Don’t flay the sheep.

Wedding Dress

• Colossians 3:12-17; Song of Solomon 2:10-13, 8: 6-7
• Wedding Homily for Colin Turner and Anne Valaas
• St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Minneapolis, MN

Colin and Anne—

While we know that the weather says nothing about how the marriage will go, I’m guessing we would all like to thank you for choosing such a perfect weekend for us to spend here celebrating with you. And those of us who were around yesterday, I’m sure, would also like to thank you and your parents for such hospitality and such a wonderful evening last night. However, I have to admit, I think I drank a little too much wine at your rehearsal dinner…I was really little mentally slow by the time we left the restaurant.

I kept seeing people wearing weird things: a guy in 1970s shortie-short basketball shorts and knee socks, and I thought, “Hmm…it was warm today, but not that warm.” And then I remembered it was Halloween. 5 minutes later, I saw another guy wearing full military dress, and I wondered why he was out in that instead of maybe his fatigues…and then I remembered that it was Halloween. And then we got close to he University and I saw someone dressed as a sexy ladybug. And I thought, “Hmm…that’s an odd choice for clubbing. Maybe that’s what the kids are into these days.” And then, I remembered it was Halloween.

Now, it is entirely possible that, had you not been getting out of cars near a church, or tooling through the park with a photographer, people might have looked at the two of you early this afternoon and thought, “Look at those gorgeous costumes! And don’t they look awfully good for having stayed out partying all night and into the afternoon.”

You’re not dressed for Halloween, but you are in fact wearing costumes, and you do have a part to play: the bride and groom.

I doubt you realized it when you picked these bible readings, but you picked what I’d call the “Halloween Costume” cycle of readings for a wedding today. These are passages about dressing up, (or dressing down): about the celebration of spring, which anyone who’s spent a winter in Minnesota is about shedding of layers; about wearing your love for each other so close that it seals your heart; about daily putting on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love, the same way that you put on a tux and a gown for this day.

Some people would argue that this idea of dressing up is inappropriate for setting up a good marriage: marriage should be about taking things off! (Innueundo aside, it should be about being able to be vulnerable with each other…) And that’s true. But dressing up is not all bad. C.S. Lewis once noticed that little kids dress up to pretend but also to practice at being grown ups. And this works for adults, too. Want to try to be happy on a glum day? Start by smiling. It will get you that much closer to being happy.

Your spouse is the perfect person to practice compassion with…everybody else has to go back to their own place at night. So you put up with them for a few hours, and they’re gone. “Set me as a seal upon your heart” sounds beautifully poetic pon a good day. But on a bad day, it can sound a lot more like you are stuck.

You are sealed, and so you have room to practice.

If you can practice being kind to the person who is closest to you, but who is also the easiest person to take for granted, you can learn to be kind to the rest of the world.

If you can practice being humble with the person who idolizes you the most, but who knows you the best, you can learn to be humble to the rest of the world.

If you can practice love with the person who you promise to love through good and bad, you can learn to be loving to the rest of the world.

In fact, it’s not so much that you are “dressing up” as these attributes. What you are really doing is this: you are practicing at being Christ to each other. You are choosing, when you get out of bed each morning, to put on the love of Christ. You are choosing, when you get into bed every night, to turn to each other and practice the gracious forgiveness of Jesus. You are choosing with each day, to grow into being the people who God calls you to be.

Marriage is not just about something between two people: Marriage is a dress rehearsal for the rest of our daily living. It is a safe place to be vulnerable, a safe place to try on new things, a safe place to practice being the person who God calls you to be.

Our hope for you today is not just a happy marriage between two people. Not just marriage where you are sealed one to the other.

Our hope and prayer is for a marriage where your practice at loving one another flows out into your practice of loving others in the world: loving friends and neighbors, family, patients, co-workers. Loving others as Christ loved us, because in your everyday living, you have clothed yourselves with Christ, the who loved us enough to be sealed to us through life and death, and to stay alongside us all the way.

This is the good news, Colin and Anne, for you today, and for all of God’s children.

Amen.

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This is life

I’m in a coffee shop, writing a homily for Colin and Anne’s wedding. On an incredibly perfect fall morning.

I talked to my Mom on the way over here about her day yesterday: seeing clients, going to a funeral for a family friend who died much too young, one of my cousins winning state semi-finals for soccer after that funeral. “This is life, ” she said.

So, here I am (on vacation, but I love Colin and Anne so I’m happy to spend a few hours doing “work”), thinking about that funeral that I missed yesterday, strugglin with a bad cough, watching a couple of National Guardsmen head off to their day (making me think of a friend at war in Afghanistan), enjoying the neighborhood where we are being hosted by Erik’s cousins, wondering if maybe in 5 or 6 years we’d move to Minnesota, thinking I should have had a glass or two fewer of the really good wine last night, glad to have had time with old friends from college, happy that Zora is so pleasant a child that she can stay out late for dinner and behave so well, delighted that she gets a night with grandma Viv tonight during the reception and Erik and I get a date, wondering when we’ll be able to take a trip again, thinking about my sisters who live on two continents right now, my parents about to set off on an adventure vacation in Asia, trying not to check websites about the election, and generally procrasitnating on this homily because all I can really think of is “This is life…” Too much going on, jumbled emotions, feeling pulled this way and that. Oddly, at peace in the middle of it all.

I’ll write something that has to do with their passages, but I wish I could just tell them: this is life. You don’t know where things will go or what will happen, and some mornings you’ll be pulled in every direction at once. But somehow, we just live with that and keep going to weddings and soccer games, writing homilies (well, in my case–they’re doctors, so…), wiping kids snotty noses, drinking some wine, and enjoying the sky when it’s blue.

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Heartland

Day one of vacation: it does not get any more middle-America than this.

