Thoughts and Reflections

A Tribute to Rusty

2011-01-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-03T11:05:00.001-08:00

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?!?

2010-10-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-04-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-04-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

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?

A Shift in Focus, Take 2

2010-03-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

As I was sifting through the copious emails that greeted me after being away on vacation for a week I almost deleted the "Keeping you e-posted" email that comes each week from the United Church of Christ from the week I was gone. I had my pointer on delete when a voice said, "wait, let's take a look at that and make sure we didn't miss anything important." So I opened it and right there was an advertisement for a new book - Toward a Hopeful Future: Why the Emergent Church Is Good news for Mainline Congregations by Phil Snider & Emily Bowen. I couldn't believe my eyes! This is the book I've been looking for and thinking I might write but am so glad I don't have to write it and that someone else has so that I can enjoy it and use it to further clarify and inspire my sabbatical journey.

I've only read the introduction so far but already I can tell this is the book that's going to help me clarify my own thinking about the experiences I've had exploring the world of the emerging church, thinking about what is emerging in my community and in the wider world of the established church and even dabbling in the Progressive Christianity movement through reading and preacing on The Phoenix Affirmations by Eric Elnes. All of this explorating and dabbling is coming together in this book through which Snider and Bowen are providing a roadmap for how all of these paths are converging or could converge to point toward a hopeful future for all.

Pointing to a hopeful future for the church is what I most want to do in my life and ministry. I was thinking this morning about what a wonderful gift my parents gave me in insisting that I grow up in the church. We moved around quite a bit as kids but no matter where we went my parents made sure we found a church home. The denomination was less important than the community. My parents modeled a commitment not to doctrine or denomination but to community and to living a life in which one earnestly seeks to follow Jesus to the best of one's ability. My parents were not perfect in their quest by any means. They made a lot of mistakes along the way but I rarely doubted that they were earnestly trying to do the right thing and to listen to the Spirit's call in their lives. At various times we were Lutheran, American Baptist, and Congregationalist. I was baptized in the Congregational church and confirmed in a Lutheran congregation. We also participated in a house church for a while and when I was a teenager my dad and step-mom were active in a Covenant Group - a group of families that met most if not every Friday to share a meal and Bible Study and to provide faithful support to one another in life. Some of the families in this group even lived communally on a farm outside the small town where we lived at the time and one of them left for a while to explore living in the Bruderhof communities on the east coast. It was a wacky but wonderful group of people to be around as a teenager.

I have countless memories throughout my childhood of being loved and welcomed, nurtured and challenged within the context of intentional Christian community both within established congregations and outside of them. In so many ways, this is the only way of life that makes any sense to me at all - life lived openly within a community in which all are earnestly seeking to follow Jesus in their lives.

The practice of following Jesus faithfully to the best of one's ability as a way of life has always been part of the Christian journey but for some reason it is rarely found or taught in the established congregations of the recent past. An emphasis on doctrine and belief has overshadowed this core element of Christian faith. Fortunately it is still there and I am so very excited to see renewed attention being paid to it.

I am more and more excited about my upcoming sabbatical journey. I'm looking forward to meeting people and experiencing the innovative and creative ministries of the congregations I'll be visiting. I have so many questions and a lot of curiosity and I am excited to learn and experience and question. But most of all I am looking forward to the journey once I return to the Madison Christian Community in the fall. I can't wait to see where our own efforts to faithfully follow Jesus in community will take us and how the experience of this sabbatical time and our past and present stories will lead us toward our own hopeful future.

A slight shift in focus

2010-03-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a week on vacation in Aruba. This trip was a gift from some friends of ours who invited us to stay with them in their time share condo. We gratefully received this gift and enjoyed a week in the sun, sitting at various beaches or by the pool, snorkeling, swimming, eating delicious food and enjoying wonderful company.

I've never been snorkeling before. I would definitely do that again. I really enjoyed being able to get so up close and person with such an incredibly beautiful and diverse underwater world. It's one thing to see it on tv and a completely other experience to be in the midst of the fish and the coral and all the life going on below the surface of the water. Next time I go snorkeling, though I'll remember to put more sun screen on the parts of my body that are floating above the water. Sun burned butt cheeks are not so comfortable!

After a week of thinking about nothing more than whether it would be a beach day or a pool day my brain is a little cloudy. But, I'm finding myself very quickly snapping back to attention as I resume planning for my sabbatical.

Right before I left on vacation, I had a wonderful morning conversation with Don and Nancy, people from my congregation who are very wise and who agreed to sit with me and listen to me talk about my hoped for sabbatical experience to help me begin to more clearly define what I'm hoping to learn and see and accomplish with this sabbatical time. They asked me what I've noticed is emerging in the mainline in the time that I've been exploring emerging congregations from outside of my own faith tradition. I had to admit that I haven't been paying much attention to what is happening in my own tradition because I've been so enamored with what is happening that seems shiny and new and different outside of that tradition. Their question got me thinking though and wondering about what is happening in my own faith tradition. How are pastors and congregations in the United Church of Christ and in other mainline traditions responding to the forces of social and cultural change that are calling all Christians and all churches to become truer more authentic in their faith expressions?

Even as I ask this question I know that the answer is bound to be wonderfully complex and diverse and I can think of many local colleagues who are doing creative and innovative things in their existing congregations. I'm so grateful for this question because it's forcing me to broaden my scope and to see more clearly what is right under my nose.

In light of this conversation and that very important question I am planning to shift the focus of my sabbatical somewhat. I still want to explore the various newly started congregations that I've learned about over the past few months but now I want to add in an exploration of some existing congregations who are embracing the changes in the world around us and finding ways to incorporate those changes into their day to day lives in worship, service, fellowship and evangelism.

So now I'm thinking about incorporating visits to the Art and Soul Cafe at Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis, MO and Brentwood Christian Church in Springfield, MO and Scotsdale Congregational, UCC in Scotsdale, AZ into my sabbatical itinerary. These are three congregations I've learned about recently that are existing communities doing creative, innovative multi-sensory stuff in worship. It seems a long, multi-stop road trip is in the works and I'm really excited to have found these communities to add to my sabbatical explorations.

One firm commitment I made to myself and to God and to my congregation at the beginning of this journey was to remain open along the way to how the Spirit will move through people and ideas and experiences to show the way. As I continue with this openness, which is contrary to my preferred style of planning things out to the nth degree way in advance, I am receiving wonderful gifts of inspiration and insight. The journey grows even more interesting and I am getting ever more curious about what the Spirit has in store for me and for all of us in the coming days, weeks and years. My seat belt is fastened, I'm ready for the ride!

Why do I blog?

2010-02-25T18:40:00.000-08:00

I really appreciated being featured in Doug Erickson's article about Madison-area religious leaders who blog. (See the link to the full article referenced on the left sidebar.) My inclusion in that article with 5 men and only one other woman made it even more clear to me why I think it is so important to continue with this effort. Not only was I in the minority as a woman but also as a relatively young person (at least when compared to the average age of clergy these days). And I was the only openly gay or lesbian person featured. I have a unique voice in the world of the church and in the world in general and the article made that even more clear to me. It's important to me that I find ways to share that unique voice with as wide an audience as possible. If there is room for me in God's church, there is room for lots of people. This is as it should be and my very presence in the church is a witness to a very different attitude and perspective on faith and religion than what gets the most press these days. In my faith community, no matter who you are or where you are on the journey, you are welcome!

As the article mentions, I don't pay a lot of attention to who is reading this blog. It is linked to my facebook page so many people read it and comment on it there. I simply trust that the people who need to read it are finding it somehow. I probably could do more to promote this forum but I haven't found the time or the energy to do that yet. This is another reason I really appreciate the article and the publicity!

In large part, I blog because writing helps me think. It forces me to pay closer attention to the world around me and to the movement of the Spirit in my life. I'm always looking for the next blog topic. Every writer I've ever known says that the most important thing for writers to do is to write and to pay attention to the world around them. There are stories everywhere and interesting things happening all the time. Everyday there are wonderful glimpses of the Spirit showing up in everyday circumstances and events of life but we have to train our eyes and ears and hearts to notice. Writing helps me do that.

And so if you're checking me out for the first time or if you're a regular follower (I now have 12, a 20% increase over the number I had before the article in the WSJ! Thanks, ya'll) I hope you find something meaningful and interesting in what I write at least some of the time. I also hope that you will share those things that you find resonating with you with others.

Fianlly, if you appreciate my voice in this forum, I also invite you to check out my new blog - http://dancingrev-runningforhaiti.blogspot.com. I started this blog about a month ago when I began training for the Madison Marathon, which takes place on May 30. I call it Running for Haiti because I am seeking sponsors to raise money for my congregation's ministry in Haiti - Haiti Partners MCC www.haitipartnersmcc.org).

My Running for Haiti blog is a weekly reflection written on Saturday mornings after I complete my longest training run of the week. I write about the thoughts and experiences I've had during the week of training (4 runs and two weight training classes each week). I also reflect on a weekly Psalm, which I'm using as a mantra as well as provide updates on what is happening in Haiti as our congregation provides support and encouragement to our partners there. It's been an amazing experience so far.

I'm humbled that there are folks who find what I say interesting and meaningful. I am grateful for your comments and feedback. I thank you for your support and encouragement.

Blessings,
Tisha

P.S. I've had a couple of people ask me why my blog is called The Dancing Rev. The main reason is because about two years ago my partner and I discovered country line dancing at Club 5 and most Monday evenings that's where you'll find us cutting a rug, laughing and enjoying our weekly date night. I never thought of myself as a person who could dance but lo and behold - I'm dancing and I love it!

A Vision for the Madison Christian Community

2010-02-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

Recently, I preached about what it was like for me to meet Doug Pagitt and encounter the emerging church for the first time. Doug was the facilitator for a clergy retreat I attended in April, 2009. Throughout the retreat he talked at length about the life and ministry of Solomon's Porch, the congregation he founded and serves in the Twin Cities. He also introduced our group of 20 and 30 something clergy to a network of friends that call themselves Emergent Village, a network of friends who came together more than 10 years ago over their interest in re-thinking religion and theology and what it meanst to be Christian and to be church in the 21st Century.

Meeting Doug at this retreat was a transfiguration experience for me - a moment in time during which I felt completely alive, simultaneously affirmed and challenged in my sense of where God is calling me to go in ministry and in life. In the 10 months that have passed since the retreat the path for ministry that began to open before me during the retreat has taken shape. The first major development along that path has been my plan to visit emerging congregations in Chicago, IL, St. Paul, MN, Denver, CO and Brooklyn, NY during my upcoming sabbatical.

Another element of this growing sense of my path in ministry is the conviction that the ongoing call to existing congregations of all shapes and sizes is to always find new and creative ways to constantly reach outside of themselves, to open their hearts, minds and church doors and go out into the world to encounter their neighbors and friends, family members and co-workers, to listen to their yearning for meaning, for community, for opportunities to make a difference in the world and to respond to this yearning in creative, innovative, respectful, invitational ways in the name of God.

After worship ended while people were leaving the sanctuary one of the founding members of the community I serve - the Madison Christian Community - took my hand in his hands and told me that my sermon reminded him of a similar experience he had 40 years ago, an encounter that led him and others to form the unique ecumenical community we now know and love. In that moment I got the strong sense that God might be calling the Madison Christian Community through its history, through this man and through me and my experiences to consider what it would be like to birth a new community; a community that would be forward thinking in today's context much the same way that the idea that birthed the Madison Christian Community was forward thinking in the 1960s.

In the 1960s, there was great interest in bringing denominations together in ecumenical partnerships and the vision of the Madison Christian Community was to build a campus of congregations of many different denominations, including Catholic. Congregations that would share building space, share ministries, share worship but also maintain their own distinct identities within their particular traditions. Twenty-four denominations came together in the initial conversation about this idea but only two denominations - the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the United Church of Christ stayed in the conversation.

What resulted from that vision is a lively, vibrant community of Lutherans and UCC'ers on the West side of Madison who share worship and ministry and a building and who rejoice in their uniqueness even as we struggle at times to hold it all together.

What a wonderful legacy it is to our founding members as we take up their mantle of visionary, forward thinking leadership. Already we are responding to God's world in love through stewardship of the environment, a vibrant gardening ministry, the many ministries we support that touch Wisconsin farmers, people in Haiti, people who are homeless in Madison and so many others. One piece that is missing is the way in which we might touch people in a creative and visionary way through worship and community. What might this outgrowth of our legacy look like as we continue to discern God's unfolding call for us in the 21st Century?

I trust that as we continue to live and grow and discern God's call that if the vision is from God and inspired by the Spirit the form and the shape will reveal itself as we continue on this journey. What I do know is that God is using my passion and deep love for this community and the Christian church along with a yearning to reach the left behind and the left out of our society with the transforming, world changing, radically inclusive love of God. What I also know is that all we have to do is stay on the journey with one another in love with open hearts and open minds and a willingness to take risks. God is inviting us to step out of our comfort zones again. God is nudging us to continue opening our hearts, minds and church doors to the world in which we now live, to listen to what it says to us and to respond in love.

Wednesday Morning Musings

2010-02-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

Today, I am supremely distracted. It is Wednesday morning and I was looking forward to two hours of peace and quiet sitting in my favorite coffee house with nothing on the agenda but thinking about, planning for and writing about my upcoming sabbatical. This is not what has happened.

It all started yesterday when I made an appointment to take my VW Beetle, which is used but has only been in my possession for 5 months, back to the Toyota dealer from which I bought it to investigate yet another issue. This is the 3rd time I've had to take this car in for service. I have now spent more than $1,000 in the past 5 months fixing this damn car. This time it was the starter, which of course is not covered under the 6 month 6,000 mile powertrain warranty that I received when I bought the car!

To top it all off, when I picked up the car and was driving home I realized that the radio wasn't working. So, back to Toyota again this morning to ask them to fix the radio (something I thought they should have taken care of in the first place!)

Of course, it wasn't an easy fix. This is something I'm learning about VWs - they're complicated. Toyota didn't have the right tool to remove the radio to find the 4 digit code that needs to be typed into the radio console in order to make it work. Apparently, this code business is a safety feature so that if someone steals your radio it's useless to them. I appreciate the effort but today that nice little anti-theft feature was a big fat pain in the ass! Before I left Toyota I asked for a $50 refund on my bill from yesterday and fortunately, the man I was working with quickly agreed. It's possible he could see the tears that were forming behind my eyes - when I'm angry, I cry. (I hate that!)

Then, I had to drive over to the VW dealer in Middleton so that they could remove the radio and get the code, which they did. BUT, I have to let the car run for an hour before I can input the code. My radio still isn't working. And, I didn't go to my favorite coffe spot, I went to a different spot that was closer to where I was after leaving the VW dealer. I didn't get there until almost 10:30. Even now, an hour later I'm still agitated and upset. I'm having a really hard time focusing on anything other than how frustrated I am that my nice quiet, relaxing, calming, fun dreaming morning has not been that at all.

It's really annoying that I'm so upset about this car business. It bothers me that I've had to spend so much money fixing a car I was hoping would run for at least a couple of years before it would need repairs. I keep thinking of what I could do with that money if I wasn't using it to fix my car. I feel guilty for all the driving I do and resent feeling so dependent on a car to get through my daily life. Paying for repairs just reminds me of my dependence and laziness - why couldn't I just take the bus or ride my bike or work from home?

On top of that, I feel helpless when I go to mechanics and I do not like feeling helpless. Ifeel like they look at me and see a sucker, someone they can take advantage of. I am aware in these times of how ignorant I am about all things mechanical and I have this really strong sense that because of that I am an easy target for their tricks. I've convinced myself that I pay more than anyone else simply because I don't know what questions to ask or which things to argue with and this leaves me feeling angry and just plain bad.

I am frustrated that I have allowed this ridiculous business with my car to so effectively derail me this morning. I have tried to focus on things other than my feelings of anger, unsettled-ness, shame and frustration but I haven't been effective - probably because I am reinforcing the bad feelings by feeling bad about feeling bad!

So, today, I am frustrated, overwhelmed, scattered and frazzled. I am not calm, focused, in tune with the Spirit's presence and movement. This coffee spot is distracting and jangly. A little girl is coughing repeatedly without covering her mouth. It's all wrong!

Last week I attended the Earl Lectures at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. The theme was Spiritual but not religious. I left those lectures with a strong conviction that I am on the right path for my life right now - exploring and reading and thinking and acting in ways that are consistent with the Spirit's call to me. I left those lectures feeling grounded, energized, excited about where I am and where I am going and what God is doing in me, in my community, in my friendships and other relationships. I also left knowing that I need and want to make a much stronger commitment to diving deeper into a spiritual journey. I need and want to do a better job of nurturing my own spirit to sustain the energy and enthusiasm and the stamina needed to be a transformational leader in the church and in people's lives. Today, I couldn't feel farther from being any of these things. And I've let a stupid little thing like problems with my car completely derail me from my place of calm and tranquility and self-assuredness.

Perhaps, I should give thanks for these problems. They are reminders that the mountaintops we experience, the times of clarity and certainty, the moments when we glimpse the path with clarity are so very precious but they are also so very fleeting. They come and they go. Thank God for the gift of these mountain top moments for without them much of life would lose meaning and would seem even more like an exercise in futility. Thank God also for the reminder that life is really lived in the valleys where we take one step after another hoping against hope that there is some reason, some meaning behind the struggles and the challenges of life.

So, I thank you God, for this reminder of my humanity. I thank you for this morning of frustration that is teaching me that I need to learn how to let go and trust your presence, your care, your love on the good days, during the times when I feel certain and confident and on the bad days when I feel shame or anger or frustration. Guide me through the rest of this day. Help me to breathe and let go of the frustration so that I can focus on the beauty of the sun shining through the window warming my back and telling of the coming Spring. Help me breathe and embrace the joy of another day of life lived in your presence. Amen

We Are One in the Spirit

2010-01-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

We are One in the Spirit
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
A sermon preached on January 24, 2010

The Haiti Partners MCC ministry team had its most recent meeting on Tuesday, January 5. As we talked about this year's trip to Haiti – who was going, what they would be doing I was there again in my mind. I was driving through the streets of Port au Prince, heading out of the city and into the mountains through Petionville, enjoying the lush beauty of Harry and Carla's compound, feeding and playing with children at the orphanage, massaging feet at the home for the destitute and dying, listening to the speakers tell us of Haiti's culture, religions and history, walking up the mountain to visit Klago, the village where the literacy project we help support is underway, noticing signs of environmental degradation and hunger, being overwhelmed by the extreme poverty and suffering of the people, especially children, seeing the crowded streets and dilapidated homes in cite soleil, hearing the joyful laughter of people enjoying one another and of children playing, and witnessing the incredible spirit and determination, creativity and liveliness of the people. Sitting in a meeting in the basement of this building, the sights, sounds and smells of this incredibly alive and vibrant and at the same time desperately poor and marginalized country took me over and I was there in this place that somehow in one short week got under my skin like no other place ever has before.

A short week later I checked my email and received the devastating news of the earthquake. It was overwhelming and very frightening to think of what might have happened to the SPARE students, to Guy and all of the other people we are connected to through our Haiti Partners MCC ministry. I couldn't stop thinking about all the people we encountered everywhere we went – street vendors, school students, mothers and fathers and children going about their day. What happened to them? How would they make it through this disaster when they started out with so very little?

And then the images on the TV of the rubble strewn city, bodies lying everywhere on the streets, people wandering around in shock and grief, thousands lost and unaccounted for, the chaos, the smell, the uncertainty, the search for help that didn't seem to be there the mad scramble to secure some kind of shelter and some amount of food and water. How can this be happening? It seemed like things were finally looking up for Haiti after the hurricanes and the political instability and the centuries of devastation and exploitation at the hands of the world community and now this. How much more can these people stand?

As the days went by the stories continued to flow and the losses continued to mount – students crushed in their schools, doctors, nurses and patients killed in hospitals that collapsed, parents crushed in their homes or at their places of work, children orphaned and on and on. All of these lives lost in a natural disaster that any other place in the world would have been devastating for sure but in Haiti was absolutely catastrophic. There was no real reason for this disaster to be as devastating as it is and will continue to be except for greed, racism and neglect of some of the least among us. We are all – the entire global community – every one of us complicit in this disaster and we bear some amount of responsibility for it.

Our government's policies and practices toward Haiti have been abhorrent. From the initial period of isolation after Haitians declared their independence from their French colonizers, to our occupation of the country, to our acts to prop up the brutal and repressive regime of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier to our self-serving manipulation of Haiti's economy our government, a government of by and for the people has not dealt fairly or justly with Haiti and we have allowed these brutal, repressive, underhanded and self-serving policies and practices to go on and on. And this is only the tip of the iceberg as many other nations around the world have taken what they could get from Haiti and given only enough back to prevent major uprisings.

In the wake of this earthquake we must do better and we must demand that our government does better because like it or not our fate and the fate of the people of Haiti are tied to one another. We are one body on this amazing planet, woven together in a web of interconnectivity that impacts us all for better and for worse.

The Apostle Paul, using the metaphor of the one body with many members highlights our common unity and interdependence. Paul was thinking primarily of the community of the church and giving advice to the Corinthians at a time of conflict and strife but we can take his words and this metaphor and expand it to include our presence within the world wide body of all of humanity – many members one body, united in one Spirit, varied and diverse in form and function but all completely vital and necessary for the health and vitality of the body itself.
Americans cannot say to Haitians we have no need of you because God tells us through Paul that the members of the body that seem to be the weakest are indispensable and those that we think of as less honorable should be adorned with greater honor and treated with greater respect. Those with power and education and healthcare and sturdy homes and reliable incomes do not need to be honored. On the contrary we must give the greater honor to those who struggle in poverty and deprivation. We must think of their needs and their hopes and their dreams even more than we think of our own because they need those thoughts and the resources that make those thoughts into reality so much more than we do. This is God's great wisdom and reordering of our ways of thinking and acting, God's way of challenging us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and maybe in times of extreme need to love our neighbors even better than we love ourselves.

When any member of the body suffers, Paul tells us, we all suffer. Haven't we all been suffering for and with the people of Haiti over the past two weeks? Haven't we also cried for the ugliness, the pain, the grief, the loss, the overwhelming horror of it all? Haven't we had our hearts broken as story after story of loss broke over us and as image after image of suffering assaulted our senses?

At the same time, Paul reminds us that if one member is honored, all rejoice together and haven't we rejoiced with great thanksgiving to notice the incredible response of the world community to this disaster. In the midst of the chaos and the confusion, the snail's pace with which aid began to reach the people, there is gratitude for the generosity of so many who have already given so much and who will hopefully continue to give as the need will be great for years to come. And aren't we also grateful that so many of the SPARE students and their families survived this disaster even as we grieve the death of Ludmilla Fleurival?

Gratitude, generosity and rejoicing are also being expressed in Haiti. Over the past two weeks I've read first hand accounts from our Global Ministries Missionaries in Haiti who tell of the incredible generosity being extended to them and that they are witnessing being extended everywhere they go. Those who have something to give, even if it is just their presence at the time of death, are giving it freely and joyfully. Those with homes are offering shelter to the homeless, those with food are feeding the hungry, those with water are offering relief to the thirsty, those with strength continue to comb through the rubble in hopes of uncovering survivors.

Don't pay too much attention to the images of violence you see. Don't get sucked in to thinking that the streets are filled with looters and thugs. Certainly, these elements exist but the overwhelming majority of the people of Haiti are peacefully and with great love and generosity doing what they can to help one another survive and to begin thinking again about life after the earthquake. And don’t listen to those who would tell you that Haiti’s failure as a nation is rooted in its traditional religion and its culture. Don’t listen to people who say that Haitians only live for today and don’t plan for or think about the future. Those people are wrong, they are repeating centuries of propaganda meant to justify the world’s raping and pillaging of Haiti and her resources. The hard work, resourcefulness and creativity of the people of Haiti was one of the most humbling aspects of my trip. These people have great dreams and visions for the future and great hopes for their nation and for themselves. But the odds are stacked against them in so many ways. The idea that Haitians are lazy, that they do not want to work or be successful is our idea, not theirs. It is our lie, not their truth.

We must remember and never forget that we are one body, we are united in our diversity. Every member is needed. Every part is valuable and necessary for the whole to function and even if the work of that part doesn't look like the work we do, we do not have the right to denigrate or cast suspicion on that work.

One of the greatest signs of hope for me since the earthquake has been the response of this community. Through our prayers, last Sunday’s impromptu bake sale inspired by a middle schooler and her friends, our response of cash gifts, our concern, our tears, our interest in what is happening on the ground in Haiti we are connected to Haiti. We have love and compassion for our partners in Haiti and for all people there who are suffering. We stand together with them in this time of their great need and we will continue to stand with them as partners, advocates and friends. This is a long journey and we must remain focused and not lose interest when the immediate crisis subsides from the news headlines because the need will be great for months and years to come.

In addition, it is inevitable that more injustices will be perpetrated as relief workers, soldiers, UN Peace Keepers and Government leaders carry out the relief efforts and then turn their minds and hearts to rebuilding. We live in an imperfect world. We function in an imperfect system. We must keep our finger on the pulse of what is happening so that we can respond when needed with letters and phone calls and other actions calling our government to be different now than it was before in relation to Haiti. Let us not continue repeating the same mistakes. Let us remember it will only change if we are engaged and involved and refuse to allow injustices in our name.

