Be thou my vision

Every night I hold a sleepy toddler and sing, “Be thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart.” This has been my go-to bedtime song for almost ten years now. But I found that last night, while election results were already rolling in ominously from the living room, these were the words I needed. And they were the words I needed to sing into the ear of my child. Words that are reminders of where our faith and hope really lie.

I have often turned to Psalm 146 in times of both fear of and expectation in system, leaders and government. It is a reminder that our hope lies not in princes (or presidents) but in the one who ‘created heaven and earth’ and who keeps faith forever. It is a jubilee song and we need a jubilee hope.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers,
     upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked the Lord brings to ruin.

Both Clinton and Caine quoted scripture in their concession messages this morning. But we know that the Reign of God is not subject to the reigns and regimes of the world, however benevolent, and it may not be co-opted. The Reign of God is proclaimed most powerfully by Jesus, who never doubted his belovedness, who never doubted God’s faithfulness, and who loved and taught us how to faithfully love our neighbor and our enemy. He persisted in proclaiming God’s reign in the midst of injustice, fear, hatred and oppression.

May we hear belovedness sung into our ears and may we sing the song for those who cannot or do not hear it elsewhere. May we remember God’s faithfulness and respond with our own. May we remember God’s great love by responding with our own love in word and in action. May our hope and vision be in our love and the in love of our creator.

“Heart of my heart, whatever befall. Still be my vision, o ruler of all.”

Seeds of Joy

In the simplest terms, the Ignatian practice of reflecting on consolation and desolation, consolation is what brings joy and desolation is joy's absence. However, life is almost never just one at a time. The two may be - and often are - mingled. Consolation, really, is what draws me closer to the God who is my joy, whose present Spirit enlivens, which may happen even in the midst of misery and sorrow.

I'm in the soggy jacket up front.  We haven't even started yet. This is just the     
warm up.

Yesterday morning I was both cold and miserable but reflecting on it, I also recognize a joy which is my consolation. I spent almost 4 hours in the pouring down freezing rain on the soccer field of my child's school working on building four wooden benches. I know that I will experience the fullness of this joy in due time when the benches join the work of over a hundred other community volunteers in a new playground for our elementary school. All built in one miserable wet day.

It crossed my mind more than once to bail on this project when I looked at the forecast for the day and again when my windshield wipers were working at full speed on the way to daycare drop-off. I was not thinking about where I might find God's joy but of how maybe I was feeling a little sick and should go home to bed. But I showed up, I discovered friends, met community members and other school parents and together we build a playground. God's un-named Spirit at work.

This is not a church story. Most of our stories aren't. It's the story of where we spend most of our lives. In work, in schools, in volunteer roles, in family. It's not a church story but it is a God story. May you all find the seeds of consolation joy as you think on your stories today.

Two of my team-mates sitting on the bench we just made.

Deeper (and Broader) Than I Expected: Reflections on a Faith Formation Conference

Because of the subtitle of this conference, “Deep Faith: Faith Formation for All Ages” I went with a pretty narrow expectation.  It’s one I was looking forward to, but narrow nonetheless.  I hoped to engage the question of how to work at education and formation intergenerationally.  How does one shape a Sunday school class or worship service such that it appeals and genuinely connects with people from toddler to senior and allows folk of all ages to learn with and from each other?  I did come away with a few ideas.  Ideas I hope to work at and explore more in the future, including an understanding that building bridges of learning and connection intended to meet the particular challenges of, for example, a four-year-old in worship, may might also be wide enough to include others with different demographics but similar needs.  Wide enough to welcome many into an experience of God.

