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.

Labyrinthine Graduation Reflections

Well, it's official. After four years, Keith and I have finally graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. There's even a picture of us, walking out the door of University Presbyterian Church, where the commencement ceremony was held, on the seminary website to prove it (it's number 5 in the changing slideshow of images at the top of the page).

Now Keith and I have entered the "call process," seeking a call to ordained ministry in a Presbyterian Church, somewhere in the world. It's a bit of an overwhelming process. Somehow, through the Holy Spirit, we will encounter our match and begin a life-changing relationship with a group of people who have come together in this amazing thing called "church." The best comparison to this process in my experience is that of seeking, meeting, dating, and choosing a mate. So far it's been both exciting and frightening. We've taken the first step, entering a new labyrinth.

During this past momentous and busy month of May, I've had the chance to walk two different labyrinths. Just before we left for graduation, we went to a church in Ruston, Louisiana and walked their labyrinth. It was a beautiful labyrinth, a replica of the famous one in Chartres, France. A couple of days after our graduation, Keith, Lucas, and I walked another labyrinth, at John Knox Ranch, a Presbyterian camp and conference center south of Austin. It was in the classic style (check out Wikipedia's page on labyrinths, which displays various styles).

Both times, as I walked, I took the suggestion of Daniel Wolpert, in Creating a Life with God, who says that, while walking toward the center of the labyrinth, listen for and let go of the things which have become barriers to your relationship with God. In the center, rest in communion with God. As you leave the center to walk the outward path, listen for and accept where God is sending you on your continued journey of faith.

Keith and I took turns, alternately walking the labyrinth and attending to Lucas. Lucas enjoyed running crazily in and out of the labyrinth, seeming to delight in the rhythm of its lines and flow. I went first, and I walked somewhat quickly, wanting to make sure Keith would have ample time to walk. But even with this concern in mind, I settled into a comfortable pace, and I was aware of God's presence with us in that place.

I could not help but love Lucas' wild running exuberance, though at first it seemed an interruption. But then, those interruptions simply became part of the journey. As I walked the outward cycles, I came to new gratitude, receiving and accepting the life God has given me as a gift, which is now replete with such "interruptions." Instead of wishing that I could be off by myself, silently, as I might have been able before Lucas came into our lives, I gave thanks that I could practice both the spiritual discipline of the labyrinth and the practice of mothering Lucas . I gave thanks for the vocations of ministry, of marriage, and of motherhood, to which God has called me.

These experiences resonate with something I read in Gernot Candolini's book, Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center. He writes, "For me the labyrinth is an invitation to turst that my life has both followed and is continuing on a good path. We can take the prevailing directives--'this is the way to do it right'--and lay them aside. I don't believe that my life is locked into a bewildering maze, with someone sitting in judgment behind every wrong turn mocking my stupidity. I believe in a path that I take in just the way I'm taking it. I ultimately believe in the great contradiction, the great paradox, the great mystery of life: that on one hand I am as a person utterly free, that I may be entirely myself, unique and irreplaceable; and that at the same time I am perfectly secure and led, completely embedded in a sure path" (p. 97).

I am grateful for the chance to walk these labyrinths at this time in my life, as I take leave of seminary and listen for God's call.

Fantasy and Reality

I love reading sci fi/fantasy novels, especially ones written for teenagers. Starting with Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain in fourth grade, in my reading, I have gone on little vacations from this world and gallivanted around in mythopoetic worlds of all sorts. These "vacations" have been especially important for me during times of transition in my life.

Of course I love The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia as well as the whole Harry Potter series, but I've always felt a little guilty about this reading passion. However, over the past couple of years, I have realized that my love for mythic fantasy is very congruent with my love of the Bible and its narratives, as well as my passion for theology and philosophy. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien (and even JK Rowling) all understood this long ago, but I'm only now catching up.

