A Tribute to Rusty

On Wednesday December 15, 2010 Cindy and I decided to put our beloved dog Rusty to sleep. He was almost 17 years old and had been struggling for a long time with bad hips and old age. Finally, when the snow and ice came it was just too hard for him to get through the tasks of his day and we decided it was time to give him one final gift – to release him from this life so that his spirit could be free once again to run and play and jump and chase squirrels and do all the things dogs love to do but that he hadn't been able to do for a long, long time. And so as hard as this was with the holidays approaching we took him to our vet and we said goodbye.

We miss that little guy. We miss his presence in the house and his spirit of love and adoration. His death has left a huge hole in our home and in our hearts. Rusty and Cindy were particularly close. She was his main focus and was incredibly faithful and loving toward her through some difficult periods of her life and she really leaned on him when she needed to know she was loved and needed. She is particularly grieved by his passing.

Certainly, Rusty had his annoying aspects - tipping over garbage, going wild when on a leash and encountering other dogs, selective hearing... and he hadn’t been himself for a long time but since he's died we've been mainly remembering all of the good Rusty stories. It's been fun to reminisce about his playfulness, his love and companionship, his joy of living, his faithfulness, and his comforting presence in our home. We've remembered how much he loved to chase squirrels and ducks - especially the ones that feed in our neighbor's yard and how full of life he was when he was young leaping and bounding everywhere he went with joy-filled abandon. We've had many laughs followed by tears of grief at the loss.

One of the unexpected blessings of this time of grieving has been the opportunity for me to see the part of Cindy that loves without boundaries, that gives completely and fully to the other joyfully. She loved that dog and she is really sad that he's gone and I am watching her grieve and thinking about how much I love her and admire her courage and how grateful I am to be her partner in life.

This sadness and sorrow and loss that we feel is painful and it hurts but it is also an incredible gift that shows us the depth and truth of the love we share with one another and the love we shared with our beloved pet.

Cindy keeps apologizing for being so weepy and teary eyed and tells me frequently that she's not very good at death. I keep telling her that the tears and the grief, the feelings of loss and sorrow are a tribute to the love she and Rusty shared. They honor his life and all the many gifts he gave to her and to us and they show her capacity to love fully and deeply, which is a gift and which also hurts like hell sometimes.

And I have been painfully aware through it all that this is life well lived - life that loves and affirms joy and commitment and that aches and rages at the grief and loss that comes no matter what. God never promised that faith would make life easier. In fact in some ways in my experience faith makes life more challenging as the spirit nudges us out of our comfort zones and we take risks in love that we might otherwise shy away from. But what God does promise is that God will be there in the depths of sorrow and despair to comfort, hold, love and heal.

This is indeed good news for Cindy and for me because we both know that this isn't going to be the last time our hearts break and grief colors our days a gloomy gray. But we also know that the warmth of God's love and the light of hope will break through the shadows, the tears and the fears if we let it and life will break upon us in all its glory and in all its horror and we will be held always in a loving embrace.

May it be so.

Something New, Take 2

One of the things I appreciate the most about the congregation I serve, Community of Hope, UCC is their willingness to try new things in worship at least once. Over the seven years that I've been the pastor we've regularly tried out new worship ideas. Some of the ideas come from me, other ideas come from various members of the congregation. Some of the things we've tried have stuck and become part of our traditions others were done once and quickly abandoned for a variety of reasons.

One experiment we tried that has become an annual tradition is our renewal of baptism service when every member of the community is invited to come to the baptismal font to remember their baptism with water and prayer. Sometimes I stand at the font and invite people to remember, sometimes people come on their own, sometimes we bless one another with the words "remember your baptism and be glad." Every year it's a little bit different but every year on the Sunday when we remember Jesus' baptsim we also remember our own and give thanks for the sign and seal of baptism that marks us as God's beloved children and sends us out into the world to carry out God's mission.