We need Haiti and Haiti needs us. We are one body and individually members of it. Each individual member's function is important to the health and well being of the body. Let us vow to remember and never forget and to stand in partnership and solidarity with one another and with Haiti as together we dream God's dream and individually each do our part to bring it to fruition in small but beautiful ways. Amen.

Preparing for Sabbatical - some random Wednesday thoughts

2010-01-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

This is the year I've been waiting for - 2010 - the year I get my very first three-month sabbatical. I'm so curious and excited to see what this experience will be like. And, I'm a little bit nervous. What will I learn? What will I do every day without the regular routine of getting up to go to church, preparing sermons, planning worship, attending meetings and visiting people? What if I don't like it or don't do it very well?

In honor of the new year and in recognition that I'm a bit of a freak about planning ahead, I have decided to spend Wednesday mornings in a local coffee shop with nothing but thinking, reading and planning on the agenda. This was my first Wednesday morning with this new routine and it was absolutely delicious. There is something wonderful about being in a public place and being away from the office that sets my mind and creativity free in a different way.

This morning, I decided that the first step in the process of planning for my sabbatical would be to figure out what I want to get out of this experience. Here are some of my thoughts.

I've already decided that I want to visit a number of congregations that consider themselves to be "emerging" communities. I've selected congregations in Denver, CO, Chicago, IL and the Twin Cities and I'll travel to each of these places for at least a week over the summer to immerse myself in their community life - meet with the pastor, meet the members of the community, do what they do together during the week, attend worship and anything else that seems important while I'm there. I want to know how these communities organize themselves. How do they worship, study scripture, build relationships, do mission and outreach, evangelize, administer themselves?

I want to ask the people who participate in these communities about their backgrounds - where were they before they came to this place? What keeps them connected to this community? What do they like about it? What do they wish was different? What are their hopes and dreams for themselves, the community, their faith, their lives of discipleship?

I want to talk with the pastors about their vision, their time, their spiritual lives. I wonder what it takes to be a pastor of an emerging community. Is it different somehow from pastoring an existing congregation? What can I learn from my colleagues about my own functioning as a pastor? What ideas and inspirations will I bring home with me?

I want to think about what existing congregations can learn from emerging communities and what we might have to offer to them.

I want to develop thoughts and ideas about how I can take what I observe and learn and experience and bring it back to the community I serve to enrich and encourage our own lives of faith and discipleship.

I realized this morning that this idea for sabbatical has arisen directly out of my love for the church - the folks who gather around Jesus and call themselves church. I have felt for so very long that our faith, our survival as a people was somehow in jeopardy and I was beginning to lose hope. And then I encountered this wonderful network of emerging congregations and pastors and people - people who are re-thinking and re-imagining everything there is to think and imagine about our faith. I want to be a part of this community of re-thinkers and re-imaginers but I don't want to leave the world of the existing congregation because of how lovingly I have been nurtured and shaped and formed in this world. I would like to somehow be a bridge that links the best of what existing congregations have to offer with the best of what is emerging so that together we can journey through this tulmutuous time. Most of all I want to spend the summer hanging out with people who are passionate about Jesus and faith and discipleship. And then I want to come back to Community of Hope and the Madison Christian Community with a reinvigorated spirit and a renewed vision for our shared life and ministry.

It's going to be a great time, that's for sure.

The Gift of Love - Christmas Eve

2009-12-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

About 15 minutes into the beginning of our Winter Solstice worship service I noticed a man and a woman I didn’t recognize standing outside the sanctuary looking in. I worried that they were hesitating to come in because we’d already started so I decided to go out to greet them and make sure they knew they were welcome to join in the service.

When I approached them the man told me that he and the woman were homeless and living in their van. They needed showers and money for gas and food. I gave them $10.00 and invited them to join us for worship. The woman went out to park the van and I returned to worship, assuming they would just leave. I noticed later that they had indeed come into the sanctuary and were sitting in the back of the room.

As I was sitting through the rest of the service I kept thinking of this couple. I wondered how the words we were speaking of God’s promise born in Jesus, of the assurance that God never forsakes or abandons us and that nothing can separate us from the love of God were sounding to these two people who were clearly in a very difficult time of their lives. Did these words sound like the empty promises of a God who had long ago left them, forsaken and alone, to beg for food, to live in their van, to be lost and forgotten by society? Was there any comfort for this couple at all in these words and in the actions of worship? Beyond their current crisis, could they hear the words of God coming to them, words of promise and provision, words of love and hope? Could they see past our wealth, our discomfort with their presence, our shortcomings as Christ’s disciples to notice God reaching out to them in spite of us and in their time of greatest need?

Then I began to wonder what I should do when the service was over – would they just leave, would they hang around, what should I do next? I had already given them some money but should I offer to put them in a hotel for the night so they could get showers? Should I go with them to get some groceries or fill their van with gas? These were certainly possibilities, but, then my discomfort with getting personally involved kicked in – who knows where those efforts would have led. Besides, all of those efforts would have only been a small drop in the bucket compared to their need. I wouldn’t have been able to get them jobs or help them with any other issues that were contributing to their current circumstance.

In the end, I’m ashamed to admit, I tried to ignore them. I hoped they’d go away. I worried that they’d steal from us or that I’d have to call the police to get them to leave. I felt really guilty about these thoughts and feelings – it’s the week of Christmas how could I be so selfish, so callous?

After worship the couple hung around in the Shalom room for a while. They asked if they could take some of the food from the food pantry donation area and I assured them they could have whatever they could use. Eventually, they left.

As the night wore on I started to pray that God would use this experience, my feelings of shame and guilt and helplessness and frustration to soften my heart in some way, to transform me and any of the others who had noticed this couple in our midst and had struggled to know what to do. I prayed that our Christmas story would actually mean something and guide me and others to a different, more loving, more compassionate way of being in the world as Christ’s disciples. And I gave thanks that God somehow manages to love us all and to work God’s justice in the world despite our bumbling efforts to love and care for and to seek justice for one another.

When the nation of Israel was at a low point in her history – facing threats from the Assyrian empire in the north and the Babylonian empire in the south and dealing with the people’s lack of faithfulness to God and to the covenant the prophet Isaiah offered hope saying; “Then a shoot will sprout from the stump of Jesse;” Jesse was the great king David’s father and prophets believed that the next great ruler of Israel would come from David’s lineage.

Isaiah continues, “from Jesse’s roots, a branch will blossom: The Spirit of YHWH will rest on you – a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and reverence for YHWH. You will delight in obeying YHWH, and you won’t judge by appearances, or make decisions by hearsay. You will treat poor people with fairness and will uphold the rights of the land’s downtrodden.” (11:1-4a)

These words of hope from Isaiah remind us that no matter how bad it is, no matter how much we lose, no matter how broken our world becomes, no matter how unfair and unjust our systems and institutions are, no matter what Jesse’s roots, Israel’s roots, our roots are planted solidly in God’s love and we will never be lost, forsaken by God or left alone.

Even in the midst of all of that is wrong, all that is broken and wounded and unjust there is hope because Isaiah tells us that from the roots a branch will blossom – even in the cold of winter, even in the middle of the night, even when the world is dark and so much seems lost.

The love of God, which comes to us on this night as a helpless infant in a poor and lonely place, this love matters and it can change our lives and change the world. God with us, God incarnate comes to us in human form in an attempt to communicate once again the depth, breadth, width and height of God’s love – the lengths God will go to reach out to us, to meet us wherever we are in life. This love has the power to do anything – even upset the systems and powers that keep so many poor and on the edge while so many others wallow in excess.

The transformation that God’s love brings is mostly imperceptible and mostly happens in small ways as hearts are touched and tiny victories for justice and peace are won. When we see an injustice we’ve previously ignored, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we take action to right a wrong, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we reach out to a person in need with compassion and caring, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we look a panhandler in the eye and say hello even if we give them nothing else, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we take the time to listen to someone’s painful story but don’t try to fix it or make it better, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we observe behavior that we believe to be contrary to God’s will for us and we find ways to change that behavior, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we hold leaders and elected officials accountable for the common good and organize ourselves as citizens to push for greater justice in the world, God’s love is transforming our lives.
We can’t fix all of the huge and overwhelming problems of our society. We can barely make a drop in the bucket by ourselves. But we can, as Mother Theresa said, do small things with great love. And we can have faith that God’s love is present and active radically impacting the world for good independent of our bumbling efforts to love and care for one another.

On this Christmas Eve we recall the story of the birth of our savior, the advent of God’s deep and abiding love in Jesus, and the hope that this love does indeed bring peace to the world. On this Christmas Eve we remember God’s promises that Jesus’ coming brings justice for the poor and the outcast, the hungry and the lame and hope for the healing and transformation of the systems and powers of our broken world. And we pray that God’s love is our guide when we encounter sisters and brothers who are homeless or desperate, so that we might respond to them with compassion by seeing the human being, by engaging the person whose needs we may or may not be able to meet but who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and not wished away or ignored. On this Christmas Eve, let us pray that Jesus will abide in us as together we do what we can to make this world a little less hostile and a little more humane, a little less unjust and a lot more compassionate if only for a few moments.

And I give thanks that just as we affirm God’s love for ourselves and our families, we also affirm God’s deep and abiding love for the couple who came to this place on Monday night seeking relief and for all the people of the world like them who are hungry, without a home, living in fear, celebrating Christmas in a war zone, or waking up not sure how they will make it through another day. For even in the midst of the cold and dark of winter, the half-spent night, the fear, desolation, injustice, and sorrow or perhaps most especially in the midst of these things a rose is blooming, Jesus is born, God’s love has come and is coming, born of Mary, a ray of light for all to see and this is indeed Good News. Amen.

The Gift of Joy - An Advent Meditation

2009-12-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

The book of Zephaniah begins with the prophet declaring Yahweh’s judgment on the people of Judah and Jerusalem:

“I will sweep away everything
from the face of the earth, says YHWH.
I will sweep away humans and animals,
birds of the air and fish of the sea!
I will make evildoers stagger,
and wipe humankind from the face of the earth, says YHWH.
I will raise my hand against Judah
and against all those who dwell in Jerusalem;” (1:2-4a)

Zephaniah continues in much this same way through 8 oracles of judgment against Jerusalem and Judah for their lack of faithfulness to their relationship with God. And then in a surprising twist at the very end of chapter three the tone completely changes and we read the final oracle:

“Shout for joy, fair Zion;
shout, Israel, be glad!
Rejoice with all your heart, fair Jerusalem!
YHWH has averted your punishment
and swept away your foes.
Israel, YHWH is among you as ruler;
never again need you fear disaster.” (3:14-15)

Through the oracles of judgment in this book Zephaniah gives voice to the people’s deepest fear – the fear that all of the corruption in their government, the oppression of the people, their subjection to Babylon and Assyria, their forced exile, and their lack of faithfulness to their covenant with God – that all of these things are indeed the judgment of God and evidence of God’s abandonment of them in their greatest time of need.

Zephaniah expresses the fear of the people by putting words of judgment in Yahweh’s mouth to draw the people’s attention to their shared experiences of oppression, corruption, lack of faithfulness, and suffering. Zephaniah says: “Look people. Look at the greed, the boasting, the pride, the few benefiting at the expense of the many. Look at the suffering the violence, the destruction and dislocation. Look at the shortcomings of leaders whom you’ve trusted and who have let you down. Look at all the ways in which the world is not the way God and we might dream it could be.”

And then, like all good prophets, Zephaniah puts words of comfort and promise, of love and care, of justice and of joy into Yahweh’s mouth to remind us that despite our fear, these things are not God’s deepest desire for us. Our suffering is not what God yearns for. Meting out punishment is not what God dreams about.

God sees it all – the ugliest and most corrupt actions of our society, our leaders, our governments and systems and of ourselves. And God sees the pain and suffering these things cause us. God sees the ways in which our government, our economy, our institutions and leaders act to harm and destroy, to build their own security at the expense of others. And rightly, God is angered but at the same time, God’s anger at the corruption, greed and pridefulness of the few is overcome by God’s compassion and love for the many, for the meek and the lowly, the oppressed and the downtrodden and by God’s promises to remain present with love and to call us to be filled with joy, to rejoice in God’s presence and in the promises that are being fulfilled even in the midst of our suffering.

It is not easy to encounter words of violence and judgment coming from God’s mouth in scripture. It is not easy to think about or make sense of God’s anger unless we consider it on a broader scale. Aren’t we currently fighting two wars? Aren’t we recovering from an economic downturn caused in part by greed, corruption, and the hubris of the powerful few playing god with the life savings of the many? Aren’t we facing oppression as our salaries are cut, our pensions reduced, our life savings disappear? Aren’t we disgusted by religious leaders of our day and suspicious of our religious institutions and their motivation for the things they do and say? Are our realities really all that different from the situations and realities described by Zephaniah and by John the Baptist in Luke? Doesn’t it somehow seem appropriate for God to be angry? Shouldn’t we be angry, too?

These expressions of God’s rage and dissatisfaction with the way things are are meant to impact us, to anger us and to spur us also to action with God’s help to right the wrongs of the world as it is. The words of God’s judgment and anger are meant to help us see how wrong things are in the world, how contrary to God’s vision and God’s dreams they are, so that we know for sure that these things are not God’s will for us. It is not God’s will that we fight wars, play monopoly with people’s hard-earned life savings, discriminate against one another based on religion, race, language, nationality, sexuality or any other factor.

But God and the prophets and we should never stop only at anger. According to our faith story, God learned after the flood that acting in anger to cause large scale destruction was a mistake and God promised never again to take that kind of harsh action. And so, after every declaration of judgment placed in God’s mouth there is always an oracle of love and salvation because what the prophets want us to remember and to know is that despite God’s anger at the injustices and oppression of our world, God controls God’s self out of love for us and seeks instead to assure us that even in the midst of all that is wrong with the world, God is present with us working to transform all that is contrary to God’s vision with love, peace, righteousness and joy.

God loves us. God delights in us. God remains with us regardless of what happens. And while we wait for God’s realm to come God promises us glimpses of joy and new life, healing and transformation out of the rubble of corruption, greed, oppression and injustice.

John the Baptist puts it another way and calls us to repent – to turn away from the things we do as individuals and as a society that contribute to oppression, greed, injustice, and lack of faith – and turn toward God by living our lives in the ways in which God desires. Live in God’s way by giving to those who are in need, doing our work with integrity and faithfulness, treating others with love and care no matter what, and refraining from abusing our power to benefit at the expense of others.

We are acutely aware of living in the in between time. God’s presence is with us, Zephaniah assures us of that. But the promises God makes of salvation and transformation are not yet fully realized. They are available to us in glimpses through God’s work in our lives and we can grasp at them in our attempts to live God-centered lives but the final transformation and new life for all that God has made is yet to come. And so we wait for Jesus, Emmanuel to come, to be with us in the in between time and we wait always as God’s people for God’s realm to come in full, for all that causes pain and sorrow to cease so that we might live forever in the joy of God’s presence.

People of God, hear the Good News: Jesus is coming! God is doing a new thing! Rejoice and give thanks. Live your lives with integrity. Do not give in to the despair, corruption and greed that is all around us but hold fast to the promises and the presence of God who never leaves, who is with us now and who will be with us always and who everyday is working in our lives and in our world to transform our sorrows into joy. Embrace the gift of Joy that comes in these promises. Claim the reality of that joy each and every day – whatever is happening now is not the end, pain and oppression and sorrow do not have the final say for God is with us, and Jesus is coming, Emmanuel. Amen.

The Gift of Peace - An Advent Meditation

2009-12-16T09:00:00.001-08:00

Some questions about peace that were on my mind as I considered this gift of Advent were: What is peace? Where does peace come from? What does it mean that Jesus is called the Prince of Peace? Is Christ’s peace different somehow from other types of peace? Is peace only the absence of violence, war, or conflict? Is peace more than a state of mind? Is it possible to BE peace in a world filled with non - peace? How can the gift of peace given by God through the advent of Christ permeate our lives, our thoughts, and our actions during the next few days and weeks and throughout the year?

As I pondered these questions I wondered what Jesus had to say about peace and since we're reading from Luke in the lectionary cycle, I decided to find the passages in Luke that speak to us of peace. When I shared this message in worship, we had different voices read the scripture readings and I responded with the words in bold type. We paused between each set to leave space for quiet meditation on the words. It was a beautiful expression of peace in worship.

When John the Baptist was born, his father Zechariah spoke these words: “Such is the tender mercy of our God, who from on high will bring the Rising Sun to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

Peace is a journey, a process, a way out of darkness and into new life. Peace is the fulfillment of a promise and a gift of God’s mercy.

On the night of Jesus’ birth, the angels spoke these words to the shepherds: “Glory to God in high heaven! And on earth, peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

Peace is a gift from God that comes through Jesus. Peace is a blessing.

The high Priest Simeon prayed these words while holding and blessing Jesus in the temple on the day of his circumcision: “Now, O God, you can dismiss your servant in peace, just as you promised; because my eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared for all the peoples to see – a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

Peace is comforting. Peace is the fulfillment of a promise. Peace is a prayer heard and acted upon.

Jesus sent 72 of his disciples in pairs to every place he intended to visit, to prepare the way for him. In preparation for the journey Jesus gives them these instructions: “And whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be upon this house!’ If the people live peaceably there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will come back to you.” (Luke 10:5-6)

Peace is a blessing we give to one another. It is also a way of life and of living that is rooted in hospitality and openness to the coming of Christ.

When Jesus spoke to the woman who had anointed his feet with oil and with her tears and dried them with her hair, he said: “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” (Luke 7:50)

When Jesus spoke to the woman who had suffered with a 12 year hemorrhage and who was healed when she touched the hem of his cloak, he said: “Daughter your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” (Luke 8:48)

Peace is the result of salvation and of healing. Peace is a by-product of faith, the outcome of an encounter with Jesus. Peace comes when we glimpse the realm of God breaking into this world.

During his sermon on the plain Jesus tells the crowds gathered to hear him teach: “Do you think I’m here to bring peace on earth? I tell you, the opposite is true: I’ve come to bring division.” (12:51)

God’s peace isn’t always the same as earthly peace. The peace of Christ is transformation, new life, an in-breaking of the realm of God. These things often lead to conflict as we are invited to repent, to change our way of being, to turn from our old lives toward a new life in Christ. Sometimes we must choose between the ways of the world and the ways of God’s realm in order to know peace. Jesus doesn’t bring peace – Jesus is peace!

Jesus wept over Jerusalem after his triumphal entry saying; “If only you had known the path to peace today!” (19:42)

Jesus is the path to peace.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection he greeted them saying: “Peace be with you.” (24:36)

Peace is the assurance of Christ’s presence.

The peace we receive from God is not merely the absence of conflict, strife or war and it is not only an invitation to calm, quiet, tranquility, harmony, or an undisturbed state of mind. God’s peace is a process rooted in historical realities as we struggle for all these things. God’s peace is also a process that exists outside of linear history. It is an assurance of God’s presence and God’s blessing, a fulfillment of promises, an invitation to transformation and new life in God's time, not ours. God’s peace is found in the community of God’s people, in the stories about who we are, who we have been and who we will be and in the very fact that we are never alone. God’s peace is rooted in God’s love, a love that blesses and adores us just as we are and that pulls us always toward God’s vision of who we are becoming.

Let us give thanks for the gift of peace. Amen.

The Gift of Hope - An Advent Message

2009-12-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Throughout Advent I have been thinking about the gift of hope. Strangely enough, my musings about hope have led me to consider for the first time in a long time the days that followed my mother’s death. The connection between hope and my mother’s death surprised me at first – what could the two possibly have to do with one another? But what I have observed in my musings is that a lot of my own hope for today and for the future is rooted in this time of extreme grief and loss and the process of healing that has unfolded since that time.

Most if not all of us know how unreal the first few days following a loved one’s death are. The fact of that person’s death is slowly beginning to sink in but you’re so incredibly busy making arrangements for the funeral and the burial and the reception and taking care of all the other details that must be attended to when someone dies that it’s easy to forget that this person you loved is gone.

Up until the moment that we were standing by the grave for the committal service following mom’s funeral I had pretty much been lost in the surreal quality of everything that was going on around me. I had cried a little off and on through the visitation and funeral but it wasn’t until the committal service was over and my mother’s casket was being lowered into the ground that the fact of my mother’s death, the reality of what this meant – came crashing in on me and all of a sudden I lost all control. I began to wail and cry like I never had before and haven’t since.

Someone grabbed me and led me away from the grave side and back to the waiting limo. I could barely walk through the sheer and utter bodily grief. I was 17 years old and the bottom had just dropped out of my life. The last little threads holding me in place were cut and I was adrift, lost and alone in the world. My mother was dead. I wasn’t ever going to talk to her on the phone again. She wasn’t going to watch me grow into adulthood and teach me what she knew about being a woman. She wasn’t going to be there for me when I needed her. My mother, the one who birthed me from her womb and loved me the best she could – was dead. Where was God? Where was Hope?

For a long time I thought God was completely absent from those moments. I was angry, confused, hurting and I believed God had abandoned me. What I have learned is that God was and is in the midst of it all. God is in the pain and the sorrow and the endings of life. God is in the grief and the pain and the regrets.

But what does it mean to see God in the midst of the brokenness of our lives? How can we begin to see God giving the gift of hope from the pain, sorrow, despair and brokenness of our world. Can we train our eyes to recognize Jesus standing in the midst of the end of the world as we know it beckoning us to hope, to love, to peace and to joy?

Perhaps this is what the season of Advent is about - training our eyes and our hearts to see Jesus all the time, everywhere, in every desperate situation, each hope-filled action, every ending and every beginning, and each expression of care. In Advent maybe our task is to learn how to accept God's gift of Hope no matter what and then find ways to be hope in a world that is desperately in need of such a precious gift.

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote the following about what he tried to do in his book Theology of Hope; “I tried to present the Christian hope no longer as such an ‘opium of the beyond’ but rather as the divine power that makes us alive in this world.”

Even when the world collapses around us, when the bottom drops out, when all that we thought we could rely upon has gone up in smoke, we can trust in God’s faithfulness. We can depend on God remaining watchful and alert, prayerful and humble, in the midst of the world as we know it and in its ending.

It’s taken me 22 years to feel like I’m approaching some kind of peace with my mother’s death. But as I’ve put the pieces back together I’ve finally come to the point where I can give thanks for my mother who gave me life and for all the things she taught me and for the beautiful person she was despite her shortcomings.

And perhaps most importantly as I move through this Advent season of preparation, waiting and watching for the coming of Jesus and the return of Christ I am aware that my ability to look at the world with love and my firm and tenacious grasp on hope is rooted in this most awful experience of my life. When I look back at that moment in the cemetery and at all that’s happened since then I can see the hand of God, the presence of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit breaking in and out and all over the place through the people and circumstances and situations that have been such a blessing to me over the years.

There has always been enough love. There have always been women to teach me about being a woman. There have always been lessons to learn as the pain healed. There has been a deepening of compassion for the pain and sorrow of others and a strong desire to act quickly to find resolution and forgiveness when things go wrong. And perhaps most important through it all has been the abiding presence of our Christian story of birth, life, death and resurrection which gives me the greatest hope of all.

God can do anything – create this amazing, limitless universe, form a people, save them from starvation, bring them out of slavery, rescue them from the wilderness, restore them after exile, hold them together when the Temple was destroyed, limit God’s self to be born a helpless baby, heal, perform miracles, right wrongs, restore people to community, suffer and die an unwanted, unjust, awful death, conquer all of the powers of death by the power of the resurrection and live on in us and with us forever. If this isn’t a reason to have hope even in the most awful moments of our lives, I don’t know what is.

Through the most awful experience of my life I gained one of the greatest gifts of all – the gift of hope. I know there is nothing I can’t handle, even death. I know I am never alone. And I can see the Chosen One coming more and more clearly in this community, in our world, in my own life, in the midst of the anguish, and the grief and the fear.

Jesus tells the disciples; “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Luke 21:33) We can lose everything, indeed we will lose everything but we will never lose God’s Word, Jesus words, the promise of a life forever in God’s loving care. This is God’s promise to us. It is real and it can be trusted.

And so I invite you and I urge you to receive the gift of hope that comes in unexpected ways. Embrace the idea of hope. Point to hope in your life, with your words and actions. Be a person who lives in hopefulness. Share the hope you have from God with the world.

See, Jesus, Emmanuel is coming – in you, in me, in us, in the joys and the sorrows of life God is doing a new thing. Let us all perceive it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let the Whole Creation Cry...

2009-11-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

In his book Praying the Psalms Walter Brueggemann suggests that our life of faith consists in moving with God in terms of a. being securely oriented in our faith and in life. b. being painfully disoriented by circumstances and events that push us to the edge of our humanity, and c. being surprisingly reoriented as we receive and give thanks for the gift of new life. (Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 14)

Brueggemann writes; “This general way of speaking can apply to our self-acceptance, our relations to significant others, and our participation in public issues. It can permit us to speak of passages, the life cycle, stages of growth, and identity crises. It can permit us to be honest about what is happening to us.” (Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 14) In addition, this way of thinking about our lives with God provides insight into particularly the Psalms but also other scripture passages as we see the people of Israel moving through this same cycle and can bring our own stories into conversation with theirs.

