The Best Laid Plans

Last year one of my resolutions was to write a blog entry every day.  If you look at the history, you will see that I fell a wee bit short.  Three hundred and fifty-eight entries, to be precise.

At my birthday I decided I wanted to walk the equivalent of hiking the Appalachian Trail this year.  Then I figured out that it would require walking about six miles a day, six days a week for the entire year.  I'm a bit behind...I've managed about five miles of dedicated walking in the last three and a half months.

I've been trying to clean up my desk on my day off....every week.  I've managed to fill two boxes with "Papers to be dealt with" and the desk is still cluttered with papers, Christmas cards, coupons...

Why am I telling you this?  I guess because confession is good for the soul. Of course, I've not been a sloth.  I've done some quilting that wasn't for a specific baby for the first time in a number of years, including finishing up projects that I started two homes ago.  I've been starting a garden and cleaning up one that was long neglected.  I've been trying to establish our home here in Florida and a new career in real estate -- both of which are fun and time consuming.  

It's good to have plans and to set goals.  I'm a firm believer in New Year's Resolutions, not because I assume I'll meet them, but because they give me a goal to shoot for, they help me focus on what's right with my life and on where I can do better.  They are an expression of the belief than I can DO better.  But I don't let them make me crazy.  I don't beat myself up when I don't meet them.  I'll keep trying.  So this year I did better with the resolution from several years ago that I would finish unfinished craft projects.  Sometimes resolutions and life changes can't be neatly packaged into 365 days (or in the case of this last year 366).  

And any day is a good day to start, but there's something freeing about opening that fresh, clean calendar.  So make a resolution.  How do you want 2017 to be different for you?  What can you, will you do to make it so?

For All the Saints

Growing up Baptist, we didn't "do" Saints, let alone All Saints Days.

We were taught that all Christians were saints, with equal access to God in Christ, and that still has a sound theological ring for me.

But a collective amnesia about our past (something Baptists do "do", and with a frightening regularity) leads us to a empoverished spirituality.  If our ideas of saintliness are limited to the example of those around us, circumstances may mean we are left without resources to challenge and sustain us.  I believe that that is what may leave some folks to leave a congregation where they've been participants for a long time, suddenly deciding they don't like the pastor or it's not "mission minded" or "spiritual" enough for them,  Their feeling of lack is not wrong -- it's the source of scarcity that is misunderstood.

We need to remember and listen to the saints of old -- you read the Desert Fathers and Mothers and they sound remarkably modern.  Theresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, St. John of the Cross, and John Bunyan led very different lives than ours, but there are, in their writings, longings and questions that resonate with us.

But I digress.

During seminary I heard or read a definition of a saint that changed my understanding of "We're all saints".  I wish I could credit it, but I can't remember where I found it.  It was "A Saint is a window through whom the love of God shines."

As a pastor, I knew many of those saints.  I sat with them in nursing homes and committee meetings, around hospital beds and kitchen tables.  We worked rummage sales and chicken dinners together.  And every year on All Saint's Sunday I have looked out at whatever congregation I was serving and no matter how many people in the pews, the worship center is full, packed to the rafters with the saints whom I have known and who were part of that particular congregation.  As I write this, my tears are flowing, because I am so grateful for these beloved people: Doris and Georgia,  Bernice and Eleanore and Tom and numerous Kens, I see their faces and I MISS them, though some of been gone far longer than I ever knew them.  None of them were perfect human beings, but I remember how the love of God shone through them and what I learned of that love from them.

For that reason I always want to sing Vaughn Williams majestic hymn Sine Nomine on All Saints Sunday, though I can never make it through without breaking down.  It reminds me that the Kingdom of God is not dependent on me, but that it is my job to be a saint -- to get out of the way so that God's love can be manifested in my life, and shine through me.  For the world is full of the saints of God.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;

Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.

Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,

And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.

Alleluia, Alleluia!

 From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,

Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,

Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Paving the Road to You-Know-Where

I had decided that I was going to blog daily this year.

Yeah.  You see how well that happened.

As I write we are in full blown ELECTION DRAMA and there is a standoff at Standing Rock over the Dakota Pipeline.  We just had a new granddaughter last week.  Things are a wee bit crazy.

I just want to say this.

If we don't want our children to be bullies, we shouldn't elect them to any office -- not President, not Dog Catcher.

If we want to be the moral leaders of the civilized world, we can't trample on treaties we made tin the past that have become inconvenient.

Babies are, in general, miraculous and bind us to what is primal and basic about ourselves.  And part of that is that we care for those who are not able to care for themselves so that we may all continue together.

My granddaughter is the most beautiful little girl in the world.

I am an incredibly lucky, and privileged person.  And I don't deserve it, particularly if I receive that privilege (and I know I do) at the expense of others. 

