Category Archives: witness

sniff

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I forget. I flat-out forget.

I forget that I am a woman pastor and that somehow my gender combined with my role is offensive to some.

I forget.  And then I run into the barbed wire of suspicion or the distaste of those who are quite clear in their minds and expressed sentiments that I am abomination.

I will admit that it wounds, this sniffing around my being for the sure-to-be-found pollution lurking in my unseemly-vocationed self.  Barely hidden sneers, voiced longings for the “good old days” when pastors were men and a man could have a pastor, the boycotting of community based in some part upon the gender of the Lead Pastor; all are real and on good days they roll off the sure of my soul that speaks of God’s calling of me to this work.

But some days, I gets tired.  Some days, I ache for a world in which we are seen as the Christ first, and the dreaded other, second.  Some days I want to let fly my anger about being assumed upon.  Some days I want to weep, knowing that what I am living is a picnic compared to my sisters who have gone before.

And the waste of the power of the Holy is ongoing.

rolled r country

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I write from Edinburgh, Scotland. 

A group of 31 pilgrims from Minnesota launched on a great adventure October 1st.  Trusting that there was soul food to be found in deliberately choosing to immerse ourselves in Celtic wisdom and stillness, we set out.

And we are here!  This is the second stop on our journey.  We have encountered rain, castles, kindreds, belly busting laughter, and the Holy at each step.

It feels like coming home.  Travelling to Lindisfarne, England, to worship and take in a place where people have gathered since the mid 600’s to create community in order to immerse themselves in God, the power of place has been elemental.  There is a soul knowing that kin are not of blood only, but of heart and desire.

The crew from RUMC are a gloried lot.  We are behaving (mostly) and so many times a day I pray blessing on our church community, our promise, and our call.

Making church together is a Holy pilgrimage.  We do Body building in the mundane and the exquisite, and whilst this Wednesday night I may be eating Haggis, I am aware that across the miles there are folks sitting down to a meal and classes and choir and bell rehearsals and we do this weaving of life together because we are called as those have been called through the ages:  we want to worship the God of  life and love. 

And we know that fellow soul travellers on the journey make all the difference.

a day in the life

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One hundred and fifty people came to Richfield UMC today.  Each left with two bags of food, a birthday bag, a children’s book, and please God, a sense that the community of Jesus followers do more than talk about justice and grace.

We have come to know each other through the years of fourth Saturday food ministry.  We work side by side to unload the truck, sort food, bag potatoes and onions and today, briny hard-boiled eggs.  We communicate with smiles and broken English and while we spend this time together there is so much we do not know about the lives lived outside the doors of the church.

People leave with bags of groceries.  We feel good about that.  But as important for the privileged that call our church home, we have a sense of who the often unseen neighbors are who are made in the image of our creator God.

One woman told me today of her dying husband, her incarcerated son, her battered body, and her sense of impending doom as the months tick by before she has to vacate her home.  I watched English-speaking and Spanish-speaking youth work together to sort and distribute bags of goodies provided by the Richfield Rotary.  They had a job to do and savored the work and the gift of partnership.

Following the food distribution I visited a member of the church who has been in the world of dementia for years.  She had fallen and broken a hip, survived the surgery, and on the other side had begun to fail.  When I entered her room her daughter was there and her eyes lit up and while her words indicated her presence in another realm, her eyes communicated joy and life and oh, to be witness to the love of a daughter and the spirit of a woman some ninety years old.  I left blessed.

There are zillions of questions to answer, prayers to breathe, a sermon to write, chores to be done and wonder to be named. 

This life called ministry is rich beyond the telling.

in gathering

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I have yet to serve a congregation that gets summer sloggy.  I hear from people that summer means slow-down, but not for me and the world of church.

We’re turning a corner tomorrow.  It’s Rally Sunday, the day when we welcome back the dispersed:  the cabin folk, the choir, the Sunday School teachers, the happy re-gathered  who make for the buzz of chaos and new. 

I love it.

In a world that has jettisoned ritual in ways that wound, we are marking new beginnings. 

At such times I marvel at the thing called “church”.  We come together, diverse of politic, age, longings, and passions, and we stop the scramble of life for a time to place ourselves in the melting pot that is worship of God.  We see welcome on faces and allow ourselves to know the good of being one of many dedicated to a vision larger than our lives.