What I came to experience in this conference was not wholly what I expected but was still pretty exciting. Two workshops in particular had me excited to come home and think about how we implement elements in my context.  The first, led by Carrie Martens, was a workshop about marking faith and milestone moments across the life span.  Like most congregations we offer some ritual life-marking moments in worship, like infant dedication and baptism.  We also offer young adults hand-made comforters when they are ready to move on after high school.  But I was challenged to think about the many other ways to mark life-moments as sacred through adulthood and at points throughout childhood: the beginning of school for a child, consecration of singleness for adults who remain unmarried, blessing on retirement when adults complete work marking a ‘fruitful past and fruitful future.’* Since there is no beginning or ending to the formation of our identity in Christ, ritual markers along the journey give us a vocabulary to name that identity.  Being able to name our identity allows us to further deepen and claim it.

One of the areas we Mennonites have claimed as central to our identity is that of peace-makers.  Yet it seems to me that it’s rare for a congregation to actively engage in educating and forming members (young and old) in practices of engaging conflict in healthy and transformative ways.  I have certainly heard many stories of unhealthy and passive aggressive ways that churches have dealt (or not) with conflict. That’s why Rachel Miller Jacobs’ concept of ‘Ordinary Time Forgiveness’ seems both so simple and so radical. 

Rachel introduced those who participated in her workshop to some tools of non-violent communication and in particular we had fun with her deck of ‘Feelings and Needs’ cards.**  These cards, as the name suggests, each name either a feeling or a need.  When confronted with a conflict or situation in which discernment or transformation is necessary, one may use these cards, either alone or with another, to identify the two or three feelings that are primarily evoked.  This allows a listener to use empathetic responding when choosing cards for the story-teller to test if the feeling is right and for teller to respond.  Once primary emotions are identified, the needs cards come into play.  It is the met or unmet needs that evoke those feelings and when identified, we can so much more easily communicate – the first step in moving toward resolution and forgiveness. 

It's more complex than that, of course.  And conflicts, like people, may be much more multi-layered, but because this is about the every-day, ‘ordinary time’ conflict, each of us being formed with the useful tools of engagement is so important to confronting the really fraught and complicated stuff.  It makes so much sense to begin engaging the notion of conflict as normal and forgiveness as central in childhood, then to continue to deepen our understanding of self and other as we mature, growing in faith and experience.  I am looking forward to trying testing these and many of the ideas I encountered at Deep Faith and I’m very grateful to have been able to participate.

__

* Carrie Martens, “Faith Markers at Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church (in worship),” table.

** Rachel received her cards from Malinda Berry, Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.  They were developed based on the Non-Violent Communication practices and principles of Marshall Rosenberg and much more can be found at Malinda’s website here.

Trump, Consent and our Circles of Grace

Like many of you, I am sure, I have been disgusted and horrified (but not surprised) by the words and behavior of Donald Trump directed at women over the course of his campaign and in particular this past weekend. It seems that this is a tipping point for many white Christians, because his words suddenly could not be 'othered.' But this is not (as, of course you know) the first time he has spoken with derision and in a violent or dehumanizing way about people. However I do see it as an opportunity to talk about this particular brand of violence and abuse and about the necessity of empowering each of us and our children to expect that we will only be touched with our consent. That no part of our bodies is an object just to be grabbed.

I came across this graphic on my Facebook feed a week or two ago. At the time I didn't think much of it other than passing agreement. Then I traveled for 5 days with my adorable red-headed toddler and I realized how caught off guard I am by people who think it's okay to poke his tummy, stroke his head, chuck his chin or grab his hand. And I realize I do this to little ones too!

It may be a fine line to tread between teaching our children to show respect for friends, kin and strangers (and we on their behalf) and to allow and even encourage them not to accept tickles, pokes or hugs when they are not open to that affection. But it's an important line. The bodies of women and girls in particular have been seen as fair game and we can reinforce this with girls and with boys without even thinking about it unless we are intentional.