In my experience of this cycle, we seem to spend the majority of our lives moving between disorientation and reorientation. We don’t tend to spend too much time in a state of equilibrium but rather seem to be in a constant state of flux as we encounter situations and have experiences that push us to the edge of what we think we can handle – death, job losses, divorce, challenges with family, relationship difficulties, health crises, crises of faith, natural disasters, accidents, economic meltdown, cultural shifts and more. These realities of life come at us repeatedly pushing us off balance and in some cases dropping us to our knees in utter surrender and despair.

Hopefully, as we move through these experiences of disorientation we are surprised from time to time to notice signs of hope popping up when before there was only despair - gestures of friendship, acts of kindness, offers of reconciliation and forgiveness, the love of family and friends - remind us that God has not left the world to chaos. These surprising experiences of being re-oriented give us the opportunity to see a situation or circumstance in a new way and open the way for us to give thanks for the gifts that have come, the signs of God’s presence, and the love and care of family, friends and Christian community.

The book of Joel is one place in which movement between disorientation and reorientation comes to life in Israel’s story. The portion of this book that we read earlier illustrates the time of reorientation that follows a period of dislocation and so let me share with you some of the words of the Prophet Joel that describe the particular experience of dislocation that had brought the people of Judah to their knees.

In chapter 1 Joel describes a plague of locusts that had come and devastated the people and the land with these words:

“Listen to this you Elders, pay attention, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this ever happened in your day, or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell your children all about it, and let your children tell their children, and let one generation pass it on to the next. What the bark-stripping locust left, the locust swarm devoured. What the locust swarm left, the winged locust ate; and what the winged locust left, the scavenger locust finished off….

Vast and countless, a horde has invaded my land! Flashing like the teeth of a lion, like the fangs of a lioness, they have destroyed my vineyards and splintered my fig trees; they have stripped them, and shared off their bark – their branches have turned white…(Joel 1:2-4, 6-7)

These beautiful images capture the sense of utter desolation felt by the people as everything they relied on was destroyed. The entire community and indeed the whole creation is devastated by the locust plague and a drought that followed. All has been lost.

How are God’s people to respond to this desolation? Joel says: “Mourn, you priests! …Weep you ministers …Order a fast! Proclaim a solemn assembly!” (1:13-14) Gather the people! Purify the community! Assemble the elders! Gather the children … Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, stand weeping between the portico and the altar and say, “Spare your people, Yahweh! Don’t let your heritage become an object of ridicule, a byword for the Nations! Don’t let the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’” Then Yahweh will be stirred on behalf of the land, and will take pity on the people.” (2:16-18)

With these words Joel calls the people to lament, cry out to God, tell God of their predicament and to repent – to turn toward God. Joel writes: “Return to Yahweh your God, who is gracious and deeply loving as a mother, quick to forgive, abundantly tender-hearted – and relents from inflicting disaster.” (2:13)

These words and images paint a picture of an entire community, indeed the whole creation suffering and groaning together, turning to God in despair and desperation calling their selves and God back to the covenant. When we are devastated, when our systems fail to provide, when our self-reliance lands us in gloom and despair, when the world around us cannot be trusted all that is left is to turn to God, our mother, our lover, our redeemer, our friend, and to gather as a community to weep and mourn, wail and cry, rage and stomp our feet and also to trust that God does not abandon God’s people.

And God does respond. Signs of hope appear where once there was only despair. Joel writes; “Forget your fear, my beloved land! Rejoice and be glad, for Yahweh has done great things. Forget your fear, you beasts in the field! The wilderness pastures will once again be carpeted in green, trees will bear fruit again, and the fig and the vine will give you their full yield.”
And the people are called to give thanks for the gifts, to give thanks for the gift of new life out of death; “Rejoice, Children of Zion! Rejoice! Be glad in Yahweh your God, … you will eat your fill and be satisfied, and praise the name of Yahweh your God, who has dealt wondrously with you! My people will never again be put to shame! You will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, Yahweh, am your God, and there is no other.” (Joel 2:23a, 26-27)

My mother, Jean, passed away from liver cancer in 1987. She was 36 years old. I am her oldest daughter. I was 17 and a junior in High School when she died. Over the past few months I have been thinking a lot about my mom, her death, my grief process and my own life. I will be turning 40 in March and I am acutely aware that every year I get to live beyond the age of 36 is a pure gift - a gift my mother never received.

I harbored a lot of anger at my mother for things she did and said during her lifetime. We did not have an easy relationship and so her death left me with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of unexpressed anger and sadness. But what I’m noticing lately is that I have learned a lot since 1987 about life and death, grace and forgiveness. I have learned, as I have moved through my early adult years that adults make mistakes even when they’re doing the best they can. I’ve learned that even parents stumble sometimes despite their deep and abiding love for their children. I have made my own mistakes, faced the consequences of some of my own misguided actions and had the opportunity to seek forgiveness from the people I harm along the way. All of these things have helped me to heal the wound of my mother’s death and come to a place lately where I can give thanks, not for the experience of her death, but for the way in which my movement through that experience and the people who have come to guide me, care for me, and teach me about being a woman and an adult in the world have been a gift.

Without a doubt the experience of my mother’s death has been one of the worst experiences of my life. And I’m not surprised that it’s taken me 22 years to feel like I’m approaching some kind of peace with this part of my story. But this Thanksgiving I am giving thanks for my mother who gave me life. I am giving thanks for the things she taught me and for the beautiful person she was for me and for so many others despite her shortcomings. But most of all I am giving thanks to God for guiding me through this particular chapter in my life’s story by sending people who have accompanied me and by nudging and urging me to hold on to my faith. I know now that God never left me even when I felt utterly alone in the pit of grief and I have a deeper trust in God now than I ever have before. I give thanks also for our Christian story – a story that moves always between birth, death and resurrection. A story that doesn’t shy away from the challenges of being human – our imperfections, our penchant for violence and self-destruction, our yearning for power at any cost, our limited knowledge and understanding – but embraces them and uses them as sources for grace, truth, beauty and new life.

And so I’d like to invite you to take a moment to reflect on the gifts you have received by the grace of God that have come to you through the challenges and dislocations of life. How have you come to a new awareness, a deeper sense of compassion, a greater trust through the difficulties of your life? And If you are in the depths of despair I invite you to light a candle of lament and offer your despair, your grief, your questions to God in faith that God hears them and is working for healing and new life even in the depths of the pit. Amen.

I Baptize You (2)

2009-11-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

I rewrote my previous blog to submit it to the Emerging Women weblog. Here is the newly revised, edited version.

I baptize you…

One of my favorite scripture passages is the story of Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:9-11. I particularly love the words that come from the voice in heaven as Jesus emerges from the Jordan “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” When I read this scripture I imagine God’s voice speaking these words to me at the moment of my baptism; “You are my daughter, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Recently, these words have begun to take on new meaning for me as I realize that not only do I claim them for myself as a disciple of Jesus Christ who needs to be reminded from time to time of her beloved-ness but I claim them also as a pastor. I claim them for all of the people in the congregation I serve and most especially for every infant, child or adult I have the privilege of baptizing.

The new meaning of these words has come about through conversations I’ve been having with two teenage boys in my congregation who are considering baptism. I have become aware through these conversations that not only am I their pastor because I work at their church but I am their pastor because they accept me and see me in that role. They have granted me authority in their lives. They listen to what I say, they watch what I do, and they respect me because I’ve been there for them in their lives for the past 6 years for better and for worse.

Claiming the authority and the power that comes with the title of pastor has been a struggle for me since my ordination. I believe that all people, by virtue of their baptism, are called by God to serve and follow Jesus Christ and that no one person’s calling is necessarily more important or authoritative. I have also been intimidated by the level of responsibility that comes along with the role that a pastor plays in the lives of congregations and in the lives of the people who make up those congregations. Clergy are responsible to carry their power and authority ethically, humbly and with integrity in every aspect of their lives. I take this responsibility very seriously and it scares me.

But what I have come to realize through talking with two teenage boys in my congregation is that the power and authority of my role as pastor of this congregation isn’t mine alone. It is a gift from God and a call that I have humbly heard and accepted. In this call I am never alone for the Holy Spirit is always there reminding me of who I am and whose I am.

In addition, this community has grown to trust me and to see me as their pastor and they call this power and this authority out in me. I am their pastor not only because they pay me to fulfill that role but because we have been together through the many ups and downs of life. We have grieved the deaths of significant people in the community, walked together through divorces, job losses and the death of a teenage boy and we have struggled to forgive and move on. We have sung and prayed and worshiped, shared secrets and longings, confessed shortcomings and accepted grace, baptized babies and adults, celebrated weddings and laughed a lot. We have become intimately connected to one another in Christ. Together through the gift of trust that has developed between us, by the grace of God and with much fear and trembling we have accepted this relationship of pastor and congregation. They affirm the power and authority of the role, I willingly agree to be their pastor and God blesses and keeps us all.

I am so grateful to these two young men for teaching me these things. They couldn’t possibly know that their awkwardly mumbled responses to my questions, their non-committal head nods and the way they seem so interested in whatever is on the tops of their shoes was revealing something that I needed to see. I am a beloved child of God in whom God is well pleased and I am their Pastor. And God willing, I will stand on holy and sacred ground in the midst of the community and say to them “I baptize you in the name of God who created you, Christ who redeemed you and the Holy Spirit who sustains you. May the Holy Spirit be upon you, child of God, disciple of Christ, member of the church.

I Baptize You...

2009-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

In the past two weeks I've had conversations with two teenage boys who are both in Confirmation this year and their parents about baptism. Neither boy was baptized as an infant or small child and both are considering being baptized at Community of Hope sometime in the next couple of months. These have been beautiful, awkward, holy conversations.

They are beautiful conversations because they are an opportunity for us to speak of things that are very meaningful in life like what we believe and how what we believe leads us to behave in certain ways. They are beautiful conversations because of the love their parents and I have for these young men and the strong desire we have for them to give faith a chance when virtually everything around them is drawing them in another direction.

They are awkward conversations because virtually every conversation involving adults and teenagers and church is awkward. Their parents and I are asking them questions about stuff that makes them uncomfortable and they'd rather be with their friends or in their rooms or anywhere but the place where their parents and their pastor are asking them about what they believe about God and Jesus and Baptism. And expecting real answers!

They are holy conversations because they center around one of the central sacraments of the Protestant church - Baptism. A holy, sacred moment in a person's life when they go public, in a sense, with their faith. I do believe in Jesus Christ. I do want to try living as a Christian. I do want to be part of the Christian Community. I do want to turn away from evil and seek good and accept God's forgiveness when I falter. I do want to join my faith journey to the journey of this congregation and accept from them their love, support and care in the name of God. Indeed, these are holy conversations.

These conversations have also gotten me thinking about that fact that I'm the Pastor for these boys and their families. I've been their pastor in title for the past 6 years but now I'm realizing that not only does my title say pastor but my authority, my role, my place in their lives says pastor - I've earned that holy and sacred name.

I met these young men when they were 8 and 9 years old and now they're 14 and 15 years old. I know some things about their lives - the joys and challenges of the past 6 years for them and their families. I know some things about what they enjoy in life, what their questions are and they know some of these things about me.

I told them both that I would consider it a great honor and a privilege to be the one who would baptize them in the name of God who created them, Jesus Christ who redeems them and the Holy Spirit who sustains them. I told them that baptizing is one of the things I love the most about being a pastor. I love that moment when all the promises have been made and they prayers have been said and I get to dip my hand into the holy waters of baptism to anoint a precious child of God and welcome him/her into the church, onto the journey of faith, into the community that promises to love, encourage, challenge and sustain them throughout their lives. This is such a sacred moment. It is such a privileged moment. It is such a spirit-filled moment. I am deeply humbled that God and this community called me and are allowing me to stand in that place.

I really hope that these two young men in our congretation will choose to be baptized. I hope they will choose it because it is the right thing for them on their faith journeys. I also hope they will choose it because they want to honor their parents for allowing them to make that choice. I hope they will choose to be baptized because they want to acknowledge their place in this community and give thanks for the ways in which these people have loved them up until now. I hope they will choose to be baptized because they truly want to engage this community and their journeys of faith in a new way and I hope to God that I and we will not let them down. Amen.

God our Refuge

2009-10-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here is my sermon from Sunday, October 18. The text was Psalm 91. Enjoy

As I thought of the various circumstances of my life through which I believe the love of God has brought me from woundedness, hurt and despair into new life I fell in love with this Psalm. I love the images throughout this text of God as a refuge, a shelter, a fortress, an eagle covering me with her pinions, her wings, a trustworthy protector, a place to rest from the trials and challenges of life, a place to live and to abide. The statements and promises of God our protector and our refuge, which are so numerous and so clear throughout this Psalm – I will rescue and shield; I will deliver, I will cover, my faithfulness will shield you, I will deliver, I will protect, I will answer, I will be with, I will satisfy, I will show, I will honor are a healing balm to the soul. With these words God assures us there is no need to fear anything at anytime in any place – no disaster, no war, no illness will destroy us for God’s angels will guard us, will lift us up, protect even our feet from being hurt on a stone. In the world of this Psalm, between God and us there are no limits to God’s faithfulness, no elements of life, no challenges or trials that cannot be overcome by God. This is truly good news for all of us who know so clearly the challenges and difficulties of just getting through each day.

This past weekend I attended an event in the Twin Cities called Christianity21. This event featured the voices of 21 women each sharing her vision or dream for the future of the church in 21 minutes. Each presenter painted a beautiful picture with her words, her thoughts, her creativity and her faith of where we might go as people of faith and how we might be ever more faithful and effective as God’s people in the world.

Seth Donovan was one of the speakers. She’s a community organizer by profession and a member of an ELCA Mission congregation in Denver, CO called House for All Sinners and Saints. Seth talked about confession and wondered what the church would look like if it had a spirit of confession, if it took confession seriously.

As she spoke she defined confession and the vision of confession that she might hope the church would embrace in two ways. First, she spoke of wanting the church to be a place where she and all people who walk through its doors would know that this was the one place in their lives where they didn’t have to be “right.” Where we could all acknowledge that at times, and maybe even more often than we’d like to admit, we are wrong, we don’t have the answers, we don’t know what to do next in our lives, in our jobs, in our relationships. What if the church (God’s sanctuary,) were truly a place where we could bring our brokenness, our full, complete, whole selves, and our messy, beautiful, complex stories without reservation trusting them to be received and held with respect?

What if the church were a place that loved and accepted each person as they are? What if we didn’t feel that we had to check our uncertainties, our questions, our doubts, our fears, or our anger at the door? What if we trusted one another to simply be ourselves in this place? What if we accepted this gift that God offers as our refuge, our shelter, our fortress, our protector? What if we trusted that when we brought our full selves, warts and all, into God’s presence and into the community of God’s people we would still be loved? This is what a church with a spirit of confession would look like according to Seth Donovan. This is what God is like according to Psalm 91.

The second image of a church with a spirit of confession had to do with the church being a place where we are free to confess our faith. This aspect of confession at first seemed like a no brainer – of course the church is a place where we are free to confess our faith. Except that my understanding of what Seth was saying actually took this element of confession one step farther. Being free to confess our faith within the sanctuary of the church or within the community of people we know and trust and who love us is one thing but that freedom must also propel us out into the world to tell our stories of faith in every aspect of our lives and not only with words but also through our actions and attitudes.

Seth used the word “decompartmentalize” to describe this aspect of confession. In her vision, the church should provide some of the safety and security, the boundaries and structures that help us figure out what we believe and how what we believe impacts us and our world. The church should be a place to listen for the Spirit’s call and to heed Jesus’ invitation to follow. The church should be a place where we can most fully be ourselves and know we are loved. Then the church must send us out into the world to tell our story, to live our faith every day, in every way with courage and truth. And when we are battered and broken, tossed about on the stormy seas of life God and God’s people are there always to receive us in again and nurture us back to wholeness.

These two visions of the church with a spirit of confession are the picture I see also being painted in Psalm 91. In the world of this Psalm God is a safe place, a refuge, a protector. Under the shelter of God’s wings we are free to be who we are fully and completely. There is nothing God doesn’t know about us, there is no thing that we can think or do or be that can separate us from God’s love and God’s desire to shield us from harm. There is no experience, no challenge, no difficulty that can destroy God’s love or push us out of relationship with our creator. God’s love for us is too big, too deep, too mysterious.

Under the protective shelter of God’s wings we are free to explore, to confess our faith, to heal, to grow into wholeness and then to be sent out into the world with courage to live our faith each and every day secure in the knowledge of God’s love, and aware that we have a place, a refuge, a sanctuary, a community, where we don’t have to be right all the time, where we can be fully who we are, where we can struggle and fuss, question and argue, and know without a doubt that we are God’s and God is ours and no matter what may come we are held, protected, answered, rescued honored and satisfied.

And I will raise you up on Eagle’s Wings
Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of my hand.

May it be so. Amen.

Christianity21

2009-10-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended an event called Christianity21 in Edina, MN (www.Christianity21.com). It featured 21 speakers, all women, who each shared their sense of hope and vision for the future of the church in no more than 21 minutes each in a variety of styles - stories, essays, skits, dialogue, Bible study, prayer, music, video and more.

Over the past few days I've been trying to describe my experience at this event to my family, friends and members of the church. The best word I've come up with so far to describe how I felt when I got in the car to drive home was "Revival."

Yes, for me this event was a revival. It felt like 48 hours of coming to Jesus in the best possible sense of that term. The sanctuary in which we met was filled with creative, faithful, thoughtful, sincerey, joyful and innovative energy. I didn't talk to a single person who wasn't excited about what God is doing in their lives. Everyone I talked to seemed engaged and hopeful about the future. I didn't encounter a single pastor who shared complaints or doubts or negativity about their parishioners or congregations. I didn't meet anyone who wasn't convinced that they were called to share the good news of Jesus in the world no matter their vocation, profession, age, gender, sexual orientation or background.

This event was unlike any church related event I've ever been to. It was stimulating to all the senses, not just the intellect. It invigorated me as a person of faith first and also as a pastor. It took me further down the road of having unreserved hope and optimism about the future of the Christian faith I hold so dear. It encouraged my faith and touched my passion for discerning the movement of the Spirit and the call of Jesus in my own life and in the ministry I share with the good people of Community of Hope and the Madison Christian Community.

Most of the people I met are folks who have left the circle of the evangelical world for some reason or another. For a variety of reasons that expression of faith was no longer working for them and so they set out to find a new way of expressing and thinking about faith. Somehow a group of these folks found one another and have been meeting together and expanding their reach for more than 10 years. This ever expanding network calls itself Emergent Village. Some of the people I met, like myself, are coming from one of the various so-called "mainline" traditions of the Protestant faith - Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and United Church of Christ.

Most of the congregations represented were new church starts intentionally using the term "emerging" as a way of describing themselves and indicating their desire to be about doing something new in the name of God. Some of the congregations represented were existing congregations in various traditions seeking to breathe hope and new life. I got the feeling that it is a fairly new development for there to be "mainline" people at Emergent Village events. This feeling made me wonder what someone like me who is almost a complete stranger to the world of evangelical churches but who is also seeking new life for the future of the church might have to offer to this group. I believe I do have something to offer and hope to figure out what along the way. I know I have a lot to learn.

For the next few weeks I will be sharing my reflections on this event in some way that will reveal itself to me as it unfolds. I'm looking forward to the process. Amen.

The Gift of Generosity

2009-10-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Over the past three weeks our congregation has been exploring generosity. As part of that exploration I invited the entire community to send me stories about generosity they'd experienced, observed, or expressed either within our community or in other settings. I also invited them to share how generosity had transformed their lives. What follows is a cross section of their responses, which were shared in worship this past Sunday.

I want to start off by thanking the 25 people who called and sent emails to share stories and observations about generosity for this morning’s sermon. All of the stories are wonderful and unique. I wish I could share them all with you but there were simply too many. I’ve tried to select a broad cross-section of what was shared with me to share with you this morning. I invite you to sit back and enjoy these stories of our generosity.

It was New Year’s Eve, 1999 - Our youngest son was 17, and a junior in high school. The summer before one of his best friends had been injured in a diving accident and was paralyzed from the shoulders down. For New Year's Eve Our son, the friend who had been paralyzed and three other friends decided they were going to treat themselves to a fancy dinner at the Tornado Room. As normal 17 year olds, no one thought they'd need a reservation, even on New Year's Eve. The young men walked into the Tornado Room and asked for a table for five. The host said the wait would be very long. "Even for someone in a wheelchair?" they asked. Within minutes they were seated in the largest of the dining areas which was already full with New Year's Eve partiers; each of the young men had money to order the best steak they could find on the menu and all the side orders they wanted. They joked, laughed and were generally enjoying themselves. When the food came, the young men took turns feeding their friend who cannot do this for himself.

At the end of the meal our son excused himself to use the men's room and when he returned to the table, his friends were silent, their former animation gone. "What happened?" he asked. Finally they told him: someone paid our bill. Our son immediately went to anger, thinking one of their parents had picked up the tab when all along they had carefully planned for each one to pay his own way. He approached the host and demanded to know who had paid the bill. The host simply said: someone in the restaurant tonight saw your party and asked to pay your bill and they wish to remain anonymous. Our son returned to the table and told his friends what had happened. They looked around the dining room -- any one there could have been their anonymous angel. While they were on their way home, they had a private conversation about what had just happened. One of the boys said: we're young now but some day we will have jobs and we need to make a vow -- here, tonight -- that when we're older, we're going to be anonymous benefactors for someone. Each of the boys agreed. The pact was made. This anonymous act of generosity had a profound and lasting impact, and not only on those 5 young men. Whenever I think of this story, I try to think of something I can do that day to anonymously help someone else.

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I am continually amazed at the generosity of some women in the jail who have so little themselves and yet will share their only stamped envelope so another woman can write to her child, or their last bit of lotion from the indigent canteen.

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Recently, a co-worker and friend of a member of Community of Hope who knew that this member’s daughter was struggling handed her friend a sealed envelope and asked that the envelope be forwarded to the daughter. The co-worker explained that her mother had recently passed away and that she knew her mother would have wanted her to use the contents of the envelope to help somebody through a tough time.

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The generosity of people listening with undivided attention, really listening, has transformed my life. How? Well, it gave me a sense that I was actually here, and not invisible, and that my opinion, my story, my life, is worth something.

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It is a major pet peeve of mine when people are stingy. I suppose that I will never be fabulously wealthy but I think there's a certain attitude - of generosity, of thankfulness, of plenty, that accompanies an un-stingy life. I think there is something very liberating in a being generous - recognizing that you have more than you possibly need/want and that there is plenty for you to share.

For me currently, generosity is not as much about money as it is about art, about opening myself up and being generous with the creativity and the ideas that I see.

Above all, I do believe that generosity is a critical part of a happy life. I think it is really fundamental to my own faith.

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I have noticed how generously so many people give of their time and expertise at MCC--from great music-making to thought-provoking children's sermons to mentoring confirmation students to creating a visually inspiring worship space to supporting the Haiti ministry to teaching kids to garden and share of their abundance, to making quilts. I especially appreciate people's willingness and ability to share their ideas with others in conversation or public proclamation.

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I love this about our community, kids are not shuttled off and then not heard from again until their older -- they're brought into the fold and given the message that they are special and accepted just as they are. Not many places offer this to kids!

I think that is my overriding sense: Our community's gift to one another is a safe place to be themselves, fully accepted and embraced for who they are -- it is an incredibly generous spiritual practice to offer acceptance.

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When I was a kid in the 1950s we made lots of food at home, canning vegetables and chickens, applesauce and peaches, and of course, cookies and desserts. That food was amazing, and more appreciated when we ate it, for all the work that went into preparation. It became a medium of exchange better than money because it had personal care and style built in. We gave away lots of the stuff we made as well as bartering; friends and relatives often needed some help.

When my Confirmation mentee and I worked on learning to make better bread, we practiced that small generosity of always giving away some portion of the bread batch we made. It is as easy to make four loaves as to make two; it only takes one hot-from-the-oven loaf to make another friend. I think little acts of generosity can become habit. I want all these lessons to be learned by my children, both my own daughters and all my children in our community.

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In society’s eyes I am given many labels that threaten to devalue me. At Community of Hope, I am seen through the eyes of pure Love. Without labels or judgment, I am valued as a child of God just as special as any other. This generosity makes dreams come true for me and answers the deepest prayers in my soul-- to simply be loved and valued for who I am.

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I am grateful for the generosity of TIME given by people at Hope and the MCC (the spiritual exploration, support and prayer from my prayer group is nothing short of a miracle in my life). The time poured into my children by our youth pastors and other parents/pastors is a great gift to our family. … At MCC we are busy "building" sturdy, engaged people. That is a generous gift, indeed.

