the Arts Festival is almost here

I'm obsessed by this event, with good reason. It's the sort of showpiece, at least on the local church level, of my doctoral project. The planning team for the event are my primary study group, and the congregation are the secondary study group.
What we're hoping will happen is that we will share our stories of who we are and who the church is as a result of the experiences we bring to it...arriving, maybe, at a more unified sense of who we are called to be into the future. On a very practical level, I'd consider the Arts Fest a success if I start hearing people telling stories about Ann Street that are not only their own...
So here's the flyer that's about town:

If you're around, come on by. We'll have all kinds of events throughout the day Saturday, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll have decent weather. Today's forecast looks pretty good!

Exceptional Two has arrived!

My nephew made it into the world today about 5 pm so now I have one of each. Exceptional One has a virus and can't go to day care or come into contact with the baby, which means my mother hasn't been to the hospital to see my sister or the baby, which I know makes her a little sad. But tomorrow, she'll get a chance.
No name yet, but everyone's healthy and well, for which I am grateful. And I wish I could have been there. I know it's the right decision to let the grandmothers have their time and let my sister get settled back in at home. But I still wish I could.
Welcome to the world, little one!
UPDATE: His name is Hayden Patrick, and he is beautiful.

Mystery, story, and a trail story

A few weeks ago I wrote in my weekly newsletter article about a church member who is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, all 2100 or so miles of it. He started in February in Georgia, is currently wandering between NC and TN (the trail is no respecter of state lines) and plans to reach Katahdin in Maine by mid-October. His trail name is Slagline, which is a reference to where the strongest steel is found in a smelter (I think). I wrote about him here, too.
Many of our members don't know Slagline. His wife, who had terminal brain cancer, moved them to Beaufort for the last three or four years of her life. She became involved in the Garden Club and the church, while he remained a little more aloof. They split their time between Beaufort and Charlottesville, VA, where she had her treatments, further limiting his interactions with the congregation. Slagline has been a steady attender of church since his wife's death, but he's the quiet one that sits in the back and slips away before you can speak to him...we all know that guy, right?
Slagline has always wanted to hike the trail, but now seems to be a good time for him. His wife died about a year ago, and he's having a little difficulty finding his way. He says he's fine, but in conversation, the loneliness and lostness tend to leak out a little. This trip is his bid to find himself again, to rewrite himself into a revised story of his life, one where he doesn't grow old with his bride. And, God bless him, he's keeping a blog.
So I wrote about him in the Chimes, because I think his trip is fascinating and his writing is entertaining, and I think he's someone we all ought to know. I expected it to go over like most of our newsletter articles...a couple of people comment, and the rest say nothing.
Not this time.
I'm getting a real lesson in something I thought I knew well: how much story shapes belonging. Lots of people want to know, each Sunday, how Slagline is doing, and what progress he's made. 430 miles as of last night. Now they feel connected, although few can picture his face. Slagline doesn't know it, but there are a lot of folks with him in spirit on the trail. And I'm curious to see how everyone responds when he gets back, whether that's at the end of a successful through-hike in October, or before.
Part of what I think they are connecting to (pulling this all together) in Slagline's seeking out the mystery in his life. On the trail, he has more questions than answers. Who will I meet today? Who will I be today? Do I have enough food to get me to my next stop? Will my shoes last? What does my life look like without my wife? Who do I want to be? Where's the next place I can get a beer? Who will I spend the night with tonight? Will I see anyone I know? and on and on...he's embraced the mystery, and the sense of discovery, and in his own words, finding the trail "a never-ending dance". (We told him that was too soft and pretty to be a good trail name, btw.)
And so here's another data point for my doctoral project, and one that may actually prove useful: we can tell some of these stories vicariously, and help people get a sense of belonging to someone else. It's not a complete experience, but it's a place to start. And we'll see what happens when the interchange starts to go another way, when some of us church folk pack up and hit the trail ourselves, to walk a little ways in Slagline's shoes, and to be trail angels, packing in treats and maybe a cold beer or two for a weary hiker. Who's packing a blackberry, btw--great for blogging on the trail.

