Tag Archives: church

Advent Day Six

Posted on by
1

“Today we remember the shepherds among us, back-breaking laborers on whom our economy stands, those we overlook or rarely see, yet rely on for our very survival, the ones who have much to teach us about watching for God in the darkness.”

 

The candle-lighting liturgy for this coming Sunday speaks of the gritty and dusty work of the shepherds.  Through the liturgy we honor them and the many in our midst who work in often non-glamorous conditions to tend essentials.

Tonight is our church staff party.  We’ll gather at my home to eat and play together.  This is good.

This is good because, like the shepherds of long ago, our staff does sometimes invisible and non-glamorous work day after day in order that “the flock” is fed and watered.

To a person they are amazing grace.

Working in the fields of this church are people who engage in ministry with people of all ages, people who polish and make ready the ministry tool that is our building, people who pray with the sick and keep our finances in such a way that empowers ministry and people who help to share the Word through clear communication and shimmering music.  There are some 50 children blessed by the ministry of our child learning center Caring For Children.  Day after day, seven days a week, Richfield UMC is tended by amazingly patient and soulful shepherds.

So tonight we’ll celebrate and give thanks for our shared ministry.

As I’ve ironed table cloths (a family sickness) and made ready my home, I have given thanks for each staff person who ministers on this stretch of field.  I feel so blessed to be in ministry with incredible colleagues.

You have such people in your life.

As you live this Advent day of heart preparation, may you too know the gift of naming those who work with you in order that tending happens.

Give thanks on this day for the co-shepherds in your life:  partners and friends and co-workers and anyone who joins their heart with your own in order that light shines in the darkness.

Give thanks and thank them;  thank them for being by your side as you go about the sometimes boring and non-glamorous work that is uniquely yours to do.

On this day and on all days, give thanks for those who help us to watch for God in the darkness.

Advent 5

Posted on by
Reply

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee. 
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a King,
born to reign in us forever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit
rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine all sufficient merit,
raise us to thy glorious throne.

                                                                                              Charles Wesley

On Sunday our church is offering a Service of Lessons and Carols.

Through sumptuous scripture and song, the salvation song of faith and love will be spun out during our 9:00 AM worship service.

Last night during rehearsal for Sunday’s service I was moved by the beauty of it all.

In the sanctuary were some forty people who gave their voices and instruments to the intensely personal thing that is expressing faith publicly.

The organ held us, the oboe wrapped us, the strings danced us and the voices wove a witness that rolled through the sanctuary and into my heart.

Come, thou long expected Jesus.  Come, set us free!

Set us free from our so-small sense of what is possible.

Set us free to move into the huge of grace and the life-shift of fully throwing in our lot with you.

Take up the spaces in our heart colonized by cynicism and shine instead the light of hope.

As we spend this fifth day of Advent intentionally breathing Holy Presence, may we each honor the prayer of our hearts:

  • From what do we long to be set free?
  • How can our freedom spark a movement of healing in this, God’s world?
  • What keeps us from saying “yes” to freedom and why would we waste a minute more in bondage?

Light a candle, sing a song, breathe ten intentional breaths, take a walk and smell the air.  Do whatever it is that will remind you that you move and have your being in the company of a God who calls you to freedom.

Pray with heart:  Come thou long expected Jesus.

teachers

Posted on by
1

Tomorrow during worship we will name the saints of our church who have died in the year gone by.

We will name them and see their faces and feel their continued presence in our midst and we will know for our own selves the reality of our own naming someday.  We too (we pray) will be remembered by a community that acknowledges the witness we bore through the gift of our life.

I am mindful of the power of teachers.  This morning I met a beloved teacher for coffee.  We had not seen each other for nearly a decade.  Life happened and while we stayed connected the chance to savor each other’s presence in the flesh has been long in coming.

Mary is a few years older than I.  When I began college I auditioned for the choir there.  I had always been a band geek but was encouraged to see myself as a singer.  Wonder of wonders, I made the top choir and was terrified and amazed at the full-body miracle that is singing in the midst of talented and soulful singers.  I remember yet the first rehearsal I went to.  I was born again.