I am also very grateful for the power of example, a form of generosity I suppose, demonstrated by so many members at MCC- I often feel inspired by ways others behave (ie choices they make or ways they reach out to others). How astonishing is laughter yoga, the laying on of hands, the labyrinth?

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This summer I asked if anyone had a computer that could be donated. Someone did. It needed work, and the donor had to spend a weekend wiping his files. It was also slow; needed RAM. I bought a gigaByte to speed it up. Now a family with a H.S. student has a laptop that is sophisticated enough for the whole family. No one is surprised. "It's what we do!"
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Many, many years ago, when I was actively dealing with childhood abuse issues, there was a demonstration at the Capitol. A member of the congregation knew I would be attending. Although she said nothing to me about coming, she just appeared and stood with and by me. It was such a generous and compassionate thing to do.

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I believe that my husband’s long commitment to Hope and its community have a lot to do with the support we are both receiving at this time. He was very committed and involved himself in many ways with the various activities of Hope and its programs and governance. He was faithful in attendance even when I didn't give him encouragement and volunteered for a lot of involvement over the years. I would say that his presence in Hope was his best effort in his realm of spiritual witness.

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The Community of Hope has been a gift to me and to my family. For me, the true "mystery" of incarnation is found in the way the spirit can infuse a congregation as "the body of Christ" offering sanctuary to refugees, help to farm families in distress, reach out to youth not only in Haiti, but also on campuses here, seeking to serve the homeless, you know how long this list can be.

Without Jesus, no church, but the church is essential to bear witness - not in mouthing creeds, but through the daily acts of generosity of its members. I believe that the church that stops giving, dries up, and, like the fig tree, will soon wither and die.

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I pray that in these stories you have found a little piece of yourself and a nod of encouragement to continue growing in generosity in all the ways lifted up here and in as many other ways as you can imagine. The Spirit is alive and she is moving freely in and through each of us. She blesses us all with numerous opportunities each and every day to be channels of God’s grace, to give freely of all that we are and all that we have to share God’s love with the world. Let us go forth from this place with joy and generosity in our hearts. Let us find ways each and every day to live out of abundance and to give generously because we trust and accept God’s grace and God’s love is not only for us but for the whole world. Amen.

The Phoenix Affirmations

2009-09-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I started reading Asphalt Jesus: Finding A New Christian Faith Along the Highways of America by Eric Elnes. This book tells the story of Elnes' cross-country walk from Phoenix, AZ to Wasthington D.C. to spread the good news of progressive Christianity and deepen the dialogue about faith in America. His idea was to walk all this way with a statement about progressive Christianity that he would post on the door of a church in Washington D.C. a la Martin Luther's 95 Theses. The Phoenix Affirmations, included here, are the statement he and his congregation, Scotsdale Congregational, UCC and others developed in preparation for this walk. Check it out.

The Phoenix Affirmations
From Asphalt Jesus: Finding A New Christian Faith Along the Highways of America by Eric Elnes

The public face of Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of our ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians who continue to celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by our experience of the transforming presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where we will be no longer silent. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making the following affirmations:

As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love. We work to express our love, as Jesus teaches us, in three ways: by loving God, neighbor, and self. (Matthew 22:34-40//Mark 12:28-31//Luke 10:25-28; cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18)

CHRISTIAN LOVE OF GOD INCLUDES:
Walking fully in the Path of Jesus without denying the legitimacy of other paths that God may provide humanity.

Listening for God’s Word, which comes through daily prayer and meditation, studying the ancient testimonies which we call Scripture, and attending to God’s present activity in the world.

Celebrating the God whose Spirit pervades and whose glory is reflected in all of God’s Creation, including the earth and its eco-systems, the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non-human.

Expressing our love in worship that is as sincere, vibrant, and artful as it is scriptural.

CHRISTIAN LOVE OF NEIGHBOR INCLUDES:
Engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations make in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class.

Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed, the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others.

Preserving religious freedom and the church’s ability to speak prophetically to government by resisting the commingling of church and state.

Walking humbly with God, acknowledging our own shortcomings while honestly seeking to understand and call forth the best in others, including those who consider us their enemies.

CHRISTIAN LOVE OF SELF INCLUDES:
Basing our lives on the faith that in Christ all things are made new and that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imagination – for eternity.

Claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts and recognizing that faith and science, doubt and belief serve the prupose of truth.

Caring for our bodies and insisting on taking time to enjoy the benefits of prayer, reflection, worship and recreation in addition to work.

Acting on the faith that we are born with a meaning and purpose, a vocation and ministry that serve to strengthen and extend God’s realm of love.

During the process of developing the idea for these affirmations Elnes asks himself a question; "Which principles would you be willing to die for?" As he answered this question, Elnes realizes that Jesus doesn't ask us to sacrifice for principles or ideas but for people, for relationships.

When I think about it, this way of viewing our lives as people of faith makes an incredible amount of sense. Even though I have often been known to interpret Jesus' death as one that came about because of his refusal to compromise principles of justice, equality and love another interpretation is certainly that Jesus made this sacrifice because of his love for God and for us. He knew that dying on the cross wasn't going to automatically make the world more just or more fair but maybe he had hope or faith that what would happen is that people like you and me would be so moved by this love, this ultimate sacrifice that we would seek to do the same in our own lives. Just thinking about this fills me with peace and also with agitation all at the same time.

The peace comes from the assurance of being loved and valued even to the point of the ultimate sacrifice - one's own life. The agitation comes from fear and anxiety - am I grateful enough for this gift, does my life measure up, what more could I do, how could I be different in the world to more closely and more faithfully follow Christ's example?

At the same time I remember that the love of God and of Jesus is a gift. We don't have to earn it. We don't and can't deserve it. All we have to do is receive it with gratitude and not guilt or obligation. And once we've received this gift prayerfully discern what response if any is ours to make.

I really appreciate coming across the Phoenix Affirmations and their simple but powerful message of the faith I love and seek to live each and every day. I pray they are a blessing to you, too.

Doing Something New

2009-09-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

This week I had lunch with two colleagues in ministry. We are meeting every 6 weeks or so to talk about our various interests in the emerging church and in what we see emerging in our own lives and in ministry. This is the second time we've met and I very much enjoyed and was fed by the conversation.

One colleague reported that since our last meeting there have been two gatherings of the house church that he and his wife are starting along with some others they've met along the journey. The most remarkable thing he said to us over lunch is that when he tells people he' s a pastor of an established congregation it's a conversation stopper. They don't ask questions, they don't wonder about worship times, they don't engage in further dialogue. But, when he mentions this new church effort people are instantly curious and interested in checking it out. They want to know what is happening, where and when.

This experience, which mirrors my own, seems to bear out my feeling that it isn't faith that people are hesitant about - it's the institution of the church and what they imagine or know to be true about the religion that comes along with that institution.

It is also my feeling and experience that even though many people are opting out of church they still carry very strong associations of the role and authority of a pastor. I feel these assumptions and associations come crashing down like a heavy weight whenever I mention that I'm a pastor. Sometimes the reactions are downright negative at other times they're just sad because all of a sudden I'm not me anymore - I'm a role or a position and I'm every painful or negative or distancing experience they've ever had with a clergy person or the church.

But, my colleague's experience is different from this when he tells people about starting a new church. Maybe he doesn't mention he's a pastor and so people are free to be curious about this new thing that he and some friends are trying. Maybe it's just the very idea that it's something new and different taking place in a completely unfamiliar setting that allows people to have curiosity. They don't have years of associations about who clergy are or what they do or a lifetime of varying impressions of The Church to weigh them down or turn them off. They are free and my colleague is free to express the creativity, the desire for community, the yearning for meaning and a connection with others who are taking their faith and the call of the gospel seriously.

I admire my colleague and his courage in starting something new. I also admire his vision and creativity and his willingness to follow the Spirit's lead in listening to the yearning of his own heart but also to the yearnings in the hearts of people he was meeting. The way he talks about this experience, it's a necessity for him to do this because what he experiences in The Church is so completely wrong for him and his family - even in his role as a pastor. He wants his children to grow up with faith, he wants his family to be able to worship together, he wants the community in which he worships to be a faith community that can support and encourage him along his own, personal journey of faith and unfortunately, the church he currently serves is not able to be any of those things. Which doesn't mean that established churches can't do these things it's just that some won't.

So, this week I've been thinking a lot about what is emerging within me and within the faith community I serve. I don't have the clear vision of my colleague. But I do have the yearning and I know that there are others around me who share that yearning. I wonder where the Spirit will lead us? I wonder what it would be like to be free from the weight of history and expectation to really try something new? I wonder what it would be like to share the story of the ministry I love and have people ask me for more?

Re-Imagining Preaching Part 3

2009-09-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

In his book Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith Doug Pagitt writes: ..."Preaching isn't an end in itself. We don't particpate in Christian communities so we can produce and hear great sermons. We take part in these communities because we believe they're where we're formed and shaped to become the people of God - people who are actively living in the kingdom."

In seminary I learned that the purpose of the sermon was to compel people to change their lives, be more faithful disciples, be better Christians, be more justice-oriented. I was taught that the fate of the souls of the people in my future congregation would lie in my hands and that I had to lead them to salvation through my cleverly constructed, skillfully researched, compelling speeches/sermons. I never liked that job. What a burden to bear as a pastor. And what an incredibly arrogant perspective on one person's role in the life of a community or in the lives of individual people. Ever since seminary, I have resisted this definition of my role and tried at every turn to get out from under it.

Despite my attempts to get out from under this particular definition of preaching, I have been told that I have a fair amount of skill as a preacher. I enjoy telling stories and have a sense of humor. I'm a good enough writer. I speak clearly with adequate volume and possess enough self-confidence. I work diligently and faithfully on my sermons every day. I'm not afraid to tell stories from my own faith journey. I love to tell stories from other people's journeys. But I can barely remember what I've said on Sunday morning by the time Monday rolls around and I can only imagine the recall time is shorter for the folks in my congregation. One-way, monologue communication is not how we learn. It's not how we absorb information the most effectively and it's not necessarily what we seek when we're hoping to transform our lives. If this effort is what is supposed to lead people to Jesus, I and all except perhaps the most skilled of preachers/speech makers are doomed to failure.

Educators have known this for a long, long time. Children and adults learn best when there is a variety of ways that information is shared. People learn best with there are multiple opportunities for hands on experience, discussion and dialogue so that they can interact with what their learning, test out their ideas and thoughts and receive feedback from others. It is our life in the community where we are formed and shaped into God's people. It is the community that guides and inspires our efforts to seek, live in and co-create God's realm. We inspire and challenge, encourage and guide one another most effectively in relationship not through making speeches.

I've heard many comments from my congregation about our Sermon in Community Sundays. People really liked it but many say "we wouldn't want to do that every week." So far, unfortunately, I agree with them. It would be difficult for me to sustain that schedule every week, in part because of the sheer number of evening meetings I attend in any given month (which is a topic for another discussion). But I wonder why they don't want to do that every week if they like it so much. (I think I'll start asking them...)

My best guess is that it's just a shift in form that is unfamiliar and people, like me, have been trained to believe that the one-way sermon is what you need and what you should want from your pastor on Sunday morning. It's something I'm struggling with still but I know there's time and that with time, if we stick with it, this Sermon in Community idea might catch on or we'll find something else that seems more real for us and then we'll do that. No matter what we do I pray that the Spirit will continue to lead, inspire and challenge us to continue being and becoming a community that thoughtfully and fearlessly forms and shapes us to be and become the people of God living in God's realm at all times and in all places. May it be so.

Re-Imagining Preaching, Part 2

2009-08-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that the experiment of creating a sermon in community is a huge success. After last week's invigorating and inspiring discussion we had an equally invigorating and inspiring conversation on the text in worship. One woman said that if she had read the text on her own she would have walked away from it but hearing highlights from the Tuesday night conversation and what others were saying in worship she saw and heard completely different things and is grateful for the insights. The feedback people gave as they were leaving worship on Sunday was overwhelmingly positive and I could tell that they were really engaged in what was going on.

This past Tuesday there were 6 of us - only one person was the same between the two nights but everyone there had been in worship on Sunday. We had an equally invigorating discussion about chapters 4-5 of I Thessalonians and I'm really looking forward to Sunday morning. I'm looking forward to sharing our insights from Tuesday night and I can't wait to see what the congregation will say.

From this very brief experiment I've observed a few things that seem valuable. First, I've learned that this style is not for everyone. I happen to be very comfortable talking off the top of my head. I prepared some notes for Sunday morning but mostly I just talked about what I had heard and what my own thoughts and ideas were about what others had said. I know that there are many preachers and pastors who are simply not comfortable with this style and for whom this idea would never work. I pray that those who are in this category and yet are seeking for a new form will consider their own strengths and discover other forms of preaching within which to find meaning and new life.

I also observed that people are hungry to engage scripture in community but in the midst of their busy lives and in light of their insecurities about their own Bible knowledge they don't respond to Bible study classes (believe me, I've tried). But, what are we doing on Tuesday night if not Bible study? And, what are we doing on Sunday morning if not Bible Study? Calling it preaching seems to give it a different sense than Bible Study - maybe an aura of importance? At any rate, we're doing in community what I would do if I were preparing a sermon on my own. We're opening the Word of God to find encouragement, challenge, support, guidance, and inspiration for our lives and our community. The only difference is that we're doing it together. I think this must be in part what we are meant to do as a community of faith - open our sacred text and read it in community so that together we can discern its meaning, its guidance, its challenge and together live out what we have heard.

Finally, I was grateful to notice that this sytle of preaching seemed to appeal to everyone in the room - not just the young people. People of all ages (except children and teens) made comments and exhibited body language that indicated their interest in what was going on around them. I also heard comments from a variety of age groups about their gratitude for what we had done and their appreciation for what was shared and how it impacted them personally. I think we're on to something here and we will be doing another series this fall.

I don't think we're ready yet to totally dispense with the more traditional style of preaching but we have another tool in our belts, another way to engage God's Word and one another as we seek to follow Jesus.

My only lingering question is - is this still preaching? If not, what is it? And if so, what makes it preaching? What makes a sermon a sermon? What makes a preacher a preacher? I'm imagining these are common questions whenever a person breaks out of the mold of something that is so ingrained in our worship practice and religious life. The questions stick with me and press me to continue defining my role and to continue to find solid reasons to do what I do.

So far, I'm going with the idea that a preacher is someone who shares the Word of God with others and a sermon is that which is shared. The form the preacher uses is less important than the content and the intent. What do you think?

No matter what, I'm incredibly grateful for this Community in which I labor as pastor and teacher. I'm grateful for the freedom they give me and one another to explore new ideas, seek new forms, and learn new ways of living together as disciples and seekers of the realm of God. They are an inspiration and I am blessed to be among them.

Re-Imagining Preaching

2009-08-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm back from a much needed vacation. I highly recommend taking two weeks off if/when you can. That second week does wonders for one's ability to disconnect from work-day pressures and reconnect with one's self, one's loved ones and one's higher sense of purpose and joy in life. I am ready for the fall schedule to descend in a few short weeks and looking forward to what adventures will unfold in the coming months.

Earlier this summer I read a book titled Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith by Doug Pagitt. This book was a breath of fresh air for me. I've never read a book on preaching that thoughtfully considers an alternative form of preaching to the monologue-style sermon that is the norm in most of today's churches.

I've always felt somewhat oppressed by the expectations we place on a pastor to "wow" his/her congregation every week with thoughtful, interesting, theologically sound, well-researched and well-supported thoughts and opinions about the meaning of a bibilical text and its application to our daily lives. How can one person bear this burden week after week, year after year without burning out, falling flat, and feeling inadequate much or most of the time? Pagitt's exploration of the origins of our current style of preaching (which he calls "speaching") has encouraged me to be more open with my own thoughts and ideas about the role of sermons and of preaching and how that role might be re-imagined for today's context.

As I've thought about what constitutes a sermon and about the role of preaching I've developed a few basic ideas:

1. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can preach given guidance, encouragement, support and resources.

2. If the sermon is meant to guide and encourage people along their journeys of faith then as many people as possible from within and outside of a worshipping community should be encouraged to preach. No one person can ever hope to connect in a meaningful way with every other person in a faith community. Variety is the spice of life.

3. If the sermon is meant to shape a community in faith and in love then the community should take as much responsibility for this task as possible with the guidance and encouragement of their pastor.

One thing I have done at Community of Hope, which has arisen out of the above ideas is to open the pulpit to as many members of the congregation who are willing to take the risk of preaching. I also actively encourage those who don't believe they have the skill or ability to preach to try their hand with my guidance and support.

So far, the congregation's response to this approach has been overwhelmingly positive. We like to hear from one another, get to know one another, be challenged and inspired by one another in this way. I am consistently grateful for the courage and humility of the people who agree to preach and often learn a great deal about where they are on their faith journeys even as I am inspired and encouraged on my own journey by their insights.

For the next two weeks we are trying a new idea, inspired by Pagitt's book. We are forming the sermon in community. Last night, the entire congregation was invited to my house to read the scripture passage for Sunday's worship service. I prepared background material on the passage, brought resource texts and various versions of the Bible and those from the community who gathered dug into the scripture together. After 90 minutes or so of discussion I had a clear sense of a theme for Sunday's service and some very touching stories from the lives and experiences of members of the congregation. Tomorrow, I will prepare some opening comments that will draw from the background material I shared with the group at my house and from our discussion. On Sunday, I will open the floor to the entire congregation to share their own insights, questions, comments and observations as together we discern the word of God for us as it comes through Sunday's text.

I can't wait to see what happens. I can't wait to invite the congregation into this process this week and then again next week. I give thanks that I am in a community that welcomes these kinds of ideas and that is open to exploring questions of life and faith together in worship.

I'd love to start a conversation about the role and purpose of sermons and preaching in today's congregations. Please share your thoughts or ideas and your challenges to my own thinking. I welcome the discussion.

Lessons of faith

2009-07-31T20:13:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago our foster son, who first lived with us from the age of 20 months until age 3 moved back in with us. He's 4 1/2 now. In the time between when he went back to his mom the first time he's been with her (for 6 weeks), with another foster family (for 6 weeks), with his great-grandmother (for the past year) and now again with us. Having our foster son, I'll call him Joe, back in our home has filled us all with an incredible mix of emotions. We're happy to have him in our home when he's not with his mom or in day care (which is most of the time, unfortunately). We're also aware that once again we've opened ourselves up to face incredible joy and happiness and also potentially, a lot of grief. In short, we've embraced the reality of life and faith with gusto and are trusting God to be with us and with Joe and with all the other people involved in this situation no matter what.

The experience of being one of Joe's foster parents has been one of the most faith challenging and faith inspiring experiences of my life so far. I've learned about hospitality through this experience - how to welcome Joe's biological parents and entire extended family into our home and into our lives even when supporting their efforts to re-gain custody of him breaks our hearts and dashes our own hopes to be the ones who get to tuck him into bed each night.

I've learned about love through this experience. How to love another human being, in this case a child, without reservation and with as much unconditional intention as possible knowing that there will come a time, sooner or later, when we will need to let him go. We love this little boy no matter what. We do our best to put his needs, his future, his happiness before ours all the while knowing that the future for which we are preparing him could happen primarily in a family other than ours.

I've learned about letting go and how hard it is to let go of my ideas of how things should be; to let go of the illusion that I'm in control of my life or anyone else's. And I've also learned how hard it is and at the same time how crucial it is for me to trust that God is in this whole situation with me and Cindy, with Joe, with his family, with the social workers, lawyers, therapists, extended family somehow working all the pain and frustration and hopes and dreams and losses and gains for good.

There is no way of knowing how this little boy's life will turn out. It is so easy to feel frustrated. To witness at one moment his rage and his confusion, which leads me to imagine the worst and then in the next moment to be totally cracked up by something he does or says and know that he's going to be o.k.

I know a woman who was cared for by foster parents for the first 7 years of her life. She is one of the most spiritually grounded, joy-filled, loving people I know. Her story gives me hope. Her love for her foster parents - even until the day they died - gives me hope. It gives me hope for Cindy and me and it gives us both hope for Joe - the hope that somehow our love and our care of him no matter how long it lasts - is going to make a difference in his life. It has already made a tremendous difference in ours.

There's supposed to be a decision by October in Joe's case - he either goes back to mom or he stays with us more permanently. No matter what happens in the next three months my prayer is that we will always be connected to Joe and that we can be there for him in some meaningful way through all the ups and downs of his life giving him as much love and care and assurance and adoration as I possibly can. My next prayer is that we will be able to let him go when it is necessary to do so with faith and trust and hope that God and all the other people who love and care for him will be there even when we can't be. And somehow, that will be enough...

May it be so. Amen.

P.S. I'm going on vacation for two weeks. much needed and much desired. Who knows if I'll post during that time or not. Any prayers you are moved to offer for Cindy, Joe and me, his biological family and all the "workers" involved are welcome.

Unity in Christ

2009-07-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

This posting is my sermon from Sunday, July 19, 2009. The text we read was Ephesians 2:11-22. I focused mostly on verses 11-12. I've included these verses from Ephesians 2:11-12 for your reading convenience. "So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called "the uncircumcision" by those who are called "the circumcision" - a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands - remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."

The text we read this morning from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians reminded me of the well known saying – the more things change the more they stay the same. In the first two verses we read Paul is referring to one of the controversies in the early church – who gets to be part of us? Who should be welcomed in the house of God? Some believed only Jews who knew the God of Israel and who had been God’s people for thousands of years were eligible to be followers of Jesus. Others argued that anyone – Jew or Gentile, slave or free, woman or man was welcome in God’s house.

Over the past 2000 years much has changed but this basic question – who gets to belong in God’s house remains. We humans can’t seem to function in the world without creating insiders and outsiders, winners and losers, those who are right and those who are wrong. And, unfortunately, the church of Jesus Christ is not immune from this human condition. No matter how many times we read the stories of Jesus welcoming the outcast, eating with sinners and prostitutes, healing the sick, bringing the forgotten and the left out to the table we persist in dividing the body of Christ into those who think or believe or act like we do and those who don’t.
I confess that this is a sin I am quite familiar with both from being the one who is cast out and from being one who is perfectly capable of building my own walls of hostility. It is much easier to notice the ways in which I have been excluded as a woman, or as a lesbian and to fight for inclusion than it is to notice the ways in which I exclude and judge those who don’t believe or behave like I do. Our recent Middle School Mission trip brought home to me one of the significant ways in which I exclude and judge those who believe differently from me and provided me with an opportunity for spiritual growth that surprised and delighted me.

As many of you know Jeff and I accompanied 12 middle school youth from the Madison Christian Community on a mission trip with Next Step Ministries. We traveled to Hancock County Mississippi where far too many people are still recovering from the devastating effects of not only hurricane Katrina but also hurricanes Ike and Gustav. We knew going into the trip that the theology of Next Step Ministries was different from the theology of the MCC but decided that what they were offering in terms of a mission trip outweighed our concerns about theological differences.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the impact that the theology of the Next Step Ministries staff would have on me. I have worked long and hard in my life of faith to broaden and deepen my understanding of what happened on the cross and it was hard to be immersed through worship, music and prayer in an atonement theology that emphasized only a distant Father God who sent his son to die on the cross because of the depravity and hopelessness of humankind.
By Monday evening when we were going to bed I had worked myself into a frenzy and couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and went outside to sit under the stars hoping this would help me think about what I needed to do so that I could get through the week without being a really unpleasant person to be around.

I was very clear that I didn’t want my issues with this theology to color or influence the experiences of our young people. I wanted to let them have their experience without trying to poison it with my knee jerk reactions and old, unresolved issues. At the same time, I reminded myself that I am their pastor and my voice and Jeff’s voice and the theology of this community needed to be heard as the week progressed.

When I finally went back to bed I had a plan to talk to Jeff in the morning and at Tuesday night’s leader meeting to talk with the leaders about how we might adjust the program so that Jeff and I would have a voice in the spiritual and worship components of the trip. I was extremely nervous about how that conversation would progress but convinced that this was the only way I was going to be able to get through the week with my integrity and my spirit intact.

Fortunately, when I talked with Jeff the next morning he was in complete agreement with my sense of needing to have an open and honest conversation with the Next Step Ministries staff. When the leader meeting rolled around later that day I took a deep breath and simply said something to the effect of; “the theology that you are presenting in the music we’re singing, the worship services we’re participating in and in the lunchtime devotionals is not the theology that I preach in my church or that is generally affirmed by my community. Jeff and I are the pastors of these kids and we need to have a part in shaping some components of this trip for them. I respect your beliefs and hope that you respect mine. I believe we are worshiping the same God and talking about the same Jesus we’re just using different words and different concepts. So, what can be done to open a space for Jeff and me to pastor our kids while we’re on this trip?”

I really have to give the leaders from Next Step Ministries a lot of credit. They took a deep breath, asked some clarifying questions and then agreed to create space for Jeff and me in the week’s program. They didn’t completely back down and we had some interesting negotiations as the week progressed but we were able to have the most open and honest conversations I’ve ever had with someone whose theological views were so completely different from my own.