Well, I'm in another transition time in my life, as Keith and I prepare to graduate from seminary and continue the process of seeking a call to church ministry. And I have found myself drawn again to reading fantasy novels. Currently I'm reading The Books of Pellinor by Allison Croggon. I came across them in the local library's "Young Adult Fiction" section, and I'm on the third of the quartet, called The Crow. Croggon, whose primary writing before these books was poetry, writes with breathtaking and beautiful detail, describing a beautiful world in extreme peril. The "Dark" is rising again, bringing with it horrifying violence, brutal inhumanity, and despair. The main characters, a girl named Maerad and her brother named Hem, orphans with tragic histories of slavery and neglect, discover that they are prophesied to put an end to this menacing evil in their world.

As I'm just beginning to think about the theology of fantasy, I've come across a wonderful essay Croggon has written about "The Reality of Fantasy." She articulates very clearly much of what has been circling about in my head as I've been reading. Croggon points out that, in order for fantasy to work, the world in which it is set must be described in almost hyper-realistic detail, so that it is believable for the reader. She also points out that one of the most essential aspects of fantasy or "fairy stories" is what Tolkien calls the "eucatastrophe," the sudden turn of events which moves the protagonists--and the reader--from despair to hope. It is an unexpected moment of grace, which does not deny the regular catastrophes in the world, but shows that those tragedies are never the end of the story.

For this reason, fantasies like those I have noted describe and wrestle with realities which are profoundly spiritual. They offer room for what Croggon calls "emotional catharsis," which is a deep human need. As they allow the reader to distance momentarily from the difficulties of his or her own life, fantasy stories also offer the reader a chance to come to new terms with those difficulties.

Not surprisingly, the primary virtue of protagonists in fantasy stories is courage, because those characters face dark realities in their world; and it is for this reason that fantasy stories can inspire courage in their readers to confront own lives with acceptance of the challenges they face. Croggon writes, "It is through fantasy that we may enter reality whole, unafraid of ourselves and so more able to deal with the fears we face in the world. Fantasy is not an evasion of reality, so much as an enabler of it."

I love this quote, and I love Croggon's books.

Pre-sermon musings at the Bangladesh Crossroads

Ten years ago this week, I was embroiled in making an excruciating decision. After five months in Bangladesh with the Peace Corps, I was beginning to recognize that it was a posting for which I was quite unprepared and badly suited. Yet, I had not yet relinquished my fantasies of doing "the toughest job you ever loved" as one of the first group of PCVs to serve in Bangladesh since 1963. I was in the grips of indecision, unable to make one of the most momentous choices I have had in my life: do I stay or do I go?

There was a lot riding on this decision for me. I was in love with the romantic ideal of Peace Corps service from the time I was ten years old. I dreamed of falling in love with a country and its people. But even more, I was in love with my own history of achievement. I had never really "failed" at anything up to this point. I had graduated from college with honors in Sociology and Anthropology, which ought to have meant I could handle the adaptation to Bangladeshi culture.

However, from almost the first day, I seemed to be struggling to survive Bangladesh. It began with a bad host family experience during training. Though my second host family was wonderful, the first one set the tone for my life in Bangladesh. My attempts to adapt always seemed to fall flat, bringing more trouble into my life. Every new behavior I tried on, hoping it would help me somehow integrate into life in Bangladesh, was a kind of ill-fitting clothing, stifling and smothering me.

The photo above represents my happiest times I had as a Peace Corps Volunteer, alone on a rooftop, above the chaotic reality of life in Bangladesh, reading or writing in my journal. But it also represents a fundamental problem I had relating to people in that place and time. I was extremely self-absorbed, in part because I was pretty confused about who I was and who I wanted to be. I wrestled constantly with what I now call the "should-demons," my critical inner voices, which made regular, coercive attempts to conform me to an unreachable ideal. With such inner conflict, I could hardly even see the people around me, which certainly inhibited the love affair I had dreamed about. All that inner wrangling eventually took so much energy that I could hardly function, let alone make good decisions to improve my situation.

