There is a deepness about this week called “holy”; a deepness of breath, a stilling of pace, a pause.

It is as though the whole swirl of the Christ-among-us is concentrated in these seven days.  The wild unfurling of hope, the stillness and grief of last meals, the betrayals and the turncoat fear and the utter silence after the last is breathed.

We are asked to take these things into our bodies and hold them awhile.  We take them in as witness to the then pain and to the ongoing of the now sorts of crucifixions.  We choose for a time not to look away.

Of course, we know that Easter is coming.  The trumpets and the lilies will declare an end to death and we will know the real of resurrection hope.

But for this week, we becoming willing to bear witness, summoning the courage to know that this deepness is reminder.  For all weeks we are called to see.  To choose not to look away from the instruments of torture – relational, societal, and visceral – that exist yet. 

And we are better for it, this week called “holy”.

Here is how crazy making our world has become due to the constant stoking of fear.

I preached a sermon on Sunday using the highly subversive words “social justice”.  I made mention of Glenn Beck’s (Fox News) warning to good people of faith that if their church is using the term “social justice” they really are fronting for Nazis and Communists.  I took exception to the advice he had for followers in such churches to run for the doors and never come back.  It seemed to me, particularly on Palm Sunday when Jesus was clearly saying “no” to justice as practiced by Rome, that we ought celebrate the work of weaving justice in the way of Jesus.  Such justice is social in its very core.

What I am aware of is that the word “social” in our culture instantly morphs for some into the word “socialist”, the new cuss word du jour.  Instantly, some pew folk are whisked from a contemplation of the gospel into an internal defense against same.

In men’s Bible study this morning, we read together the text for Holy Thursday in which Jesus kneels at the feet of his disciples, takes their tired and dusty flesh into his hands, and offers grace and compassion.  The text ends with the reminder that our call as disciples is to love one another.

To love means to listen deeply to one another.  To love means to know our connection with the well-being of one another.  To love means to let go of the cudgels that fear would have us wield.

To love means doing the astoundingly hard work of living as disciples, one with the other, lest crucifixions continue.  It was fear that eventuated in the mangle of the cross.

Please God, let us live love.

There are those who say with all kinds of conviction that the teachings of Jesus have been so contorted that they can’t be named as relevant.

Not so.  It seems that everywhere I look in these days I see grace of the Holy kind.  The church is stirring.

We are stirring into our midst compassion, laughter, hope and courage.  The result is a community willing to be far from perfect, very human, and open to transformation.  We come together with the power of the Christ as our hub, and we trust that the wobbly of community living will not overtake us.

Given that headlines in these days are full of hate speak born of fear-incitement politicking, I breathe deep thanks for a community that seeks to live in a different way.  As the people of Jesus, we intentionally sniff for the Holy in each other, knowing it resides in us each, as well.  Hurled epitaphs break the Body.  We seek another way.

So, having a community where the Way is practiced is salvation for the hope-clingers in these days of rage-speak.  Mayhap we will take to the streets and share the power of another way.  It is time.

It’s scooter weather!  I rolled out my pink scooter yesterday and sniffed the wind like a dog as I zipped down the street.  There is life, and sound, and smell and the wind reached for me like a long-lost friend.

I’m visiting my daughter and her partner today.  The plane will deposit me in Denver where I will have three days of wandering streets and reading while Leah works, followed by adventures in the company of dearly beloveds.  Will I ever get over the wonder of being a mother crazy for her babies?  I hope not.

Retreat with 19 women from church is shimmering gift.  To make house together, to sing and to laugh and to open and to be in the company of sisters in faith who share the wild hope of being people of Jesus.  It is sometimes too much to take in, this beauty, but I did.  And I do.

And oh, I am full of hope that this issue of providing health care for all might be moving toward the practice of grace.  I read of the growing rancor between people so convinced that there is not enough to go around and so convinced that someone is trying to take from them what has been gained and I wonder how it is that the gospels can be reconciled with allowing the poor to fend for their (please keep them invisible) selves?

Until all are fed and known as kin, we will be a people bent-over by fear.  That is not one of my favorite things.

But it is spring, and love is, and celebrations await, and we are a people of hope, are we.

I spent the night with two long time friends.  One put me in my first pulpit, the other was a part of my heart before I was even born.  They are married to each other and wildly in love.

And one of them is seeking to chase the tentacles of cancer from his body.  It began in his bladder, did this invasion, and it has moved to his fine and voracious brain.  It has been two years of doctoring and drugging and changing eating habits and praying and breathing and surgeries and they are tired and aware of the succulent thing that is life.

Honest conversation comes easily when time seems finite.  Love is voiced freely when each moment is realized as precious.  The warm of sun, dreaming of dreams, speaking of gratitude and wonder; all are unwrapped as gift and marveled over with trembling and tender heart.

Oh, the mercy that is life and love.  Unwrapped, please God, in the temple of our hearts.

Well, after many conversations about which one of our six children would present us with the next heart to love, the answer arrived on Sunday. I now count a grand-dog as kin.

We’ve always been dog people.  My children grew up with a pound Golden Retriever who detested other dogs but loved us (and bread) with a priceless passion.  Bivio was the nanny and keeper of comings and goings and snugglings and rompings.  Zoe, our current dog, is a Black Lab (mostly).  She is gray of muzzle, lumpy and creaky and walking grace.