Mary was the queen of the sopranos; not in the Pit-Bull with jewelry on sort of way, but in such a way that the grace of her being sang through her body.  Her voice was (and is) sublime.  I wanted to be like her.  I wanted to sing that freely and laugh that fully and practice grace that deftly so I apprenticed myself to learn this way of voicing soul.

She taught me well.

She still does.  Encountering a kindred with whom beers and tears and so much life have been shared is like entering sanctuary.

Did she know she was my teacher?  Probably not, and therein lies the power.

St Francis enjoined fellow disciples to “Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words”.

We are preachers, each one of us.  My prayer is that our lives are witness to the power of the gospel.  As we sing and scrap and love and bumble, may we preach grace.

Some day our name will be read and our spirit will echo with the sound of a bell rung to mark our passing.

May we also be a place in hearts we have touched and taught.  For surely, as a gospel preaching people, we know the power of resurrection.

 

 

 

varied and dense

Posted on by
Reply

The Holy Spirit finds ready kindling in the bellies of pastors.

My partner is a pastor. I am one too.

Last night Cooper offered a mini retreat at his church.  Twenty some people came out for an evening of faith sharing.  He got home after ten, set the alarm to get up at six and now he is unloading food from a truck for their church’s monthly food distribution.

On this day I will meet with a couple to plan their wedding and talk about their hearts.  I’ll follow that with a hospital visit and phone calling, come home and write a sermon and then attend a dinner for our confirmation students and their parents and mentors.

Tomorrow we at RUMC will be in the presence of five amazing youth as they speak for themselves their intention to live in the grace of God in the way of Jesus.  At our second service we will all savor the power of our discipleship, and then it is off to a party and then and then and then we will motor off to our place of regrouping:  the cabin.

It is a varied and dense thing, this art called ministry.  It fascinates and calls me yet.

I’m preparing to spend time with new clergy in a retreat setting next month.  The stated topic is “margins”.  How do we as clergy maintain margins in this thing that is living our vocation?  How do we give and give and give knowing that we must also receive receive receive?  How do we balance the exquisite juggle that is parish ministry with the needful time spent apart from it?

Sometimes the belly fire falters.  Like all others whose work is woven into their bones, clergy wonder if we can muster the energy and hope that keeps us setting alarms and dreaming programs.  We wonder if the world is just too busy to sit open before the immensity of possibility and grace.

And then we encounter eyes that light up and puddle, hearts that hunger, and transformation that invites and the spark that felt falterish gets lit anew.

Mostly I thank God for seeking my partnership in the stirring of hope.

In a world tangled and seemingly bent upon savaging, I am part of a movement that proclaims the power of holy and human love.

For today, that is enough.

 

something

Posted on by
Reply

Outside the sanctuary, the first snow flakes of the year were slopping.

Inside the sanctuary, there were hundreds gathered.  We were there, pilgrims that we are, to listen to the heart of poet David Whyte.

Whyte wove a web of invitation to each of us to examine the temporary names we live under and add to them a name which honestly speaks the soul longing that thrums within each:  Pilgrim.

As pilgrims, we know our call to “set out beyond ourselves” as we learn to ask more and more beautiful questions about this journey that is our life.

In reflecting on the grand mystery that is life, Whyte quoted his dear Anam Cara, John O’Donohue, who said that “The great miracle of life is that there is something rather than nothing and that you are a part of that something.”

In the sanctuary of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church we who gathered were keenly aware of our being part of the great “something”.  As Whyte read his poems (the latest collection is entitled “Pilgrim” and is soul companion song), he left at the end of each reading a deep silence.

In that silence sang the longings, losses, and hope-beat of each heart present.  We were woven by reverence for the sacred scripture that is life lived courageously, openly and cracked-open painfully.

In the silence was the “something” sung through the ages.

It sings yet.

wonder

Posted on by
1

Desks and seemingly must-do tasks can run my life.

Maybe you know something about that.

When I look up from the emails and phone calls and clamorous things that need tending, I find that time and energy have zipped by yet again.

So it feels especially crucial to me to get out and spend time with people.  Flesh and blood heart beating people are what center me and my work.

I spent near two hours (where did the time go???) with a woman who has long called RUMC home.  She is one of those members who have given so much to their church and who struggle to get moving early enough to catch the church bus to attend worship and who has seen so much change and who feels increasingly invisible in her church.