Often, I simply shut the door on Bangladesh, barricaded myself in my room, and went deep inside myself. I went over and over the details of my story, looking for options. Every doorway I could envision out of that room seemed to involve death in some way. If I gave up and went home, I would see myself as a failure, and I thought everyone else would, too. If I stayed, I would have to keep trying to make this thing work, and the effort to do that might kill me. There was no way to come out of this thing living, it seemed, so I continued in the path I was on, my indecision rendering me inert, dead weight.

But then, in March 1999, I met some Christian missionaries. They opened their homes to me, invited me into conversation about my vocation, and prayed with me. They had a deep sense of call, empowered by their confidence that Jesus Christ could redeem anyone in any situation. I won't name them, in case they are still in Bangladesh, because "missionaries" were and probably are still officially not allowed there, if they intend to preach to Muslims. These missionaries came from a more "conservative" Christian perspective than I have myself. But however I feel about their efforts to evangelize Muslims, their Christian witness had a profound impact on a young woman from Indiana. In and through their testimony, in both their words and their actions, I met Jesus Christ.

Sure, I had been born into a Christian family, attended church my whole life, confirmed in eighth grade, and so on. To a certain extent, I was already a "believer," if believing means having a kind of intellectual agreement with various statements. And yet, I wasn't a believer at all in many respects. Certainly I saw Jesus as an important teacher of moral and ethical behavior, and I thought I was following him. But my self-absorbtion and strangling indecision in Bangladesh showed up the deeper truth. Yes, Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again, redeeming sinners and reconciling humanity with God. But what did that really have to do with me?

"Judge not, lest ye be judged," Jesus preaches. When one of these missionaries quoted this statement to me, the light began to dawn for me. I valued my own judgment above and beyond God's judgment in Jesus Christ, whom Barth describes as "the judge who was judged in our place." The only problem was that my testimony against myself was inevitably damning. Believing the story my "should-demons" were telling me, I could never come out alive.

But, as the missionaries reminded me, Jesus had already been tried according to systems more unjust than my should-demons, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Jesus died, and Jesus has risen from that death. Jesus' resurrection was God's vindication, breaking forever the power of the unjust systems which had convicted him. By faith in Jesus, Christians join themselves to him, claiming his vindication as their own. Christians stake their lives on Jesus' witness to God's forgiving and vindicating love, which overcomes every barrier and births in us a new, empowering, eternal kind of life.

By April 1999, I had come to the crossroads. Any decision I made would determine the whole course of my future. I could stay in Bangladesh, finish out my Peace Corps term (another 18 months!) and go into the international non-profit work I had always assumed would come naturally after Peace Corps service. Or I could turn around, go home and start over, begin living out of a new direction for my life.

What it came down to was, which story would I stake my life on? If I continued to believe the "should-demons," all roads would lead to my death. I would be strangled, sooner or later, by impossible expectations. But if I began believing, truly believing, in Jesus Christ, and I began trusting that I, too, was forgiven and redeemed, than all roads would lead to life. I could even choose to stay in Bangladesh, empowered by that incredible love to exit the prison I had created for myself and take the risk of relationship. Or, I could go home and begin again. God would love me and empower me as a disciple in either place. I was free to choose.

I'm preaching this Sunday on Jesus' post-resurrection appearance to the disciples in Luke 24:36-48 (off lectionary). In that appearance, with his testimony, in which Jesus showed himself to be really alive and helped the disciples understand the scriptures, Jesus turned a bunch of fearful, undecided people into a powerful community of witnesses. In staking their lives on his story, they broke out of their closed room and risked relationships. Whenever and wherever

those witnesses tell that story faithfully, in their words and in their deeds, the witness to Jesus Christ has transformed the world, bringing true, eternal life.

Spring is springing...

The community garden is growing. All plots currently available are taken. And everything we planted in our plot is growing, including the eggplants, which waited a while to peek their sprouts through the soil. Keith reports that we actually have one tiny tomato and one tiny pepper already. I'm still amazed by the miracle of seeds sprouting and becoming.