I have a duty to speak for those who have no voice.

I'm tired of manipulation and half-truths used to control people who are too lazy to figure out what they're actually voting on.  I'm fed up with people who don't bother to vote, then complain about what "They" do.  I'm enraged with politicians who do their best to prevent people from voting to continue their own positions of power.

I'm so glad  Autumn is here.  I'm grateful for each day. 

I was going to write a blog about all these things.  But I'm paving a road...

In memoriam

There were a lot of memes on FB over the last weekend, reminding us that Memorial Day isn't about long weekends or shopping or partying...and this is true.

However.

Some of us remember when Memorial Day was May 30.  Period.  On whatever day it fell, businesses closed down.  People traveled to the cemetery to decorate the graves of the dead -- to clean the stone, to plant fresh flowers, to pause, to remember.  Not just the war dead, but all the dead.  My grandmother used to call it Decoration Day.  Please note, this was AFTER World War II.  People gathered with their families to remember the dead, and because it was often the first time they were getting nice weather, they would do it outside, with a picnic.  It was often the case that families would have picnics in the park-like cemetery settings.

Somehow, someone decided that it was more efficient to make holidays "moveable feasts" -- to have them fall on a Monday because it was more convenient to just take a long weekend rather than work for a day or two, take one day off, then work another couple of days.  As for stores -- well, if you work retail you don't get holidays, ESPECIALLY in grocery. 

So how can you expect people to honor the root of a holiday if you can't even mark it as a holiday?  I have no problem with stores being open on Sunday or Christmas or Easter -- those are religious holidays and I don't expect people to honor them just because I do.  But I DO take exception to making national observances like Labor Day, Martin Luther King, Jr Day (NOT "MLK DAY" or "King Day"), and Presidents' Day and especially  Memorial Day and the Fourth of July into shopping extravaganzas.  It does, of course, underscore the observation of President Coolidge (? - Hoover?) that "the business of America is business."  It's a pretty sad way to remember the founding principle of the holiday as summed up in the document associated with Memorial Day, the Gettysburg Address:   It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Government of the people.  By the people.  For the people. 

 I am not a complete iconoclast.  I am not anti-business or anti-commerce.  Businesses provide income and goods that people need.  They deserve to make a profit.  But I don't believe they should be the central consideration, the ruling ideal of a culture or a country.  I suspect that many of our honored dead these days are sacrificed on the altar of profit, that we generate wars and conflicts to maintain businesses that are in the business of war and that those who profit from them are working overtly and covertly to make sure that there is always someone who needs their goods.  Too often we wrap profit in a flag and call it patriotism, even as those who profit the most are undermining our communities by underpaying workers, moving jobs out of the country, and moving headquarters to avoid taxes.

And, I might add, government by of Business, by Business, for Business is not only the antithesis of capitalism as laid out by Adam Smith, but it is a grotesque parody of the ideal for which our sons and daughters have died. 

The Terrible Speed of Mercy

A friend recently posted a line from Flannery O'Connor's _The Violent Bear it Away_:  "GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY"

In the world of synchronicity this resonates with my mental meanderings on my morning drive.  I live in an area where you see a lot of lawn signs for a candidate who wants to make America great again.  I won't say the name.  I'd have to wash my mouth out with soap.  And somehow I ALWAYS wind up in those neighborhoods, but that's another story (and probably another humiliating confession) for another day. 

I was thinking about what it means to be great in my universe and what they mean by making America great.  I was thinking about all those people who want to bomb the people who don't want America to be a Christian nation.  I was thinking about the people who want to check our naughty bits to make sure we're pooping in the right room.  And a line from a hymn jumped into my head.

It's an "inner verse" hymn.  I've often found that this is where a hymn is most powerful for me -- not in the opening verse, which is usually more general and setting the stage, and which is the one everybody (at least church-going everybodies) knows, the one you sing at hymn sings.  It's those inner verses I love, the ones that lay out the implications of the first verse, and I've sung them enough times over the years that I do actually have them mostly memorized. 

Mostly memorized.  Because I'm missing a phrase in the set-up, but the REST of the stanza  goes

Lead on, O King Eternal, 'till sin's fierce war shall cease

and (words words words) shall whisper the sweet "Amen" of peace;

For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums -

With deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.

 

When people talk about making America great they talk about being a world power, about being The World Power, and they are talking about the ability to get what we want, when we want it without any interference from or obligation to anyone else.  And that's certainly not MY definition of a Christian Nation.  With deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.  So wouldn't that be how an earthly Christian Nation is shaped and formed, how it interacts with and in the world? 