I also have to give our young people credit in this story because it was partly their open-hearted, open armed embrace of the leaders and their strong desire to serve on this trip that weighed on me and led me to find a way to open my own heart to embrace these people whose views were different from my own but whose desire to love God, to serve their neighbor and to follow Jesus was clearly lived in their lives with passion and conviction. I figured if our kids could see past the differences in belief and music, prayer and faith expression to the hearts of the people expressing those beliefs then I had better follow their lead and adjust my own vision.

Because I was willing to follow the lead of our young people and courageously speak my own truth but also work to find common ground with those who believe and express their faith differently from me and because of the openness of the Next Step Ministries staff members I had some wonderful faith experiences with our young people that I will remember for a long, long time.

A feature of Wednesday night’s worship service was an opportunity for all of us to wash one another’s feet. We broke up into our work crew groups and served one another as Jesus served the disciples in John’s gospel. We washed one another’s feet and we prayed for one another. I can’t even describe the feeling I had as our young people recognized one another’s gifts and contributions to the team and prayed for one another and as they prayed for me, their pastor. It was a special moment and I am really glad that I was able to enjoy it with an open heart and mind so that I could freely participate out of my own context and also express my heartfelt prayers for the Next Step Ministries staff members who were part of our team.

On Thursday night Kat, the worship leader, shared what she referred to as the gospel message – the message that Jesus died for our sins on the cross. The plan following this message was to have an altar call and encourage the students to commit their lives to Christ. This was a feature of the week’s worship that the Next Step Ministries staff, Jeff and I had worked on quite a bit over the week so that we were all comfortable with how it progressed. Following Kat’s message, she invited Jeff and I to join her in the front of the worship space to pray for anyone who wanted to come forward and either commit their life to Jesus or be prayed for for any other reason.

During the time that we were available to pray with and for one another, two of our kids came forward. One came to me and shared what was on his mind that night. Again, words fail me as I try to describe to you what a privilege it was to sit with this young person, to assure him that he is loved by God, that no matter how painful or difficult life’s journey may be I would be there, God was there, his parents and this community were there for him to hold him up, to accept him as he is now and in every moment and to hold him in the light of God’s love. These are the moments pastors live for – times when all the boundaries are stripped away and we are meeting another person heart to heart in the real stuff of faith. It was an incredible privilege to share this experience and again, I will remember it for a long, long time.

At the end of our mission trip week as we prepared to head for home I could honestly say that this mission trip experience had been not only a good experience of meeting and serving people in need but it had also been a significant faith experience for me and I believe also for our kids. I am so grateful that I did not choose to grin and bear it, to mark in my mind and heart all the transgressions of those whose faith expression is different from my own. I am so glad that I was able to see beyond the differences in theology and worship style to the hearts of those who were leading me and our kids through an important experience of Christian Discipleship. I can honestly say it was a pleasure to meet these people, to share this week with them, to engage in difficult but honest conversations, to meet them on the common ground that we could find rather than standing separate from them in the places of our differences.

Verses 11 and 12 from the second chapter of Ephesians say; “Bear in mind
that at one time the men among you who were Gentiles physically – called “the uncircumcised” by those who call themselves ‘the circumcised,” all because of a minor operation – had no part in Christ and were excluded from the community of Israel. You were strangers to the Covenant and its promise, you were with out hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:11-12)

These verse call attention to the fact that it was only a minor operation, the removal of the foreskin from a boy’s penis that technically separated the Jews from the Gentiles. That tiny difference meant that one group of people considered themselves in and the other group of people was most decidedly out. Following my recent mission trip experience I have a renewed passion for finding ways to see past the differences that cause me to separate the world into those who are in and those who are out. I have a renewed sense of the unity in Christ that God yearns for us to embrace and that has already been accomplished in Jesus. Jesus has already dissolved the walls of hostility that keep us apart. Jesus is our peace, the one who unites us as one body, and makes us all a dwelling place for God. He is calling us to embrace the unity he has provided so that we might all grow into a holy temple for God.

I wonder what dividing walls of hostility you hold in your hearts and minds? What dividing walls do we hide behind as a community? How is God calling us as individuals and as members of Christ’s body to seek greater unity, to reconcile ourselves with those from whom we are now divided so that we might live more fully into God’s love for all of God’s people? I pray you will consider these questions in the coming weeks and that God’s Spirit might lead us all to greater unity in Christ. Amen.

Mission Mississippi

2009-07-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Last week (July 5-11) my colleague, Jeff Wild, and I travelled with 12 middle school youth from our two congregations to Hancock County, Mississippi for a week long mission trip. We arranged this trip through a relatively new missions organization called Next Step Ministries. Next Step took care of all the details - work sites, worship, meals, sleeping quarters, leadership. All we had to do was get ourselves there and be open to the movement of the Spirit through this experience.

Our work for the week included helping to rebuild a fence for Mr. Brice Philips whom you can meet by following this link.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVRtH0JOpc&feature=related)

Brice is a local hero who used his low power radio station - WQRZ 105.3 to communicate necessary and life saving information during and after hurricane Katrina. He lost his home and most of his equipment in the storm but salvaged enough when he evacuated to the Emergency Operations Center to keep broadcasting throughout the storm. He is an amazing person - giving generously of his time and expertise to make sure people in Hancock County have the information they need during emergencies. He is also a crucial link on local issues of justice, plays a wide variety of music and is just an all around neat guy. It was a highlight of the week to meet him. The kids were all interviewed on the radio and hopefully we will receive copies of those interviews to share with our congregations.

Other work including digging trenches for the footings of a cement slab for a pavilion at Bayside Community Baptist Church. This pavilion is being built on the church's property but is intended to be used by community members for picnics, family reunions, dances etc. It was hard work in the 90 degree heat and humidity to dig in the hard, compacted soil but our youth attacked this work with gusto and we did everything we could to move this project to the next stage.

We also helped put new flooring in a woman's trailer, helped to put siding on a storage shed that had been built by other groups before ours, helped wash puppies at a local animal shelter (due to rain...) and built a lean-to for a little girl's pony.

I am really proud of our young people who were open minded, hard working, and faithful in their efforts. They also had a lot of fun swimming every night and giggling and laughing through most of their free time and most of the rest of the day, too.

Some faith highlights of the trip for me included the evening that we washed one another's feet in recognition that Jesus washed the disciples' feet and commanded that we serve one another in the same way. There were some very touching, Spirit-filled moments as we knelt washing feet and prayed for one another. I also really appreciated the opportunity for individual prayer that was offered after worship on another night. A couple of young people I know have had major life challenges came forward for prayer and I am so grateful for the opportunity to pray with them and to offer love and support for the difficulties they face in their lives.

The true test of the value and "success" of any trip with youth is whether or not they want to do it again and in the car on the way home the big question was asked - "Can we do this again next year?"

Thanks be to God for life changing, faith enhancing, relationship building trips like this one.

Business Meetings

2009-06-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

General Synod 27
Monday and Tuesday June 29 and 30, 2009
Time for Business

Monday morning began with a caucus of the Wisconsin Delegation. Various members of the delegation reported on the work of their committees and we heard from two voices who are opposed to the Single Governance Board that will come before the Synod.

I was on the committee that dealt with the resolution entitled “Calling for the Support of H.R. 676 – Single Payer National Health Care Reform to Advance Health Equity for All and to Eliminate Health Disparities." There was overwhelming support for this resolution and recognition that we are currently at a crucial point in our Nation’s history during which we might actually succeed in our efforts to provide health care for all Americans. Our committee adjusted the resolution slightly to include a set of values and to ask the any legislation that might ultimately come to a vote in the Senat would include those values. We finished our business on Sunday evening and so after the caucus time was over on Monday morning I was free until 3:00 in the afternoon.

Our first order of business for Monday night was Amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws of the UCC that would bring those documents into line with action of the General Synod four years ago to affirm alternate paths to ministry.

Alternate Paths to Ministry means that individuals might be ordained, licensed or commissioned for ministry in the UCC by following a variety of paths of study, education and preparation not only a four year college degree and Masters of Divinity. There was residual discussion as we addressed these Bylaws and Constitution changes about affirming our history of an educated clergy. Nevertheless, we affirmed these changes to our Constitution and By-Laws.

We also passed these resolutions: "Calling on President Barack Obama to Revisit and Re-negotiate a More Humane, Democratic, and Ecologically Sound Version of the North American Free Trade Agreement" and "A Call to Awareness and Action to End the Practice of Trafficking in Persons."

Other business included voting to confirm Linda Jaramillo as Minister of Justice and Witness Ministries; Stephen Stearner as Minister to Local Church Ministries and Geoffrey Black as General Minister and President and recognizing folks and organizations and churches that have received awared and recognition during Synod.

Monday evening’s business session ended with a beautiful evening prayer service led by a quartet of dancers who took us through the wonder of creation in scripture, movement
and song. This was an unexpected highlight of Synod that I almost missed because it was 9:15 p.m. and we had had a long, exhausting day. I’m so glad I didn’t walk out when business ended!

Tuesday morning featured another 6:30 a.m. Caucus gathering during which we received additional committee reports and honored the youth delegation from the Wisconsin Conference who have been participating in service projects, attending business sessions and committee meetings and representing the Wisconsin Conference with great maturity and enthusiasm.

The first order of business for this morning was the 9 different resolutions addressing the single governance proposal and process. The committee that had the monumental task of bringing a recommended action to the floor worked through what sounded like an incredible process that resulted in submitting a resolution titled “Toward Unified Governance For the National Setting Of The United Church of Christ.”

This resolution’s most significant shift was in changing the words “Single Governance” to the words “Unified Governance.” It also recommended that the Executive Council and the Covenanted Ministries Boards continue holding sacred conversations on race and also continue the process to propose a Unified Governance Proposal for General Synod 28 in 2011. These conversations would be separate from one another but could take place concurrently. The resolution encourages local churches, associations and conferences to discuss the concept of Unified Governance so that the Church is prepared to move on this matter at the next General Synod.

After the resolution above was presented to the floor an amendment was offered that was ultimately defeated. When the allotted time for this business was up the moderator noted that unless there was a motion to continue debate she would be forced to call the question at hand and force a vote on the resolution itself. No one moved to extend debate, the question was called and the resolution passed. This was when the fun really began as there was one young woman who was in line to offer a minority report who was not allowed to speak because the question had been called and the chair had moved on to the next order of business.

The chair of the next committee began his presentation when a small group of those opposed to the resolution gathered in the front of the room and began to sing and clap disrupting the business. The Moderator ruled them out of order but they continued until finally someone gave one of the women in the group an opportunity to speak.

We did finally move on with the agenda to affirm the following resolutions: “An Economic Justice Coveannt;” A Call to be Global Mission Churches in the United Church of Christ;” “A Call for Study of Our Church’s Involvement in the Eugenics Movement;” and “Calling for Comprehensive HIV Prevention in Church and Community.”

Ken Medema, who has been providing musical interludes throughout the various business sessions did a masterful job of singing the pain, tension and hope of the events surround the resolution on Unified Governance.

Tuesday's afternoon business session included some additional tensions around LGBT issues as they were raised in a resolution affirming Diversity/Multicultural Education. Members of the Biblical Witness Fellowship raised objection to the idea of including education about LGBT issues as part of diversity education in the schools. Even in the UCC the question of inclusiveness and equality for LGBT people is not a completely settled question.

A complete list of resolutions that were presented and acted upon by the General Synod can be found at www.ucc.org for those who are interested.

Tuesday concluded with a worship service including communion and a party with the Wisconsin Delegation.

I am honored to have been a part of the delegation from Wisconsin and to have had the opportunity to be here at this gathering of the national church. I have been reminded this week of the many strengths and some of the weaknesses of our denomination. It is good to see both sides but ultimately to affirm that we are an important and vital witness to the love and justice of Jesus Christ in the world.

It will be good to be home.

Blessings,
Tisha

Sunday at Synod

2009-06-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

General Synod 27

Sunday June 28, 2009

Today the nitty gritty business of General Synod begins. But first some gathered for Sacred Conversations on Race and others (like myself) went to worship in area congregations. I joined two other folks in attending Mars Hill the church of Rob Bell. I don't know a lot about Rob Bell but he's a young guy who started this church in Grand Rapids. He also produces videos for youth groups and adult discussion groups that explore various themes of faith. I've only seen one of the videos and I thought it was pretty good so I was interested in hearing him preach.

We drove up to the address of the church and followed the parking lot attendants to the parking lot of the church located in the back section of a mall. We went inside a humongous building and were ushered into the gathering space, which holds 3,500 people.

The music was fairly typical mega-church fare although the theology was a little more open-minded than what I've been exposed to in the past. It felt a little like a concert - performers on the stage, people singing along to their favorite songs. There wasn't a single moment where I felt like I was part of a community. But, I am a person who really likes and feels most comfortable in small groups.

The topic of the sermon was forgiveness. Rob Bell preached on one line of text - Jesus speaking from the cross in Luke; "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." I appreciated his insights about forgiveness - nothing new to me.

Then we went into communion - no liturgy, no prayer, no words just an invitation to come forward and serve yourself from the table with the little fake bread wafers and cups of juice. Some people served one another, some served themselves. This was my least favorite element of worship. I like the practice of serving one another, of being Christ with and for one another at the table.

Also during this time there were people who went up onto the platform to offer prayers at the cross. This was very touching and real. Clearly there were many people who had been deeply touched by what they had heard and who were really working on forgiveness.

Overall, a worthwhile journey into an unfamiliar church environment. It made me appreciate my own community in many ways. What we do is not as polished or as high tech but it is very real and incredibly genuine and for me that is enough, more than enough.

The afternoon was free time, which concluded with opening worship at 3:00 p.m. John Thomas preached and encouraged the entire UCC to be more bold, to take more risks, to dive into the pool of evangelism (there are no crocodiles in there!) and to be even bolder in our witness for social justice - to go beyond our fears of how our own lives will change if we actually succeeded on some of our visions. Because our lives would change and will change if and when we achieve greater justice for a greater number of people. Those of us in privileged positions have to be willing to let go of our privilege, our power and our luxurious lifestyle in order for justice to be real for more people. It's a scary but necessary thing for us to grapple with. In the end he assured us that the river of God's love, of salvation is flowing through it all assuring us of God's presence and God's care for all.

After a lovely dinner, I met with my committee, which was considering a resolution calling the UCC to take action in the next four months to encourage congress to pass comprehensive health care legislation that would provide health care for all Americans and eliminate the disparaties in healthcare, primarily for people of color. We had decent presentations from the authors of the resolution and I believe strengthened the resolution based on their input and our own deep concern for health care. We finished our business by 9:30 p.m. and so Monday morning is a free time for us!

After the committees adjourned I attended a 20/30 clergy gathering during which we honored and gave a gift to Rev. John Thomas for his faithful service and in particular for his support of this network of younger clergy.

It was another full day but also had more free time in it than I was imagining. I am looking forward to the business sessions on Monday and to starting to hear about some of the resolutions that various committees are working on.

As a reminder, there is live feed of much of what happens at General Synod on the UCC web page - http://www.ucc.org/.

Until the next post.

Tisha

River City Saturday

2009-06-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

General Synod 27 - Grand Rapids, MI
River City Saturday - June 27, 2009

River City Saturday began at 6:30 a.m. for the delegates from the Wisconsin Conference. We welcomed two people who worked on the Single Governance Structure proposal who gave us more information about the process from their perspective. I asked them to speak to the issues I’ve heard raised about concerns about the proposal from the Historically Underrepresented Groups.
The representatives from the process made it clear that the opposition to the Single Governance Proposal comes from some but not all of these groups and within the groups.

The picture that is coming together for me from what I’ve heard is one of an inter-family fight that has its roots in deep history and that has a lot to do with struggles over power and the lack of trust that has developed through difficult and painful experiences.

I have no doubt that the UCC has struggled with racism and that the people of color within this denomination have many real experiences of being left out of major decisions, not represented at the table or downright ignored, belittled or worse. We are human and we live in a racist society.
At the same time, I have seen this denomination make sincere and concerted efforts to work against the impacts of racism that belittle all of us.

So where does that leave us with this single governance proposal? It seems to me there are two different things we need to address. One is healing wounds from past hurts, finding ways of offering and accepting forgiveness and then building or re-building trust. The other is the reality before us of a denomination whose structure is unwieldy and eating up precious resources that are needed for us to move into the future and continue to do God’s work in the way only we can.

From what I’ve heard, we can’t afford to spend any more time debating structure. Now is the time to move forward and work out details as we go along. There will never be a perfect structure. There will never be a time when all people agree on one course of action and so we have to be bold and courageous and move ahead praying for God’s grace and guidance.

This matter will be referred to one of the committees to deal with the propositions that are before the Synod. It will be that committee’s task to deliberate and recommend a course of action to the entire body on Tuesday morning.

It is highly unlikely that I will be on that committee but all delegates will have an opportunity to speak to whatever the committee represents when the matter is brought to the floor. Please continue your prayers as we move into the more concentrated business portion of our time together.

The rest of the day on Saturday was a festival of lectures, music and dance performances and workshops.

The highlight for me was watching a DVD called “What Makes Me White” by Aimee Sands. This DVD is Aimee Sands’ exploration of her own formation as a white person, which she argues is as much a construct of culture and experience as blackness or any other racial identity. She tells the story of driving into the New York City from the suburbs and that when the car reached the part of the city where people of color lived the windows would go up and the doors would be locked. This experience communicated to her a feeling of fear and separation from people of color that harmed her and caused her to feel fearful and isolated.

She reflected on the fact that white people very rarely talk about race. It’s not something we have to think about because of our privileged position in American society. Our attitudes about race, our privilege is hurtful to us. They separate us from so much of the world and from so many people. They are also hurtful to our sisters and brothers of color.

Sands’ request of all the white people who watch her DVD to do the personal work of uncovering and transforming our racist assumptions and attitudes and then to do what we can to work toward greater equality for all people. She implored the white people in the room to become aware of when and where in our lives we are given the benefit of the doubt because of the color of our skin and then act to make changes within ourselves and within society at large. This was a powerful DVD and I hope it will be available for congregations to watch and discuss at some point.

Over the dinner hour I coordinated a dinner for clergy in their 20s and 30s to discuss the emerging church – what we know about it, what we wonder about it, how we’d like to incorporate some of its witness into the life and ministry of our own congregations and within the UCC as a whole. This was a stimulating, exciting, spirit-filled discussion. Our conversation and my growing awareness of the emerging church is giving me great and amazing hope for the future of the church. I can’t wait to learn more about this movement of renewal and re-imagination.

Saturday ended with a celebration of the ministry of John Thomas as the 6th General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. John has held this position for the last 10 years. Later this week the mantle of leadership will be passed to Rev. Geoffrey Black.

The celebration of John Thomas’ ministry highlighted a number of themes of his ministry and of our denomination. First, he was recognized for his consistent presence and witness within the national and global ecumenical community and praised for his commitment and dedication to ecumenism in all its various forms. Next, he was praised for his prophetic witness and strong commitment to justice, especially standing with Trinity, UCC when the controversy over comments of their former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The God is Still Speaking campaign was lifted up as an example of John’s but also the entire UCC’s Evangelical courage – the courage to step out boldly to proclaim who we are and to extand radical hospitality and an extravagant welcome to all people, no matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey.

In his own remarks about his years of ministry as the General Minister and President, John Thomas said that it has been his privilege to serve “A community of faith that takes God seriously enough not to take itself too seriously.”

As the celebration came to a close I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to serve in the UCC with such a fine leader and colleague. It was another full but inspiring and meaningful day and now I turn my sights to the intense schedule of the next three days during which the only breaks will be for meals from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. Prayers for me and all as we conduct the business of the church over the next three days are welcomed and encouraged.

Tisha

General Synod Opening Day

2009-06-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

General Synod 27

June 27, 2009

Opening Day

The theme of General Synod 27 is "Immerse Yourself. What you see here is the amazing creation of Alexandra Childs, a pastor at First Congregational Church of Alameda, CA. This display, which is amazing up close and personal used 4 tons of stone, 200 gallons of water (to fill the 8x8 foot immersion pool up on the stage) and 50 live plants.

This first official day of General Synod has been a true immersion in the joys and the challenges of what the next few days will be about.

Some of the joys: catching up with old friends and making new ones; cookies, cookies and more cookies (I had 6 today...); hearing from the General Minister and President Elect, Rev. Geoffrey Black; honoring the life and ministry of Rev. Joseph H. Evans, the third president of the UCC and its first African American President; the presentation of congregations that have joined the UCC since last General Synod and the introduction of the slogan "Vital Congregations Multiply"; worship led by the choirs and dance ministries of Trinity, UCC in Chicago and preaching by Rev. Otis Moss, Jr., their pastor.

The primary challenge of this General Synod centers the process of finding a way to structure our denomination that will support the ministry we are called to do without being too cumbersome and that will ensure that all of the diverse and varied voices of our wider church are represented at the table.

The original plan was to have a proposed new structure to present to this General Synod that the delegates would hopefully approve so that the national church could do the Constitution and By-laws work that would implement this new structure. The proposed structure is called "Single Governance" and involves moving from 4 covenanted ministries with 4 separate boards plus the Executive Council toward a single governing body that would plan for and represent all of the ministries and boards of the entire church.

From what I can tell, the process of moving from the current structure to the development of a proposed new structure was deeply flawed in some way - or at least it feels to some that it was deeply flawed. Concerns about the planning process that produced the Single Governance plan led one of the covenanted ministries to vote against the proposal at its Spring meeting thereby halting the entire process at the 11th hour.

We had our first opportunity today as delegates to get more information about this process and its breakdown and to discuss in principal whether or not we affirm a single governance model for the UCC.

From the session I attended it is clear that this process has caused great division, pain and fear among those who have been directly involved. The groups that seem particularly concerned about it are those groups in the UCC that are referred to as the Historically Underrepresented Groups or HUGS - groups like PAAM (Pacific and Asian American Ministries); COREM (Council of Racial and Ethnic Minorities); United Black Christians, and others. There are cries of the process being racist and pleas to scrap the entire process and start all over again.

Since I am new to this discussion and have very little information on which to weigh these issues it feels like we delegates are being brought into a family fight at the last minute without adequate information to weigh the pros and cons and make a reasonable and rational decision about what should happen.

On the one hand it makes a lot of "head" sense to restructure our denomination - we're in decline, we don't have a lot of money, the current structure is unwieldy (285 people serve on the various boards and committees of the national church! The new structure would have a single board of 85 people).

On the other hand it is clear that this process has caused a lot of pain. One woman from PAAM who was in our meeting was on the verge of tears as she pleaded for delegates to hear what she had to say about PAAM's concerns with the new structure and with the process that led to this new structure and their reasons for voting against the proposal.

It is hard to say where this discussion will lead and I'm actually not even sure yet what will ultimately come to the floor for a vote but I invite your prayers for us as we try to sort out all the passionate and competing voices and with grace, love, compassion and humility move through this process with one another.

One thing is for sure, these hurts go deep and are not just about this one thing but about the pain of racism, sexism, elitism, classism as it has been experienced in our church but also in the wider culture.

Tomorrow begins with breakfast at 6:30 a.m. Each Conference delegation gathers with itself to share a meal and receive further input on the Single Governance issue. After breakfast it's River City Saturday, an all day festival of speakers, workshops, performances and fun. I'm looking forward to it all and am still feeling incredibly blessed just to be here.

Until tomorrow,

Tisha

20/30 Clergy Network Gathering

2009-06-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

General Synod 27
June 25, 2009
20/30 Clergy Network Gathering

Day one of my General Synod Adventure: I was up at 4:00 this morning to make my 6:00 a.m. flight to Grand Rapids. I arrived at my hotel a little bit before 10:00 a.m. (eastern time), checked in and made my way to the 20/30 Clergy Network Gathering.

The 20/30 Clergy Network is a loosely organized, entirely volunteer run network of UCC clergy in their 20s and 30s. There were roughly 30 of us who gathered for worship, networking, fellowship and conversation.

In the morning we talked about what energizes us in ministry and what we’re trying to figure out. I didn’t get a chance to share with the group but I will say here that there are many things that energize me in ministry these days including the people I am privileged to know at the Madison Christian Community and Community of Hope. The Spirit is alive in our community of faith and she calls us to do amazing things with and for one another and with and for the world in which we live.

I’m also excited about spirit movements in me that are guiding me to continuously re-think what I’m doing in ministry and how I’m doing it. I feel a greater sense of openness in me that is being met in community to try new things, to reach beyond our comfort zones, to engage in authentic community as followers of Jesus. This is all incredibly exciting.

I’m trying to figure out what the church will look like in the future because it is becoming more and more clear to me that the church as we know it now is disappearing quickly. I wonder what will take its place and this wondering is also very exciting. I hope and pray that whatever takes its place will be closer to the ground, less hierarchical, less institutional and more communal, less bureaucratic and more relational, less focused on creating insiders and outsiders and more inclusive of all God's children.

Over lunch Rev. Geoffrey Black, who will be affirmed at this Synod as the next General Minister and President of the UCC, spoke to our group. He was with us for about an hour speaking about his collaborative style of leadership, the importance of moving toward the Single Governance Structure that is being considered at this Synod (more on this in a later post) and the value he places on younger clergy as the current and future leaders of the church. It was good to meet Rev. Black and good to hear some of his thoughts and ideas.