Lucas is growing, too. Here he is in the Monroe church sanctuary, almost as tall as the pews. In a few years, we'll look back on this and think, "Was he ever that small?" I know this, because right now I'm looking at him thinking, "How did he get so big?" He is changing so quickly, getting new ideas every day about the world and trying them out. Lately he's been big on hats and ballcaps. He taps his head and points at the hats, hanging on the coathook, and we all put them on. Then we take them off, and hang them up, and the cycle begins again. If you see me, and I have hat-hair, now you know why.

We've been interns at the church for about eight months, and as we've been tinkering, trying out programs for young adults and families, we've been growing, too. It's hard to know how successful we've been at facilitating growth for the church, but certainly we've had lots of opportunities to experiment with our ideas about what might inspire people to deepen in their relationships to God and to each other.

I must admit that I'm impatient for results in all these kinds of growth. I'm impatient for the tomatoes to ripen. I'm impatient for Lucas to be able to talk in sentences and play more organized games with me. I'm impatient for the Young Adult ministry at this church to take off in numbers and enthusiasm.

But so much of growth is hidden. It's hard to see that it's happening until it's happened. And then the happening catches me by surprise. I pray to trust God in these hidden times of growth. I pray for help recognizing growth when it happens.

Here is a prayer from J. Philip Newell, from Celtic Treasure:

The earth is full of your goodness, O God.

It sprouts green and grows into the roundness of fruit.

Its touch and its taste enliven our souls.

Let us know the seeds of life's goodness within us and between us.

And let us handle its gifts with wonder.

Slowly, slowly

My Lucas has been sick this week, and time has gotten all wavy and wiggly on me. Like everyone else with kids these days, Keith and I have our schedules tightly knitted so that we can share work, household, and parenting duties. With Lucas home sick, everything must shift to accommodate someone staying home with him. The nice thing is, between the two of us, we are more than able to cover "one" ministry position (though the household and parenting positions may be questionable at times!).

However, weeks like this make me wonder about the younger families in our congregation and in our culture today. As we minister to these families, attempting to plan fellowship gatherings and Christian educational opportunities, it becomes rapidly clear how BUSY everyone seems to be in our world. Here in Monroe, once your kids have graduated from preschool, it seems that sports begin to take over your world. Life with preschoolers is isolating, so parents must look on the chance to integrate into the community's sports' scene as a relief at first, but then they seem to end up running from practice to practice, game to game, with nary a chance at taking a deep breath, let alone gathering for a church event.

This worries me, as I look at these parents and as I look at my rapidly growing boy. His latest trick is learning to climb onto the bed (the dog now has nowhere to escape him), so you know that we'll have to get him into sports to use up some of that physical energy. But I worry about running from here to there. I already feel too busy, and I have more opportunities than most people to pursue my church vocation and creative interests even while raising my son.

I came across this blog recently on "Slow Family Living," which gave me a chance to take a deep breath of relief ( http://slowfamilyliving.com/). From there, I found the following post in a New York Times blog on parenting, which is well worth a read:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/what-is-slow-parenting/
It fascinates me: as technology gets faster and faster, many people around the world are calling for a breather.

When I lived in Guatemala, and I would go walking in my mountain village, my host mother Toribia always sent me off, calling out a phrase that means, "Slowly, slowly, don't fall down." I found deep meaning in those words while living there, taking a year and moving with the Maya-Kiche seasons. Those words come back to me now, and I long to find a slow and steady rhythm to carry me through these days, even when "falling down" has happened.

What does "slow living" mean for you readers out there? How do you slow down?

"Purity of heart" and Toddler Parenting

Yesterday, Lucas made an exciting discovery: he can screech in an excruciatingly high pitch, and if he does so in the general vicinity of our dog, Billy, he gets a reaction which pleases him. Billy growls and runs away. Lucas laughs. All of this was going on while I was trying to make a salad for dinner. All I wanted to do was cut up some red onions, but I sighed and had the following conversation with myself:


Self 1: The kiddo is screeching at the dog.


Self 2: Ignore it. If you pay too much attention, he'll just keep it up.


Self 1: But the dog doesn't like it.


Self 2: It's not a big deal.