Another idea that stuck has been our annual All Saints remembrance. Each year the community is invited to come forward on the Sunday closest to All Saints Day, November 1 during worship to light a candle and name the person or people they are remembering that year - people who touched their lives for better and for worse, people who made them who they are in a variety of ways. We also remember members of our community and extended families who passed away in the previous year but often those names are far out numbered by the other folks we remember whom we have loved and lost. It's always a very touching time of naming the beloved saints of our lives. Virtually everyone in the congregation that morning comes forward to name a beloved saint and light a candle - grief and loss are a common bond and we have far too few opportunities to honor the impact they make on our lives.

An idea we tried a couple of weeks ago that I hope will stick but it's too soon to tell now is our efforts to decorate our sanctuary for Advent DURING worship. For the past two or three years the time of preparing for Advent has created mostly consternation and frustration in the hearts of the very small contingent of folks upon whom that responsibility falls every year. In an attempt to broaden the circle of people who feel responsible for that task and lighten the burden on the few the Worship Team decided to use half of a regular sunday morning service to do that job. We had an abbreviated service including a much shortened Thanksgiving reflection from me and then invited people to participate in preparing the sanctuary for Advent by hanging the banners, putting up the trees, dressing the communion table, singing Carols and hymns, working on a craft project or engaging one another in questions I copied from the Story Corps website and we had snacks. Virtually everyone was engaged in some kind of activity during the remainder of the service, some people lingered until well after worship was formally over and the result was a beautifully decorated sanctuary to which many hands contributed to make light work.

I had this feeling as I was watching the 60 or so people in worship that morning scurry around busily, laughing, talking, creating, beautifying, that this is what has to happen in every aspect of our church life. We have to find ways to open the doors to participation for more people and make that participation do-able and enjoyable. In my ideal world, being a part of a church community should be more fun than drudgery, it should draw the best of who we are out of us and not inspire us to complain or feel put out by the tasks we undertake. Our church and community involvement should come out of our sense of joy in giving to the well being of the larger community and not be something we undertake begrudgingly because we're afraid no one else will do it if we don't.

This one example of sharing the responsibility for decorating our sanctuary with the entire congregation is something I have begun thinking about in terms of most other areas of church life. How can we do the same when it comes to our mission commitments, church administration and governance, community development, spiritual growth, evangelism, fellowship? How can we create opportunities for people to share power and authority across the generations in our congregations? How can we open doors for new people and allow and encourage different ways of doing and being church that appeal to today's generation, that arise out of their gifts and interests and skills but are also built upon and respectful of the solid foundation of all of the generations that have come before? How can we create opportunities for this generation to make the faith its own in small and also large ways?

These are the questions I ponder now that were inspired by a congregation's openness and willingness to embrace unusual, different, sometimes slightly wacky, experiments in worship. These are the questions we must answer together as we continue doing God's mission and being God's people in this time and place. May God bless and keep us all.

I'm Back?!?

It's been almost two months since I returned from my sabbatical. I must be getting my feet fully back under me if I'm finding time to write in this blog, even if it's going to be brief. I can't make any promises about frequence of posts but I've got a lot rolling around in my mind and I imagine writing about some of it will help with clarity and sense of focus and direction.

The greatest gift of the sabbatical for me personally was the firm decision to be my most authentic and real self in every aspect of my life. No more "Pastor" persona, to the best of my ability. I decided that what is most important to my role as pastor is for me to first be a person who lives, speaks and acts out of her faith and out of her best sense of what is best and most true for her in life. The difference between now and before is that I'm working on worrying less about what other people want from me, what they might be expecting what I SHOULD be doing and focusing more on living from a placy of joyful response to the world, to God's call in my life and to my best sense of what it is I have to offer in the church and wider community.

Another incredible gift from the sabbatical was the gift I gave to myself to finally stop thinking of all the reasons why I can't, shouldn't share my musical gifts, especially my voice with others and focus on being the best musician and singer I can be to the glory of God. I've been taking guitar lessons, am thinking of voice lessons in the near future and am singing and playing a lot more in worship and at open mics around town. Hallelujah, I finally said yes to myself, to my deepest joy and most joyful gift.