 

Deeds of love and mercy for our own people who work 60 hours a week and still can't afford decent housing in the areas where they live or milk for their kids.  Deeds of love and mercy for those who use up their last cent caring for an ill and/or elderly parent and wind up in debt for the rest of their own lives.  Deeds of love and mercy for those who self-medicate with something that's socially unacceptable instead of a martini or scotch.  Deeds of love and mercy for those who committed crimes, did the time, and now need to find a way to live without hurting anyone else again.  Deeds of love and mercy for those who are running from the horrors of war.  Deeds of love and mercy for those who are fighting because they are afraid we will make them like us. 

 

We teach our children that they shouldn't be selfish and then immerse them in a culture that is self-centered, materially focused and determined to stay that way, even if someone else needs to be hurt OR DIE to make it so.  Why are we surprised when they shoot each other in school?  How would they even know what love and mercy look like in a community?

 

Greatness is not raw power or coercion.  It is strength and encouragement.  It does not give you a position to control others, it allows you to lift them up.  It is love for those who are different, mercy for those who consider themselves our enemies. 

 

It's easy to say "Bomb them all!  Torture the information out of them!" or  "If they've failed they're just losers, forget about them!"  And that may be the way of the world.  But it is certainly not greatness. 

 

GOD'S mercy comes faster than we can imagine, and it comes to those for whom we cannot imagine it.  This is the scandal of the gospel.  So it even comes to those for whom it is a horror, because it reminds them that at some level we are all losers, terrorists, and creeps.  Admittedly, some of us more than others.  And God loves us enough to invite us to admit it and to leave that life behind.

 

{As a post script, quite frankly, I find all the talk about and obsession with sex and gender to be pointless, boring, and puerile.  Get over it!  You use the same bathroom as people of the other gender at home for heaven's sake!  Replace urinals with toilets and close them in so that we girls aren't standing in line for a half hour while the boys breeze in and out after us and we'll all use the same bathrooms.  It's not a big deal.   Girls use bathrooms.  It's not like we have to pretend we're just going "to powder our noses".}

 

[Post Post Script - Read Flannery O'Connor.  It is not light reading.  It will challenge you to the depth of your heart.  It will make you ask yourself hard questions.  It is good for your soul.]

 

 









Daily Disciplines

So I'm working on a post entitled "My Almost a Year of Being Practically Pagan", which will explain some of the background behind this, but I have to begin here with the admission that I did not embrace a Lenten discipline, in this, my first year of retirement.  I didn't give anything up.  I didn't take anything up.  I barely realized that it was Lent, and let me tell you, it is even harder when the weather is warm and sunny and there's nothing to make you feel like a miserable sinner who needs to repent SOMEHOW. 

At any rate, I was sitting here thinking about Easter and how odd it has been to face this holy day without being a wrung out mass of exhausted emotion.  We WILL go to church, of course.  I've been on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and intended to go on Good Friday, but was caught somewhere else beyond my control.  Our daughter and her children will be here.  My parents are here.  So we will have a full table, which is something that I love. 

But I wanted to do something more, somehow to focus on the season of Easter, which gets forgotten by most of us the moment the last jelly bean has been consumed (and in our house that's very rapidly).  So I decided that I am going to do an Easter discipline, and it is one that was prompted by my friend Laura.

Laura, a 20-something, just announced on FB that she is going to take a break from electronics and is going to start writing real, honest-to-goodness, paper and ink LETTERS to people.  What a concept!  And since I've always been a lover of the penned word (and the granddaughter of a mail carrier), I  thought, "Hey!  I can write letters!  I am going to write a letter to someone every day of Easter."  That's 49 letters until Pentecost.  And I'm excited.  I have a list of people to whom I OWE letters to start off, but if you would like to receive a real handwritten letter with a stamp and everything from me, send me your land address and I will put you on my list.  If I have more than 49 names it will take a little longer, but I promise you, I WILL write if you ask me to do so!

Where's the Finish Line?

Did you ever get mad at your parents when you were a child?  I'm not just talking the standard teenage frustrations, but the pre-adolescent "Why are they say so mean to me?  They're so unfair!  I wish Tommy's parents were my Mom and Dad!  I'm going to go live with Grandma!"  I know I felt that way about my parents before I ever hit double digits.  After all, they were GROWNUPS!  If they were making me unhappy, it had to be because they wanted to.

I had an illuminating moment yesterday.  It occurred to me that when I was dealing with all that unhappiness and existential angst, my mother was 28, maybe 29 years old.  When I think about the person I was at 28 years old and how much I've grown over the years, I'm amazed.  And I realize that my mother was still growing at that age, too.

My mother was growing!  As she was an only child and I was the oldest, she was doing a lot of seat-of-the-pants learning about parenting.  But she was also learning about life herself.  And if she made some mistakes along the way in her parenting, I'm sure that she didn't do it intentionally -- she just needed to grow a little more.

