Are you still out there?

I cannot believe that I've been neglecting this blog since 2009. Where has all that time gone? I looked at it again for the first time in ages, and thought to myself, maybe, maybe the time is ripe to begin again. Are any of you who once read this blog (and are named as followers on FB's networked blogs or elsewhere) still out there? Hello again!

There've been a few changes in our lives since the last blog post. The wilderness of our daily lives includes a church community we co-pastor (and we've been trying to keep up with posting our sermons on this blog (though we're a bit behind right now). We now have two little boys, one who is now 4.5 year old the other is now 13 months old, and we now have a house and a garden and a whole new part of the country we are exploring at the pace of people with children under 7. It's a pretty great life, and maybe, maybe the time is ripe to begin reporting on it here again. What'ya think?

We have been called...

The days of transition are almost over for Keith, Lucas, Billy-dog, and me, praise the Lord. As of Sunday, Oct. 25th, we were extended a call to be the co-pastors of First Presbyterian Church, La Grande, Oregon, and we are unbelievably thrilled at this opportunity.

It has been a long couple of months of waiting, as this call process has worked itself out. Since we left Monroe, LA at the end of August, we have visited Dallas and Amarillo, TX; Parker, CO; Powell, WY; and now, Vancouver, WA/Portland, OR. A lot of traveling, but a good time of reflection, discernment, and quiet preparation for this new step in our lives, becoming pastors of a church. We will officially begin serving the church on Nov. 9th.

I hope to return to a more regular practice of blogging when we are settled in at La Grande and our internet access becomes more regular.

Thanks for everyone who has prayed us through our seminary studies, internship, and now transition into pastoral ministry. It has been an exciting journey, and a new era is about to begin!

Moving into Limbo

I've been neglecting this blog as Keith and I pack up our apartment, again. We are leaving Monroe for Limbo for a couple of months. I promise to let you know what happens with our call process, as soon as I can (Call process: the means by which would-be seminary students become ordained pastors at a particular church somewhere). We are in process with a church, and it looks like there will be an eventual cesation to our wanderings, but not yet.

We are processing, in lots of ways, as it were. Right now, we are processing a year of life in Monroe, Louisiana, trying to pack our stuff, write our final sermons, and tie up any loose ends.

Is it possible to "tie up loose ends" from a year of life? I wonder about this. A year of relationship building. A year of sharing life stories, which are ongoing, which don't stop whenever we happen to leave this place. A year of helping to shape the life of this church community. These are ends that will really remain "loose." We don't know the end of any of our stories.

The main way we tie up loose ends is to say "thank you," I think. We can never say this enough, to each other, or, more importantly, to God. We have lots of thanks to give for our year in this place.

Northern Louisiana Safari

Keith, Lucas, and I had an adventure yesterday. We went to the High Delta Safari Park just north of Delhi, Louisiana. We traveled in a big wagon-type vehicle and stopped along the way to feed fallow deer, watusis, pot-bellied pigs, emus, zebras, and donkeys, and camels.

I always have mixed feelings at places like this and at zoos. On the one hand, I really want Lucas to get a first-hand experience of real, live, animals, since we read so many stories about them and look at so many photos and pictures of them. Most people's lives these days allow us only cursory relationships with animals, other than our pets, and ours is no different. I think Lucas longs for relationships with living creatures, and however I can make that happen, I will!

On the other hand, I always feel a little sad at places like this. I am wistful for a world that has never existed in my lifetime, where such animals could exist peacefully and on their own terms. I guess I have some romantic notion of the "primeval forest" or a "primeval ecology" where animals of all kinds coexisted with human beings--if not peacefully, at least with enough room for all of them to have what they needed to survive, procreate, develop. (I guess that would be the Garden of Eden).

But the reality is that there are few "safe havens" left on earth for many kinds of animals. We human creatures continue to cut down and carve away at the forests, oceans, mountains, and deserts for our own population needs and desires.