We drove up the Mississippi from Galena, IL to Prairie du Chien, WI.

But the day started with: frantic packing with a crabby 2 year old; a harried stop to vote early (but not often…we aren’t THOSE kind of Chicago people); 2 or 3 errands that we forgot about yesterday.

And then, finally, we were on the road. Very little freeway driving, rolling hills, farms (which Zora can identify), and the big river.

In Galena, we ate a very late lunch of overpriced, disappointing looking, but suprisingly tasty chicken salad sandwiches. In Prairie du Chien we ate fantastic “family restaurant” fried catfish and potatoes and vegetable beef soup and white rolls. The local country music station was playing there, mostly political ads,a few songs, and a notice for folks to sign up for the fan bus going to see the local football team play in the state finals next week.

Erik drove all day. I finished some socks for Zora, knit a slipper for my Grandma, and started a hat to stave off the boredome of slipper number 2. We talked about how smart our kid is, how crabby she was, how fabulous she is; we talked about the election; we talked about a friend who died this week; we wondered how we had never thought of it to take this route to Minnesota before.

Now, Zora is “sleeping” in a hotel room closet space that fits her portacrib perfectly, and Erik and I are about to tuck into huge slices of homemade pie from the supper place (caramel apple and wildberry).

Tomorrow, we  do leg two of the trip: more Mississippi, and finally to Minneapolis for a wedding on Saturday.

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Finances from another angle

Maybe this it too hopeful, but I think Margaret Atwood is on to something: the financial crisis about more than finances. And maybe the fix to it is also about fixing more than finances.

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Slacker Mom

I just read this.

How do I measure up?

1. Zora’s bathroom floor? Littered with books. As is the living room for that matter.
2. Halloween plans? Colin and Anne’s wedding rehearsal. Maybe Zora will wear her elephant costume from last year, which we bought huge so that she could wear it two years in a row.
3. Zora’s health? She’s got a pretty nasty cough, but I haven’t called the doctor because Erik has the same one and he’s still alive. And what would they prescribe anyway?
4. Last birthday party? We skipped that because it happened during my Grandma’s wake. Which really didn’t bother Zora because we weren’t planning to do anything anyway. She’s two. She doesn’t care.
5. Woke up covered in pee? Actually, this morning, I went a little overboard and gave her a little bit of a sponge bath. But that was definitely an over-achiever moment.

I would say that officially qualifies me for slacker mom status. Long live Gen Y!

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One of those days

It’s one of those days when there is simply too much to do. Too many little details to coordinate too many activities this weekend: wedding, bible presentations, youth group meetings, youth group field trips, college care packs, dinners, confirmation details, and on and on.

And so, in desperation, I am going completely out of order with the church seasons here and I’m playing my Advent song list.

For now, I’m plugging ahead with the minutiae here, but it’s one of those “Come, Lord Jesus” sort of days.

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A few Monday things

1. Oh, do I love Mondays. Again, I know my week is unusual. But it’s quiet and another Sunday is finished, and this morning I got to sleep in.
2. Big events coming down the river: CROP walk; Bible Sunday; Erik switching jobs; meeting up with friends a few times this week; a family road trip; hiring a house cleaner.
3. Thing I don’t have time to do but am doing anyway: making a stole. I got it in my head that it would be really nice to have a stole for weddings and other things with the Hebrew word “chesed” (it means loving-kindness) written down one side and a Trinity symbol on the other side. I’ve got all the stuff, and now I just need to get to work.
4. Speaking of weddings, I’m helping officiate at Erik’s college roommate’s wedding in a few weeks (thus family road trip), and I get to do the homily. I am not kidding: when Colin told me I get to do the homily, I did a little happy dance. And, they picked good texts.
5. Zora is a little linguistic miracle: I think we’ve got 5-6 word sentences going. Example: “Lambie go in bumpa Luge’s car.”
6. I don’t think I’m going to have to make any begging-calls to recruit mentors for my junior high confirmation group. There are 22 of them. I thought this would be tough. The people I asked are awesome and excited. A definite good-church moment.
7. I still don’t feel like I understand the financial crisis. But, I am really happy to be a renter right now!
8. I got my fall/winter clothes out this week. I put my shorts away. Then it was, of course, in the 80s this weekend. In deference to signs of global warming, I’ve decided that the new rule is that one pair of shorts stay in my drawer all year.

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What next?

Really, this campaign cannot get any wierder. Now this?

Actually, it probably could get stranger…this probably won’t happen, but the idea that people are even talking about it.

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Bronzed

It’s official. I’m tanner than Erik.

Now, you might say that this a very stupid contest for me to engage in, what with my Dutch genes and Erik’s Norwegian ones. Clearly, we are not tanners and whatever tanning ability we have is probably a Northern European draw, right?

Nope. Erik’s dark-haired and olive-ish skinned, and he tans like a Greek. Seriously. People in Greektown sometimes assume he is Greek. Either there was a little Viking philandering in the Mediterranean in his ancestry or he’s part Lapp.

Meanwhile, I am a poster child for Dutch tourism (in the country, to the farms, not in the city, to the bars…)

Sadly, my victory this summer is not really fair one. Erik’s just been cooped up inside a whole lot more than I have, and by the time he squeezes in a vacation, we think the leaves will be off the trees.

But I’m enjoying it while I can!

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Call to Worship for “Blessed are the meek”

One: Praise the Lord, the Maker of all, skies and seas, pebbles and puddles alike.

Many: Praise to the God of big and of small.

One: Praise the Lord, the Redeemer of all, powerful and pretentious, homeless

and hidden alike.

Many: Praise to the God of big and of small.

One: Praise the Lord, the Sustainer of all, continents and cosmos, minnows and

mosquitoes alike.

Many: Praise to the God of big and of small.

One: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

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