Category Archives: women in ministry

prayerful dissent

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I am an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church; somewhat miracle, that.

My heart got swept into the movement of people who are moved by relationship with the Christ to engage in the world in such a way that healing happens.  We touch with justice and compassion out of gratitude for our daily wash in grace;  we can’t help it.

We are an international church.  We make decisions that affect the life of our movement every four years.  At this gathering, persons come from across the world.  The numbers of delegates sent to vote on policy matters are determined by the numbers of people who know themselves as United Methodists in that area.  United Methodism is strong in numbers in Africa and in the Southern United States.  It is not as strong in numbers in areas traditionally less conservative.  In the case of Minnesota for the upcoming General Conference, we are able to send only 3 clergy and 3 lay delegates to represent our entire state.

So trying to impact church-wide policy in ways held to be crucial by many is a sometimes long and painful process.

And so it is that while the ELCA, Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ movements of Jesus have all voted to enflesh the meaning of baptism by ordaining persons who are heterosexual as well as homosexual and offer services of blessing to couples of the same-sex who desire the elemental good of the celebration of relationship within the bounds of community, the United Methodist Church has not been able to free itself from the bonds of a long-lived denial of baptismal and inclusive grace.

When we are ordained as UM clergy, we agree to uphold the Discipline of the United Methodist Church.  Many of us, as we made this vow, knew that the challenge of upholding that discipline would be great, given the jangle of unjust embedded within it.

I certainly knew the challenge of it, even as I took my ordination vow.  But I figured I would work with all that I had to pray and listen and lead the church into a more grace- based embrace of all of God’s children.  I have organized regional conferences, spoken at the state capitol numerous times, been a contributor to a published teaching piece put out by the Human Rights Campaign, led two congregations through a Reconciling process, and spoken from the pulpit about this issue (some would say incessantly!).

As the years have unfolded, the pain for me has become magnified.  Beloveds of their creator have found community in churches I have pastored and while the joining of hearts within longed-for community in Christ has been stunning in its beauty and power, the reality has persisted:  we welcome, we delight in the being of all of God’s createds, we proclaim the abundant, amazing and endless grace of God but when it comes to blessing the love work of same gendered couples and the pastoral work of same gender loving clergy, the policy of the UM church maintains that there are limits to grace and clergy are ordained to Word, Sacrament, Order and Policing.

I have had couples come to me.  Couples who are in love and in the throes and celebration of mutual unfolding and they are desirous of blessing.  For whatever reasons, including taxes and inheritances and other such state-driven impediments, they do not desire legal marriage.  But they wonder: might they call together their beloveds and hear spoken over their love a blessing by their pastor?

Desirous as we are for integration of our loves into our spiritual and social lives, of course such blessing is a natural outgrowth of a fulsome life.

And yet, we deny such to persons who live and love and raise children and bless their churches and the world with the living of their discipleship.  We deny blessing.

This year at Annual Conference a petition was circulated.  The text is below.

We joyfully affirm that we will offer the grace of the Church’s blessing to any prepared couple desiring Christian marriage. We are convinced by the witness of others and are compelled by Spirit and conscience to act.  We thank the many United Methodists who have already called for full equality and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the life of the Church. 

 

We repent that it has taken us so long to act. We realize that our church’s discriminatory policies tarnish the witness of the Church to the world, and we are complicit.  We value our covenant relationships and ask everyone to hold the divided community of the United Methodist Church in prayer. 

I signed.  I signed because in the teachings of Jesus I see the outreaching of grace and life lived in the seeking of justice enfleshed in community.  I signed because my words about the expansive grace and welcome of God are clanging gongs if I am not willing to participate in the healing good that is blessing and naming relationships that make for life.  I signed because my pastor’s heart can bear no more the double-speak of grace abundant and barricades maintained.

I do not know what this means in the living of my call.  It can mean being brought up on charges.  It can mean losing my credentials in a movement I have given my spirit to.  It can mean being booted out of the open door church.

Prior to putting my name and heart to the petition, I talked with our Staff Parish Relations Committee about my inclination to sign.  I didn’t want to sign without the blessing of the church body I am amazed to know myself a part of.

They gave their blessing.

And so, God as my partner, witness and guide; so will I.  I’m a minister of the gospel of Jesus the Christ.  God has graced me with a hunger for lived wholeness and hope in community sprung from the heart of Jesus.

