We are 36 pilgrims soaking in Ireland.

I’m not sure how to articulate these past four days.

We have gazed over cliffs, prayed the Psalms, stood upon bogs, sniffed peat fires, felt the wind, and become a community.

The “what” of this will speak into the future.

For now, I’m not much inclined to speak.

I’m listening.

I’ve been singing one of the songs from “The Wizard of Oz”.

Said song is sung at Emerald City when Dorothy and her bedraggled companions are buffed and shined and curled and stuffed up in order to meet the Wizard.

I am not meeting the Wizard this weekend.  Rather, I am participating in the preparations for one of our children’s weddings.

Cooper’s youngest daughter Julia is marrying a most lovely young man.  They are mature and excited and organized and after a year plus of planning, the big weekend commences on Thursday.

In one room on Saturday night will be parents and grands and children and aunts and uncles and friends who make life whole.

Cooper will be in a tux.  This is no small thing.

And the rest of us?  We have been scurrying here and there finding THE right clothes to wear. To go with THE right clothes the right doo-dads had to be found and hair cuts commenced and nails done and all those other things that go into making a person feel good.  All of these most serious pursuits have been shoe-horned into the living of these days.  

We are off tomorrow night to do this celebrating.

It has been gift, this preparing.  All along it has been fun to imagine the joy of the day and the fun of being kin and kindreds who have come together to bless Julia and Clint.

A new thing is beginning.  Julia and Clint’s coming together is built upon years of loving and praying and hoping and it is high holy courage act, the joining of hearts for life.

And by golly, those who are there to lend prayers and laughter will be buffed and stuffed and shining with love.

I have the great gift to be in relationship with engaged and vital young adults.

Last night I was able to spend time with three daughters of ours.  Each has passion for the world and the bettering of same.

The topic of patriarchy came up.  The air shifted.  Energy zinged.  

There have been waves of feminism that have washed the soul of our culture.  I am not sure what wave we are currently experiencing, but the rolling of the sea that is sexism is far from still.

Each of the young women could name experiences they had encountered that shook them up.  Bright and talented and powerful, they had all encountered times when they have been shushed and silenced and shamed for being bright and talented and powerful.

They were angry and so frustrated.  Patriarchy, the assumption that being male is the norm that ought guide and rule, is a real binder of possibility and soul.  They are plenty tired of it.

In preparing to teach a class on poverty, the effects of this gender lopsidedness is so very clear.  Women yet make nearly a quarter less than men.  Women yet are assaulted and frightened in their homes and worlds.  Women yet are often left to tend children sans financial and emotional support.  Women yet are achingly vulnerable.

What does it mean to us as people of faith?  What does it mean that those who gestate and birth are maligned and silenced?  What does it mean to be a people of the incarnation when woman Word Made Flesh is clearly suspect, else our laws and culture would assure safety of body and being?

I’m saddened and oh yes, enraged that although this work has been going on for so long, the putrid elephant that is patriarchy lives seemingly unremarked and unchallenged smack dab in the midst of community.

And, I am moved and blessed to have sisters and brothers who pay attention, who allow the anger, who ask the questions and challenge the assumptions.

Hope and power.  Let it be.

At church we are seeking to mark rites of passage.

The notion has been put forward that churches began to lose their resonance and power in people’s lives when they stepped back from being the place where rites of passage are celebrated:  birth, death, marriages, coming to man or womanhood, leaving home, divorce, etc.  When rites of passage are celebrated in community, the richness of generational wisdom is joined with the power of the Holy and life is named as God adventure and gift.  When significant life passages are not named and held in church community, richness is leached.

So with that in mind, I share with you a rite of passage just shared with my son:  buying his first suit.

There have been purchases made in the past, but this time, it was for real.  We’re talking a real go-out-in-the-world suit.

My son arrived at my house shining with the results of riding his bike.  He flipped on a t-shirt to complement the when-have-they-last-seen-a-washing-machine-shorts and we were off.

Our goal was a suggested outlet that specializes in men’s suits.  We went in.  The nice man began his measuring and spieling and pulled out some options.

And then Jameson put on the suit coat.

Before my eyes, he was transformed into a svelte man.  

Holy holy holy.

The shy sort of greeting he gave his reflection in the mirror was powerful.  It was a sort of “I’ve known you were there and it’s fun to meet you fully” sense of leaning into the future.