A third gift of the sabbatical was time at home - time to garden, enjoy Cindy and my family and friends, read good books, think interesting and creative thoughts, dream big dreams, run and play in the sun, preserve the bouty of our garden, shop at the farmer's market every week, luxuriate in each new day unfolding with no agenda but my own. What a gift and a revelation to learn what I truly love vs. what I think I should care about, love or put time and energy into.

Now, two months away from this wonderful gift of time and space and the resulting creativity, happiness, joyfulness and peace that came from it I am wondering how to live more fully in that place and less fully in the busy-ness my life is becoming again. What do I have to stop doing? What do I have to start doing? What do I want to do more of? What do I need to do less of? Ah, these are the questions of life, of a life that is simply too full of goodness and from which some goodness must be extracted in order to go deeper, love more fully, live more richly, share of myself more joyfully.

Should be an interesting and life long journey.

Starting to sink in...

I have been looking forward to and planning for and imagining and anticipating this sabbatical for months now. It's always been off in the future, far away, a distant glimmer on the horizon. But now that we're back from our vacation and the first of June is only 5 short weeks away the reality of this sabbatical is sinking in. I feel alternately overwhelmed with what needs to happen before I leave and worried that I'm going to miss some crucial detail and so excited I can hardly focus. It's getting harder and harder to remain in the moment, to focus on today, this minute and easier and easier to day dream about what is to come. This is a recurring trend in my life, though. I'm always looking forward to something, always living with one foot and much of my mind off in the future.

And so this week I've begun making lists of things I need to tell my replacement or the congregation, books and other things I want to take home with me for the summer, and things that I have to get done before I leave to either tie up this program year or lay the groundwork for the fall. These aren't the most fun aspects of this journey but it's vitally important to me to do a good job of leaving and to try not to leave any loose ends for others to have to deal with. It would be really easy for me to get really wrapped up in these nit picky details and forget to also continue dreaming and visioning so let me share a little bit of my day to day sabbatical vision.

I envision waking up around 6:00 a.m. or maybe 6:30 to go for a run or to the gym to lift weights. I'll come home, take a shower, eat a leisurely breakfast and do the daily puzzles in the paper. I particularly like Sudoku and KenKen. Once the puzzles are all done. I'll read for a while, perhaps do some journaling. If the weather's nice and I'm at home I'll sit out on our beautiful front deck or I'll go to a coffee shop wherever I am to soak in the local flavor. If I have appointments or other things I need to do that day I'll make them wait until at least 10:00 a.m. to give me ample time for this little daily luxury.

My mother loved to lounge around the house in her pajamas for hours in the morning. Sometimes she'd shower and put her pajamas back on only getting dressed when she absolutely had to leave the house for the day. I guess I got this idea of a slow and leisurely start to the day from her and I am very much looking forward to giving myself this wonderful gift between June and August.

So, while you will not hear from me after the end of May because I do not plan to continue with this blog while I'm on sabbatical (I'll return in September with lots of new material) you can imagine me starting each day in this way and giving thanks to God and to the Madison Christian Community for the privilege and opportunity to do so. I can't wait!

It's a Pilgrimage!

We're back from a wonderful trip to Germany. What a beautiful country - at least the parts of it we saw. It was a great trip and Cindy and I are already wondering when we'll be able to do it again. The best part of the trip for me was seeing my friends in their homes, in the places where they live their lives and in the culture and country that has shaped them. I feel like I have a better understanding of each person after being introduced to their home. I am deeply grateful for their hospitality and generosity.

Right before I left I had a meeting of my Pastor Parish Relations Committee. This is the group of people from the congregation whose job it is to guide and support me as the pastor and also tend to the relationship between me and the congregation as well as the congregation and me. It's an incredible group of people and I am deeply appreciative of their kind attentiveness to me as a person, to my role as their pastor and to the life of the congregation. Somehow, they hold all these various interests in a delicate balance.