In him there is no darkness at all...

sermon on 1 John 1:1-2:2

I spent much of Thursday trying to replace the wireless router at home with a new one. A procedure that should have been very simple, and was, the last time I did it, somehow went awry. Before my internet service was restored and I could sit in my recliner and play with the computer, I had to call not only my internet provider but also the manufacturer of the router. My problems were solved by resetting both my cable modem and the router. After that, it was a matter of moments before everything worked as it should.
I have concluded that life would be easier if it came with a reset button. So many things already do; when you get into some menu on the TV that you can’t escape from, you turn it off and back on again—reset it—to see if that solves the problem. It usually does. When the computer starts to act up a little, we restart it, or if things are really bad, we hit the magic combination of control-alt-delete, and that usually solves the problem. Most electronic devices have somewhere a little button that’s hard to find and even harder to push—a reset button, that lets you scrap what you’ve done wrong and make a fresh start.
Remember the Staples commercials with the “Easy Buttons”? When you had a dilemma in the office, according to the commercial, you could just press the big red easy button and your problem would be solved. I had an easy button in my stocking that year at Christmas, but mine must have been defective, because no matter how many times I pressed that button, no matter how often the little recorded voice said, “that was easy,” my problems never got solved. But I like the idea that when we get ourselves into a jam, when things go wrong, when we make a mistake, that there might be an easy button we could push, to reset or restart whatever situation we found ourselves in, and then everything would be okay.
Life, sadly, is not so easy. For most of us, much of the time, life is work. Not just the employment that provides for our homes and families, but life demands some effort from us. For some, just moving about is work. For others, we have someone at home we must help care for. As much as we may love them, that’s also work. Getting along with other people is sometimes work, especially when those other people are people we love and care for and know well, perhaps even too well. There are bills to pay, homes to care for, cars to service, children and parents to look after, cleaning up to do, and for most of us, at least some of those things don’t come easy. Life doesn’t come easy.
This is the dilemma the early church faced after Jesus’ death and resurrection. He ascended to Heaven with the promise that he would be back…and life got a lot easier for people when they thought he’d be back any minute. No need to keep saving for a “rainy day” or retirement: Jesus was coming right back. No need to plant a crop, when Jesus would be back and you wouldn’t be there to harvest it. Why start a long project, when Jesus’ return will keep you from finishing? As the weeks became months and months became years and decades, Christians began to realize that a life of following Christ might not be as easy as they thought.
The epistles of the New Testament give us some testimony about the work of figuring out how to live in a post-Resurrection world. Last week, Eric reminded us that we are called to do, not to hide ourselves away. This week, our text from 1 John demonstrates some of the work of being a church: determining what we do and don’t believe, and what we do about it.
The writer of this letter, whom we’ll call John, was writing to a community struggling to understand who Jesus was. Was he a great teacher? Was he God? Was he something else…a pure soul in an earthly body, one so pure it could not be tainted by sin? These are difficult questions, questions people of faith still struggle with…and wouldn’t it be nice if we could get them answered to our satisfaction just by pushing a big red button? “Wow, that was easy.”
And it’s still not. Language is not enough to express who God is, what Jesus accomplished, how the Holy Spirit lives within us. I could talk up here all morning and still manage not to communicate who God is. But we do have some tools we can use: we use our experiences and the stories we tell about those moments in which we sense that God is near. We use our hearts that tell us that we’re not alone, that move us to love people with a love that is not our own. And we do use some tools of language, like similes and metaphors. Remember grammar lessons as a child? Metaphors help us to describe something by comparing it to something else that it is not related to literally…they broaden the boundaries of our understanding and invite us to think creatively and evocatively, something the church has been doing for centuries. Think about our hymns, for example. “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne.”
John uses metaphor to talk about what Jesus was about, who God is: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. God is not literally light…but what a wonderful metaphor for expressing who God is. And John uses metaphor to help us understand what it means to have a relationship with God: “if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.”
Here’s the thing about light: it is measurable. There are all kinds of ways to measure light: wavelengths that produce light of different colors; lumens measure output of visible light; physicists can count photons, the substance of light. Light exists, and can be proven to exist. What doesn’t exist, technically, is darkness. Darkness is the absence of light, and darkness cannot exist where light is.
Several years ago on vacation, Ben and I went to Linville Caverns. Deep under the ground, many twists and turns from the entrance, our guide turned off the lights…and we were surrounded by darkness that was so absolute that not only could we not see our hands in front of our faces, we felt like the darkness had weight, substance to it.
That weight, though, was only an illusion. After a minute or two in the darkness, our guide turned on a flashlight…and that little flashlight beam lit up the whole cavern, chased away the darkness, and reduced it to pale shadows. In that moment, I developed a new appreciation for the sense that God is light, and that darkness cannot survive the light.