In our Circle of Grace curriculum our children and youth learn about the space around themselves as inhabited by the Spirit of God, intent on their value and filling them with an inherent worth.  Nothing should be allowed to violate that space.  The children have an opportunity to think about what is allowed inside their Circle of Grace and what isn't. We tend to think about the things that go outside the Circle as things which we, their caregivers, would evaluate as a threat, or as 'creepy'. But sometimes even hugs and kisses from mom or dad might be put outside the Circle because they aren't feeling it. What's important is asking: Do you need a hug? Can I get a kiss goodbye? Is it time for the tickle monster? They might say no! That's okay. If caregivers and those close to our children can respect and protect the Circles of Grace of our children as they define them, they will be further empowered to name those boundaries in other situations.

May the Spirit's Circle of Grace surround you!

Parenting in the Pews (or on the chairs, as the case may be)

My mama and me when I was
about the same age as my
littlest one is now.

It is family lore that when I was about three, and my family was sitting in our usual spot on the front pew in the balcony of our church, that I was (as usual) fidgeting and talking out loud. So my mom tried to put her hand over my mouth to keep me quiet. Instead it had the opposite effect. I wriggled away screaming, “Mommy don’t hit me! Mommy, don’t hit me!” This, to the extreme embarrassment of my mother (my distress about being struck was completely unfounded) caused heads and eyes below to swivel immediately to the commotion above.

Now, as a parent of vocal, wiggly, strong-willed children I can see where it might have been a mistake to try to physically restrain a child whose first response is defiance. And as a parent I understand the struggle of trying to help my children understand that there’s a time and place for moving around and being loud and there’s a time to do quiet activities. As a pastor I want church to be a place where both are okay. As a pastor I want other parents to know that their children will be not just tolerated but loved in their loud questions, their running around the altar, their inattention, their stomping across the mezzanine floor and down the ramp, in addition to their quiet coloring or precocious scripture readings.

I am proud to be a part of a congregation that boldly and warmly welcomes little ones into the faith family with a commitment to their formation and care throughout their growing years and to supporting families. I encourage us to be visible and proactive in that support. On a Sunday morning, this could mean sitting beside a family with children and quietly talking with a toddler about what you notice happening in worship or what’s in the bag they brought. It might be engaging with the teenager next to you during the passing of the peace to ask about school. It could mean volunteering for the next Parent’s Night Out or bringing a snack to Sunday school. For 20 or more of you it could be adopting a family with kids as their prayer partner (that’s how many families there are with kids under 12), checking in regularly and bringing them into God’s light as a spiritual discipline.

I thank God for you when I think of you, Seattle Mennonite Church people. You care deeply for our families with children. May we welcome and bless them just as Jesus did.

Meeting Jesus

This week Megan will be heading up to Camrec for Pre-Junior Camp and next week Pastor Melanie and I will share the pastoral leadership at Junior Camp. So yesterday in our pastors meeting, Megan read the summer's theme verses from Mark 10. Parents bring their kids to Jesus to be blessed, are scolded by the disciples, but then welcomed by Jesus. Megan invited us to hear the passage with the ears of parents. I invite you to do it. Read it. Live it like you're there with the children you love, waiting to see Jesus. Really imagine your own kids and all they bring to that kind of situation. 

Parenting is a vulnerable thing and I experienced this story with a lot of emotion. It was like I was right there, one kid on my hip because he refuses to be put down, in a power struggle with the other because why should she be in this place doing this thing I'm making her do. And then the presumption and effrontery of Jesus' disciples to keep me from this meeting we've been planning, that I've had to wrangle my kids. We just want to see him for a minute! The anger and frustration have already been building in me and that's just the limit. I'm ready to explode or to cry.

But then Jesus. His welcome, his blessing. The immediate ease and release of breath and tension. The knowing his love for me and for my children. Seeing him embrace them and them welcoming the embrace, the recalcitrance disappearing. Holy cow, you guys, I could not stop the tears. Jesus loves me. I never felt it more profoundly and with more gratitude and picturing Jesus loving and blessing my beloved ones. May you all be blessed with the knowledge of Jesus' love and care for you.

And here are some cheesy but (if you're in the mood I was) tear-inducing pictures of Jesus with children.