I gathered them together at the end of March to listen to me talk one final time about my upcoming sabbatical. I wanted to run my developing ideas by them and receive their guidance and wisdom for this journey. There were two things that came out of that conversation that I'm incredibly grateful for and about which I've been thinking and praying ever since.

The first of these things was the naming of this sabbatical as a pilgrimage. As soon as one of the members of the group uttered that word I knew that this was what this is about for me. I am embarking on a holy journey, traveling to sacred places in search of the holy, hoping to touch and be touched by the divine in the places I go, knowing I'll be forever changed by what I encounter there. The person who spoke of pilgrimage also said that it was clear to him that God is trying to show me something and has been for the past year. All I have to do, he said, is keep my eyes and heart open, remain willing to see and encounter and be moved by what it is God is hoping to show me. Even as I type these words I feel exhilerated and also frightened, which is the combination of feelings I associate with the work of the Holy Spirit.

When we were in Germany I spoke with my friend Martin about pilgrimages. He grew up Catholic and pilgrimage is a more integral part of that tradition than it is in the tradition I grew up in. In fact, I didn't hear the word pilgrimage until I was studying church history in seminary! Martin told me about some of the pilgrimages he's aware of that people undertake in Europe, journeys that lead to sacred and holy places where the bones of saints are kept or where a particular miracle has taken place. I am excited to find myself unexpectedly standing in this ancient tradition, making a pilgrimage that may only be significant to me for the time being but one that I am pretty sure will mark my life in some way as yet to be determined.

The second important piece of wisdom that came out of the Pastor Parish Relations Committee meeting was the suggestion that I develop 3 to 5 core questions that are the same basic questions I ask in each setting I visit. Since that suggestion I have come up with three core questions so far.

First, for a wide variety of reasons it is very important for me to know about how the various communities I visit are relating to the question of homosexuality and the church. I have felt for a long time now that there is no reason in today's world for congregations to continue to exclude people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. I am no longer interested in anything except an unapologetic, public and assertive affirmation of the full inclusion of glbt people in the life of the Christian community. I am more and more interested in finding a way to live out this conviction in my current community and in my life as a lesbian and as a pastor. There is far too much spiritual damage that has been done and is still being done in the name of God to people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. More and more I feel called to address this reality boldly and unapologetically,naming it for the sin that it is and declaring God's love and grace for all her children regardless of who they love.

Second, I've realized lately that my soul and spirit are parched and longing for the spiritual food that comes through music, poetry, beauty, art, creativity, and story. I'm in search of new inspiration, poets, composers, singer/songwriters, artists, novels, stories that will touch and feed my spirit with the beauty and truth of the world and replenish the well. So I want to know from the people I meet who and what feeds them in these ways.

Third, I am somewhat disenchanted with denominational structures and the sometimes bulky and archaic institutional facets of church. Sometimes, I have a hard time seeing the purpose of denominations and buildings and committee meetings. They can all be cumbersome and heavy things that drain energy and creativity and get in the way of ingenuity. At the same time, I do believe that these structures can serve a worthwhile purpose. With this in mind, I want to talk with each of the places I visit about their relationship to the wider church as well as how they organize themselves to minimize bureaucracy and maximize creativity and permission giving, which is necessary, in my opinion, to be able to respond to the movement of the Spirit.

It feels good to be back from vacation and entering the final six weeks of preparation before launching on this pilgrimage. I am trusting that every moment is part of the process and that every thought, experience and encounter is preparing me for what it is that God is preparing for me. I am so grateful for the journey.

Vacation

Cindy and I are heading off to Germany on Monday (4/5)for two weeks of rest and relaxation. We're going to visit friends, Martin, Ursula, Katrin, Weibke, Udo, Christoph, Frauke, Christian and others and to experience life in another country. I've never been to Europe and I know that once Easter morning is behind me I'll be VERY excited.

Have a blessed remainder of Holy Week and a joy-filled Easter.

I'll be back at the end of April.

Tisha, aka the Dancing Rev. aka the Running Rev.