Understanding that Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine is a mystery. It’s a difficult concept; our Tuesday morning Bible study spent part of our Lenten study wrestling with it. Ultimately, it’s something we accept because we cannot understand how Jesus could be any other way and still be who he is and do for us what he has done, and continues to do. Mystery is inherent to our faith: the mystery of a death that brings life, of blood that shapes a new covenant, of the power of a small meal juice and bread that can transform hearts and lives. Come to think of it, those things also smack of metaphor…the poetry of our faith that gives meaning to those mysteries we can’t explain with ordinary words.
Anyway, back to our scripture lesson.
John was facing a church that was trying to understand who Jesus was—God, man?—and what it meant to believe in Jesus Christ, to follow him, in a world that just kept on going. How should they live? As you’ll remember from Eric’s sermon, this is a question that Jesus’ followers started asking right after the Resurrection…and we’ve never really stopped asking it. How do we go on in a world where Christ was once in the flesh, where his death and resurrection makes possible our resurrection, and yet where we still have to live day by day, to deal with all the many and varied temptations and opportunities to sin that surround us? How is it possible to receive the Holy Spirit and yet still sin? And when we sin, does that mean that the Spirit has left us, that God abandons us, that we must try again to be worthy of God’s love?
Difficult questions, but honest ones. We still ask these questions, still struggle with the answers. What happens when we, despite our best efforts and honorable intentions, hurt ourselves or someone else with our actions? What happens when we fail to treat others like fellow children of God? When we lose track of the light, and darkness overcomes us?
John’s church wrestled with these same issues, shared the same struggles we often do in our own faith lives. Where is God? When we hurt, when we struggle, when life is simply too hard, when terrible things happen to our loved ones, when the world seems to be harsh and unfair, when there is illness and when people do terrible things to one another, what then? When everything seems so dark, where is the light?
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
There is darkness in this world. We have only to read the newspaper or turn on the news to see it. War in Iraq, and a lack of unity at home about whether it’s worth fighting or not. Swine flu. Genocide in Africa. Break-ins and broken down cars. Cancer. Economic struggle. And there is darkness in our own lives. I know mine, and I know some of yours. And sometimes it seems too much. Sometimes it is too much. You’ve heard the saying, “God won’t give me more than I can handle.” I don’t like this saying on two levels: first, I don’t believe that God chooses to make our lives difficult, to put adversity in our way. Life is hard enough without thinking that God is out there making it harder on purpose. Secondly, I suspect that we need to be reminded that it’s not about what I can handle or what you can handle…sometimes perhaps we need to remember that God is with us, and helps us to handle our burdens and struggles. And God’s strength is inexhaustible.
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
When we have sinned, when the darkness is in us, in our thoughts and especially in our actions, that is when we most need to remember the light of God. And remember the reset button I wish we had in our own lives? Confession is never easy, but when we look honestly at ourselves, see our failures and confess to God our wrongdoing, when we do this earnestly and faithfully, John tells us there is an answer to the question of how sin separates us from God: it can’t. Not permanently. Not if we continue to live after the example of Jesus Christ. Not if we invite God’s light into us, to chase out our own darkness. And God will do it again, and again, each time we need it, if we will only ask with faith and integrity.
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
How then should we live? As best we can, knowing that God is with us, that God’s love is so great that Jesus Christ lived, died, and was resurrected for us, so that we could share in God’s eternal life, in the light of God’s love for us. And in the knowledge that in that light, darkness cannot flourish. In our own lives, darkness cannot flourish when we know Christ. And we can share that light with other people, can bring it to other places where darkness seems to grow and have power and substance.
This, I think, is why Jesus died: not so I could have eternal life. Not so you could have it. Not so Ann Street members or Methodists or Protestants or even Christians could have eternal life, although we do. But hopefully, that’s a ways off for us…so what do we do now, between Jesus’ resurrection and our own? Who are we called to be in this world?
We are the light-bearers, who bring the light of God into the darkness of the world. We are not meant to sit at home and protect our own salvation but to look for ways to bring light into others’ lives. Through prayer, through study, through conversation, through giving of our time, our talents, our money, and our service…in large ways and small ones we bring the light of God into the darkness, knowing that in God, there is no darkness at all. We do this best when we do it with the graciousness of God that we have received in Christ, when we do it not only with our words, but with our hearts and our actions.
Our last hymn this morning is not one we sing very often, and less-familiar hymns often seem harder to sing than our familiar favorites. But I invite you to let the words of this hymn sink into you, and to leave today with the last line of the chorus as your prayer: In him there is no darkness at all; the night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.
Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus.
Amen.