Self 1: But Billy might bite Lucas, and what will he learn if I let him harass the dog?


Self 2: I have to get this salad done, argh!


Self 1: Now where did that kiddo get to, anyway? (shrieking and growling from the back bedroom).


Was it Kierkegaard who said that "purity of heart is to will one thing"? (http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2523). Where toddler parenting is concerned, I find that willing one thing is darn near impossible. After all, in order to parent well, I must not only feed the toddler, but also myself; and in order to parent well, I must pick and choose my battles with the toddler; and in order to parent well, I must set reasonable limits on the toddler's behavior; and in order to parent well, I must MAKE THE SHRIEKING STOP!

Kierkegaard was writing about vocation and pursuing God's calling on our lives with clarity and decisiveness. But my life, as one who is called not only to church ministry but also to motherhood, is constantly pulled in many directions. Instead of willing one good thing, I find myself living every moment in the dynamic tension between many good things.

A couple of good books I've been working on recently include Also a Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma and In the Midst of Chaos, both by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore. I heaved a great sigh of relief when I read Miller-McLemore's perspective on how traditional spiritual practices of solitude and silence do not seem to be meant for people with children. I love silence and solitude, but I also love Lucas and the noisy chaos he brings into my life. Miller-McLemore believes that God is present and can be experienced in the midst of chaos, in practices of listening to children and in the tension of dual vocations.

Right now I'm not so sure. But I'm going to resist the temptation to read a few more parenting books, which often muddle me even more, and I'm going to attempt to trust The Parent of Us All to teach me how to parent peacefully. And I'm going to trust that the salads will get made, everyone will eat, Lucas will learn to respect Billy, and everyone will go to sleep tonight and wake up again tomorrow.

(Photo shows Lucas and Billy peacefully co-existing in May 2008.)

Baking: Gluttony? or Sabbath Practice?

I've been on a baking binge this week. I've made three loaves of rosemary foccacia bread (the bread my niece and nephew call "Aunt Laura Bread"), three loaves of ciabatta bread, three dozen chocolate chip cookies, one batch of my new favorite "Tuscan Short Bread" (with rosemary and walnuts), and a huge batch of amazingly delicious and decadent cinnamon rolls.

While we do have relatives coming to visit this weekend, I'd be lying if I said that were my motivation for all this baking activity. A friend of ours once told my husband, "You know what you've got? A 'Liberated Woman' who wants to be 'Homemaker of the Century,'" and while I must admit there's some truth to that statment, God help me, that wasn't my motivation either. It was, pure and simple, my desire to satisfy the cravings of my heart, not to mention my mouth and my nose! I guess I'm giving away that I didn't give up sweets for Lent as I have attempted to do in the past. I didn't give up anything. I "flunked" Lent this year, I guess (Here's a great post on this subject: http://ekklesiaproject.blogspot.com/2009/03/flunking-lent.html). I'm a glutton.

But the delight I have found in kneading bread dough from rumpled and messy to smooth and elastic, and the satisfaction I have found in the scent of buttery shortbread, and the rest I have found in waiting on bread to rise...These lead me to think of baking as a practice which helps me to "sanctify time," as I was talking about in last week's post. Certainly, if I were an Orthodox Jew, it wouldn't work as a Sabbath practice, because baking is clearly a form of labor. And yet, for me, while the bread is in the oven, I sit in my rocking chair and inhale the aroma, and I relax into the warm presence of it, and I'm held in God's hand.

And there's nothing quite liked baked goods for bringing together a community! I bake almost every week for our Sunday school class, and I think they know now that the muffins I bring are a form of my love for them. I'm also trying to bake for the garden workdays, with the same idea in mind. Where there's bread, there's community. I learned it from Jesus himself.

Here's the most delicious and easiest bread recipe I know, which I got from No Need to Knead by Suzanne Dunaway( http://www.buonaforchetta.com/noneed.html).