On this Rally Sunday eve I am full of thanks for the Body that is church.  Tired as I am of all the muck throwing and fear stirring of these days, I’m blessed to throw in my lot with the hope filled, heart warmed, clutsy and beautiful followers of the message of love.

And there is popcorn, to boot!

stress

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The gnarl is near constant:

How is it that we as followers of Jesus are grounded in the biblical vision of justice and to speak of such things is near blasphemy?

I hear almost weekly of those who boycott worship at church because of perceived “politics”.   They don’t want to hear so much about the growing and glaring inequity between the rich and poor.  They don’t want to hear about the teachings of Jesus that have to do with serving as societal corrective to the mad romp for power and privilege which seems to be our assumed due.  The cry of the earth and the inclusion of the outcast are voices to be muted whilst pew sitting since to speak of biblical vision is to collude with some sort of political conspiracy.

Oh.  When the voices of the prophets as sounded through scripture and throughout the ages are unwelcome in our sanctuaries, we are on rocky ground.

It is tightrope walk, this living of the gospel.  Nets we have, but the wobble of stepping out is real.  God grant us the courage for the living of these days.

so different

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Bishop Desmond Tutu said this:

“Unless we work assiduously so that all of God’s children, our brothers and sisters, members of one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of movement, the freedom to be fully human, within a humanity measured by nothing less than the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself, then we are on the road inexorably to self-destruction, we are not far from global suicide – and yet it could be so different.”

Would that Pentecost be unleashed by the people of Jesus.  Would that we found a way to stop sniping at each other and instead saw the Holy in all.  Would that we let go of fear and opened to possibility.  Would that the church be grace and light, joy and delight; affirming the unique shine of each.

Why are the people of Jesus so shuttered and closed?  We know the Way.  Would that we lived it.

water washed

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My children tease me about many things. 

What is predictable is a tease following baptisms.  I love being able to be a part of baptisms.  The power of enfolding and naming and proclaiming grace and identity on behalf of the movement through the ages makes me near crazy with wonder.  Without exception, I believe with all I am that the babies know well that they are participating in miracle.  They are “right there” with their eyes:  open, aware, present, holy.  So I come home bubbling with the story of how it is holy communion is shared and my children know the ways that their mother’s heart has to tell the story or burst.  So they listen, God bless them.

This past Sunday has me humming yet.  Baptised in the midst of a community of grace and joy were a mom and her three-year old.  Both of them are wise beyond the ages.

The wee one was held by her mother and baptised first.  As an invitation to feel the sweet of the baptismal water, I asked her if she wanted to feel it, knowing that she would.

Her sweet palm was nestled in the water of grace as she was baptised.

And then, when it came time to baptise her mother, I asked her if she wanted to help, knowing that of course she would.

And so we blessed in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sustainer.  Water; gift of earth, flow of life, wash of grace was gentled onto the head of a woman who is already witness of the Way.

She who was nurtured in the water of her mother’s womb used water to bless and welcome her mother to life.

Water washed, wonder full.

again and still: humility

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I am blessed to be colleague with a pastor very different from me.

Phillip was born in Vietnam.  He came to know the power of Jesus and knew from that moment on that he could not be still; even in Communist Vietnam, even at the risk of his freedom and life, even when jailed, even when cast adrift as a boat person, even and thank God, now.

Phillip serves here as the Vietnamese Language minister.  His congregation is new.  Members of his church are first generation immigrants and their children.  Some speak English fluently; many over the age of twenty do not.  They are members of Richfield UMC and there is much to be learned from them about what it means to be thrown into a new culture, language, customs and mores.

And there is much to be learned through them about this thing called being a Christian.

What I am moved by is the power of wonder and how that transforms faith.  For Phillip and his congregation, being a right-out-loud Christian is yet a marvel.  It is gift, this walk with Jesus, and sharing the gift has the urgency of life unbound. 

I am humbled.  I am humbled by the ways my brother Phillip and his congregation share their witness.  The teachings of Jesus are shared with  joy and gratitude and newness of life and when did the mainline church become so bored by transformation that we lost our urgency?

I am humbled.  God sends into our lives those who jiggle complacency and so it is for me.  Again and still, I grow in the rich loam of humility.