Many of her friends have died.  The people she knew and so very importantly, the people who knew her by name are no longer in the pew beside her.  She sang in the choir.  Her husband was an accomplished soloist.  The pictures in her home feature eyes eagerly engaging the world and energy to embrace adventure.

She gracefully shared her sense of grief about her sense of growing invisibility.  That is no small trick.  The hurts of being unseen can fester and erupt in bitterness.  Not so for her.  She cares enough about her church and her pastor to name her heart.  It is honor to be in the company of such a one.

Through her I am blessed.

Often we talk in churches about how vital it is to greet visitors.  I was reminded on Friday how vital it is that we greet each person we encounter in church.  In the body of each beats a heart longing for recognition and acknowledgement.

I talk often of the wonder of parents of young children who go through the considerable challenge of readying all of their charges and themselves for worship.

What my sister in Christ reminded me of is the importance of experiencing wonder and appreciation for each person who goes through the considerable challenge of readying themselves for worship, particularly when bodies are reluctant to move because years have been encountered.

Tomorrow is Rally Sunday.  My prayer is that all feel welcomed and all feel wondrous about our shared call to transformation in Christ.

 

change

Posted on by
1

Last night a group of us shared some fine time.

Those gathered are people who summoned the courage to enter the doors of our church for the first time.  They came in the door, decided that they might find meaning in our midst, and have decided to join their lot with ours.

Every time I meet with prospective new members I am moved by wonder.  Truly, taking membership vows represents a longing for community and communion that is no small thing.

We talked about what it was that prompted them to walk through the doors for the first time, and we asked about what it is they are seeking.  We barraged them with the requisite information but really, what we sought to do was listen for the story of the Holy that walks in their being as we invite them to  enter a community seeking to live and name transformational possibilities.

They are a wise and diverse lot.  They named their awareness that the church is so very much more than the pastor.  They have sniffed around our being and decided that at RUMC, they may find a safe place to grow in their relationship with the Holy and those the Holy has created – even themselves.

This thing called “church” is no easy thing.  We challenge ourselves to learn about what Jesus taught and put that teaching into the living of our days.  It is messy and demanding work.  When we take membership vows we agree that we will live together in community and we know that sometimes it feels like we live in one of those rock tumblers:  we get swirled around in the grit of others and sometimes we allow that bumping to polish us into something unknown even to our own imaginings.

To those who follow soul rumblings into community, I say “welcome”.  We need your grit in order to shine in ways that make for grace in the world.

Welcome indeed.

 

prep

Posted on by
Reply

Leaving town is a spiritual practice.

Whenever I am making preparations to be gone for a time, the worries raise their voices.

For example, I seem to be convinced that if I am in close proximity to my beloveds I can keep them safe.  It’s a fine fantasy.  If I’m in my zone, somehow my people are safer.

Church details feel monumental.  Our church has the best staff bar none and a wondrous crew of retired clergy.  There should be no worry.  Should is the operative word.  Worry I do.

Like so many other things, I suspect thriving happens when space is made.  Offspring turn to each other or their step-Coop.  Pets are tended.  Church folk know the power of community.  All these things are good.

And for me?  Stepping out of my self-appointed role of keeper of well-being is flat-out crucial.

I’m off for five days.  Preparing to leave has lessons to lend.

Perhaps the spiritual discipline most necessary for digesting a magnificent Holy Week is the sacred revel of fun.

I can work with that.

circles of life

Posted on by
Reply

I spent the day with United Methodist clergy from throughout the state.

The goal?  The goal was to celebrate the powerful call we share.  We named our grinches and glories, and re-membered the sense of wonder and promise that is sharing the gospel.

It was flat-out fun as well as soul tonic.

Tonight, I got an email from a friend.  She wrote to tell me that for some reason over the past few days I had popped into her mind as she was in prayer.  She wrote to tell me that she had been praying for me.

Some times the slogging gets thick, doesn’t it?  We get bogged into a sense of the immense of what we seek to midwife, no matter what it is we are called to do.  Work commences, the days pass, and somewhere along the way the sacred juice that is joy gets  parched out of us.

And then we get reminded that we are blessed blessed blessed.  The circles of love that hold our hearts and lives are alive and vibrant and present, slog or no.