The time for heart healing, the time for blessing, the time for prayerful dissent is now.

memories

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Memorial Day has always been a weekend of cabin and family.  After retirement my father was a purveyor of popcorn, ice cream, pop and curiosity from his club car bus at the park in Moose Lake.  The Macaulay and Moose Lake Holyoke Railroad Popcorn Bus was a park fixture.  Dad loved the chance to interact with people, and proudly proclaimed his popcorn the best there ever could be.  He was right about that.

On Memorial Day he would drive the bus to our cabin, park it, and let the grandkids gorge themselves on all the treats they wanted.

It was disgusting and wonderful, both.  Our children would be covered in various forms of sticky and their sense of amazement at this free access to the forbidden was wonderful to behold.

Fifteen years ago, the day after Memorial Day, my father died of a massive heart attack.  I had called him in the morning to thank him and check in, and by the afternoon he was gone.

So Memorial Day, as leaves were raked, flowers planted, and time shared with my family at the cabin sans treat bus, I thought much about the unfolding of family and the changing meanings of same and the thread of grace and faith that stitches life together.

Fifteen years ago, as we hugged goodbye, never did I imagine that I would no more be able to hug that skinny and rumbly body again.  There are so many never-could-have-imagineds that have commenced since that time.

And, the flowers got planted.  The celebration that is life was shared.  The belief in the power of what will be was lived into through conversations and loving and savoring what is.

It is the shining possibility of now that makes for later memories.  It is taking in the crunch of dirt under nails, the heave of belly through laugh and the smelling of life in flower and neck.

And, there is gratitude.  Gratitude for the quirky gift that is family in all its vexations. Gratitude for the souls of those who blessed and live yet through our hearts and passions. Gratitude that thirty-some years from now, my children will be planting flowers and thinking thoughts about how it is we encountered life together.

I will be there as my father is there and so too will their children hear the stories and plant newness of life in the sweet yearn of memory.

how it is

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Blending families is not for the faint of heart.

I married a man who has three children.  I have three children.  We came together when said children were launching into life.  They were and are young adults fine of mind, body and spirit.

When contemplating this blending adventure, I drew pictures in my mind of a doubled tribe happily meshing into a glorious larger whole.  Our children, who already liked each other immensely, would take to the shared roof adventure with great gusto.

And so they have.  But not in the ways my imagination drew.

What we are discovering is that each group needs its time.  So this weekend, Cooper has travelled to Kansas City to be with his three children and mine are gathering here for a trip to the holy land of the cabin.

For a weekend, we will live rhythms of family we have known for decades.  Of course there will be cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  Of course it will be hard to get Jameson out of bed.  Of course we will sit under the stars and feel awe.  No one will have to be explained into shared memories and jokes, and the delicate work that is weaving the new will be given over to relaxing into the old.

Years ago I would have counted this parallel play as indictment of the new.  Now I see it as healthy and celebratory relishing of the power of growing up in a stew of shared assumptions and ways of being.  In psycho-speak, we’re affirming differentiation. Relishing the apart does nothing to malign the new.

So, when Leah steps off the plane from Denver tonight, we will load three siblings, a dog, a cat, and a humming mother into a Jetta (it’s a good thing we like each other and the dog will not be wet!) and make the trek to the cabin.  For a weekend, we will be teasing, savoring people who have shared so much life, love, and struggle.

When Cooper joins us on Sunday, he will be washed with the same and the glow from his own time with his babies will shine from him.

That’s how it is.  Thanks be to God.

miracle

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Tribe and heart are amazing things.

I come from a line not so different from many.  In the growing-up years of the generation before me, feelings were kept tightly held.  Like all things kept in the dark of self, contained feelings made for inner roil and outer censorship.

And then, through the soul-task that is living, feelings get named and shared and lives and hearts are changed forever more.

As she lay dying of cancer, aware beyond a doubt that her days were numbered and her heart desirous of open, my aunt said to her adult daughter four words that thrum yet in my soul:  Love is a miracle.

Love is a miracle.

Miracle is.

I stood tonight at the airport waiting for the arrival of my son.  He has been in New Orleans working for AmeriCorps.  I haven’t seen him since Christmas.  As I waited I was witness to the arrival of a man coming home after serving for over a year in Afghanistan.  I watched miracle as his family swooped him up and held onto his precious and whole flesh.  Theirs were not the only weeping eyes.  Those of us who bore witness wept along with them.

And then my son was there and my arms were filled with his sweet being and my heart near broke with the miracle of loving.

Love is a miracle.  We get to live it.  My aunt spoke its power to her beloveds and her words bespeak the ways she became willing to apprentice herself to the art of unclenching.

It is art for the courageous, this thing called loving.

My tribe is courageous.

overwhelmed

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There are thousands of preachers gathered in the metro area this week.  The annual Festival of Homiletics is underway, and the great names in the world of preaching are gathered to feed those who feed flocks weekly.