The same could be said about the head-to-head battles we had in my teenage years.  The world of the late 60s/early 70s was nothing like she had ever experienced in her own life before.  How could she help me navigate a world that was unfamiliar to her?  How could she give me anything other than what she had learned, even if it didn't quite match the world I was living in, the people I was encountering?

A lot of us grow up with resentments about what our parents did and didn't do for us; some of it serious, some of it imagined.  Therapists are buying second houses on peoples' working through the hurts and misinformation they received from their parents, and I suspect most of those people believe, deep down inside, that it was done to them intentionally.  The truth is, that our parents were growing -- at least we hope they were.

We all know people who stopped growing when they were 20 or 34 or 42.  They stopped being introspective; they lost the desire to know more or be more.  But after I left home my mom went to work full time.  She learned to use a computer.  She travelled the world.  She painted a picture, a real picture suitable for framing.  For me to be angry about who she was (or who I thought she was on one day in our lives) is just plain silly.

Now, let this be said.  My mom and I have a good relationship.  We have certain subjects we don't go to, but we talk a lot about our lives, honestly and openly.  There was never any physical or emotional abuse in our home.  Did she make mistakes?  From my point of view, yes.    Do we love each other?  Yes. Did I make mistakes as a parent?  Dear Lord, yes.

I can only hope that my children will one day realize that I was learning as I went along, that some lessons I learned earlier and easier than others.  I can only hope that they will forgive me and be grateful that I gave them an example that being an adult human being is an on-going process.  You may enter adulthood, but if you are lucky, you don't reach the finish line until you draw your last breath.

Living Fearlessly

You know that closet that holds all your nightmares?  The one you have to make sure is closed when you go to bed at night so that the monsters and witches don't come out to get you? Mine is overpopulated.

I'm afraid of suspension bridges.  I just don't trust them not to fall down when I'm on them.  I once sat on a suspension bridge in a traffic jam, at night, in the rain, and every time a semi went past in the opposite direction the bridge would flex and bounce.  I nearly hyperventilated.  I don't mind regular, pier bridges, as long as I'm on them and not under them.  I hate sitting at a traffic light or being in a traffic jam stuck under an over pass, because something in my primitive brain tells me that a chunk of concrete is going to fall off and come through the roof of my car and kill me.  The lower level of a two level suspension bridge like the Oakland Bay Bridge or the  George Washington?  Forget about it.

I'm not afraid of snakes -- I've even held a boa constrictor.  But worms? Eeeeeeeeuuuuuwwww....

I'm afraid people won't like me.  I'm afraid of failing.  I'm afraid of cancer.  I'm afraid for my kids (who are adults).  I'm afraid that the food I eat is contaminated with unnatural ingredients or by poor production methods.  I'm afraid a certain presidential candidate will be elected and we will become a totalitarian state.

I lay these out before you because I'm certain that at least one of the things that frighten me will make you laugh, if not all of them.  How could she be afraid of that?  The fact that I recognize that they are silly helps me function around the fear (remember the spell for getting rid of what frightens you most in Harry Potter?), but it doesn't free me from it.  I can drive on suspension bridges, but it requires a brief routine of mental and emotional preparation AND I confess I superstitiously roll down the window when I drive over one.  No matter what the weather.  No, I don't think that will prevent it from collapsing, but that way if it DOES fall, I won't be trapped in the car underwater until the car pressurizes and I can escape.  Just saying.  When I was young (five or six years old) I was afraid of cannibal head hunters.  How they were going to get under my bed in suburban New Jersey was not the issue.  That they might be there was.  I avoided them by checking all the windows and doors before I went to bed, to make sure they were locked,  and making sure that closet door was closed. 

We live in a culture that promotes fear.  All advertising is aimed at making us afraid of something and then providing us with a product that will "protect" us or even "save" us.  The "best" advertising gets you in your most primitive brain area, the one that is focused only on survival - even if the product being sold is obviously not required for survival. 

My goal for the coming year is to live fearlessly, but I'm not sure that that is humanly possible. So here's my plan.  I am going to do my best to catch myself when I'm making gut-level decisions or when I find myself procrastinating and ask, "What frightens me here?  Why?"  There are some things we should be afraid of, but many of the fears that we allow to control our day to day lives are as silly as cannibal head hunters in New Jersey.  And the sacred writings that I try to follow tell me that love is the antidote to fear.  It is not easy to act in love towards those people and things that evoke fear in you.  But I'm fairly sure that many of the things and people we fear are because of cultural advertising and that it's based on someone else's fears which, if exposed, would make us laugh.

I think the key for me is not to live fearlessly, but to live lovingly, to let love take the place of my fear.  It seems to me I've heard that somewhere...