Rosemary Foccacia Bread (Dunaway via Hudson)

• 2 cups luke-warm water
• 2 tsp. yeast (or one envelope)
• 4 cups unbleached bread flour
• 2-3 tsp. salt
• Chopped fresh rosemary (can use dried, but fresh tastes better)
• kosher or sea salt
• olive oil

1. Pour water in a large bowl. Sprinkle yeast into water and stir until dissolved. Add two cups of flour, and stir until smooth. Add two more cups of flour and salt, and stir until the flour is incorporated. The dough will be pretty wet and sticky. Cover and let rise 40 mins or so. (You can also cover it and let it rise overnight in the fridge. Just let it come to room temp. before continuing).

2. Oil a large skillet (cast iron works great), and pour the risen dough into it. Brush olive oil on top, sprinkle with chopped rosemary and salt. Let rise again, 20-30 mins.

3. Heat oven to 500. Bake bread for 10-15 mins at this temp, and then turn it down to 400 for 10-15 mins. more. Try to wait to break into into until it has cooled completely on a rack!

In and out of time

Clearly, I have yet to establish a rhythm for blogging. I hear tell that it's blogging practice to neglect one's blog for very long, that one of the marks of the genre is to keep it current. But I haven't gotten into a regular "updating" habit yet, and so here we are, two weeks later.

However, this is just another minute episode (if you will) in my life of attempting to live in multiple kinds of time all at once. Blogging time. The liturgical calendar (it's Lent, after all). Lucas time. Keith time. Spring garden planting time. The seminary calendar. Taxation time (April 15th on its way).

I preached on the Ten Commandments this past Sunday in church. Out all of the commandments, the one with which people in our world seem to have the most difficulty accepting is the commandment to "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." This is where we Protestant Christians like to drag in the justification by faith argument, and claim that the "old law" has passed in Jesus. (They don't call it the "Protestant Work Ethic" for nothing). I'm pretty sure that my sermon opened up this can of worms for some people, as they looked at the commandments and thought, "No murder, check. No stealing, check. But how can I possible keep the Sabbath? How can I possibly stop working, for even one day?"

Sabbath is about resting from work. But I think it is also about how we approach time in general. One of my seminary professors talked about how following the commandments in Judaism (including Sabbath) is actually about "sanctifying time." What would it be like to live in sanctified time, I wonder?

In the past, I've had fantasies of following a pseudo-monastic daily prayer pattern, praying the hours (Here's a website which lists them http://palm.philippians-1-20.us/hours.htm). A momentary glance at the number of online pages that come up and the number of book titles on prayer available demonstrates to me that I am not alone in this. What is it that I hope for, what is it that I long for in dreaming of holy time?

I long for childhood time, the kind of time I see Lucas inhabiting more and more, where he is so deeply engrossed in his play (and I'm so engrossed in him) that an hour passes without either of us noticing. Is that what holy time is like?

Garden Dreams and Garden Practicality

My husband Keith went and bought some seeds for our community garden plot. He bought seeds for two kinds of tomatoes, squash, beans, spinach, and peppers. I'm already dreaming ways to eat the produce, and we haven't even planted yet. Typical.

I'm not really a gardener. My Mom is, and I remember her coercing my sisters and me out to weed the garden behind our house. Hot hours crouched down in the humid Indiana summer, pulling weeds, didn't inspire my enthusiasm. I didn't make the connection between those hard hours of work and the food on our table. It seemed much easier to go to the grocery store to pick up carrots. As an adult, I've begun to find grocery shopping for produce grown in Chile or Australia or some other far off place bewildering and disturbing. I can't look at it anymore without wondering, what is the price in travel and labor for this food, so neatly piled up in the store? How much pesticide residue will my family and I consume, eating it? And, admittedly most compelling, will it even taste good?

When I lived in Guatemala, my host family had enough small plots of land to cultivate all of the corn they consumed in a year, and let me tell you, Guatemalans eat a lot of corn. They call themselves "the people of corn" and much of their culture revolves around the corn planting and harvest. As I lived with them and experienced their life, the corn tortillas and tamales we ate almost every day tasted better and better. All that hard work, all that loving and personal care for plants and the earth, I believe it tranfers to the food and the communion around the table.