After lunch we broke into smaller groups to have some discussion about how we might be advocates for one another and for other younger clergy in the coming years. I joined the group that was talking about how we might advocate for one another with the Pension Board, which manages our pensions and also our health care plan. There are clearly a number of improvements we could advocate for in terms of our health coverage and many, many instances still where churches are not paying into the pension fund for their clergy or not providing health insurance.

The question this conversation raised for me was this: do I want to work on trying to “fix” a system and a structure for ministry and support of ministry that is out dated or do I want to spend my time and energy doing the ministry about which I am passionate, the ministry that feeds me and other people and that seems to be closer to what Jesus calls us to do. Is my role as a pastor in the UCC to prop up the institution or to do the will of God as faithfully as I am able? If I can’t get health insurance or a pension for doing the will of God, won’t I still do it? If I wasn’t “employed” as a pastor, wouldn’t I still be following the Spirit as a faithful Christian? I’m convinced the answer to those questions is a resounding YES! So then it becomes a question about the professionalization of ministry and the idea that maybe one thing that will be a characteristic of the church of the future is fewer clergy making a living off the church and more people authentically and faithfully engaged in the ministry of Jesus Christ. This is a vision for the future of the church I can get behind, even if it means that I eventually really do work myself out of a job.

I would love to hear any thoughts or comments readers of this post might have about any of the topics raised here – professionalization of ministry, the institution of the church, visions for the future of the church or any other things that strike your fancy.

It’s a privilege to be here at General Synod 27. I’m grateful for the opportunity. If you're interested in more detail about what's happening at this Synod you can get lots of information at http://www.ucc.org/synod/ where there will be live coverage of much of the business and other elements of the week online.

I’m signing off until tomorrow.

Blessings,
Tisha

Keep Swimming Keep Singing

2009-06-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Last week was a really difficult week in my personal life and in the lives of many in our community. On a personal note, my partner and I have been foster parents to a little boy who is now 4 1/2 years old. Even though he no longer lives with us his situation is far from settled and every once in a while the grief of not being able to have him with us and of watching him get shuffled from one less than ideal situation to another is too much to bear. I just have to cry and wail and be sad for a while. One of those times hit me last week.

Add to that, one of our members had a brain tumor removed a week ago on Monday. She's fine. She will be fine but the fear and uncertainty of such a diagnosis hit us all really hard. It was amazing to see our community of faith rally around her and her family with prayer and laying on of hands and meals and phone calls and visits and offers of whatever else might be needed.

Another family in the church were close friends with a family that was driving on vacation in Iowa when they were in a car accident that killed the two parents and sent all three children - 15, 13 and 10 - to the hospital. The family from our church went immediately to Iowa to provide what support they could and are this week attending the funerals of the parents.

Yesterday morning I saw my spiritual director for the first time in over a month. Here is the poem she shared at the beginning of our session.

Grief will come to you.
Grip and cling all you want,
It makes no difference.

Catastrophe? It's just waiting to happen.
Loss? You can be certain of it.

Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by a dark current.

All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing.

by Gregory Orr in "How Beautiful the Beloved"

My Spiritual Director had no way of knowing what had transpired in my life in the month since the last time we sat down together but she found this poem, or it found her and she read these words and spoke straight to my soul.

My cell phone rang today at about 12:45. The caller was a new friend, someone I don't know very well yet but a person with whom I hope to develop a long and wonderful friendship. She was calling from vacation in Portland and said "I don't know why but you've been on my mind so much lately and everytime I think of you I pause and pray. I don't know what's going on for you but I need to let you know that God knows, God loves you and God will make a way."

Thank you God, Holy Spirit, breath of life and wind of heaven for your presence in the grief, in the sorrow, in the fear, in the catastrophes, in the loss. Thank you for placing people and poems and phone calls and expressions of love and caring in our paths at the times we need them the most. Thank you for the lessons, the gratitude, the wisdom that comes in the darkness and the pain of life. Give us all the strength to keep swimming and the wisdom to keep singing.

Amen.

While You Are Alive

2009-06-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Jean Feraca, host of "Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders" was one of the featured speakers at last weekend's Wisconsin Conference, UCC Annual Meeting. The main topic of her talk was Evolution Theology. She spent more than an hour telling stories, reading poetry, sharing pictures and talking about her awakeneing to Evolution Theology - the belief that the universe is evolved over time and that God is absolutely involved and present in that evolution. No conflict in Jean Feraca's mind or in mine between science and religion.

One of the poem's Jean Feraca shared is copied below. It is a poem by Kabir an Indian Poet, mystic and philosopher who lived from 1440-1518.

19
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think … and think … while you are alive.

What you call "salvation"
belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstastic
just because the body is rotten -that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
You will simply end up with an apartment in the city of Death.
If you make love with the divine now,
in the next life
You will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth,
find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

With this poem, Jean Feraca was making the point that Christianity's old way of understanding life on earth is out-dated and no longer relevant. Instead of seeing our life on earth as the torture we must endure to reach the final goal of heaven and salvation, Feraca suggested with this poem and in her talk that this life is meant to be enjoyed, reveled in, lived to the fullest.

When we live full lives, when we acknowledge and revel in the beauty, complexity, and mystery of creation we honor God and we bless God - we make love to/with God. God created us so that God could love us and we could love God and one another and all of creation. God created this phenomenal place we call earth and the mind blowing galaxies and universes that expand out in every direction for pleasure and delight - God's and our own. All that is belongs to God and is created in part to sing praises to God. What better way to do that than to live fully to the best of our ability while we are alive trusting that when the amazing journey that is our life on this earth has come to an end we will rest in the hand of our creator forevermore.

A woman in my congregation had a seizure on Friday night. Once she was in the hospital doctors discovered a brain tumor. On Monday morning she had this brain tumor removed. It was benign, the surgeons were able to remove the whole thing and she went home on Thursday afternoon. She is going to be fine. It's a modern-day miracle in my opinion.

I can't begin to imagine what this experience has been like for her, her husband and children and extended family but as their pastor I will be asking them to talk about it as time goes on. Personally, walking with this family through this experience has affirmed the transitory nature of this life and the need for me and for all of us to do our best each and every day to live in gratitude, in love, in peace and most of all to give thanks to the Creator for the amazing gift of each new sunrise.

This life is not meant to be endured. It is meant to be celebrated, lived fully and well to the glory of God. What do I need to do, what do you need to do, to embrace this idea to its fullest and to live your life in a way that glorifies and gives praise to God?

Kin to Creation

2009-06-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Mandala created by Daniel Krumenauer

One Spring when I was in seminary my women’s group decided to take a retreat after classes were done for the semester. A member of our group, Blythe, grew up attending a UCC camp in the Sierra Nevadas and she arranged for us to use the campground for a long weekend just before the summer camping season was to begin.

The site was absolutely gorgeous and mostly undeveloped – huge trees, bright blue sky, a mountain stream in the woods, tents for the campers filled with cots, a rustic outdoor chapel and no one around for miles but us. During the day it was quite warm – in the 80s at night it got really cold - almost near freezing, or at least that's how cold it seemed as I shivered in my sleeping bag, wearing all my clothes with the hood of the sleeping bag drawn as tight as possible around my head and face.

The second day we were there we took a walk in the woods along the stream. None of us had thought to bring bathing suits but Blythe assured us we were alone and so we took the risk, stripped naked and submersed ourselves in the rushing, mountain stream. It was amazing laying in that stream with the water moving past, looking up at the clear blue sky, the trees swaying in the breeze, birds and insects all around. We laid there in the water for a while, silent and in awe of the amazing creation all around us and of our tiny part in this amazing web of life.

This memory came back to me this past weekend when I was at the Annual Meeting of the Wisconsin Conference, United Church of Christ. The theme of the meeting was “Creation and the Environment” with the title of “Living Gracefully.”

On Friday afternoon we heard a lecture from Rev. Dr. Karl Kuhn, Associate Professor of Religion at Lakeland College. The main argument of his lecture was that humanity is meant to live in a kinship relationship with all of creation and to recognize what we share in common with the rest of creation. Our tendency is to notice our differences, to see how we are set apart from the rest of the world but God, who is the source of all that is created us to be family with and for one another – humans and animals, insects and plants, rocks, waters, land, air and sky. Karl argued that what we share with creation is much more important and compelling than what separates us from creation. He urged us to revel in our common origin – the very stuff of the earth; our common calling – to nurture abundant life and live in right relationship with God, one another and all of creation; and our common need for redemption and transformation.

There are two women in my congregation who bought a blue bird house for their yard this spring. Before K was even done installing the birdhouse, a mother blue bird was eyeing it and took occupancy as soon as K was out of the yard. Last week, two baby blue birds hatched and K and H were in church on Sunday, the proud grandmothers of two baby bluebirds. It seemed so right as I listened to them talk that they should be parenting not only their son but also these baby bluebirds and the trees, flowers, plants and shrubs with which they are populating their lawn.

We are part of the creation – the surge of life is all around us. Together as one family of God we live and breathe, grow, wither, and die and are reborn every moment by the grace and wisdom of God. We are connected with all of creation and all of creation is connected with us. We accompany one another along the journey of life and death providing sustenance and care, beauty and joy. We rely on one another and on God, who is the source of all, to be in right relationship, to maintain the delicate web of interconnected life, death and new life.

The Psalmists certainly understood this relationship of interconnection and interdependence, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). For the sake of our planet, this amazing home we share I pray we humans will re-learn what we once knew – we are one with creation, one with one another, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers all together in a delicate, intricate, amazing web of life.

Thanks be to God for this amazing gift.

Our Children, Our Responsibility

2009-06-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Culturally Relevant Education is an approach to teaching that utilizes the culture and history of the students when teaching standard curriculum. Implementing Culturally Relevant Education for African American students in the Madison Metropolitan School District is one of the issues Dane County United, a broad-based organizing effort in Dane County is organizing around.

The premise behind Culturally Relevant Education is the researched and proven fact that students are more engaged in education when they see themselves, their culture and their language reflected in their classrooms and the curriculum. Culturally Relevant Education can be used in any classroom by any teacher to teach any subject when the teacher is trained and when he/she is open to embracing and becoming familiar with the culture he/she is trying to lift up in the classroom.

Currently, Wisconsin is at the bottom of the list when it comes to the academic achievement of African American students – we are 50 out of 50! The evidence of African American young people being disengaged from education is glaring and obvious in the high drop out rate, the high rate of suspensions, expulsions and incarceration of young people and the growing violence was can see in the African American communities in Wisconsin. I have to believe that if young African American students believed that education was relevant to them, if they could see themselves, their ancestors, their culture and history lifted up and valued within the classroom, they would have more tools to make different choices for themselves. At the same time, white folks have to commit ourselves to unlearning our racism and work to stop seeing the culture and history of African Americans as deficient or faulty primarily because it is different from ours. Our particular histories and cultural expressions are different from one another but that doesn’t mean one is inherently better or worse than the other.

When I heard the news of the recent murder of a 17 year old African-American student from Memorial High School by three other teenage boys from that same school I couldn’t help but wonder if this approach to education might have made a difference for him and for the other boys who are now locked up rather than in the classroom. Certainly, there is no one approach or program or effort that will solve all the problems but when you’ve sunk so low, there must be an earnest attempt to do anything possible to gain more solid footing.

I also couldn’t help but think about the three boys in Milton who overdosed on Heroin two weeks ago. Fortunately, they survived and have an opportunity to make different choices in the future but this other young man wasn’t so lucky and I feel really sad for him, his family and for our community for that senseless violence and loss.

This violence, this death, these acts of desperation are something we all must care about and take responsibility for in some way. Just because it didn’t happen to me or in my neighborhood doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect me and doesn’t mean I don’t have a role to play in healing the brokenness that exists.

Jesus never turned away from brokenness. Jesus never passed judgment on those who were different, made them feel less than or unworthy. Jesus reached beyond the barriers that divide people from one another. Jesus saw past the external differences to the humanity we all share and he touched that humanity with his love, compassion and healing.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to do the same in our own lives, in our own communities, in our own neighborhoods. We must reach beyond the things that divide us from one another and build relationships of love and mutual respect. Until we do, our children will continue to die in the streets, to turn to drugs or sex or alcohol or gang violence. And we all will suffer as the wisdom and intelligence, beauty and creativity of our young people withers and dies right before our very eyes.

God I pray for eyes to see ways in which I maintain barriers, judge differences as deficient, refuse to engage because it’s not my problem. Guide me and all of us to do what we can to bridge the gaps and touch the humanity in all your children with the love, compassion and healing of Christ. Amen.

Hopeful Expectancy

2009-06-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

I first heard of The Shack byWm. Paul Young a few months ago when a colleague mentioned having read it. She told the basic story of the book - Mack's young daughter is brutally murdered and after a couple of years of grieving he is invited by God to return to the scene of the crime - the shack - where the murder took place. During a weekend at the shack the man meets God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and begins a path to healing and new life.

I admit I was skeptical of the story and of the theology that might be presented by this "religious" novel. Then the Adult Education committee at church hosted two Sunday morning discussion sessions in April and invited anyone interested in the book to attend whether you'd read it or not.

In those conversations, folks I greatly respect shared passages from the book that had touched them deeply and opened their eyes to God in a new way. "O.k.", I said to myself, "If that person, and that person and others whom I respect, liked it then I'd better at least read it before I write it off." And so I bought myself a copy and read it.

I didn't love the book but I didn't hate it either. I can't say it drastically changed my perspective on God or introduced me to some element of faith or theology that was new or challenging to me but it did help me expand some of my own thinking beyond where I had gone so far. Just like most things, it was a mixed bag but much more enjoyable to read than I thought it would be when I first heard about it.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was the author's attempt to present God as loving, non-judgmental, hopeful and expectant. I particularly appreciated the following exchange between Mack and God where God explains the difference between expectations and expectancy and affirms that God holds no expectations of us but rather lives in hopeful expectancy of being in loving relationship with us.

"Papa now spoke up. "Honey, I've never placed an expectation on you or anyone else. The idea behind expectations requires that someone does not know the future or outcome and is trying to control behavior to get the desired result. Humans try to control behavior largely through expectations. I know you and everything about you. Why would I have an expectation other than what I already know? That would be foolish. And beyond that, because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me."

"What? You've never been disappointed in me?" Mack was trying to digest this.

"Never!" Papa stated emphatically. "What I do have is a constant and living expectancy in our relationship, ..." (P. 208, The Shack by Wm. Paul Young)

In this exchange, God offers Mack a new way of looking at his own relationship with God as a relationship of expectancy instead of a relationship of expectation. God is expectant and hopeful that we will reach out to her and engage in relationship but God does not have expectations of us that are impossible for us to achieve.

I love this idea of God living in hopeful expectancy of having a loving and meaningful relationship with her creation. It makes me think of something else I read recently - that God created the world and human beings just so God could love us and adore us and so that we could be in loving relationship with God and one another. What a drastic change from the thunder bolt hurling, flood causing, war mongering, unsatisfied and even disappointed God that seems to overpower any other images of who God is or could be.

When I read the exchange above, I remembered telling a counselor once that my image of God was of a stern parent, arms folded, foot tapping, head shaking, saying "tsk, tsk, tsk, I'm so disappointed in you." Praise be to God that image is no longer the one that comes first to mind when I pray but I must admit it's still there driving my desire to do the right thing, never disappoint others, always be on top of whatever I'm doing. It's the idea that no matter what I do it's never going to please a God determined to see only my shortcomings.

What a breath of fresh air it was to read this brief exchange in The Shack and to have another image to add to the ones I've developed for myself - the image of a God who loves me no matter what and who doesn't have expectations that I can never meet but who lives in hopeful expectancy that I will turn to her/him in love, in honesty, and in truth and in the hope that this love and expectancy would characterize all of my relationships - even my relationship with myself.

What images of God are most meaningful to you? What images of God do you hope to retire? How might the idea of God existing in expectancy of being in relationship with us in love, intimacy and adoration impact your image of God and your sense of yourself in relationship with God?

Can't wait to read your thoughts.

Tisha

Yearning for the words of Love

2009-06-08T09:16:00.001-07:00

Sunday's edition of the Wisconsin State Journal had this headline on the front page; "Near-tragedy with heroin shakes Milton." The near-tragedy referred to was the heroin overdose of three eighth-grade boys who took the heroin from the mother of one of the boys. When they started to get sick, one of the boys knew to go get help from a known heroin addict in town who administered a drug used to counter the effects of a heroin overdose and saved one of the boys' lives. Milton is a small town of 5,670 people near Madison.

This story really touched me and so I offered a prayer for these boys in worship on Sunday. I prayed for the void that is in them, the yearning for happiness, or escape, or meaning or connection or love that they are filling by experimenting with drugs. I prayed for the messages they have received from others, from society and that they give to themselves that tell them their lives aren't worth much, that they're not o.k. just as they are, that happiness can be found in artificial highs, that it's cool to get high, to use drugs or alcohol.

And then I prayed for all of us. We all have empty places in our lives, we all feel a void somewhere at some point, we all yearn for meaning in our lives, for happiness and if we don't know of positive, life-giving ways to fill that void or meet that yearning we will find something whether it's drugs, alchohol, food, sex, work or even religion to stop the pain if only for a little while.

We also all have those voices in our heads that tell us we're not enough, we're too fat, too tall, too smart, too dumb, we're too loud, too quiet, we can't do this or that, the list goes on and it seems those voices of negativity and self-limiting are so much louder and so much easier to believe than the voices of love, caring and adoration. These voices, like the feelings of emptiness, lead us to self-destructive behaviors and habits that more often than not disconnect us from community, family and friends, and from ourselves.

In light of the many societal messages that lead to self-destructive, pleasure seeking, disconnecting behaviors and in the face of so many children with disconnected, checked-out parents it seems to me the community of faith and all who call themselves disciples of Christ has a role to play. Our role is to open the doors of acceptance and hospitality wide open, to speak words of love and engage in acts of loving service that communicate to our children, our world, ourselves the deep and abiding love God has for us, the wide and embracing forgiveness God offers no matter what and the yearning of God to connect with God's children.

I don't know if a loving word or act, a caring presence whether from a neighbor, a teacher, a relative, or a disciple of Jesus Christ, would make a difference for the three boys who overdosed on heroin. But I do know it made a difference for me. Even when I persisted in self-destructive behaviors I knew there were people out there who loved me. I knew God was out there hoping and yearning for me to choose life over death, to choose to accept God's love and the love of others over the behaviors I was engaged in that only contributed to feelings of shame and self loathing.

And so I pray again for those three boys in Milton and I pray again for myself and for everyone who feels that void and finds it easier to listen to the voices of self-loathing than the voices of love. And I pray for those who've never heard a voice of love and acceptance, adoration and caring and who can't believe, even if they have that this voice was speaking to them. And I offer to all of God's sons and daughters the words God spoke to God's beloved son on the day he was baptized by John in the River Jordan "You are my son, the beloved. In you I am well pleased." May we and all have the ears to hear.

Amen.

House Church

2009-06-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

About six weeks ago now an early childhood memory implanted itself in my brain and heart and has settled in as a constant companion. I was at a UCC 20/30 clergy gathering called "Reimagining Church." Our guest speaker was Doug Pagitt, a leader in the emergent church. The purpose of this event was to gather UCC clergy in their 20s and 30s to think and worship and pray about the present and the future of the church and our denomination, the United Church of Christ. During that event as Doug described worship and community life at his church in Minneapolis - Solomon's Porch I remembered my parent's participation in a house church when I was a little girl.

I'm a little fuzzy on the dates - must have been when I was 5 or 6 years old until I was maybe 7 or 8. The house church was started by the pastor of our congregation who gathered a group of 8 adults together on a regular basis for prayer, discussion, food and fellowship and support in life and faith. I was the only child in the group and I remember really loving this house church thing. I loved the attention. I loved having these adults in my home and visiting their homes. I loved crawling around on the floor under the dining room table and falling asleep on the pile of coats in various people's bedrooms. This was a time of feeling completely loved, accepted, cared for, and nurtured. These memories have clearly formed my sense of what church is and how church should feel and what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

I have always preferred small congregations over larger ones. I have always sought small, intimate groups of friends with whom I could share the fullness of my life trusting that no matter what I would be lifted up, cared for, accepted, nurtured and encouraged along the journey. I have always been willing to go deeper in group conversation - to reveal my fears or questions, to tell the stories of my short comings, to share the joys of my accomplishments - because I inherently trust that what I share will be honored and valued and might also be useful or meaningful to someone else in the group. I have always loved tossing around theories and thoughts and ideas about the Bible in conversation without having to find the answers.

This is the life of faith I try to practice day to day in my personal relationships and within the life of Community of Hope and the Madison Christian Community. Even still, I always yearn for more - more intimacy, more small, caring conversations, more study and discussion and challenge to live the life of faith with integrity, creativity and a sense of humor.

What do you yearn for in the life of faith? Where did your sense of what it means to be a follower of Jesus first begin to take shape? How can you more fully engage your friends, other church members (if you're in a church), your neighbors, co-workers or people you don't yet know in a meaningful, challenging, insightful and supportive exchange of what really matters in life and how that impacts who we are as Christ's disciples?

Blesings on the journey!

Tisha

Switching Gears

2009-06-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

I originally entered the blogosphere with the sole intention of providing friends, family members and members of my congregation with my thoughts and reflections on my February, 2009 trip to Haiti. What I discovered in the process of writing the few posts I managed before Lent and Easter took my breath away, was that I liked sharing those thoughts and reflections with others and longed to connect with more people on broader topics than just my trip to Haiti.

Today, I begin a new chapter in the life of this blog and shift my focus away from Haiti and on to something else - thoughts and reflections on life and faith. My hope is that these thoughts and reflections might spark some conversation among those who read them and provide food for the journey for all of us.

Another motivator for diving back into the blogosphere is that a few folks within our congregation - Community of Hope - have been talking about how to use current technologies to reach out beyond ourselves to a wider segment of our community. Our hope is to share a faithful message of God's love for all people no matter what, which is the Good News we preach and share within our church every Sunday, with those who long to hear of this love. We believe we have a perspective on life and faith that is needed in the world today. Our faith perspective can best be described in this phrase used often by one of our members - the Journey Inward and the Journey Outward.

When we gather as a congregation in worship and prayer we travel the Inward Journey. We seek guidance from scripture, from one another, in prayer and discernment and conversation to nurture our relationship with God and our lives as disciples of Christ. Along the Inward Journey you might find us walking the labyrinth, participating in a drumming circle or drumming in worship, singing and playing instruments, meeting in prayer groups and for fellowship over breakfast, sharing our faith lives with our youth by being a confirmation mentor and forming spiritual friendships with one another and much much more. The Inward Journey nurtures our souls, helps us grow in love for one another and in love with God.

The sustenance we gain as we journey inward and the ways in which we come to know God's dream for us and for our world propel us onto the Outward Journey. We draw upon the strength we know in God and in community with one another to go out into the world in our work lives, our volunteer efforts, our political activities, our neighborhods, the wider community and the world to serve our sisters and brothers. Along the Ourward Journey you might find us serving meals at a homeless shelter, traveling to Haiti to build relationships with our partners there, working to raise money for community centers or community organizing efforts or organizations that provide support to farm families, prisoners and others in need in our community. You might also find us, praying for one another and the world, listening for the Spirit's call on our lives, raising our children to be engaged, caring, faithful people and trying every day in all that we do and in all that we are to be the kind of people we believe God calls us and desires for us to be.

As one member of this active and engaged, faithful and loving community of faith who happens to be the pastor, I look forward to using this space to comment on both the Inward Journey and the Outward Journey as I see it manifesting in my life and in the lives of the folks within Community of Hope. I look forward to journeying with you and welcome all comments, questions, challenges and insights.

Blessings be upon us all,

Tisha

Trauma not transformed is transmitted

2009-04-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I sat down to post. I've been completely consumed by preparations for Holy Week and Easter. There were a couple of weeks there when I wasn't able to think beyond the next task that had to be attended to. It feels good to be re-entering this space with some thoughts and reflections.

Tonight I want to write a little bit about one of our speakers, Louis Henri Mars, who came to speak with our group about some of the work he is doing to bring healing and transformation to the Haitian people. Louis Henri grew up as the son of a diplomat. The family lived all over the world. His father was the first Haitian psychiatrist to ever practice in Haiti. Louis Henri could live anywhere. He is a successful businessman, one of the wealthy elite. But he chooses to stay in Haiti because he believes that his presence in Haiti and his work to forge connections between the rich and the poor in Haiti can make a difference.

We talked to Louis Henri for close to two hours. For that entire time I felt incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to meet this man and hear a little bit about his vision for Haiti and his sense of what needs to happen in order for Haiti to heal.

He started off by taking us back all the way to the late 18th century when, in 1791 the roughly 500,000 slaves in Haiti began their revolt against the 20,000 to 30,000 French Colonial rulers holding them captive. By 1804 the slaves gained independence but slavery was still going strong in the rest of the world. Haiti was isolated by other nations because its successful slave revolt threatened the other nations still benefitting from slavery.