Bucket List Friday Five

Singing Owl over at the RevGals proposed this F5:

Four days of being mostly in bed with a really bad case of flu (do not worry--I will give no detail) has me pondering the fragility of life. LOL! Death, however, has been cheated in my case and I am up and taking nourishment. In that vein of thought, do you have a "Bucket List"? In other words, from the movie of the same name, five things you want to see, do, accomplish, etc. before you kick the bucket?

Hmmm...
Write and publish a book
Take cooking classes
Spend major quality time with my family
Finish my doctorate (project ends soon, and I'm getting nervous!)
Take Ben on a volunteer vacation somewhere we can both help

I'm not grumping, I'm grace-ing

Five graces to help me get over the grumps:
I have a fantabulous new working wireless router. No more poaching from the neighbor's slow connection.
One major chore will be done by the time I go to bed. And lots of little ones.
Tomorrow I get to spend time "working" with people I enjoy. Hard to consider it work.
We are just about at a tipping point on a lot of levels in our little family. Mundane stuff, mostly, but nice to see the downhill side coming.
Exceptional Two, my nephew, is on the way, slowly. If he doesn't make a move by Monday, they'll make it for him. I'm so excited, and a little scared for my sister. I wasn't scared last time, but I've read several accounts of babies being lost recently; guess they're rubbing off.

Pondering Discipleship

I'm still thinking about Sunday's sermon, and where to go with it. 1 John 1-2's light/dark dualism really attracts me. I know it's last week's lection, but I think I'm going with it anyway, and thinking about darkness as the absence of light.
I've recently read a blog post by Dan Dick called, Do United Methodists want to be disciples? that has raised a lot of questions for me (which you can see in the comments if you read the post).
Firstly, his post reflects a different understanding of what a disciple is than what I grew up with, which is fine. He very graciously gave me his operational definition, and I concur wholeheartedly with what he's thinking.
Except.
Except that I would use different terms. I've bloggend before (although I'm too lazy to link) about my concern with understanding the operational definitions of some of the words we use. One of the reasons I work hard to make my sermons accessible and easily understandable is to share my own operational definitions of certain words so that we're all on the same page. I wonder how many people will read Dan Dick's post and not think about that....
The mission of the UMC in our Discipline is "to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." My operational definition of disciples would be followers of Christ who are growing in their relationship with God and seeking ways to serve God outside themselves. That frankly gives me a lot of latitude to consider someone a disciple: the children in my church are disciples, and have stories and ministry and mission to share. The older adults in my church are disciples, and have stories and ministry and mission to share. As does everyone in between.
That's not to say that everyone in the pew or on the roll is a disciple. Some don't really want to put the work into it, and it is work. It does take effort. Some are still learning, and havent' tumbled to the reality that our faith is a life's journey, and not a moment's decision. But most of my folk I would call authentic disciples, who try to live out their faith in their everyday lives and who look beyond themselves when thinking about the Kingdom of God.
And I'm pretty pleased with that. It's not been true everywhere I've been, but it is true here. We're not all called in the same directions, but we seem to be willing to support one another. We don't always agree, and sometimes feel that God is leading us on divergent paths, but we've struggled to stay one body, to find commonality, and to accept that sometimes we just won't agree. I've painted a fairly utopian picture, and it's not that clean or easy, but it is, I think, discipleship on a corporate level.
And I think that's a faithful working definition for disciple.