I've come to regret that I didn't attend more closely to my mother's gardening, or other handy skills she wanted to teach me, like canning or sewing. In our current economic situation, I think such skills, the ones our grandparents knew well because they had to, are going to become vital again. I think that one of the best things we can do for future generations is teach them to garden, even as we teach them to use a computer. Here's a great article in Orion Magazine about this very issue: "A Bunny Runs Around a Tree," by Sandra Steingraber (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4259/).

Community Garden: It's really happening!

Saturday was the first workday of the ARCO Royal Avenue Community Garden Project in Partnership with First Presbyterian Church (how's that for a mouthful of a name!). When Keith and I first came to the church, we looked at their large and beautiful plots of land and thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we could help get a community garden going?" And then, Keith was randomly searching on Google Images, and came across the blog for the Monroe Community Gardens (http://monroegardens.blogspot.com/), a group that had already been working to create a community garden for more than a year. They were a "people without a country," with lots of interest and will-power, but no land. A serendipitous connection...or the Holy Spirit?

Through this group, we met Mike Roberts, one of the central organizers of the garden. Here he is, setting up recycled railroad ties to frame one of the plots. He is easily one of the most enthusiastic people I have ever met. This guy is a one-man course in community-building!

On Saturday, we started cleaning up the land and to laying out some "sample" plots. I attacked some tenacious vines which had taken over the fence-row on the lot's border with a borrowed rake, which I managed to break several times in my vehemence. Luckily, Gerald, the new gardening friend from whom I borrowed it, was forgiving, as he was also engaged in a battle with the vines.

I'm starting to scheme about what we'll plant in our plot. I can already imagine the taste of delicious fresh vegetables, which always taste better when you've grown them yourself! Doesn't get any more local than that!

Body awareness

So I went to my first yoga class in a long time this week. Our teacher guided us to move from our hectic thought-mind space into the slower, ebb and flow of our body-mind. It was wonderful. I've been realizing lately how much I live out of the "what's next, what's next" jumping-around of my brain, and how I've forgotten how to truly rest and enjoy the movements of my own body. Like everyone else, I'm too busy, with my toddler, my work, random and assorted projects, too much time on Facebook...

About nine years ago, I studied massage for three months at the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing (IPSB for short) in California( http://ipsb.com/news.htm ), one of the most enjoyable educational experiences ever. Talk about luxurious experiential education: I got at least one pretty wonderful therapeutic massage every other day or so. I was more aware of the miracle of the human body than ever before.

When I went, shortly after that, to Guatemala, my massage training led me to connect with Capacitar, http://www.capacitar.org/, an amazing organization whose teachers empower grass-roots communities all over the world with training in holistic health practices. Their founder, Patricia Cane, is one of the most inspiring people I've ever met, and I've often thought that I want to be just like her when I grow up.

When I worked with BorderLinks http://www.borderlinks.org/ , we were able to get Pat Cane to come and lead an Encuentro; people from both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border gathered and learned basic holistic health practices, like Tai Chi, reflexology, and breathing practices, together. Pat Cane did the most seamless, relaxed, bi-lingual teaching that I've ever seen.

Since I've been at seminary the past few years, it seems that my body awareness has grown ever dimmer as I've concentrated on learning the theology and practice of ministry. But as I am about to graduate and seek a call in the Presbyterian church, it is high time to remember the body, not just for my own ongoing health, but for the sake of the church itself. It is kind of ironic that a group of people, who follow a healer of not only spiritual, but also physical ailments, and who call themselves "the Body of Christ," can often be poor at caring for bodies, their own and others', privileging spiritual well-being over physical.

Holistic or hole-istic?

