The Gift of Time

Sabbatical at last. Perhaps it should have been obvious to me that the greatest gift that God would offer during this year would have to offer was the luxury to stretch out into time. I am in Seattle a little (well, a lot) longer than I had planned. I should have been in South Korea with Joe already, but as it turns out, because of the miracle of finding a buyer for our condo Naomi and I are hanging out in a mostly empty house and bumming around Lake City for 5 additional weeks waiting for closing, signing papers, doing errands, tidying up the loose ends that moving overseas inevitably causes, giving away and selling the furniture and odds and ends left in our house, cleaning out the cupboards and the fridge and packing up what needs to come along.

Well that's what I've been doing. Naomi's been building legos, playing outside, watching videos (a little too much of that probably), going to the park, going swimming, eating donuts, jumping on the trampoline, peeing in the potty (most of the time) and going to the farmers' market. And I've been able to do all of those things with her, plus all my errands and re-reading the whole Harry Potter series. All of this because of this awesome gift of time.

I have been reminded over and over again that it does take time to be with a preschooler. It's not only the potty training (which is definitely time consuming!) It took Naomi and me almost an hour to walk home from the park yesterday. The park is a 5 minute walk away. I was torn constantly between wanting to yank Naomi away from the one thousandth rock stuck in the mud, the sticks and pine-cones and blackberries, and allowing her and myself to revel in these thing. I should want and be able to draw pictures in the dirt by the side of the road with a stick, hop from paver to paver in the sidewalk and lick pretend ice-cream made from pine-cones.

I should but that doesn't mean that it's easy to relax into the pace of a three-year-old, and she is often as frustrated with me as I am with her. I have this whole plan of exploring quilting as a spiritual discipline, but I am beginning to wonder if one of the challenges (and gifts) that lies before me in this time of Sabbatical will be to discover what it means to live into the spiritual discipline of parenting. While I think a lot about what it means to introduce Naomi to Jesus and at whatever level she can understand it, the faith in which I live, it has never really been a full-time gig.

So, why shouldn't a five minute walk take ten times that long? No reason, when presented with the gift of time. God help me live into the gift. I will need it - both the gift and the help living into it.

God's Wrinkled Hands

I found this prayer today in Words for Worship II, a worship resource from Herald Press, in the 'Morning and Evening' section. I don't know what it was about it exactly, but it cut to some central longing in me. Likely it is related to my urgent need just now to be taken care of and the desire to "take everything...and pile it into [God's] wrinkled, loving hands." How surprised and delighted I was to find that it had been written by another Pacific Northwest pastor, Linda Nafziger-Meiser, from Boise ID.

We take everything that our day has held,
the best and the worst,
and we pile it into your wrinkled, loving hands.
We take everything that the world has held today,
the good and the bad,
and we heap it all into your lap, Grandmother God.
Then we crawl up into your lap, too.
And still there is room for us and the whole world.

Clearing the Table

In seminary, my classmates and I, in our class on worship and preaching, heard almost ad nauseum the metaphor of worship being like a meal at which we find nourishment. June Alliman Yoder, Marlene Kropf and Rebecca Slough (two of whom were the professors of said class) write in their book Preparing Sunday Dinner: A Collaborative Approach to Worship and Preaching,

If Sunday worship is the meal that nourishes and sustains individual Christians as well as the Christian community, then it is vital that leaders understand how to prepare and serve this meal. If this is the meal that keeps Christians alive, that delights our souls, that creates a context for fellowship and celebration, and that sustains the church's work and witness in the world, then we must cultivate skill in the kitchen as well as capacities for hosting and serving on the part of worship planners, preachers music leaders and other in worship ministry.

It's an apt analogy and one I like with regards to worship, especially because often our worship is literally before or around the Lord's table. I also like this analogy because I like to make the preparations. Just as I literally like to prepare food for my family or for guests or bake cookies with my daughter. And I like the results - whether its a meal enjoyed with others or worship well 'cooked' the participation in these activities gives me joy.

What I don't like is clean-up. It's as true of my culinary endeavors as it is of worship. I mean the physical clean up: putting away the candles and the table runners, vacuuming up the crumbs from Communion. I can be forgetful or neglectful about cleaning up on Sundays, to the annoyance of our facilities manager. And I am often a procrastinator.