On Hamilton: A Canadian Mennonite reflects on 'An American Musical' after Independence Day

I keep asking myself what took me so long.  After all, in my family I am surrounded by Hamiltons (or Epp Hamiltons). But now that I’ve finally listened to it, the cast recording of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton has been playing pretty much non-stop since I downloaded it several weeks ago.  It gets better every time.  I get caught up in the battles, the debates, the romance and betrayal. I’m not the first to express astonishment that the birth of this adopted nation of mine could be so interesting and dramatic, not to mention danceable.  And I don’t have to elaborate on what the internet has already said about how Miranda has recast the founding fathers as people of color, celebrates the work and contributions of immigrants (they get the job done), and given women a place in history through his musical. 

Is Hamilton making me love America? The dream that Miranda captures is compelling.  The optimism, hope and creativity are contagious.  But as many facts as I learned about the birth of this nation, the story is still historical fiction.  Washington repeats the refrain, “You have no control: Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”  The losers definitely have no control.  This, like most of the stories of history passed down tell the story of victors.  Yes, Miranda tells the story of Alexander Hamilton with the voice of the man who was his adversary, villainized in memory, played by an actor of color, but we still hear the story from the perspective of the ones who came, saw and conquered.  Violently.  I don’t love that.

I don’t love the American celebration and idealization of violence (although those songs in Hamilton are so good) and I don’t love how we celebrate independence when we are not independent but, in fact totally dependent.  We are interdependent. We need each other, in our communities and in the community of the world.  I feel grateful to be a part of a Mennonite congregation that celebrates our dependence not only on each other but on the God who created us and all people, all creation.  It is a kind of dependence – among people and on the earth – that was well known to the first peoples of the Americas. 

Even as a latter day immigrant, I live with the complicated complicity of being a settler.  In Canada my ancestors farmed on Cree land in Saskatchewan, and now I live, work, and worship on what was Duwamish territory in Washington.  At Seattle Mennonite Church on Sunday we acknowledged our interdependence and were explicit: American ‘independence’ was achieved at the cost of many lives, European, African and Indigenous, and colonization pushed indigenous folks into reservations that were small compensation for all they lost.  And I live too understanding that many of the privileges I have taken for granted are because of my European heritage, won through violent means.

Although I feel the discomfort in my gut at having to face the complicity, I’m grateful.  And I feel grateful too that the Mennonite community here in the United States has, in my experience, been more engaged than in Canada with the question of how and whether we participate in government.  Or whether Christians of conscience should vote in federal elections.  Here in the US voters directly elect the person who is the Commander in Chief of the nation’s military, yet we Mennos place our allegiance in only in Jesus, whose message is peace.  I have been challenged to understand that there are many ways to participate in civic life and to build community and to love my neighbor and my enemy.  I’ve learned that the church can play the role of prophet in civic life: speaking the truth unspoken by history, calling out government on violence and injustice, renouncing doctrines that brutalize, building community and peacemaking in locally and internationally.

In Hamilton, as George Washington prepares to leave office, he quotes a prophet: “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree.  And no one will make them afraid.” Washington imagines settling down in his retirement in the verdant landscape of Mount Vernon, “At home in this nation we’ve made.”  For Micah, the prophet whose words he quoted, these words are part of God’s imagination for the whole earth, not just one exceptionalist part of it: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid”

I’m not sure that’s what Washington had in mind.  And I’m not sure how realistic it is, but it is certainly my prayer and dream for this nation that I live in and that we all inherited from Hamilton and his colleagues.  After the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, the cast of Hamilton performed ‘Yorktown (the world turned upside down)’ at the Tony Awards without the guns that they usually carry during that battle scene.  May we all learn to lay down our guns and not war against other nations (never mind each other).  May we learn instead to care for the earth and for our neighbor.  May we all have a share of what is good and made by God.  May we acknowledge when we have been the ones who cause fear and been takers and tyrants.  And may everyone go out and listen to Hamilton now so that we can have a group discussion and I won’t be the only one holding these questions!