And now, there is Chela.  She lives in Denver with my daughter and her partner.  It seems she was wandering the parking lot at Chase’s work.  My daughter Leah has always wanted to be the kind of person that her aunt Anne is:  the kind that dogs in all of their core wisdom come to when they need a good home.  Chela has found home with Leah and Chase and in a week, I get to meet her.

Love is an expansive thing.  There are nooks and crannies in our hearts that only the liquid and loving eyes of dogs can fill.  So when the opportunity to love wanders in, the brave of heart offer welcome, knowing that from this time onward, family time will be noted by the era of the dog of the day.

For Leah and Chase, this is the time of Chela.

(The following was shared at an Out Front rally for equal marriage rights in the capitol rotunda in St Paul)

My oldest daughter Leah is 25.

She is passionate about working to create a world where hope is the first language of all.

I talked with her a month back about why she is resistant to having anything to do with church.

She rattled off to me some of the verbiage she has heard spoken in the name of the church. The words made me wince. Because what she rattled off were small and gnarled and hate-laced proclamations that seek to draw the circle of grace small.

I challenged her: she for sure hadn’t heard those things preached in the church where she worshipped growing up.

She waffled a bit and then she got to it. She spoke a question long on her heart. She said this: “When is the church going to step up?! When is the church going to speak out for justice? How is it that a church built upon the teachings of a man who was relentless about enfolding all into God’s vision of justice, how is it that Christians of all people are so silent and so unwilling to claim power and voice? When is the church going to step up for justice, Mom?”

Well, Leah, we are stepping up and speaking out.

The people of Jesus are joining our voice and power with people of all faiths to say that discriminating against any of God’s children based on who they love in a culture gone mad with hate – that is just plain crazy-making.

We DO believe in love, justice and equality in Minnesota and throughout God’s creation.

Love is sacred gift. Living that love fully in families with two moms or living that love in the marriage of two men or living that love in a family with a man and a woman is living sacred gift and the world is withering for want of lived love so why on earth would people of faith be silent while across this nation legislatures are perpetrating injustice through denying equal rights for same-gender loving people?

We will NOT be silent. We WILL speak for love and justice. And I say this to Leah and to all people who have longed for the church to reclaim its prophetic voice:

We are stepping up.

Last night I had a date with my daughter. 

She is 22, freshly graduated from college, immersed in creating a life of meaning, working for Green Corps and as a hostess at a pub, and living in the third floor of our house.

We don’t see each other often beyond a “is there coffee in the thermos?” in the morning or a creaking of floors above me when she comes in after her old mother has retired for the night.

She is walking delight.  So, having a free night for both of us and having the luxury of time together, we opted for dinner and a chick flick.  We perused the movie listings and landed on the most unlikely movie ever to attend with our partners and thus, on a Friday night, we found ourselves in a throng of woman people – Rachel counted nine men in the packed house – and sat through “Dear John”.  I was easily the oldest person in the place.

It was as we expected:  Drivel (ok, I did cry) and surface-skimming.  But of course, that wasn’t the point of going.  The point was, we claimed the time and participated in the ritual of sharing food and laughter and appreciation for the wonder that is liking people called kin.

Blessed am I among women.

Yesterday I participated in an interfaith forum.  There were four of us presenting:  a Jewish Rabbi, a Hindu, a Muslim and me, the Christian rep.  We each spoke for ten minutes or so fegarding our faith tradition and its teachings about poverty.  Following our presentation, we responded to questions raised by folks in the room.

It was a rich experience.  The hospitality was warm and the appreciation for such a gathering lent shimmer to the event.

What I came to know about myself is this:  I begin from the place of the power of Jesus’ social teachings.  Built upon the strength of his Hebrew roots, Jesus had much to say about how it is being God’s beloveds means we live with an awareness of our connection in community.

I suggested more than once that if we organized:  within our faith traditions and across our faith traditions, the structures that create the blight of poverty would be dismantled.  It was a novel concept to some, this notion of joined power and civic impact.

We have a long way to go.  But if we are not willing to lean into our faith teachings and bring them into the light of day of lived values, I figure we ought close the doors of the busily kept up temples and churches and content ourselves with a world we are not much thrilled about leaving to our children and grandchildren.

We are rich in instruction and promise.  Will we summon the imagination and faith to live it? 

What I experienced yet again is the conviction that the teachings of Jesus are sufficient for this task.  And I learned that I am oh so hungry for a movement of folk who see the oughtness of fully lived Christian life.

How many emails is it reasonable to digest and respond to in a day?

How much information is enough?

In a posthumously published book (A Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix) , Edwin Friedman maintains that we are near paralyzed with the volume of information we have coming at us day after day.  We don’t take action or take the risk involved with bold leadership because we feel that we have to somehow have all the information possible in order to decide wisely.  We are paralyzed by this information overload.  It stalls us physically, and even imaginatively. 

Medical intuitive Carolyn Myss maintains that the zinging through the air of the so-much information beamed through emails and wireless portals affects our beings at a cellular level.  We are bombarded; under seige.

At a training I was at yesterday the presenter maintained that stress (the common day lament of the masses) is not caused by doing too much.  It is caused by not doing the things that we should be doing.  When we knowingly set aside or try to ignore the things we know are ours to do, we become stressed.

Provocative.  So maybe what this means is that on this Friday night when I owe no one my presence I will relieve my stress by doing what I know I need to do.  I will stop.  I will stop inputting and outputting and allow a wide-open space  for my whipped-into-a-frenzy input-overloaded brain.

No emails.  No tasks.  No interactions.  No easy thing, this.