The new rulers of Haiti only knew the French Colonial style of governance and so this is the style of government that they reproduced. This style of government has now been functionining in Haiti for more than 200 years passed on from one generation of leaders to the next. In addition to transmitting colonialism from one generation to the next the trauma, brutality and violence of slavery have also been transmitted from one generation to the next through the government, in the educational system, and within families - from parents to children. Louis Henri said "trauma not transformed is transmitted." This is the root of the problems in Haiti - slavery, colonial rule and the ongoing process of transmitting the trauma of this history from one generation to the next.

What is needed to stop this cycle? The transformation of the minds and hearts of the people of Haiti - the ruling class and the poor alike. Development in terms of health care, infrastructure, employment, electricity, food etc. may address the symptoms of Haiti's ills but the root causes of its challenges come from moral, spiritual, ethical and relational issues that go much deeper and stretch all the way back to slavery and colonialism.

How can this transformation possibly take place? Louis Henri believes that this transformation is possible by building small communities at all levels in which people tell their stories to one another, learn to see one another as sisters and brothers, especially across lines of class. His sense is that the biggest issue that the poor have with the rich is the feeling that they've been abandoned, that they are not seen by the people in power. The money that comes in to the country is not used to meet their needs for clean water, access to health care and education. The rich keep most of it for themselves, pad their personal banking accounts, ensure their own comfort and security but leave the vast majority of the population to fend for themselves in a country with 70% unemployment. In order to change this dynamic, these two groups of people need to work together as a team, in community with one another. There are huge divides between the rich and the poor and those divides need to be bridged.

A few years ago Louis Henri received a call from God. This call has led him to work full time on the vision he has of forming communities of people from both the elite and poor classes to share stories, build relationships, heal the divides, the trauma inflicted upon them all from generations of trauma not transformed but transmitted from one generation to the next. One story he shared of this work came from a particular neighborhood in which he was able to form a group made up of businessmen, gang leaders and community members. This group began to meet and get to know one another and talk about ways they might work together - see one another as sisters and brothers all relying on the well being of the entire community. His work in this area was confirmed the hurricanes. When other communities surrounding this one were wracked with looting and violence, this community was peaceful. None of the businesses were looted, none of the members of this community were beaten or taken advantage of. The gang members worked with the community and business leaders to protect their neighborhood. This was an incredible success at a time when violence and looting were common and widespread.

Other work that Louis Henri has done to transform the hearts and minds of the rich and the poor has been to find business people that are colleagues and friends of his who would contribute to developing a a micro-credit program to benefit aspiring business women in Cite Soleil. The business people put up the money for women from Cite Soleil to apply for loans to start their own micro-businesses. The idea is that in addition to the money the women receive help with creating business plans, budgeting, marketing etc. from the business people who put up the money.

In this work, Louis Henri finds great hope. He believes that working to touch the root causes of Haiti's corruption and poverty is the only thing that will truly bring Haiti out of the difficult situation it is currently in and has been in for decades. He believes that only in building community, creating a stronger sense of interdependence between the rich and poor, transforming the trauma of slavery, corruption, greed, scarcity mentality will Haiti's past be healed and her true potential for the future unleashed.

Throughout this entire conversation, I felt incredibly awed by the vision, the passion, the hopefulness, the commitment of this one man and by the small but incredible things he is doing with great love for his country and his people. In this one person and the people like him that are doing similar work I saw great hope. And for his life and for the lives of all who work with him, who are touched by his vision, whose own hearts and minds and lives are transformed and healed I give great thanks.

Hungry Eyes

2009-03-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

The third full day we were in Haiti I went with some other members of the group to an orphanage run by the Missionary Sisters of Charity (Mother Theresa's order). The day before when I walked in the door for just a quick visit I was overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells and just couldn't stay. It is more difficult for me to see children suffering than to sit by the bedside of a person who is dying and so I went on to the Home for the Destitute and Dying.

But on this day I was prepared mentally and emotionally. As we arrived at the orphanage there were parents with small children waiting outside the gate. All of the children appeared to be very sick. We learned that the orphanage has a simple medical clinic and that families bring sick children there and when the children are better, they go back home with their parents or other relatives. The first room was the place where the sickest babies and toddlers were staying in rows of cribs. We had to walk through this room where many parents and family members were sitting with their children, in order to get to the rest of the rooms where children live in row after row of cribs in three large rooms.

Family members who have brought their children to be healed and returned to health and will take them home are allowed to visit from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., the time when the children are being fed. They feed and hold their children for this hour on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The rest of the time the children are cared for by the nuns and volunteers like those of us from our group. Of course, there were also children in the orphanage who did not have family members coming to visit them.

From the moment we walked in the door, a little after 9:00 a.m. there were children all around us, grabbing for our hands, reaching up to be held or picked up, some smiling and playful others clearly ill or very sad. For a little while I sat on the floor while a few small children played around me, climbed on me and on one another, chased little beads across the floor, played with old bottle caps or anything else they could find to play with.

At 10:00 a.m. when the parents had to leave the place erupted with cries and screams as the children who were being held by parents or other family members were placed back in their cribs or handed off to other volunteers. I got up to see if I could provide some comfort and a mother walked up to me and handed me her daughter, led me to a rocking chair and invited me to sit and rock her baby. I felt honored, told her thank you and sat down. Another child climbed onto my lap and we sat like that for a while.

When those children were restless and ready to go play, I got up and went into another room. There was a little girl in the back corner whimpering quietly to herself. She was very thin and obviously malnourished. Her hair had that orange tint of protein deficiency, her belly was round and distended and she was burning up with a fever. I picked her up and she wrapped her little arms around my neck and held on for dear life. I sat down on a bench in that room to hold and rock her and soon had a second child on my lap. I sat with this little girl until it was time to feed the children their lunch - maybe 30 to 40 minutes. The whole time she was awake, whimpering, burning up with fever. The nun gave me a bowl of food to feed to her which is when I noticed her front teeth were rotten. I tried to feed her but she was clearly not interested in food. Rather than forcing it, the nun told me to put her down and help feed the other children in the room.

In the next row of cribs there was a little boy, also extremely malnourished. The tag on his leg said he was 12 months old but his body was no bigger than a newborn, although his head was huge and the brown eyes that stared at me with such hope and trust were as big as saucers. I don't know how this child was still alive. The nun gave me a hearty helping of rice and beans and I began feeding this little boy. He ate with great vigor, seeming to enjoy every bite and before long had that entire bowl of food eaten. I don't know how that tiny little body could process such a large helping of food but he got it all down and probably would have taken more if I could have given it to him.

Shortly after feeding the children, it was time for us to leave. I walked out of the orphanage knowing I would never forget these children - children who are on the very bottom of the heap, born to families that can't care for them no matter how badly they want to. I know I will never forget the eyes of the little boy and the little girl who were both so malnourished. I wonder what their future will bring even if they survive and are nourished back to health. There are far too many children like these children in the world - forgotten, being born and dying in extreme poverty.

I am grateful for this experience and I pray I will remember it as I do whatever I can here in the United States to nurture and love and care for the children in my life. I am grateful for the opportunity to sponsor a child through the SPARE program of our church and to make sure that at least that one child in Haiti will have access to an education and some food each day. It's a little thing I can do with great love. I pray that somehow, it's enough.

The Gospel In Haiti

2009-03-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

“One day, while he was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were witting near by… and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he said, Friend, your sins are forgiven you. …he said to the one who was paralyzed – “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.” Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God.” (Luke 5:17-25)

I have always loved this story from Luke’s gospel. I actually love all of the stories of Jesus healing people – restoring those who were marginalized to community, making it possible for those who have been left behind to claim their rightful place in the realm of God. To me, this is truly good news and the kind of good news we need in today’s hurting and wounded world. Our world is filled with all kinds of sophisticated ways to separate people from one another and make sure that there are plenty of outsiders. We need these stories of healing and restoration to remind us that the barriers are of our own making and not from God and to call us to a new and different way of being in the world.

What I love about this particular story is the dedication and persistence of the paralyzed person’s friends. They did not give up. They knew that Jesus could help their friend and they stopped at nothing to make sure that Jesus saw their friend and was compelled to heal him.

I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with Haiti. Well, in Haiti, I witnessed this very story from Luke’s gospel in a powerful experience friendship, community, restoration and healing.

First, some background.

Guy Morales grew up in Cite Soleil, a shanty town built on a garbage dump outside of Port au Prince. I don’t know his whole story but somehow he managed to get an education and actually lived in the United States for a while. But at one point he realized he needed to return to Haiti and since then he has worked tirelessly, from what I can tell, to try and be a positive influence in his country, to use his education and experience to help others.

Guy is the man to the far left with some SPARE students

Guy finds the students for members of our church and others to sponsor and provides mentoring and support to them. Since he speaks English, he also is the link between the students of the program and their American sponsors and translates the letters they write to one another each month.

When Bryan, one of the leaders of our trip, was given $10,000 by an anonymous donor in the wake of the most recent hurricanes that devastated Haiti, he contacted Guy to find out what Guy thought they could do with the money. Guy had an idea based on an experience of his family when he was growing up. His mother and other families in Cite Soleil had a cooperative. They each contributed a small amount of money to the cooperative each month so that one family would have a lump sum payment to pay larger bills or do repairs on their house. Each family received the lump sum on a rotating basis and contributed the same small amount to benefit other families in the other months.

Bryan and Guy decided that they would distribute this $10,000 in a similar way and Guy set about finding families in Cite Soleil that might benefit the most from having a little extra money each month and those that would be likely to work together in a cooperative way. I believe he identified 30 families. Each family receives a payment of $20 a month to use in any way they could to support their families. Some of the families have joined a cooperative and contribute a small amount of that $20 each month so that one of the other families can have a larger amount.

One of the days we were in Haiti our group went with Guy to meet some of these families and to hear from them about their lives. We met them in the upper room of a small health clinic in Cite Soleil. There were men and women of all ages; a young woman who was very pregnant, women with children, some with businesses, and a few elderly men and women without families to help care for them and with varying disabilities. Each person introduced him/herself to us and some spoke briefly about their lives, their families and what it meant to them to have this small additional amount of money each month – food for their children, medical care or medicines, a little something to help others with even greater needs than their own.

An elderly man who’d had a stroke and was paralyzed on one side of his body spoke of how hard it was for him to get through each day, especially if he dropped his cane and there was no one around to help him pick it up. Another elderly gentleman told us that his neighbors brought him a little bit of soup that they could spare that morning because they knew he had to go to this meeting but that he wouldn’t be able to go without some sustenance. He didn’t have any food in his house to feed himself. A young woman with 6 children told us that earlier that week her newborn baby had died and she was on her way after our meeting to her village to bury her baby. She had a tattered dress clutched in her hands – the dress her baby would be buried in. We gathered around her as a group to pray and then dismissed her so she could go to bury her child. Quietly, one of the members of our group gave Guy some money to give her later to help with the bus fare and the cost of the burial.

A common theme among all the people who spoke to us was their gratitude for this money and the difference it was making for their family. Every person also hoped that the gifts would be able to continue somehow even after the original $10,000 ran out, which will happen sometime in May of this year.

At one point in our meeting there was some noise on the stairs and then a small group of younger men appeared carrying an elderly gentleman up the stairs. When they arrived, Guy welcomed them and asked them who they were and what they were doing. They introduced the man they had carried up the steps and told Guy that when he was picking people for this cooperative program this particular man, elderly and quite frail, was somehow overlooked. They wanted Guy to meet him so that when the time came to pick new people, Guy would know who he was and be able to include him in the cooperative effort. We welcomed the gentleman and thanked his friends for carrying him to the gathering.

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. These younger men had taken the initiative to carry one of their elderly, handicapped neighbors to this gathering in the hopes that he would receive some healing, some aid, some means to provide food for himself. Obviously, the community that surrounded this man was doing everything it could to help him but they knew he needed more.

Our time with this group of people ended with some photos of the combined group and some laughter as we shook hands, hugged, thanked one another for the gift of this opportunity to meet one another, to speak and to listen to one another’s stories and to pray together. Before we left, we gathered in circle and someone started singing “How Great Thou Art” in Creole. Soon, that great old hymn was being sung with gusto by Americans and Haitians together in Creole and English a true moment of recognizing our common humanity.

As I reflected on this experience later I realized that we had witnessed the gospel of Haiti – the living Good News of Jesus Christ in that upper room in Cite Soleil. I wondered, who was Jesus in this story? Were the Americans with the money Jesus? Were the friends who brought the man to the gathering Jesus? Were the other Haitians gathered in the room Jesus? No. No individual or single group within that story could fully embody the living Christ in this or in any situation but all of us together in our need and in our desire to meet a need, in our caring and compassion for one another, in our need for healing, our need to be restored to community, together we were and are Jesus with and for one another. Together, we represented healing and hope, the possibility of some relief from suffering, the opportunity to be together in human community without the barriers that so often divide us from one another. It was a powerful experience.

What is going to happen to the man who was carried to our gathering? Will there be some way for him in this lifetime to take up his mat and walk? Is he even still living? Will there be another $10,000 to distribute to these people who surely need it and were making good use over the course of a month of the amount of money I blow on coffee, cookies, lunches out in a week? Who will raise that money? Is it even a good idea to drop small amounts of money into people’s laps if you’re not sure it can be sustained? Does this produce some kind of dependence? Does it alleviate suffering for a while only to compound suffering when it’s no longer available? What is our call as Christians in this situation?

The only answer I have to any of these questions is in the beauty of the story, which will touch my life forever and which will be told over and over again. The only answer is to find ways to do small things with great love and to trust in the living Christ to make beautiful, creative, truth out of our all too human and often very flawed efforts to make connections, build relationships, offer healing in the name of Christ and somehow impact our hurting and wounded world for good.

Hungry in Haiti

2009-03-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

As I was preparing for my trip to Haiti, I started gathering memories and recollections from my experience of Living in Ife, Nigeria during the summer of 1993. I remembered what it was like to arrive in that country from the United States - the shock of being in a country and a culture so utterly foreign to anything I had ever experienced before. I remembered what it was like to come to terms with the many differences between life there and life in the US including noticing and trying to make sense of the poverty and the political and social turmoil.

I started wondering - what will be the similarities and the differences between what it was like to be in Nigeria and what I would find in Haiti. I asked Roger, a member of Community of Hope and someone I knew had been to Haiti before and who also has traveled in western Africa, how he would compare his experiences of Africa with his experience of Haiti. I will never forget what he said. "In Africa, even the very poor appeared to have enough food. In Haiti, people do not have enough food."

This simple difference between these two places tore at my heart and mind as I prepared for our trip. I have issues with food. I don't know an American who doesn't. I eat more food than I need. I worry about having enough food on any given day. Most of the time I'm hardly done with a meal and I start thinking about what I will eat next and when. I hate feeling hungry and would do almost anything to avoid that feeling. I carry food with me almost everywhere I go. When I get past a certain point I am not a nice person if I'm hungry.

I don't know for sure where all this worry and concern over food comes from in my psyche but I have had to learn how to deal with it and I'm trying to heal it. At one point in my life I was more than 50 pounds over weight and I have worked very hard over the past few years to develop healthier, more sane eating habits. And so, needless to say I was worrying about food in Haiti. Would I be hungry? Would there be enough? Would I like the food there? Will the food be safe to eat? Are there foods I should avoid?

Leading up to the trip I made an important decision. I decided not to pack any food in my suitcase for this trip. I decided that I was going to go to Haiti to experience life there as purely as possible. I wanted to leave my American trappings behind as much as possible and go with an open mind, heart and spirit to receive the experience and for me that included trying not to obsess over food. And so I stepped out in faith that indeed there would be enough for me, even in a country where most people do not have enough. After all, I could afford to go on this trip. I made the assumption that this included adequate food and nutrition.

But still, I was hungry in Haiti. I was hungry not because I didn't have enough to eat, because in one sense I had more than enough to eat. I was hungry because of what I ate - mostly simple carbohydrates, very little protein, a smattering of fruits, mostly in the morning, very few vegetables and no dairy products (I'm lactose intolerant so that was my own choice).

Here are some of the lessons I learned and assumptions I made about the food situation in Haiti through my own experience of feeling hungry in Haiti.

1. Most Haitians, even the ones with "enough" really only eat one substantial meal each day. This is a delicious meal with rice, beans, some kind of vegetable stew or other mix of vegetables and protein and probably also some fruits. This meal is hearty and nutritious. But it's only one meal each day. In the morning, those who are able, have a morning meal of spaghetti with a little tomato paste, onion and garlic if they can get it or bread or pastry. In the evening again, bread, maybe some margarine or peanut butter if it's available, maybe some tea or fruit. That's it. For an entire day. And those who are really poor might only eat a few days a week if even that.

2. Everywhere you go there are people selling food on the street - fruits mostly but also tomatoes and fried foods like plantain and bread. What struck me about this, though was how small the piles are that these vendors have - a few tangerines, a basket of tomatoes, a few loaves of bread. No one vendor had very much or even very much variety to sell. Even at the major market on Saturday morning where I went with Ari to buy food for his family and all their various guests for an entire week, no single vendor had very much to offer. We bought six stalks of broccoli from one woman and this was all the broccoli she had for that day - or at least it was all the broccoli I could see she had. As I compared this to what I witnessed in Nigeria I began to see a huge difference and the statement of Roger before the trip made even more of an impact. In the market in Nigeria, vendors had piles of products - peppers, onions, garlic, fruits and vegetables - huge piles of them everywhere you turned. An abundance of really beautiful, nutritious food everywhere you looked. In Haiti, still beautiful, nutritious food but in small quantities, not nearly abundant.

What does this mean for a whole nation of people? When I consider the food pyramid - how many servings of each of the main food groups it takes to be healthy it seems to me that no one in Haiti is getting enough. Maybe a few of the richest people have adequate diets but I wonder about that.

Why is this? Why is an entire nation - 8.5 million people basically hungry? There are a lot of reasons - trade policies that undercut local producers and force them out of business being one major factor. Haitians used to produce most of the rice consumed in their country. Now they import most of the rice consumed in their country. Why? Because the US and other global markets needed a place to get rid of their excess rice and so they undercut the price of Haitian rice and flooded the market. This pushed numerous farmers off the land - they could no longer make a living farming rice - and into the cities where now instead of working to feed their families they are starving, literally. And this is just one factor. There are others.

I was hungry in Haiti every day because my body did not get enough of the nutrients it needs to sustain itself. I am very active, I work out regularly, I run. I need a certain amount of protein, fiber, fruits and vegetables to sustain my body, to feel energetic and clear headed. What is it like to never really have enough? And Haitians work hard every day just to survive - lifting, carrying, walking - that takes nutrition to sustain long term and be healthy.

I'm sure I could get used to the Haitian diet. I would modify my behavior, my body would adjust. And indeed we were told that overall Haitians are used to this reality - one major meal a day is the norm. It's what they know. Their bodies have adjusted. But still. It's not enough and I wonder about the long term impact of this stark reality for Haiti.

I am proud that every partnership effort between our congregation and our partners in Haiti includes a food component. It means a lot to me to know that we are making some small difference in the lives of the students we help send to school and the adults we help learn to read by providing money for food. And I pray for the day when no one in the world, whether in the US or Africa or Haiti or anywhere else has to adjust to not having enough of what we know a body needs to be strong and healthy in this life.

Memory Village

2009-03-04T18:28:00.000-08:00

From the first moment we set foot in Haiti we were immersed in conversations about the history, culture, politics, economy and religion of Haiti. One the first day of our trip we met Carla and Ari, business partners and friends who started the conversation that many others continued throughout the trip.

Carla is an American woman who has lived and worked in Haiti with her husband for more than 20 years. Ari is a Haitian man and a true visionary. He told us his entire family now lives in the United States but he has chosen to stay in Haiti to build something in his own country and for his own people. He said, “why would I want to go to your country and benefit from what your ancestors have built when I can stay here and build something for my own people.”

Ari’s family and Carla’s family live in the same compound in the village of Gwo Jan outside of Port au Prince. Together Ari and Carla are working to encourage Haitians to buy local and to support Haitian businesses and artists. At their compound in Gwo Jan they have an oasis of sorts – a place for artists to come and perform, to sell their products to the many visitors that come for a variety of reasons, to work together on the challenges they see around them in their village and in Haiti in general. They’ve made a commitment to buy only locally produced food and wear only Haitian-made clothing. They are mentors for some of the young men and women in the village. They provide hospitality and cultural and historical orientations to a large number of foreigners and also have educational programs with Haitian school children where they demonstrate traditional cooking methods and sustainable agricultural production. And if this weren't enough, they produced educational spots for Haitian television that teach Haitian values and encourage support of Haitian-made and grown products.

In addition to all of this, Ari and Carla have a vision for a Memory Village that they would build on their property. The purpose of this Memory Village would be to lead people through an experience of Colonialism and Slavery from the perspective of the African Slaves. Small groups of participants would move through the Memory Village, starting in Africa in a dramatic recreation of the process and experience of slavery.

Participants would experience being captured by slave traders, taken in chains to a coastal prison or holding cell, bought for export to the New World, sold on auction upon arrival in Haiti, held in quarantine where slaves were brainwashed, tortured and had their spirits broken to complete the process of turning free, strong, proud African men and women into slaves who could wield a machete in the sugar canes, do back breaking labor and suffer humiliation and torture at the hands of the plantation owners and not revolt. A question we heard over and over again – what has to happen to the human heart, spirit and mind in order to make a free person into a slave? What kind of trauma, what messages of inferiority, what spiritual abuse needs to take place to turn a free man or a woman into a slave?

Toward the end of our trip, we had the privilege of staying at the guest house that is a part of Ari and Carla’s compound. As part of our time with them, Ari and Carla walked with us around the part of their property that will one day be the Memory Village. They described the buildings that will be built on this land and the experiences people will have as they move through this history from Africa and Europe to Haiti, through the revolt that won Haiti its independence, and on into the modern day times of Haiti.

One feature of the memory village will be a slave ship replica in which participants will be invited to crouch as the slaves would have been forced to do for hours, days, weeks at a time as they crossed the ocean from Africa to the New World.

As we crouched in this beautiful place – a babbling brook, lush vegetation that will one day house a slave ship, we heard about the particular methods of torture used by various slave traders as recorded in their memoirs or journals to ensure compliance on the part of their human cargo as the ships made their way across the ocean.

We learned that one of the reasons slave trading was such a popular trade was its incredible profitability. It only cost a slave trader $1 to purchase a slave in Africa and provide passage for that slave to the New World Once in Haiti, that same slave could be sold for $800 to the French plantation owners. At that rate even if only a few people survived the passage healthy and able to work the slave trader would realize a significant profit and so not much thought was given to what the slaves were fed, how their illnesses and diseases were treated, what conditions they were living in. And indeed many died throughout the process.

As we crouched in the place where the slave ship replica will be I vowed that I would remain in that crouched position until the time came to move on to another part of the Memory Village no matter what. I wanted to have even the slightest experience in my own body of what our African sisters and brothers experienced during that horrendous passage – the physical pain not to mention the spiritual and psychological trauma of being subjected to such conditions and torn from one’s village, one’s family, everything one had ever known.

When the time came to move from that place I could barely stand, my calves and ankles were falling asleep and could hardly hold my weight. And this after only 10 minutes or so of holding the same, uncomfortable position. How could a human being do something like this to another human being?

Transformation and healing were words used by Ari and Carla to talk about what they and many others believe is essential in order for Haiti to rise as a strong, independent, healthy, capable nation. The psyche of Haiti needs to be transformed, to be healed from the scars of slavery and colonialism. The ways in which the experiences of slavery and colonial rule have worked their way into the conscious and subconscious memories of the Haitian people are damaging to their ability to move their nation forward – to provide adequate food, clean water, sanitation, meaningful work to the people of Haiti, to govern with integrity and peace. This trauma needs to be transformed, healed because trauma that is not transformed is transmitted from one generation to the next. And this is work that only Haiti can do for itself. No amount of money from the West, no amount of used clothing, or school supplies, or even education coming from outsiders can transform this history. And indeed those of us who are white westerners have our own work to do in relation to this history.

Another powerful statement I heard while in Haiti: “The one who hits, forgets.” This is a powerful statement to those of us who do not have the experience of slavery in their direct history. Our ancestors were the ones who hit and it is easy for us to forget. It’s all too tempting to wish that we could put this shameful, embarrassing part of our history behind us. Can’t we just move on? Slavery was over more than 200 years ago. But we can’t forget because our sisters and brothers of African descent all over the world bear the scars of slavery and of colonialism and those scars do not let them forget. Their nations were raped and pillaged and are still being mined of all their riches for the benefit of Europe, the US and the rest of the world. Another reason we cannot forget the history of slavery and need to educate ourselve about that history and its modern-day impact is because white people also have a trauma that needs to be transformed and this is work that only we can do for ourselves.

I’m aware this is a pretty heavy reflection. It feels good to get it out in words because it has been weighing heavy on my soul. I don’t have any answers yet for myself but I do know that being in Haiti in February, 2009, listening to Haitian people speak about their lives, their hopes and dreams, their pain and sorrows, their history and their visions for the future, is part of the healing. To the extent that I was able to be in Haiti with open eyes, an open heart, open ears and an open mind; to the extend that I was able to reserve judgment, to see the positive, to share in the hopes for the future, there was healing.