A great weekend that did me in

It was a very productive weekend. I'm sure that has nothing to do with my internet service at the house being spotty...anyway, I got a lot done.
Friday, I worked on the mythical office plan and covered one of my two salvaged cabinet units with cloth.
Saturday, I lazed around a while and then loaded up the kayak and hit the water. Ponies, ponies everywhere...three separate groups of them. Lots of boaters, a whole fleet of kayakers taking some class outing, I guess...the 'yaks were marked as property of NC State. Hard paddling the whole way; I started out paddling into the wind, so I'd have an easier paddle when I turned back. Instead, when I'd just made up my mind to go another 20-30 minutes, the wind turned, and so did I, and so I paddled all the way back into the wind. Uphill both ways! Still fun, and I was barely sore at all, which bodes well for this summer.
And then there was Sunday. After the morning's services, I went home, ate a meal assembled in my own kitchen (nearly as much a miracle as cooking it there) and then wandered out to plant the garden. I have all kinds of goodness out there, from tomatoes and peppers to squashes and eggplant, and of course, the obligatory marigolds. I know there's a scientific reason why we plant them in vegetable gardens. I even know what it is: they repel nematodes (bad wormy things, for the unscientific among us). But that's not why I plant them. I plant them because I am genetically programmed to. My mother does, and my grandmother did, and probably her mother and grandmother before her. It is what we do.
Like planting tomatoes at all, for that matter.
I'm preaching this week, which leads to random theologizing. Eric preached the Thomas passage last week, and this week's lectionary passage is not exciting me, but I'm thinking about continuing his theme of what happens after Easter? I'm thinking of picking up last week's 1 John texts and looking at what it means to be a child of the light, and abhorring the darkness. Remembering too one of those email things that may be apocryphal about evil existing not in itself but as the absence of light. Feel free to weigh in with ideas!
For now, I'm nursing my back. After all that great work, I've got a brutal case of muscle spasms, and after wasting the morning stoned on muscle relaxers, I've come into the office to be productive. So I blog. Meh.

F5: Appliance Edition

From Sally at RevGals:

As I write this I am waiting for my new dishwasher to be delivered, it along with my washing machine and vacuum cleaner are household appliances that I consider indispensable! Others not so much, we decided not to replace our tumble drier when the old one finally gave out last year, and I can honestly say I haven't really missed it. My hubby Tim and I often disagree about which household appliances are really necessary and which ones aren't, we also enjoy a few luxury items, my one of favourites is a juicer, and Tim's is our all singing all dancing filter coffee maker- it has a thermos jug so the coffee stays nice and hot without the aid if a heat element.

So being in a domestic frame of mind I thought I'd ask;

1. What is the one appliance you simply couldn't be without?

Not counting the heat pump (I need climate control!), I'm very fond of the dishwasher. As I play around in the kitchen, it saves a lot of time and doesn't complain about getting everything clean the way my husband does. :)
My indoor electric grill is a close second. No matter what the weather, I can have yummy grilled treats for supper, like balsamic-marinated baby zucchini and eggplant. Or steak. And bonus: the grill plate is dishwasher safe.

2. What if anything would you happily give up?

Coffee maker, no doubt. I don't drink much coffee at home, and Ben doesn't drink it at all. I bought a brand-new coffee press at a local church yard sale, and I love it. Who knew lower tech would make way better coffee?

3. What is the most strangest household appliance you own?

Hmmm...I don't own an immersion blender anymore, since it broke. I miss it, though. I don't think I own anything really strange.

4. What is the most luxurious household appliance you own?

My clothes dryer. It keeps my clothes from picking up pollen outside, and we use it to fluff clothes (no ironing) and I confess to warming my towels on cold morning and my pjs on cold evenings. It's probably our most expensive appliance in terms of use, but they're relatively small luxuries and I'm not willing to give them up.