But, since I am quickly approaching my sabbatical, I have made it my summer goal to reorganize the worship supply room, take inventory and restock. We have a beautiful (from my perspective at least) and well stocked space for worship supplies including candles and holders, vases, cloths in many colors, rocks, leaves, various types of stands and holders for things. All this can get into a bit of a jumble, however organized the space began and I spent the better part of the day today pulling out clothes and banners to see which have to go to the dry cleaner to get the wax removed, pulling out broken candle stubs from votives, sorting things into categorized bins.

I commented to Marian (the aforementioned facilities manager) that it would be nice if a volunteer would take on this task. And yet, I realized that cleaning up is as important a part of the worship cycle as preparing the table on Sunday morning. In addition to the joy of peeling melted wax off the sides of candles, I am receiving the gift of an afternoon away from my computer (so much for that...blog, blog, blog), the satisfaction of neatly organized shelves, and I am preparing in a different way than when I lay out the elements for Communion on a Sunday morning or light the candles on the worship table. I am making a space inviting and orderly for others who will use it in the next year. I hope I am making the space and its contents easy to use and accessible so that others will be able to prepare 'Sunday dinner' in my absence. May God's blessing be on the clearing up as it is in the setting out.

Bible Babble and the Babel Fish

Pentecost is here again and this year I was inspired by Douglas Adams. Remember the moment when Ford Prefect shoves the Babel fish in Arthur Dent's ear? Arthur, like he usually is, is confused because he has just arrived on a Vogon vessel and only moments before had no idea that Vogons existed. But then all of a sudden he can understand everything that's going on around him - or at least everything that's being said; he's still pretty confused much of the time. That moment of understanding, that is what happened on Pentecost.

In Acts 2, there are people from all over the known world gathered to celebrate one of the high Jewish holidays. All of these people who were just minding their own business tuning each other out because they couldn't understand what the person next to them was saying, now they can understand every word. And not only understand but realize that God was working through this miracle of understanding.

No doubt Douglas Adams named the Babel fish for the story in the Bible often associated with Pentecost as the anti-Pentecost, the place where all the trouble started. At Babel, in Genesis 11, the language are all mixed up and no one can hear or understand each other any longer. But Pentecost and the Holy Spirit gives that all back. In understanding they are suddenly able to create a community, because the barrier of language has been broken down. And that's not all, Peter quotes Joel as he interprets this event: even upon slaves, on men and women, on young and old. The Spirit is for everyone. This is the birth of the church.

Radical new community all because of a little fish...I mean the Holy Spirit.

Affirmation of Faith for Pentecost

We believe in God, creator of all,
whose love is more than mind can measure or time contain.

We believe that God's desire is fullness of life for all,
and from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell,
nothing and no one has fallen beyond the reach of God's mercy.

We believe in Jesus Christ,
who unveiled the divinity of human flesh
and revealed to us the nature of God;
who embodied God's holy wisdom
and brought forth fruits of love, joy, peace,
goodness, faithfulness and humility.

We believe in the way of the cross,
for when Christ embraced the outcasts
and unmasked the arrogant,
he stirred into deadly confrontation
the power of love and the love of power.
The enemies of life had their way with him,
tearing spirit from flesh,
but God's saving power raised him to life,
so that we and every person on earth
might follow him into the fullness of life which death cannot overcome.

We believe in the Holy Spirit
God's ceaseless and mysterious Go-between,
who kindles the fires of passion and integrity.
Elusive and uncontrollable,
comforting and disturbing,
she purges our delusions with fire
and whispers grace with a lover's breath,
empowering us to refuse what is evil,
and be taken up with praise.

Though sometimes fearful, in God we trust.
We lay ourselves open to the Spirit's touch
that we might be the body of Christ,
offering our life for the life of the world,
and being drawn into the mysterious dance of the Trinity,
through Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory and praise forever.