And for his mother?  Besides being swept by the beauty of my son, the lump in my throat as I remembered past outfittings for Ninja Turtle garb and soccer threads was real.

As stewards of entrusted souls, we are witnesses of transformation.  We are handed body and soul people and from day one we are witnesses to the small and large power of possibility and growth.

Day by day, passage by passage, we are invited to wonder.

So it was for me yesterday.  

Wonder shared is a powerful good.  

Thanks for listening.

My psychic bags are packed.

Come Monday Cooper and I and Zoe (who now needs help getting in the car) will head for the cabin.  Following us on Tuesday will be all three babies and one partner.

We will have twenty four hours together.

The Fourth of July has been a Moose Lake thing for as long as I can remember.  In years past we have attended the parade which features thrown candy and sewage trucks (they shine them up and festoon them but is there any disguising their function?).  There are rides and mini doughnuts and chaos and heat and excitement.  We have then adjourned to the sweetness of the lake and the cabin, there to welcome family for feasting and conversation.

This year I’m suspecting we will skip the parade and the rides in order to celebrate good coffee, quiet time and the amazing good that is gentle time together.  

It isn’t the mini doughnuts and jazz of people that calls me.  This year it is the whiz bang of being in a place that has long held us through family reorganizations (how is that for linguistically gentling the rip of divorce?) and leavings and comings.

To awaken there surrounded by the breaths of beloveds is heart fireworks.

Wherever it is you find yourself on this Fourth of July, whether in crowds or quiet, I pray you know well the sweetness of gratitude.

So much has been given in order for freedom and justice for all to be more than phraseology.

Much more will be asked in order for freedom and justice for all to be made real.

Hold to your beloveds.  

Shine your gratitude.  

Eat a mini-doughnut for me.  

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  Jesus, quoting Isaiah 

Last week I was at Drake University in Iowa to prepare to teach a class on poverty.

I was in the midst of a sea of United Methodist Women and I was jazzed.  UMW is an organization that has long sought to empower women and children and raise a voice for justice for those too often silenced.

I will teach the “poverty” class in mid July at St John’s University.  In attendance will be women (and some men) from throughout the state who take the time to open their hearts to the real of the issues around poverty, as well as classes offered on Immigration and the Bible and Haiti.

In order to teach this class, I have been immersed in study about the issue of poverty.

It has been hard heart work.

How is it we can devote newsprint and airwave time to so much twaddle when nearly a quarter of our children live in poverty (defined as an income of roughly $24,000 for a family of four)?

How is it that alarm regarding the growing chasm between the rich and those who cannot afford health care and shelter is not being sounded daily?

How has silence around this issue been countenanced?

I write this on the day when the Supreme Court has ruled on the so-called “Obamacare” issue.  The verbal posturing that is going on in the aftermath of the ruling is nauseating.

How is it Christians who embrace the teachings of Jesus blithely side-step the portions of his teaching that have to do with God’s vision for the eradication of poverty?

How is it we could claim that any child or any child of God is not our compassion concern?

This is an age of rhetoric gone mad.  Faced with so many incomprehensibly twisted proclamations, one of the tactics has been to refuse to enter the noisy fray.

But I believe we must.

How are the children?  Disproportionately poor.

How are many veterans?  Disproportionately poor.

How are people of color and women?  Disproportionately poor.

Poverty doesn’t just happen.  It is allowed to happen.

To us all. 

It is an expectant world.

Ok, maybe I am projecting my own anticipation of the joys of a Memorial Day weekend with church bookended by cabin time.  I don’t think I am alone, though, in the fizz of happy in the air.

I love this weekend.  It’s the kick-off of summer (even though May and April in Minnesota have blasted us with heat).  People engage in conversation about plans and looking-forward-tos and the romp is on.

I’m waiting for Rachel to get done with her work so that we can throw the creaky dog in the car and head for the cabin along with the millions of others who will be on the road tonight.  We will plant gardens and put the dock in and rake but really, those are diversions from the main events: reading, sleeping and sunning.

My mom, who three weeks ago was skittering around on health thin ice will join us for an overnight.

My cabin neighbors will have stories to tell.

Sunday we will baptize a new sister in Christ.  We’ll engage in the necessary pain that is remembering the reason for the holiday.  We’ll name the blast of Pentecost and sing some songs and go off to the revels that await us each.

Fizz.  True that.  Bring it on!