Now back in the United States I am ever so grateful for the work I’ve been doing locally with an organization called Dane County United. For the past 18 months or so we’ve been working on finding a way to move the Madison Metropolitan School District in a positive direction in terms of addressing the achievement gap between African American and white students. We have a proposal now that we’ve developed through months of listening to University Professors, Teachers, Administrators, parents and students. This proposal seeks funding to implement Culturally Relevant Education within our district by identifying teachers and administrators who are already having success with African American students and provide them with additional support, resources and continuing education. We also hope that additional teachers with the potential to be successful in this arena will be identified and nurtured to develop these skills.

At a meeting of more than 100 community members last night we experienced what it looks like, feels like, sounds like to teach from a culturally relevant perspective and specifically in this case from an African Centered perspective. A class of 3rd and 4th grade students demonstrated some of what they do each day in their classroom – recite a pledge that speaks of self respect, contributing in positive ways to their families and communities; sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and share in a drumming circle playing drums that they made themselves. It was a powerful experience to see these children – African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, West Indian – join together in respect and self-confidence. Following the demonstration these students led each table of adults in an activity from their own classes – activities that teach to the educational standards of our district from a culturally relevant perspective.

These children know that they belong in this classroom. Their families, their community, their foods, their cultural expressions are validated, honored and used as the subject of how they’re learning to live in the world.

This too is part of the healing.

I’ve gone on for far too long. If you’ve read all of this, God bless you. Please pray for the people of Haiti and for the people of the US and all people whose lives are impacted by the history of slavery. And please, discover more about this history and how it impacts you no matter the color of your skin. And please find a way to transform that history for yourself to contribute to global healing of this incredible brokenness in our human story.

As the great Bob Marley puts it:
“…Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds
have no fear for atomic energy
‘cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it’s just a part of it:
We’ve got to fulfil de book.
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of Freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have;
Redemption songs; …”

Washing the Feet of the Women at San Fil

2009-02-26T17:31:00.000-08:00

"So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." (John 13:14-15)

Prior to traveling to Haiti, I had only participated in a foot-washing ritual one time in my life. It was when I was a student at the UW-Madison and attending Madison Campus Ministry (now The Crossing Campus Ministry). On Maundy Thursday we gathered in the dimly lit sanctuary to remember the Last Supper and to wash one another's feet following Jesus' example and the command in John's gospel to "do as I have done to you."

There were only a few of us gathered that night and we knew one another pretty well. Even still, I wasn't them and still am not in the habit of letting just anybody touch my feet. There's something private, personal, intimate about feet. And in Wisconsin in March or April (depending on when Holy Week falls)after a long, cold winter, one's feet are not likely to be all that pleasant to behold. But our small group followed Jesus' command and knelt before one another with a basin of water and a towel and we washed each other's feet.

From time to time since then I have suggested to various groups that we might also try washing one another's feet as part of our Maundy Thursday observances. So far that suggestion has been met with resistance - people would have to take off their socks and shoes; what if women are wearing nylons and can't remove them so their feet can be washed; how about if we just wash each other's hands? I have yet to convince a group that foot washing would be a good idea, something meaningful to do. Maybe I should stop asking...

Fast foward to Haiti. February 10, 2009.

Part of our trip plan was to serve in an orphanage and a home for the destitute and dying - both institutions run by the Missionaries of Charity (The sisters of Mother Theresa). On this first full day of our time in Haiti we were offered the choice between the two. I knew instantly that I wanted to go first to San Fil, the home for the destitute and dying.

I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by all the new and different sights, sounds and smells of Haiti and I just didn't feel I could handle the chaos of the orphanage. I needed a quiet place to be to collect myself and as a Pastor I'm no stranger to death and dying. In fact, I have had some of the most profound experiences of my ministry at the bedsides of people who are dying.

And so I showed up with two other women from our group at San Fil on Tuesday morning. First, we helped some of the sisters make beds. Two vinyl covered twin mattresses wrapped in clean sheets made up the beds of the women and men at San Fil. Beds were lined up in rows in two big rooms and along one long hall way. When all the beds were made we were handed gloves and bottles of lotion and told to go give massages to the women.

I went into the first room and the minute I walked in the door the young woman who knew what I needed to do even if I didn't grabbed me and took me to the bedside of a woman I imagine was only a few hours or a few days from death. Her legs were swollen and her skin very dry. I approached and she opened her eyes to indicate that yes, she would like me to massage her feet.

I knelt on the floor, opened my bottle of lotion and began to rub the lotion into her skin. The woman closed her eyes and moaned her gratitude. I lovingly massaged one leg and then the other and by the time I was done there was a line of women waiting for their own massages.

I moved to the next bed over and knelt on the floor there for about an hour as woman after woman came to me to have her feet and legs massaged with lotion. I don't speak Creole and the women didn't appear to know any English and so our smiles and our eyes were the only ways for us to communicate.

As I knelt at the feet of these women I prayed for their feet. In a country like Haiti people walk everywhere. Their feet work hard every day to carry them where they need to go to provide for themselves and their families. Foot massages are a luxury many would never think of in their daily lives. But here, as their deaths approached these women were receiving foot massages and at least from me prayers and blessings for their faithful feet.

I love having my own feet massaged and I particularly love it when the masseusse singles out each toe for special treatment - a little squeeze, a tug. Hello little toe, thank you for your service to the body. And so I made sure that every toe on every foot of every woman in that room got a special squeeze and a tug and a little blessing.

I couldn't help but think as I massaged the feet of the women at San Fil, of the passage quoted above and I wondered to myself, who is Jesus in this situation? Am I Jesus serving these disciples of Christ? Are they Jesus, allowing me to wash their feet, to bless and honor them in this holy and intimate way? No, I decided. We are Jesus together - Haitian women and American women bound by our feet, by our gratitude for one another, by the humility of serving and of being served. We are Jesus together and we are blessing one another.

The two hours I spent massaging the feet of the women at San Fil were some of the most precious and holy moments of the trip to Haiti for me. In those two hours I found my center. I connected to the presence of Christ who was with us in that room, in me and in them and in our connection with one another.

I thank God for these women and for the privilege of serving them in this way. I thank God for their smiles, for their laughter, for the way they cared for one another and made sure those who were sickest weren't passed over. I thank God for their brief lives and pray for the strength and courage to do my part in trying to change our world so that people no longer have to live and die in poverty, hunger and disease.

On the last night of our trip we gathered for our evening reflection session. We shared our final thoughts about the trip and when everyone was done, Bryan, our leader brought out a large bowl filled with water and a towel. In that circle of 13 (our driver, Maxime, joined us that night) we knelt and we washed one another's feet.

Thanks and praise be to God. Amen.

Haiti Trip - Overview

2009-02-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

What you will be reading here is a sermon I preached in my congregation on Sunday, February 22, 2009. This sermon was based on Mark 9:2-9, the story of Jesus' transfiguration.

"Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elizah, with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from teh cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!" Suddenly, when they looked around they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Human One had risen from the dead." (Mark 9:2-9, NRSV)

No one listens to the cry of the poor, or the sound of a wooden bell.
No one listens to the cry of the poor, or the sound of a wooden bell…

These are the opening words to a song by Bryan Sirchio a member of my congregation, Community of Hope and one of the leaders for my recent trip to Haiti. This song, The Wooden Bell, was written after one of Bryan’s trips to Haiti during which he prayed to be shown a way to connect with a Haitian artist whose work he might support in some way.

In Cite Soleil, the shanty town built on a garbage dump in Port au Prince, Brian met a man named Pierre who carved wooden bells. They struck up a relationship and Brian began selling wooden bells in the US at cost and sending the money to Pierre. Even though Pierre has since died of AIDS there are other artists in Cite Soleil that carve wooden bells and every time Brian goes to Haiti he brings a shipment of bells back to the US to sell on behalf of these artists.

This relationship means that their families might have enough to eat, can perhaps send their children to school, make repairs on their homes or access health care or clean drinking water. This relationship also acknowledges the gifts and talents of the artist and honors their labor. Hopefully, they get a sense of pride and self-respect knowing that their work is being seen and admired in another part of the world.

I first heard Bryan’s song and the sound of a wooden bell more than 10 years ago and at that time I vowed that one day I would go to Haiti to listen to the cries of the poor. I vowed to be a person who listens, who sees, who witnesses the reality of life in the majority of the world – a hard life of poverty and disease, of uncertainty and hardship, of death and destruction, of living one disaster away from utter desolation.

Throughout my first trip to Haiti I carried this text from Mark – the story of Jesus’ transfiguration in my mind and heart but it wasn’t until I came home, sat down in my office and read it again that I made connections between this text and the experiences of our trip. Here are my thoughts on the connections between this text and my experiences in Haiti.

Six days after Jesus has spoken about his death and resurrection for the first time he takes his closest disciples to a place apart, a holy place. Within the worldview of the ancient near east, high places were closer to God so mountains and hill tops are sacred places where one can more easily access the divine.

Jesus takes the disciples to this place because he has something for them to see and experience, in this case his transfiguration, his revelation to them of his true identity as the son of God, the holy one about whom he has just spoken who will die and rise again.

On February 9, 2009 a group of 12 of Jesus’ contemporary disciples left on a trip Jesus prepared for us and invited us to. Roger, Bryan, Julie, Marilyn, Diane, Tisha, Deb and Jim from Wisconsin; Mallory from California; Chuck and Nancy from Nevada and Jennifer from Florida followed Jesus to Haiti, to this sacred and holy place set apart from our daily lives where we encountered Jesus whose clothes were not dazzling white but were the clean, simple clothes and lives of the people of Haiti.

We went to Haiti to witness God’s presence there; to learn from the people of Haiti; and to open our eyes and ears to the ways in which God is calling us to be transformed by the lives, history, economics and reality of Haiti. We went not because we believed we could change anything significant about the way things are in Haiti but because we believed that our witness, our presence, would guide us in living our own lives with greater faithfulness. We went believing that seeing is better than not seeing, knowing better than not knowing, hearing better than remaining ignorant to the reality of life for the poorest of the poor.

No sooner do the disciples arrive on the mountain than they see Jesus talking with Elijah, who represents the prophets of Israel’s history and Moses who represents the law and the covenant between God and the people. There is their teacher Jesus in conversation with the law and the prophets signaling that in Jesus the law and the prophets come together and help us understand who Jesus is.

Most of our time in Haiti was spent listening to the history of colonialism and slavery and how that history impacts the current situation in Haiti. We heard about the slave revolt and fight for independence from France, of the ensuing global isolation; US occupation; brutal military dictatorships; and today’s struggling democracy. We learned about trade policies that undermine Haiti’s ability to feed itself; of continued use and misuse of this land and its people to the benfit of everyone except the Haitian people; of government corruption; ineffective leadership; and inadequate health and education. And let’s not forget the religious history – the close relationship between the French colonizers, slave traders and plantation owners and the catholic church sent on a mission to convert the heathens and ensure subservient slaves and the more recent but damaging in my view, explosion of evangelical protestant missionaries spreading their own unique version of the shame and fear based religion.

In the face of the overwhelming reality of seeing Jesus with Moses and Elijah, Peter babbles on about building dwellings. Peter, like so many of us wants to define this experience on his own terms. He wants to capture it, limit it in some way or preserve it for future posterity. The text says they are terrified and in his terror Peter tries to exert control so as to ease his own mind. Peter finds it hard to simply be in this experience without having to manipulate it in some way.
This is the force present in all of us that we struggled not to give in to during our time in Haiti.

Everywhere privileged, white Americans go we have the tendency to try to define, control and manipulate things to our own benefit. We analyze and judge and interpret the realities of others and assume that we know what is best in every situation. It is hard for us to listen, to acknowledge the strengths of other cultures and other ways of doing things. It is hard for us to keep our hands off of other people’s lives – we have lots of advice and lots of ideas.

To the very best of our ability and not perfectly our group struggled not to do these things. Not to pass judgment or try to define what we were seeing and experiencing on our own terms. We tried mostly to simply be – to absorb and reflect and listen. And, contrary to what most people think of as a mission trip – we didn’t build a darn thing! For us to go there and build something takes away Haitian jobs, implies Haitians are incapable of building their own country and that is simply not true. They are capable, they need partners and supporters and encouragers and friends not definers, fixers, doers or know-it-alls.

And then the voice from the cloud signals Jesus’ identity as it did when he was baptized by John in the River Jordan. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

And so listen we did. We listened to every person who would talk to us because we trusted that they were the authority on their country, their lives, their story. We listened in love and we looked into their eyes to see who they were, to see these beloved sons and daughters of God. And we opened ourselves to their stories and we were transformed in the gift of this speaking and listening. We didn’t try to fix anything or change anything or to judge anything. We sought only understanding and a willingness within ourselves to be transformed by what we heard and saw by the grace and love of God in Jesus.

Suddenly, as suddenly as it began, the experience of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop is over. Elijah and Moses are gone and Jesus stands before his disciples as he had before and they return to their lives with the admonition not to tell anyone until after the Human One has risen from the dead.

Well, fortunately for us the Human One is resurrected and we are free to talk about our experiences of him in the world. Fortunately, I haven’t been asked to be silent. On the contrary, I am convinced that the greatest witness I can give to what I experienced in 8 days in Haiti is to talk about it and write about it as much as possible in the coming days, weeks and months.

Each day in Haiti felt like an eternity, in a good way. Everyday was rich with experiences, observations, sights, sounds and smells so foreign to what life is like here. Everyday we met amazing, interesting people doing incredible work to build their country, to hold on to the hope that things can be different in some small way through their faithful efforts. But at the same time this trip was a tiny blip in time – 8 days out of all the days I’ve lived so far on this earth and so just as suddenly as the disciples experienced the return to daily life, I was back on the plane to the US.

I was so aware as I walked across the tarmac at the airport and climbed the stairs to enter the plane that I was incredibly relieved to be heading home. I was looking forward to seeing Cindy, the people of my congregation, my friends and family. I was looking forward to returning to my life where I at least have the illusion of knowing what I’m doing and where I’m going and who I am.

As I paused on the steps for one last look at the mountains surrounding Port au Prince, I was acutely aware that in that moment the spirits of all the people we had seen and listened to were crowding around me and that I was not coming home by myself. I was bringing a huge cloud of witnesses with me back here to Madison.

There are stories behind each of these people or groups but let me list for you who is in this cloud of witnesses –
· 30 families in Cite Soleil who are receiving a monthly stipend of $20 because of the generosity of one $10,000 gift through Brian to a man who had a vision for a cooperative effort among those who are struggling the most there;

· more than 20 SPARE (Sponsorship Program Aiding Relationships and Education) students and their families whom we are helping to get an education;

· Ari and Carla and their families and all the young people in Gwo Jan, a village outside of Port au Prince who are working on a buy Haitian/buy local campaign and developing a memory village to transform the wounds of slavery;

· the artists, the youth drama group and the musicians of Gwo Jan who shared their talents with us;

· the street vendors and artists we supported with our dollars by purchasing their goods and especially the artisits whose work we brought back with us because of your generosity;

· the workers at the two hotels where we stayed and their families – they’re some of the lucky ones to have jobs and we tipped them generously;

· our driver who became a friend, Maxim;

· the people of Klago, another village outside of Port au Prince where we are helping to support an adult literacy program and where farmers have formed a cooperative to preserve their land, to increase their purchasing and selling power and to reforest their area;

· the children at the orphanage who were there to be healed and will go home with their parents and the children who are orphans whom we fed and played with and mostly just held;

· the women and men at San Fil, the home for the destitute and dying whose feet and bodies we massaged with love and lotion;

· the folks who could live anywhere in the world but who choose to stay in Haiti to build their country and who spoke to our group about their take on Haitian religion, economics, history and life in Haiti – Ja Lo Ki and Colleen; Louis Henris and Pastor Gee;

· Patrick and Kim Bentrott, missionaries from Global Ministries, the UCC and DOC global mission effort. Patrick and Kim have been in Haiti since November and will be there for four years.

· and last but certainly not least, the pastors and churches of CONASPEH – the National Spiritual Council of Protestant Churches in Haiti, our Global Ministries partners through the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ and the folks with whom Patrick and Kim will work.

This cloud of witnesses is calling me and all of us to be people who live our faith; people who see the connections between the lives of the people of Haiti and our lives. People who see the scars of a long and complicated history of oppression, slavery, domination, abuse, torture, corruption, greed and who seek to partner with not only the people of Haiti but also with people whose lives are touched by this history in the US so that together we might transform the trauma of this history, heal it and move into a new reality; people who see the beauty and the hope and the possibility of Haiti and refuse to ignore the reality and the depth of the suffering; people who will partner with our sisters and brothers in Christ to heal the wounds of oppressive, shame based, fear based religion so that we all together might proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as the gospel of love and justice; of peace and hospitality; of a world where everyone has enough food to eat and meaningful work to do and the opportunity to live free from the fear of violence and the chains of oppression of mind, body and spirit.

I am incredibly grateful to this congregation and to the entire Madison Christian Community for the privilege of going on this trip. I thank you for the gift of the time away and for the gift that this experience has already been in my life. I pray that as Roger and Bryan and I continue to talk about the experiences of this trip and as we continue to discern together as a congregation how best to be in relationship with our Haitian partners and friends our lives will be enriched. I pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to show us the way to do small things with great love and to think more about how we are called to live differently within our own reality than about how we might fix the reality of life for the people of Haiti.

The call of the cloud of witnesses that is with us this morning is not to fix them or to solve their problems or to provide them with things they can actually provide for themselves. The call is to partner with them, to support their dreams and visions for their own country. And above all else the call is to see them, not to turn away from their poverty and their need but to be willing to look at it, be touched by it, to remember it and them and to pray. May God help us as we seek to be faithful to this call. Amen.

Home from Haiti

2009-02-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Haiti. The past few days have been spent catching up with things at church and at home - washing clothes, putting things away, answering emails and phone calls. It's been a real whirlwind and a bit surreal. It's incredible how quickly we can travel from one reality to the next in this world.

The 8 days I spent in Haiti with 11 other Americans were an incredible experience. I am so glad I went on this trip and I imagine this won't be my only trip to Haiti.

Let me say a little bit about the purpose and tone of this trip. The primary purpose of the trip was to go and experience life in Haiti in some small way. The trip was based on the idea of "reverse mission" and was called "A Mission of Mutual Exchange." Here is some of what the trip leaders wrote about the trip: "First, it has long been realized that the older model of doing "mission work" has been problematic at best. According to the older model, groups of folks from the world of the "haves" travel to places like Haiti in order to give to the "have nots." Often this "giving" would mean that folks from affluent countries would travel to a developing country in order to hand out food or clothing or that we would put our hands and expertise to use and build a house or a church or a school, dig a well, or teach something. In other wods, WE would do the giving. We would then return home after a week or two without having developed any ongoing structure through which the work done or the relationships begun could continue."

I so much appreciate this different way of looking at short-term mission trips and believe that participating in a trip of this nature has left all kinds of doors open for ongoing relationships. It is certainly true that I benefitted from this experience but I also believe that by being as respectful as I could possible be and by mostly listening and witnessing with eyes open and mouth shut I gave a gift to the people of Haiti that I met and to whom I opened my heart and mind.

The other wonderful element of this kind of trip is that while in Haiti we visited many of the people with whom we have already begun developing relationships for ongoing work and support. On this trip we:

met the students in the SPARE Program (Sponsorship Program Aiding Relationships and Education) whom we support by sending money for school fees for children in Port au Prince;
met some members of the 30 families benefitting from a small monthly stipend provided by the generous gift of one individual. It is my hope that we can find some way to continue this stipend program because I could see what a difference that small amount of money was making in the lives of these families;
met Mr. Gee, the Haitian man who leads both of the above efforts;
participated in a cultural orientation in which we learned about Haitian culture and history;
worked with the Missionaries of Charity in an orphanage and in a hospice care home for homeless men and women called "The Home for the Dying and the Destitute;"
Visited Cite Soleil (a shanty town on the outskirts of Port au Prince);
Met with Haitian leaders for evening seminars to further educate us about Haiti's history and current reality;
attended worship at a Haitian church;
Visited an adult literacy project in Klago, a village outside of Port au Prince to learn about their program and about their efforts to restore the environment in their area;
Participated in the annual congress of CONASPEH (The National Spiritual Council of Protestant Churches in Haiti) an organization representing 6,000 protestant congregations in Haiti and also providing health care, education, seminary training and food to people in Port au Prince;
Participated in a building dedication ceremony for a building built by Haitian and American partners through CONASPEH and Global Ministries in the village of Pont Sonde. This building will provide education, health care, seminary training and food to the people in this village and throughout the Arte Bonite department of Haiti and probably beyond;
Learned about Vo Dou (Voo Doo) and about the interplay between Vo Dou, Catholicism and Protestantism in Haiti;
Ate delicious food, laughed, sang, and struggled together to make sense of everything we were seeing and hearing.

I have said since I came back that I feel like I earned an Associate's degree in Haitian culture and history. I certainly learned more about the history of slavery and colonialism and how that history continues to impact the world today than I ever learned here in the United States.

Three powerful phrases I heard from our speakers in relation to this history: "Trauma not transformed is transmitted;" "The one who hits, forgets;" and "Hurt People Hurt People."

Tomorrow is Sunday and my sermon is all about my trip to Haiti. I will post that sermon here for additional insight into my early thoughts about this trip and about the experiences described above.

My prayer in relation to this trip is that I will find some way to continue the relationships begun over the past few days. In some ways that will be easy because our congregation already has relationships with the SPARE students, with the adult literacy effort and with the families in Cite Soleil. In other ways that will be difficult because I ask myself whether or not this is enough. What more can I do out of who I am and out of the gifts I have to share with the world? How might those gifts and this experience come together in some small effort done with great love? Good question!

Until later...
Dancing Rev.

Dancing Rev. Gets started

2009-02-01T18:34:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 1, 2009

I can't believe I'm doing this - blogging. I have been resisting diving into the world of blogs for some time now but I woke up in the middle of the night last night and I knew that it was time to take the plunge. First, when your blogging name is on the tip of your tongue when you wake up at 2:00 in the morning you have to listen to yourself. Second, when you have techie's in your church that have been gently nudging you in this direction for some time now and their names are in your mind at 2:00 a.m. you have to listen to the Spirit. So, here I am.

I'm sure the major reason why this is coming up now is because I am preparing for a trip to Haiti. I will be traveling with 11 others, some from my church and others from around the country, on a mission of mutual exchange trip co-sponsored by our Haiti Partners ministry and by the CONASPEH partnership of the Southeast Wisconsin Association of the Wisconsin Conference of the UCC. We will be visitng our mission partners in Port au Prince and Cite Soleil and in rural mountain areas of Haiti. I don't know much about Haiti or the places we'll be going so I will have to fill in all the details when I get back. We leave on our trip on Monday, February 9 and return to the U.S. on Tuesday, February 17.

I have had the desire to visit Haiti for over 10 years. This desire arose when I first heard a song by Bryan Sirchio who is a mentor, a friend and a member of my church. The song is called The Wooden Bell.

When introducing the song, Bryan talked about his first visit to Haiti more than 15 years ago. Before the trip and while he was in Haiti, Bryan prayed that he might be shown a way to benefit local Haitian artists through his own music ministry in the United States. When he met a man who carved wooden bells, he knew he had found the Haitian artist that he could support and encourage. The phrase carved on these wooden bells: "No one listens to the cry of the poor, or the sound of the wooden bell."

After hearing this song for the first time I knew that someday I would go to Haiti with Bryan. He spoke at that time and still does speak of Haiti with such compassion, hope and conviction that I have been compelled over and over to visit this place that his inspired such passion in this man I admire so much and who has been a significant supporter of my own spiritual journey.

Now, after many years, a few more songs of Bryan's written about his experiences in Haiti, my own time to visit this nation that has so deeply touched the life of one I so greatly admire. My own prayer is to be open to whatever it is that the Holy Spirit might have in store for me on this trip. Perhaps the urge to finally start a blog is one piece of how the Spirit is preparing me for whatever it is that will come out of this trip for me and for my congregation.

I bought a beautiful new paper journal to take with me on the trip. My plan is to take very detailed notes of everything we do on our trip - all the places we visit, the people we meet and my thoughts and reflections on the experiences of our group. I also plan to take a few pictures although we've been asked to be sensitive of the fact that Haitians have been exploited by westerners for years. Promises have been made and not kept, people have used the situation of the peopel of Haiti for their own personal gain. Folks are understandably leery of westerners with cameras. The people of Haiti do not have much to fear from me. I'm not a great photographer and my camera is often the last thing I think of in any given situation. But, I will do my best to get enough photos to add images to all the words and I will be as respectful and careful with my camera as I can possibly be.

So, with that I sign off for now and make a commitment to myself to return to this place after my trip to share my experiences, thoughts and reflections with anyone who cares to read them.

P.S. - why dancing rev? Because I am a pastor. I serve one of the congregations of the Madison Christian Community, Community of Hope, in Madison, WI. And because I love to dance!

Until later,

Dancing Rev.