I am finding myself overwhelmed in a way strange to me.  I’m not overwhelmed by the shining stars whose work I admire greatly.  I am taking in their words and notions and finding room for gratitude.

What I am overwhelmed by is the sometimes huge feeling thing that is serving as a mouthpiece of the gospel.  I look around me and see people who have given their lives to bringing to voice teachings timeless in their power and transformative in their reach and what I see are tender and hopeful and vulnerable and a trifle beat-up folk.

I am one of that number.

We serve the movement of Jesus in a time complex and challenging.  It has ever been thus.  We read books a plenty about how to cook up church in a way that will be palatable and maybe even delicious to a starving-for-meaning world and we scurry and fret and what we (and that “we” would mean me here) so often experience is a sort of Holy amnesia.  We are so busy trying to be God that we forget that God is in the midst of things and God has it.  The church will be what the church will be.  We just need to be open and set a nourishing table of grace.  God will provide.  So we say.  So we sometimes believe.

Lives have been given over to the preaching of the Word.  We want to do it well.  We tremble at the task.  We enter pulpits and pray to make room for the amazement that is grace and we are human and so much tender courage in one place is overwhelming.

Pray for preachers.  We want so much.

soul weave

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I am preparing for a women’s retreat.

Thirty-one of us from church are spending a weekend apart from the things that claim and name us.

This year, we are learning from a yoga teacher the ways we might imagine and live integration of our beings.  This is no ordinary teacher.  Deborah is a friend of many years, and watching her unfold into the teacher she is has been constant reminder to me that we each are called and we get to choose to answer.  Deborah did.  She is now running a thriving studio, writing books, and crafting life in such a way that others come to soak in her presence.

We get to soak in presence.  The presence of each woman on the retreat is unique and remarkable.  It is no small gifting, this time apart.  We are presented with the chance to claim and name our own beings.

As I am readying myself for this year and the thirty-one who will make community for a weekend, I am reminded of the yearly groups who have gone before.  I have led retreats some twelve times or so.  Each time I am wondered; how is it God creates such complex and stunning beauty?  How is it we are allowed the chance to grow and learn and laugh together?

I’m aware that each woman who has gone on retreat through the years is with me yet.  I think of them as I pack and ready.  I remember and give thanks and pray that this weekend will bring rest and stretch for this year’s batch of beauty.

We walk in community always.  The chance to be apart to remember strengthens our being.  Each woman, unique and beautiful and seeking and open is woven forever into the story that is life.

Amazing grace, that.

If

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If you hate injustice, tyranny, lust and greed, hate these things in yourself.                 Gandhi

It feels sometimes as though we are consuming ourselves.

I read last week that the state of Minnesota is considering harvesting trees from state park lands to sell at the market to bail us out of financial woe.

I read this morning that cuts are being made to health care for the poor in our state.  They will be shifted to private health care in order for the state to cut its costs and while surely cuts must be made we know beyond a doubt that many will fall through the health care cracks.

Schools are fighting for survival, infrastructure is unraveling and the words being traded across public airwaves are hate and fear speak.

And most troubling to this mother’s heart is this report from my daughter.  In checking her voice mail upon entering her work day, she heard on the recording the sound of automatic gun fire.  Just that.  Just that.

She works for NARAL.  She works with an organization that works to insure that all women retain the decision-making power over their own bodies.

Evidentally the work of her organization inspired someone to spew the deadly sounds of hate and fear into her office and most fearsomely, into her heart.

How do we, as a people grounded in a movement insistent upon care for creation, get honest about the health and honesty of our own hearts? How do we root around and name the resentments, fear, injustices and tyrannies that lurk in our own hearts?  Once found, how do we exorcize them, making room for the cultivation of belief in a peace that generates life?

Rather than grinding the seed corn of our future, we are called to mulch the soil of that which we tend first and foremost:  our own hearts.  From such tending, the future of creation is made verdant.

Rather than consuming ourselves, we choose to grow grace and peace and hope, assured that there is enough for all:  enough compassion, enough food, enough care, enough.

We choose.

death by paper cuts

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Someone once said that the practice of ministry is like death by a thousand paper cuts.

It was belly laugh material, that quote.  It was belly laugh material because it hit a spark of true deep within.

The world is a changing.  In the midst of the changes going on around us, the role and function of local church pastors is changing as well.  It is a challenging time to be a church leader, because the needs of the job today often disappoint those who have a vision of what the ideal church pastor of the past was called upon to do.

