio and one an elder relocation service (hands on help for elders as they move from one home to another).  And me, well, I do the dance that is ministry.  Between us we have eight children and four grandchildren.  There are partners and there are consulting gigs and for one a recently published book and for another, a nationally published article (that would be me). 

We haven’t been together for three years.  It got to be known that this was near criminal, so we met in a retreat center where we had time and space and trees and stars and no agenda beyond hearing each other’s hearts and holding same.

I am blessed.  I am blessed to be connected to women who know and hold me and who allow me to know and hold them.  I am blessed by the awe I feel at their beauty.  I am blessed by the ways they are woven threads of grace in my life.  I am blessed by deep laughter and free tears and breathing the same air with them – no matter how far the miles may separate us.

We all breathe.  And the blessings are.

Yesterday was spring at its finest here in Minneapolis.  True, there are barely buds on the trees, but oh, the sun was glory.

Cooper and I had a date.  A long afternoon of revelling in play.  We walked from Minnehaha falls down to the river, we stopped at a most urban site for a quick dinner, and then we hopped the light rail to the Metrodome for a Twins game.

My man loves baseball.  I love him.  So I’m thinking the “if a=b and b=c, then the a=c” thing should apply.  It does, just not with the same fervor.  For the likes of me, the game on the field is (ok, meaningful) prop for the game in the crowd.  The play last night was thrilling. 

We were surrounded by Minnesota theatre:  The costumes, the set, the Scandinavian chorus, the lines, the music, the ritual foods, the drama and the comedy.

A pop fly came our way.  It bounced off the deck above us and caromed to an area two rows behind us.  I ended up with a foot slamming into my shoulder because a man two rows back launched himself into the air to score the ball for his child.  He did.  I have the tread marks to prove it.  And what did that child of about seven years of age do?  Once the drama subsided and bodies were untangled, he burst into sobs.  The bullet ball and the heroic leap and the glare of public scrutiny and the thrill of the hunt were too much for him.  Sometimes getting what we fervently hope for is more than we can take in, no?

A row in front of us was an Angel’s fan.  She seemed intent upon boisterously cheering for her team whilst in the midst of Twins territory.  She had a stuffed monkey Angel’s mascot that she danced through the air as she whooped.  Twins fans accepted her exuberance with grace.  Though I did hear some muttering about harm coming to that monkey….

On the light rail crammed with blue and red jerseys, I took up the muse of those of us who are aging:  “My, how times have changed….”  In a crammed train with people clinging to straps for stability there were two children of elementary age.  They were seated.  Around them were some advanced in their years.  When I was a girl, it was unthinkable that the young would not assume that the seats were best used by those who have racked up more years.  How do we as parents and teachers balance child-centered with child aware-of-others?  How do we as village raise our children to be aware of the village?

And there was this.  The Twins were getting slaughtered.  The lead of the opposing team seemed insurmountable and my sad man wanted to leave before the game was over.   That seemed so wrong to me.  We’d be quitters!  So we stayed.  And there was a grand slam miracle and the place went nuts and I thought thank God for crowds who show up and cheer for men who make obscene amounts of money to hit a white ball in order for us to enjoy community theatre.

It was a great day.

I have a dear faith sister who is serving in Sierra Leone on mission for the ELCA.

When first I met her she was serving a big steeple church in Lancaster, PA.  She was ground for that church and willing enough to be a resident of Pennsylvania and yet there was a yen in her that would not be stilled.  She felt the tug of a land and people she had experienced years before. 

So she is there now.  Serving the movement of Jesus in a place far from her roots.  Learning the ways of life apart from rhythms and ways of being  that mark the seasons of a parish pastor in the States.

It is her first Holy Week there.  Serving in a liason role without a parish to guide, she is guest and participant but she does not set the table for worship.  She wrote to we who are her clergy sisters and asked that we might send her our sermons and the thoughts we are sharing with our communities.  It would help, she told us, to feel across the many miles some semblance of  being enfolded in the story as she is used to feeling it unfold.

It is the wee hours of morning here on Easter.  In a few hours I will be in the midst of an Easter-seeking crowd of church folk, greedily gulping the sounds of timpani and organ.  We will do what we do on Easter:  greet each other with the shining joy of the resurrection, marvel at the beauty of our children, and throw our hearts into singing hope.

And across the world, the party will have already unfolded.  With Kate in their midst.  And that, perhaps, is one of the most powerful Easter witnesses of all.  The disciples are enjoined in that long ago garden to “go and tell” the good news of the risen one.

My sister Kate is doing just that;  in her powerful, grounded and Spirit filled way she is doing that.  My prayer is that she knows the power of Christ holding her in the new, rolling back the stones of loneliness, breathing through her courage, blessing her witness, even as she will bless my own in the hours to come.

We carry the Christ.  One to the other.  We are the people of the Risen One.

Last night on Maundy Thursday we gathered as the broken and the blessed.

On a Thursday night as the world swirled around us, we paused for a time and remembered a story of which we are an ongoing part.

We acknowledged how badly we need each other.  There is no purchaseable gimickry that can replace the warmth of the Holy shared face to face, hand to hand, heart to heart.

We participated in remembering the story of Jesus and how it was he gathered at table with his heart folk.  We participated in owning our own sometimes inability to allow love to touch the vulnerable places of our being.  We thought a bit about how pride keeps us from allowing ourselves to be tended in the ways taught to us by our faith.  We knew in that time that we are broken and we are blessed by coming together and feeding each other the stuffs of attention and compassion and bread.

For all the natterings about relevance surrounding the institution of church, I say: come to dinner.  Because for an hour or so last night, the lonely were held, the tired tended, and the seeking found.  All because we paused and fed each other the bread of life.  Our love, broken and blessed as shared meal was conduit of the Holy.  Truly, we shared bread for our journey.  And it was good.