- Nathan Nettleton, Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources

The trouble with Easter

I am finding it difficult to write the Easter message this year. There are a number of friends and members of my congregation who are weighted with burdens that will not some how magically disappear when the sun rises on Easter Sunday. There are some who will continue to live in the liminal space between Good Friday and Resurrection. Last Sunday my friend and fellow pastor Sarah Klaassen reminded us in her sermon that our Lenten task – our Christian task – is 'to accompany shadows.' We are a people who do not choose the happy and easy road, but who walk the way of the cross. We forgo the pursuit of happiness in favor of walking the dusty road with Christ. On Good Friday and throughout Lent this is, if not a welcome message and challenge, an appropriate one. But on Easter, full of budding flowers, sweet hot-crossed rolls, and loud Hallelujah choruses, where does the lingering grief and confusion still fit?

I often feel this way around Christmas as well. A celebration of light and joy when, for some, life seems full of darkness and sorrow must feel particularly oppressive. My pastoral colleague Jonathan often says, ‘What you see depends on where you sit.’ I think it may be difficult to see and hear a story of resurrection when you’re sitting in the tomb next to death, or addiction, or depression, or unemployment or homelessness or any number of losses and traumas that we bear in ourselves or on behalf of another.

For this reason I think I will speak from Mary’s perspective this year. Mary Magdalene who first encountered the risen Jesus, also first encountered the confusion and fear of the empty tomb. Where is the body? Has someone taken him? Why is the stone moved? Who are the strange and white robed men? Who is this man, the gardener and does he know what has become of my Lord? I weep with Mary who ‘as yet did not understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.’ (John 20:9) And I will try to proclaim with her ‘I have seen the Lord!’ even though I, like she, may not recognize him right now.

**The image above is by Chinese artist He Qi, entitled 'The Empty Tomb'

Parenting and Peacemaking

When I was in PEPS (Programs for Early Parent Support) in the first months of my daughter's life, I met weekly with other moms whose babies were born around the same time as Naomi. In one meeting our leader asked as the ice breaker exercise, "What is one thing that you really hope your child will learn from you?" The answers were varied from fiscal responsibility to putting family first, to care for the environment. Many good responses. My answer was that I wanted Naomi to learn from me a life of faith and the importance of seeking justice and making peace.

My answer would be much the same almost three years later. So I have recently been facilitating a discussion in our adult education hour about teaching peace to children. I initiated this group because I have really wanted a forum to pool the collective wisdom of parents about strategies for teaching and modeling our discipleship of the Prince of Peace. There are so many facets to raising children to be not only non-violent, but also proactive peace-seekers, that it is both a fruitful but all too limited conversation.

In our last session we talked about the concerns of parents whose children have an excess of energy and often channel it in aggressive or violent ways, or who continue to gravitate to war toys, games and play. There were many great suggestions for creative and alternative play. One was involvement in sports and athletics. One mom of two teenage boys said that this has been the primary way that her boys have engaged in positive, directed, energy releasing activities that have the benefit of team work and goal setting built in.

I have been encouraged in some of my reading to resist the competitive urge in sports and to emphasize the satisfaction of participation, the benefits of working with the team, the joy that engaging in physical activity can bring. The lore of soccer-moms or hockey-dads speaks to the way parents can get tied up in very aggressive, competitive and even violent ways around their kids' sports. I found this great poem by Cynthia Hockmann-Chupp on the PeaceSigns website, a newsletter from MC USA's Peace and Justice Support Network.

Game of Peace

God,
As I sit here on the sidelines,
Watching the ball go back and forth, back and forth,
Help me to remember that this is a game.
It's not all about me.
It's not all about my child.

God,
Be with the referee.
It's hard to always be a fair and equitable judge.
Let your light shine through me,
As I remember that the ref, too, is your child.
And whether he is my brother in Christ,
Or God's child waiting to be discovered,
Let this be an opportunity to witness for your peace.

God,
Be with the opposing coach.
It can be tiring to work with children.
Help me to remember all the volunteer hours,
All the time away from family and friends,
Given so my child has a chance to play against another team.
Let your light shine through me,
As I remember that the opposing coach, too, is your child.
And whether she is my sister in Christ,
Or God's child waiting to be discovered,
Bless this opportunity to witness for your peace.

God,
Be with the opposing players.
They are children like my child.
Yet some have already experienced more grief in their short lives
Than I have in my long life.
Let your light shine through me,
As I remember that the opposing players are your children.

God,
As I sit here on the sidelines,
Let your light shine through me
I cannot pass the ball for my child
But I can pass the peace.