prayerful dissent

Posted on June 4, 2011 by emacaulay

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

Posted on June 1, 2011 by emacaulay

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

Posted on May 27, 2011 by emacaulay

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

Posted on May 27, 2011 by emacaulay

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

Posted on May 18, 2011 by emacaulay

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.

saints

Posted on May 4, 2011 by emacaulay

Today we celebrated the life of a brother. The Rev. Jim Dodge lived life with an honest and searching heart.

At his funeral today we named our love for him and the real challenge that is living as people fully aware of the power of grace.

And we sang and prayed our gratitude for having known such a one as Jim.

One of the traditions of the UM church in MN is that at funerals for our colleagues, we sing as a clergy choir. This tradition never ceases to humble me. When it came time to sing for our brother and from our own need to witness, the front of the church became packed with people who have opted to give their lives over to ministry.

I’m proud to be one of that number.

And, I am so grateful that our lives are held by the hand of the Holy and we walk our days in the company of so much that is good.

The squirrely and painful days are real. But oh, to be able to come together and name our gratitude is soul tonic. The grief is real, but it is shared and stirred into a huge pot of grace and for that on this day I breathe thanks.

God speed, Jim. And, thanks for your touch on the lives of the so many who call you teacher and friend.

bell tones

Posted on April 21, 2011 by emacaulay

The bell tone of wisdom cut through my muddle the other day.

I have been trained to see things. I began my paycheck life as a life guard, moved to serving near every kind of food ever imagined in near every kind of establishment imagined, became a mother of three, and then entered parish ministry. I approach each Sunday with a kind of life guard’s vigilance: I want to be sure that things are calm and safe and well tended.

So I see things like people interactions and set-up seemliness. When things are amiss, I want to see that they are not amiss.

We have half an hour between services. That half hour is spent shaking hands and greeting people and getting reset for another service in another space and it is often a chaotic time.

I noticed in my trekking that the coffee urn was empty (again!) and that while there was a full one in the kitchen, no one had made the switch. So I did (again!). I carried the empty to the kitchen and hefted the full and steamed into positioning it on its stand in the narthex and a fine soul standing near the coffee said this:

“You didn’t have to do that! All you had to do was tap someone on the shoulder and ask for help, and we would happily help.”

Her words were like a ringing bell. Gosh, a person could ask for help!

Rather than trying to do it all, a person could ask for help and indeed that is what life and gospel life at that is all about: being willing to know limitations and the great good of leaning into the power of community.

Tonight is Maundy Thursday. We’ll gather for worship to hear the telling of how it is Jesus knelt at the feet of his beloveds and tended them and how it is we are called to do likewise.

Some say that Jesus came to know this power of tending through the ways he felt the good of his own feet being annointed by Mary.

And so it is. We feed, we tend, we bless. And sometimes we are reminded that mutual tending is the dance of our faith. Asking for help is sign of knowledge of our limits and trust in our community.

It’s the Way.

parade

Posted on April 16, 2011 by emacaulay

We need to stop trying to fix up people so that the system works better, and start fixing up the system so that people work better. Thelma Goodrich

I’m writing a sermon for Palm Sunday. It’s the time when we remember that Jesus rode into the gates of power on a borrowed donkey. Consistent with his teachings, his choice of mount had much to say about his notions of power. Power: Holy power and communal power and individual power. Power is meant to be mustered by people of faith; not to “get along” in a world where more are in want, but to recreate with God’s help a world in which people work better.

Our systems are broken. This is clear. What is also clear is that we are wont to finger point in order to busy ourselves with righteous indignation. In so doing we vent our anxieties and change nothing. The systems remain broken. Our world remains bound.

And the parade continues. The parade that begins in cheering hope and ends in a slink away to muttering because really, it is easy to cheer but oh so hard to live these teachings brought to us by the donkey rider.

How do we change the system? We remember who we are. We are the followers of the one who named each as holy. We are the followers of the one who maintained that we have heart and courage enough to create God’s vision for wholeness here on this God-blessed earth. We are the followers who know our penchant for quick fixes and the thrill of other-condemnation and we pray about that. We are the followers who choose to follow by opening ourselves to the message and to hope and to the power of living our values in community and the thrill of inviting the world to the table of grace because there is enough for all in the God vision taught us by the Christ. Enough grace, and enough food, and enough compassion: enough.

Sometimes the broken barbs of the system lodge themselves in our hearts. We lose hope that there can ever be another way.

But then we take in a parade featuring a man on a donkey and we remember that while it is can-get-you-killed work, it is our work, this healing of systems that crucify too many.

Too many.

making ready

Posted on April 14, 2011 by emacaulay

One of the gifts of ministry is that I get to experience the same worship service many times.

I get to experience it as the scripture text leads me in the crafting of a service that will move it into hearts. I get to experience it as I work with our communications person to create visuals that will move the message. I get to experience it as I write sermons and then, I get to experience it in community as we worship together.

So, that being the case, I can tell you that Good Friday and Easter worship (my colleague is writing Maundy Thursday) has already run through my being and I am glad for their touch on my soul. Utter devastation followed by blasting new life is a rhythm as old as our souls. Lived through the being of Jesus it is beat-of-heart intimate and real, this proclamation of messy and tenacious love.

There is much to make ready for Holy Week. My house is coated in the fur of cat and dog, my table cloths needful of ironing (but, my mom is coming and I will put that precise woman to goodly works!), and the list of things to do at church to make ready is endless.

But worship? It is amazing, trust me. Or don’t trust me. Come and feel for yourselves!

Living Waters

Celebrating the Sacred