I am saddened by this, and I carried that sadness with me on the trip yesterday, even as I rejoiced to see Lucas laugh at the potbellied piglets in the petting zoo. At the same time, most of the Safari Park animals are "natives" of Africa, and they probably arrived here by some form of the exotic animal trade. I've never been to Africa, and without zoos or safari parks, I would never have the experience of seeing a zebra in person. Zebras are really beautiful, aren't they?

One of my favorite animal sanctuaries is Wolf Park in Battle Ground, Indiana, where they have been studying captive packs of wolves for years. During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I did my science fair projects there, studying wolf behavior as part of the yearly winter "wolf watch," and studying Ericha, the infamous Wolf Park goat (at the prompting of Erich Klinghammer, the founder, her namesake). I think the folks there have done a good job of creating a space where wolves can be wolves with a large measure of integrity, but humans can also interact with them and learn about them and from them.

I've been reading another fantasy novel called Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley, in which she tells the story of Jake, a teenager whose dad runs "Smokehill National Park," a haven for dragons. It is set in an almost modern-day world, the major fantasy element being the dragons, but it reminded me of the world I saw during my Wolf Park days, the world of people who passionately love animals, always seeking to learn more about them, learn their languages and realities, and protect them from those who would destroy them. These are people who long for wild creatures to be free, but also recognize that without havens or parks where humans can interact with them in some way, dangerous misconceptions about them lead humans to destroy them and their habitat.

Of course, there is one animal with whom we have a long-term relationship (and for whom we are supposed to be creating sanctuary for in our own home) our dog, Billy! I'm not sure this photo proves that we are succeeding at it with any integrity, though! Oh well. He is a good dog--and a good sport--and I promise he wasn't harmed in the taking of this photo.

Reading the End of the Novel First?

"He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ " Mark 4: 26-29

I can't stand transitions. I like beginnings, and I'm so-so with endings, but I get real impatient in the middle, the getting from here to there. Seriously, I'm one of those sinful people who usually reads the end of the novel shortly after beginning it. It's a terrible habit, very frowned upon in society. I usually do read the whole novel, but it helps me be able to put the book down for a few seconds if I know where the thing is going.

Keith, Lucas, and I are sitting right in the center of a transition right now, as we finish out our year-long internship here in Monroe, and wait as whatever what God has for us next unfolds. And it has been driving me batty!

I am reading another young adult fantasy novel from the library, which I really like: Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. I must admit that I skipped to the ending on this one, because I couldn't put it down otherwise, and it's hard to read straight through anything in my life, with a 21-month-old like Lucas, a dog like Billy, and a husband like Keith! Heh heh. But it is a great book, a really good story, and now as I read it cover-to-cover the way I'm supposed to, I'm realizing that one of the beauties of this book is the way Cashore develops the relationship between the two main characters. And that in skipping ahead, I missed out on the tensions and flow of that development.

And then it dawned on me how much I try to do this in my life. I want so bad to know the "end" of the story, to rush through the middle so I won't be held in suspense. But here I am, thirty-three years old, with a toddler and just really getting started in a vocation that it will take me a lifetime to master in any real way. And so, I'm right in the middle of everything! My whole life is suspense!

So I guess I'd better learn to appreciate it somehow, for the wondrous mystery that it is. This morning, looking at the daily lectionary, the above parable from Mark's Gospel came up, and I heard it in a new way. The farmer doesn't know how the seed sprouts, and the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain. The development of the plant is a mystery, but it is an important mystery, an unfolding which has to happen for the plant to grow to fruition. But the exciting thing is watching how it happens.

It's not just that it's worth waiting for the mystery to unfold, but the joy in life is watching and appreciating exactly how that will happen, bit by bit, turn by turn.