5. Tell us about your dream kitchen- the sky is the limit here....

All stainless steel appliances. Bosch makes a really great silent dishwasher, or maybe I'd get the Fischer and Paykel dishwasher drawers. Both gas and electric stove burners and an electric oven. A great island with a work sink and a refrigerator drawer or two. A huge side-by-side fridge/freezer wide enough to accomodate frozen pizzas for Ben and cookie sheets of whatever needs cooling for me. A nook with comfy furniture for conversation and browsing cookbooks. A KitchenAid mixer in red or turquoise. And if the sky's the limit, a self-cleaning food processor. I won't buy one because they're hard to get in the dishwasher and a hassle to clean...but it would be so convenient!

Garden season, or, "I've been nesting"

Spring always seems to be a time for me to nest. I want to clean things (a little), fix up things...like my office renovation plans, and I want to get the garden in. So while the county schools are out, I hired two members of the youth group to clean up my raised bed garden and mix in some compost and fresh soil. Sadly, I had to leave them to come in to the office, but by the time I left, they had already found 2 small snakes...oh, well. We relocated them to the ditch to give them a chance to find a place to rest until it's really warm enough for snakes.
UPDATE: Having a few spare moments to wander the interwebs, my snakes were mature earth snakes, dining on the earthworms and hopefully grubs in the raised bed. I expect they'll be back, but that's fine with me; we seemed to have earthworms to spare today.
This year's garden will be both more and less ambitious than last year's. I'll be planting more kinds of things but fewer plants of each variety. So here's what I've got in mind:
Tomatoes: Better Boys (sandwich/slicing), Sweet 100s or another hybrid cherry tomato, and a yellow slicing tomato. Don't know which one yet.
Cucumbers
Yellow Squash (I'll be home to fight the dreaded cutworm this year)
Zucchini (ditto)
Red bell peppers
I'm still looking for strawberry plants. It's not too late (but it's close) to plant a container full, if I can find vigorous plants.
Later in the spring, I'm thinking about Japanese eggplants, too.
Should be a good garden year!

An unorthodox Easter

One of our church members is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, all two-thousand-plus miles of it. He's keeping an online trail journal (a blog by any other name) and below is an excerpt from his Easter Sunday post (warning: I didn't pick the names. Trail names are...colorful, to say the least):

Six hikers wake at dawn in Walnut Mtn Shelter. We all join and acknowledge that it is Easter morning. It is easy to forget what day it is on the Trail. Maybe we are all trying to remind each other and remember the meaning of the day. Charlie from Plano,TX says he knew he had a problem when his new mother-in-law awakened him and his wife on their first Easter morning as a couple to tell them the eggs had been hidden and it was time for them to get up and find the eggs. John Nascar asked Charlie if he got married at 12?
As we were all laughing Joe Kickass was peeling an orange that he had selected the previous day from a trail magic bag 13 miles back. He gave each of us a section and said "Happy Easter". It tasted better than any glass of orange juice I can remember. What an Easter morning. A sunny day after a week of brutal weather. Rich laughter from a story by a dry talking Texan. And a delicious orange slice being given to me while my legs were being kept warm in my sleeping bag. It was a grand start to a glorious sunny and mostly downhill day
I cannot remember a better day. I feel blessed and thankful. SL

I'm struck by what a sacramental moment took place there in that shelter with an orange shared in a unique community, bonded not by faith or race or upbringing, but by common experience and desire.
Wouldn't it be nice if church had just a little bit of that? We're meant to be drawn together by our faith, but that's just what gets us in the door, if we're lucky. After that, it's the experiences we have in common, the stories we share, that create our community. It is Christ lived in us, in our interactions with one another, our words and actions and those indefineable moments of acceptance and grace, that binds us together...not our privately held faith, but the life we share.
I'm not suggesting that sharing an orange equates to the Eucharist. But I am suggesting that something sacramental and elemental took place in those hikers' shelter. Sharing a meal together marks an intimacy that we forget about when we pick up food in a drive-thru or eat a meal in front of the television. And the trail experiences have created a sense of intimacy that brings together people of all ages (my friend has met hikers in their early twenties, and although he's in his early sixties, he's not the oldest hiker he's met), from all kinds of places, and all kinds of circumstances. I suspect Christ was in their company.
As for me, I'm thinking about orange slices and sleeping bags and free grace.

Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot

Shamelessly ripped off from John at The Zeray Gazette:

(wait, I must have some shame, I credited him...anyway)

Poetry Party: Practicing Resurrection

Christine at Abbey of the Arts has proposed another poetry party! Today's theme is practicing resurrection, and she offers this image as inspiration:


Warm sand under foot
Gentle breezes move the air
My heart soars to you

In a breeze, a storm
a quiet moment, a breath
where life is, you are


(bonus Easter haiku, since I was in the mood:)

The darkest Friday
A Saturday in silence
Sunday's dawn--joy!

Thoughts on Holy Week

I'm trying to keep a Holy Week, honest.
But there's so much to do, and it's all so demanding, and it's so much more fun to skip from Palm Sunday straight to Easter. We avoid all the blood and the pain and the unpleasantness of those last days of Jesus' life. It lets us opt out of betrayal, denial, the trial, the scourging, the cross. We can go straight from Palm branches to Easter lilies...can't we?
Not in good faith.
We sang an old hymn (1630, I think) called "Ah, Holy Jesus" on Sunday night at our evening service (a modified tenebrae service). We did not like it. It's dark, broody, depressing, and I lost count of all the atonement references. It is slow and almost painful to sing, and there's no resolution to the melody...the end of the song just leaves us hanging, no pun intended.
And although we were tempted to leave it out of the service, we opted to include it, because it was true, and a reminder to us that there is no resurrection without death.
It is a lot more comfortable to preach joy and light and life and hope and try to avoid preaching on the atonement. It feels friendlier not to dwell on the crucifix, with Christ transfixed upon it, but to look only at the empty cross and a transfigured Savior. Yet our salvation is not cheap, and did not come easy.
In faithfulness to the gift of salvation, to the mercy God offers, we can't skip through Holy Week. Although I'd like to have skipped the funeral and the general busy-ness of this week, I'm trying to create space in my life to walk through the events of this week...to share a last supper on Maundy Thursday, to find myself in the crowd on Good Friday, to sit in stunned silence for Holy Saturday.
And then maybe I'll be ready to really appreciate Easter.

A poem for Holy Week:

Join me in the glad parade
marching toward Friday with shouts and songs,
surrounded by spring and life reborn,
laughing out loud with our friends.

Join me in the milling throng
tripping into Friday on the heels of strangers,
hesitant, as singing turns to silence,
echoes of laughter trailing away.

Join me in the weeping crowd
running from Friday's unspeakable pain,
shrouded in blackness, alone in the dark,
cries of abandonment filling the night.

Join me in this line of stragglers
heading toward Sunday with silent despair,
hoping beyond reason for easing of pain;
for a time to laugh together again.

(Annie Bellinger Hammon, Honoring Rob: Poems, Prayers and Meditations, p. 63)
My thanks to Chris and Annie Hammon for sharing this poem with me and my classmates.

I'm taking a blog sabbath until it is time to laugh together again...I'll be back Sunday or Monday. May your Holy Week be blessed, and Easter find you with joy and revelation.

Why did the rubber snake go to the funeral?