First and foremost, pastors have to be gifted organizers.  In a culture where most couples are both working outside the home and the claims upon time and energies is seemingly relentless, churches have to figure out how to mobilize volunteers in ways that bless.  We are run by the members of the church.  Increasingly church members are stretched overly so keeping an organization alive that relies upon the passion and gifts of volunteers is no small trick.

Secondly, the financial realities are relentless.  Running a building, supervising and funding staff and program are clamorous challenges.  In an age when the gospel of scarcity is being pounded into our beings, lifting a vision of the good of giving to an organization designed to give itself away is full-time must.

Thirdly, remembering why we exist takes spiritual discipline.  The interpersonal jabbing and squabbling that happens in Bodies is sometimes demoralizing.  Perhaps the greatest place of heart ache for me is the demeaning and denigrating of what is without helping to create what could be.  It’s a lot easier to sit on the sidelines lobbing in criticism than joining in to build a vision that transforms.

After church on Sunday I was exhausted.  It wasn’t the preaching and conversing and worshipping that got me.  It was the paper cuts.  One at a time, comments thrown my direction are easy to slough off.  But collectively?  Collectively the effect was an oozing pastor desperate for Sabbath.

We are doing transformational work at our church.  Transformation asks us to move into a different way of being and on most days that movement hums in the very air we breathe.

On other days I become aware that my own spiritual practices are not optional.  Moving into a new day and being church in a new day requires naming of paper cuts, conversations about how to facilitate healthy communication, and a goodly and endless sense of being grounded in grace.

We get to do this thing called church.  It is gift.  It is messy.

It doesn’t have to be fatal.

purity

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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

One of the small groups at church is exploring the beatitudes; the series of blessings Jesus lays out as part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew.

The “purity” word is a loaded one.  It has become so nuanced with the things that our culture has taught us are un pure – namely, the expressions of body sexual in nature.  So two great things – sex and the concept of purity – get marred in one fell swoop.

As with most things, it’s bigger than our containers, this notion of purity.  Purity of heart has to do with honest reflection and willingness to turn and come to know ourselves in the company of the Holy.  A great line I ran across lately seems to say it all:  “Everything you are, God already knows and loves”.  So why work so creatively at dodging both self and God?

Tonight, I was in the presence of  hearts purely shining.  We gathered for Lenten contemplative worship in the chapel.  We are embracing a Benedictine-type service of Word, prayer, silence, and communion.  It’s only half an hour in length but oh, the opportunity to share the sound of silence together in the shine of candles is holy gift.

The world is swirling around us with messages of fear and wrench but for a time we opened our seeking-to-be-open hearts to our gracious God.

Blessed, indeed.

soul song

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This Step

Somewhere

around the middle of your life

 

you understand that

it is not the destination.

 

Nor is it what is waiting

where the road turns next.

 

It is the step that you are taking now,

or maybe what has stopped you.

 

It is this soft light, sifting

through the leaves,

 

the red-winged blackbird

calling from the mountain ash.

 

It is the secret whispered

in this breeze…

this breath.

Deborah Cooper

One of the gifts of crafting worship at RUMC is choosing a poem or bit of soul song for the front of the bulletin.  My hope is that the words chosen will dance well with the text for the day, creating deeper soul nestle.  I also hope that sometimes those bulletin covers make it to the vaunted place of proclamation:  the refrigerator of parishioner’s homes.

The poem above was written by a Duluth poet; a woman near in age to my own.  It speaks so powerfully to me because I am in the midst of that mid-life assessment of all that is and it is one wild ride.

I am always looking for thought companions and guides on the way.  One of the books that has reappeared in my life is “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife” by James Hollis.  It is a gentle and powerful speaking of the sometimes tectonic plate shifting and readjusting that mark this middle passage.

It is good and holy work, this being present to what is.  Hollis writes that “the Middle Passage presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask the sometimes frightening, always liberating question:  “Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?”…(it is) a rite of passage between the extended adolescence of first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality.”  Eventually, through the hard work of jettisoning the societal and parental teachings that have kept us from knowing our full selves, we discover that “I am not what happened to me.  I am what I choose to become.”

Well, no easy work, that.  While preaching Sunday, I reflected on the invitation that Jesus gives us to be “born again”.  In some sense, the work of the Middle Passage is to allow fullness of life, rebirth, and newness of being.

We aren’t alone in our labor.  We partner with the Holy; a midwife longing for the emergence of our good.  If we are wise, we find partners who remind us to breathe and trust this new life and its emergence.

And please God, we remember to savor breath.  This breath.

The welcome of wisdom and the song of soul.