My sixteen-month-old son Lucas and I went for a walk this afternoon. He likes to pick up rocks and leaves and examine dandelions and clover. Acorns are a special favorite. Today, he was carrying around a cherished rock he had just encountered, and he came across a hole in the cement, a little divot; perhaps a rock had been mixed in there with the original cement but had come loose. Lucas poked the hole with his finger, looked at the rock in his hand, and placed it in the hole. The rock barely fit, but there was an undeniable logic to it. Lucas showed himself to be his problem-solving father's son. Later he attempted to fill another hole with a clover flower. That was when he showed himself to be his fanciful mother's son!

I was touched by these little actions, as a sappy mama is entitled to be. At the same time, I'd been thinking all morning about holistic approaches to work and parenting and living. As a theology student and activist and former massage therapy student, I feel I'm entitled to think in big, abstract ways about such things. But I was also thinking about the faith of my church community and what the best approach might be to nurturing it, as the pastor I am in the process of becoming. Even more specifically, I was thinking about how I might lead a parenting class. I was trying to decide whether to use a "practical tips" or a "holistic spirituality" kind of a famework.

Here's the thing. Parenting is one of those life experiences which teaches a person that their whole theoretical framework of life was nothing more than an edifice of air, a castle of cloud, blown away by the first, shrieking exhalation of the newborn child. And yet being a parent without a larger dream, without hanging onto the hope that one day the shrieking babe will become a healthy, sane adult, parenting would only be an excercise in daily chaos, in which we move from petty demand to demand until we collapse.

Irenaeus famously said, "The glory of God is humanity fully alive." I love this quote, but what does it mean to be "fully alive?" I believe God creates each one of us to come to a kind of wholeness of personhood and, indeed, holiness. Jesus Christ most fully exemplifies what that kind of wholeness looks like in a person. Okay, and so what was so great about Jesus? I think he lived (and died and rose again) out the greatest commandment: Love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind (Matt. 22:36-38).

Holistic philosophies seek health (another word related to whole and holy) in the interconnection and integration of heart, mind, spirit, and body. I think the greatest commandment points at this kind of health, the holistic work of all systems. One of my hopes for the church is that we can be a people and a place where such healing can take place, where whole, fully alive human beings can be nutured and can be sent out to nuture others.

But so often, reality seems to work against holistic practice. We divide the church up into committees in the administrative practice of my tradition. The Worship Commitee, the Evangelism Commitee, the Stewardship Commitee. We break it down, and we break it down again into bite size pieces. Sometimes, though, the glorious dream of full aliveness becomes so bitty that all we can do is argue about the color of the carpet in the sanctuary. But still we hope that somehow each bite-sized piece will form back up into a whole loaf, a whole communion, a whole interconnected Body of Christ, moving, breathing and thinking towards God's glory.

But Jesus said, "This is my body, broken for you." The only whole One, the fully alive One, allowed himself to be broken, so that we, in our brokenness, might be healed.

I'm frustrated with the small-scale of actual ministry work sometimes, the day-to-day piecemeal work. I'm frustrated with the gap between my dreams and reality, the long pathway, full of rubble. But God does give me pieces, rocks, dandelions, bottle caps, clover. It is not my job to heal seamlessly. My job is to try my best to fit them, sometimes awkwardly, into the holes in the sidewalk.

A whole new world

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.



I've been contemplating blogging for over two years now, holding off because I didn't think I wanted to spend any more time on the computer than I already do, and also, why would I want to share the intimate details of my life with the whole world?



So why am I doing this? And why now?



Because I've been a writer since the time I was eight years old. Because journaling is no longer enough. Because there is an incredible conversation out going on that I want to be part of. Because God gave each one of us voices, and blogging has given us new ways to share them with each other. All of our voices, all of our particular lives, all of these details: each one unique, each one astonishing. Why not mine, too? I've been holding back and holding out, and it's time to put some musings and mutterings out there and let them go.



I don't know how many intimate details I'll be sharing. But God has given me a voice. Sometimes it sounds like a sqawk, and sometimes like a croak, but sometimes it sounds like a glorious song. Sometimes (not very often) I'm as foreboding and gloomy as Edgar Allen Poe's raven. But mostly I sing to call attention to the glory of the world God has made and continues to make anew each and every day.