Clarifying

For almost a year now I've been talking about what is changing in the wider culture and in the Church and my desire to respond to those changes through the community of faith I serve and in my role as a pastor and religious leader. One of the responses I see to these changes and cultural shifts is found in the emergent conversation of leaders like Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Shane Claiborne and so many others. I have spent the last year diving into the thinking of these folks and others and trying to find ways to express what is changing and how I would like to respond to those changes. I have felt for a long, long time that the Christian faith I was raised with, the gift of faith I received from my parents and the various churches we attended, has been sidelined and needs to work harder to make its presence known in our world today.

What exactly is changing? How can liberal and progressive congregations respond to these changes? What is up with all this talk of emerging and emergent church and worship and theology?

When I think about what is changing in the world that is calling out for a positive response from Progressive Christians I think of the greater pluralism of our society that can no longer swallow the exclusivist belief that only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior have access to heaven or eternal life. Progressive Christians have to let the world know that we struggle with this belief, too and tend to err on the side of affirming diversity and the all-inclusive love of God.

I think about all the things we know about the world and the way it works and the increasing discomfort with being told to believe in a God who created this incredibly complex and mysterious world in 7 days and who only cares about our salvation from this world and not about the health and well beingn of the world itself. Progressive Christians need to speak out about our ability to hold our creation story in creative conversation with the science of evolution.

I think about how the church has been in the business for far too long of teaching a religion and a God that people can no longer believe in. Christianity as it has been taught and defined in so many churches in recent history is no longer credible or believable to so many people in our world. But there is a whole stream of Christianity that doesn't try to sell this bill of goods. This stream of Christianity, my home, has been pushed to the margins. I want our voices to be heard once again. I want us to stand up with the faith we know and love as Progressive Christians and share that faith with the wider world to offer an alternative voice that emphasizes inclusion, mystery and wonder, questions and seeking, humility in interpretation and a sincere effort to live one's faith each and every day no matter how difficult that is in community with others who are also embracing that journey.

And when I talked about the great emergence and emergent communities and the emerging church I am referring to a conversation that has arisen primarily in the world of evangelical Christianity. Some Evangelical Christians have grown unsatisfied with the version of the Christian faith taught in their churches and are finding a wide variety of ways to express that disatisfaction. Some are mostly seeking to re-imagine worship without changing the doctrine or theology with which they are most comfortable. Some are seeking primarily to re-imagine church and moving away from the mega church model and toward a house church model again without changing much in terms of theology and doctrine. Some are placing greater emphasis on the teachings of reformers like John Calvin, Martin Luther and Johnathan Edwards while still maintaining most of the theological beliefs of their more conservative counterparts. Finally, there are still others who are reimagining worship and theology by questioning many of the doctrines and beliefs of the faith of their childhood and moving more and more in the theological direction of the historic mainline and progressive Christian traditions.

This is a huge shift that is taking place and it is bound to impact public discourse about religion and Christianity. Those of us in the historically mainline but currently sidelined progressive Protestant traditions have a lot to offer to this conversation and much to gain by joining forces with our sisters and brothers of the faith who are asking these questions and re-imagining the faith in creative and innovative ways. We also have much to learn. I for one am incredibly excited by the conversation and energized by this shift.

The effort to clarify my own thinking on all of these things continues. I'm confident that the experience of my upcoming sabbatial during which I will visit congregations that consider themselves part of the emergent community seeking to re-imagine doctrine and theology as well as established congregations making efforts to respond to what is happening in the world of evangelical Christianity and also in the wider world will be immensely valuable in this regard.

People are asking questions and are no longer satisfied with being told that their questions are wrong or inappropriate. People are yearning for an expression of faith that meets them where they are, that guides them in living engaged, faithful lives in this world, that honors their minds, bodies and spirits and stimulates their hearts to respond to the needs of all of God's awesome and mysterious creation. I want to respond. I want to share the richness of my own tradition with seekers, believers and non-belivers, questioners and doubters, the cast out and excluded because I believe this is what God is calling me to do and I believe it is what Jesus yearns for all who sincerely follow his way to also do. Will you join me in your own way?