Saint Family Reunion

Last weekend Lucas and I were attending the Saint Family Reunion in Ohio. Some of you may not know it, but I was already a half “Saint” before I was ever baptized. You see, my mother’s maiden name was capital-“S” Saint, as she is the daughter of James Giles Saint the Third (who was, incidentally, a Presbyterian minister—after all, what would you do with a last name like “Saint”?). So my genetic half-Sainthood doesn’t mean I’m already halfway through the process of sanctification. Though it does mean that, yes, our family theme song is “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

At any rate, four branches of the Saint family gathered together at the reunion last week. Now, when I told one of the local church members about this during our time at the Food Bank this week, he laughed and said, “If my family had a reunion, you’d need a SWAT team there to keep the peace!” Some of you might have a similar feeling about getting together with your extended family. Lots of old arguments, hard feelings, and irreconcilable differences coming together over dinner, not something many of us enjoy.

But what was remarkable was how peaceful our family reunion was, as I imagine these things are as present in our extended family as in anyone else’s. We had the whole gamut of political and theological views represented in our gathering. We had all ages of people and many kinds of lifestyles. We had Salvation Army officers, global missionaries, multiple Presbyterian ministers, Unitarian Universalists, and I'm sure some "spiritual but not religious" thrown in for good measure.

I think the oldest was my great Uncle Bill, who is probably in his late eighties. He was accompanied by his caregiver, his gynecologist son John, who wore scrubs all weekend and told a dirty joke I won’t repeat here. Half the family laughed at it and half of them didn’t understand it. We had loquacious cousin Aland, free-spirited teacher Amari, tatooed Suzanne, and shy psychology student, Jenny. Some of us were single parents of toddlers, and some of us, like me, in that role for the weekend, were trying to figure out how they manage it on a day to day basis! We had strong-armed Aunt Dottie, who if you stretch her, reaches 5 feet, marshalling all of us together for a family picture. It was something to see.

One of the more remarkable moments was during our Sunday morning family worship service. My sisters, Julie and Beth, and I had been asked to lead the group in singing "In My Life, Lord, Be Glorified." A pretty simple tune, in which you can substitute various phrases: "in our church" or "in this world" or whatever. With the upcoming Sunday lectionary in my mind, upon which I am currently trying to write a sermon (II Samuel 7: 1-14a and Ephesians 2:19-22) I asked the group to sing "In this house, Lord, Be Glorified." It was lovely to see and hear all of these wonderful people, in all their variety, who are all family in some way, who are all "saints" in some way, singing this song together.

The Ephesians passage says something about this:

"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."

God reunited the Saints, and God continues over and over again, to reunite all the saints, as people of all different kinds come together in community, worshipping and inviting God to be glorified in their midst.

Creating a life of your own making

So my Mom left this book at my house during her last visit, 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch. Suzy Welch is a regular Oprah-related commentator, and in her words, her book is about "a new approach to making choices that will allow you to create a life of your own making..." (p.3). The decision-making tool Welch teaches involves framing a question about an action to take in one's life, and then visualizing the consequences of that action or inaction in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years, and making one's decision based on the analysis of those potential consequences.

I think Welch's decision-making tool is a good one, and I will attempt to use it as we continue in our discernment process. But I have a problem with the language of "creating a life of your own making." This is one of those places where Christian faith smacks up against prevailing individualistic and consumerist cultural notions. I think the idea that a person can have "a life of one's own making" encourages a kind of self-idolatry and perpetuates the very crushing expectations from which Welch wants to help liberate us.

The thing is, our lives are never "of our own making." After all, not a one of us had a choice about being born. In fact, our lives result from a long line of choices that were made before any one of us ever came to be. The stories of scripture tell us that we exist only because God chose to create us, human beings, from the dust of the earth. We are creatures, first and foremost, and we do not create lives, neither our own, nor anyone else's. We are always the humble recipients of God's incredibly gracious gift of life.

And yet, I don't want to perpetuate any kind of fatalism, and I don't buy "double predestination" as it has been used and described by theologians in the past. We do have free will, and so we have agency in living out our lives. There are choices to be made. But the question is not, "How do I create a life of my own making?" so much as "How do I faithfully live into the life for which I have been created?"

In our world, there are SO many choices. More and more, it seems to me, this is a defining issue for the ministry of pastors and preachers in our time. We are free to use the gifts God has given us, but we must exercise wisdom and good judgment so that our choices form us more closely in the image of Christ.