Because the "guest of honor" was a huge practical joker.
In the last weeks of his life, he would hide rubber snakes and fake roaches in his clothing for the hospice nurses to find. He would pretend to be asleep when company came...until you caught a little glint from his eyes when he couldn't resist peeking. A couple of weeks ago, he sent a minion to leave a rubber snake on my desk on Sunday morning, so today the snake went to the funeral.
Here's a part of my reflection, which was not the main sermon:
Oh, there are lots of things to say about C . There are endless funny stories and tales of pranks he pulled. I could tell you about all the good he did in his work, in the church, and as a good neighbor. Instead, let me start by telling you about the places I miss C most.
Sometimes in the morning, my husband and I would go to Hardee’s for breakfast, where we often saw C sitting with a bunch of other men, laughing and telling stories. I’ll miss seeing him there.
As long as he was able, every Sunday C sat by the church’s back door on Sunday mornings. He was the unofficial greeter, who took the early shift until it was someone else’s turn to be there. He told us jokes and made sure we knew what we needed to know. I’ll miss seeing him there, too.
And then there’s the sight of him sitting in “his spot” in the sanctuary. Everyone knew that was where to go to get a little laugh and hear about what was going on. I’ll miss seeing him there, too.
There are so many places where C’s absence troubles us, for all that we’ve had a little time to get used to it. Some of his friends and neighbors have had to find another ride to the store or the doctor’s office or church (or Hardee’s), because C could always be counted on for that. C ran errands for friends who couldn’t get out. He’d do anything he could if you needed him. And we’ll miss that as well—and in the missing, perhaps we might realize that it’s not the rides or the errand-running or the checking-in on folks that we miss, so much as we miss the man who did it, and what he taught us about following God.
C did lots of things for other people that don’t have much to do with Jesus, at least not at first glance. Going to Hardee’s, for example, doesn’t appear in Scripture. Yet C knew somehow that maintaining that comforting habit with his friends was important to them and to him. And what we saw in C as we watched him be himself, looking out for others, was the love of Christ, who is with us in all we do. Sitting around the breakfast table telling jokes, we saw that being with our friends and enjoying one another’s company, what we in the church call “fellowship”, helps make us who we are…and with C, that meant we might get just a little closer to Jesus, who C knew and loved, and who I have no doubt knew and loved C well.
And although I said there’s no need for me to tell you about C’s famous (or should I say infamous) sense of humor, the truth is that it’s impossible to talk about who he was without telling at least one story about his pranks. I’m going to tell you two, because I can.
Soon after I came to Ann Street, we purchased a computer stand for my office, and called on C to put it together for me. Before I went back into the office, several “little birds” warned me to look out for some little visitor in my office. I went into the office and sure enough, I found a huge plastic spider. This was C’s calling card, left for me almost three years ago.
A few weeks ago, I walked into my office to find on my desk a rubber snake. C had someone bring it in for me, one last little prank on the lady preacher. I laughed and then went by the house to tell C what I found. Of course, he pretended to be sleeping when I walked in because that was just who he was. And he pretended not to know anything about my snake…but it was all in good fun. And from C’s sense of fun and his joy in these little pranks, we can also learn something about God: that God has a sense of humor, too, that it is good for us to have a little fun, that God’s kingdom is not strict and severe but filled with laughter and joy and love for God and one another. That’s a pretty good lesson to learn from a rubber snake, and from a man like C.

A slow blog spell

It isn't just that this week was too busy to blog, although sometimes it was.
It's partly the tired...from being busy for weeks on end.
I'm not worried about burnout, particularly, but just about keeping my energy level up. Trying to learn how to balance rest with exercise to increase my stamina overall.
My fall-back for this year is to come up with 5 small graces, so here's today's shot at it:
1: a really good evening worship service. Sort of a modified Tenebrae, ending with resurrection. Had 3 of the kids from the youth group do readings and lots of positive feedback.
2: got home before 8, which I was not really expecting.
3: our usual post-service chat in the parking lot was just about perfect...beautiful wether and the gnats or midges or whatever pesterous bugs aren't too bad yet
4: I have a project I'm excited about, as soon as the Arts Festival is over
5: all the busy is good, with the possible exception of Tuesday's funeral. I'm sorry the man died, but I'm so happy that we believe in resurrection. Plus, it'll be my first funeral in which a rubber snake has a role, since the deceased was a huge practical joker. So maybe it's at least partially good.

A Lent-Is-Almost-Over Five Graces

1: My "Wii shoulder" pain is gone. Even played Wii Tennis and Wii Baseball last night.
2: My Lenten commitment for this year is going okay. I've increased my activity level, tried to eat better (she says as she tries not to get Cheetos gunk on the keyboard), and generally taken care of myself fairly well.
3: The WonderMutt and I took a long walk on Monday.
4: I have the evening mostly off tonight; just a quick check-in at one meeting.
5: Tomorrow is my day off! Yay!