Don’t flay the sheep.

“She’s my daughter”

An amazing metaphor for prayer:

I heard an interview on the radio this weekend, with a woman named Anita de Wit. She told the story of helping her daughter, Angelique, leave behind prostitution in Amsterdam’s red light district.

At one point, Anita talked about how important it was, through the whole process, to leave open the lines of communication. She said that sometimes, her daughter would call her on a  cell phone, even as Angelique was standing in one of those (sadly) famous windows, on display.

Anita said something like: “People would think it was strange, that I was talking to her about regular things while she was there.”

And this is the part I cannot forget: “But you can’t think, ‘My daughter is whoring herself right now.’ You think, ‘She’s my daughter and she needs to talk to me.’”

If that doesn’t break your heart…

Lord, teach us to pray…

(The interview, totally worth your while to listen to, can be found here.)

[ Filed under Journal, Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

Praying Angry

I got angry in church this Sunday while praying the pastoral prayer.

I wrote a new one for this Sunday, addressing the Aurora shootings. And, to be honest, I felt a little guilty taking such significant note of this violence in a suburban Chicago congregation when, truth be told, we barely care that over 250 people have been killed by guns in Chicago in the last 6 months.

The prayer was not my best work. But it was decent.

Now, this may be a surprise (a little insight into the “sausage making” for those who are not church professionals) but even as we are leading worship, some of us are in fact thinking about and evaluating how things are going. I know: it’s perhaps not particularly worshipful. But I don’t beat myself up too much. I figure it’s one of the hazards of the profession.

So, as I read this prayer, I found myself thinking that the prayer was striking the right note, doing the job it was meant to do. And I thought,  ”Huh. I also wrote it in a general enough style that I could use it again.”

And that’s when I had to check myself, and not let the rising anger get me.

Because I realized how horrible it was, to so casually think that I will, in all likelihood, be able to use this prayer again.

How is it acceptable to us that weapon meant to kill human being are so easy to access? How is it that structures we have in place for mental health care are so shoddy? I don’t have the solution. But I wish we were even talking seriously as a society about the solution.

And, yes, we can’t start talking about the solution immediately after something like this happens. But we’re in the middle of a presidential campaign. By the middle of this week, I think both candidates ought to have some serious proposals about the issue. Maybe some of our other politicians should start working on this, too.

Maybe the rest of us need to care enough to do something (this convicts me: I know I’ll be much less angry in a few days myself…)

But it’s really simple: the sort of thing that happened in Aurora is not OK. Neither is the sort of thing that happens on the streets of a city like Chicago nearly every day.

And it’s not OK that this keeps happening.

Creator God,

What a world you have made…
We are surrounded and astounded by your works all around us:
Sun and sky, rain and thunder,  mountains and rivers and plains.
Your beauty all around us, even in the faces and hands of other human beings.
You have loved us and blessed us with such gifts and abilities. And we can only sit back in wonder when you call us your children.

Yet as a parent, we know your heart aches for us. This world is such a messy place, o God. The same faces you made beautiful are scarred by sadness, the same hands you made for such blessing can hurt and kill. How long, O Lord, why do we go on hurting  each other? How long must we wait for peace? How long until we are comforted? How long until the world is made whole again? We ask out of our own pain and the pain of those we love: in sickness, in mourning, in broken relationships, in disappointment, in depression…

And we ask for those we do not know. We pray today for all whose lives are upended by violence. For families and friends grieving deaths in Colorado. And for hundreds of families closer to home, in our own big city, whose dear ones are gone because of violence.

We pray for every person who spirals into such dark loneliness, into such deep places of depression and rage, and mental illness, that violence makes any sense to them. And we pray, too, for the people who love them, who care for them, and struggle to keep them healthy and safe.

And we pray for ourselves. Shine a light into our hearts, so that we might see how, ever so slightly, we might change ourselves, and move our society from a culture of violence a culture that glorifies your your peace, peace that passes all understanding.

Make us whole, O Creator God. Remake us into the beauty you intended. Make us bearers of good news, and doers of good works; change the world through us.

This seems so much to ask. But we know you are able, through the power of Jesus. The one who taught us to pray boldly saying,

Our Father….

[ Filed under Journal, Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

Strangers and Aliens

Psalm 146

Hebrews 11:13-16

July 1, 2012

Park Ridge Community Church, Park Ridge, IL

It’s a basic human question:

In whom do you trust?

Before we know how to string that sentence together, before we can speak, it’s one of the questions we have to answer:

What makes you feel safe?

Where do you place your hope?

In whom do you trust?

Four years ago, we were invited to a picnic at church friends’ house for the Fourth of July. They lived in Wayne, IL, a suburb that was designed to give people room to their rambling homes and a couple horses.

By the time it was dark, time for fireworks, I wondered how my daughter Zora, then just a little under two, and completely exhausted, was going to handle this.

It turns out that our friend, a retired airline pilot, and Vietnam helicopter pilot, held an annual (slightly illegal) enormous home-grown fireworks display, which he liked to shoot off from the back porch in the direction of the barn (and just so you know: no animals were harmed: they had long ago given up their horses).

Of course, we were on lawn chairs out between the porch and barn, with the result that most of the show was right over our heads. I tried to remind myself that my friend had spent his professional life responsible for hundreds of airline passengers, so we were, I hoped, safe.

But, back to the tired girl in my arms. Nothing short of miraculous, she fell asleep in my arms. It might have been the result of many things: a late bed-time; hours of chasing our hosts’ big friendly dog around; too much ice cream. But I decided to take it as a sign of good mothering skills. She must trust me, I though, to sleep away quietly in my arms while bottle rockets went off above our heads.

On that fourth of July, four years ago, we were in the same place, and a different place, as a country.

Just like now, it was election season. We were working our way to the fall’s decision between Obama and McCain. (In fact, I remember that the husband and wife who hosted us that night, were at such odds with each other about the election that year that they had to stop talking to each other about it. My church congregation was similar)

But the economic disaster that hit us that next all wasn’t on our radar yet.

Our dollar bills say, “In God we trust”.

But, if you had asked me four years ago, I would have said that for many of us (often myself included), “In God we trust” came with a footnote:

“In God I trust…but…note that this is because in God’s infinite grace and wisdom I live in this particular country, with free and fair elections; currency that holds its value; a booming economy; a stable stock market; a passport that can get me out a jam if I’m traveling…”

For many Christians in the US, our sense of trust in God and country can get so tangled that its hard to figure out which is which.

Honestly, it’s been a hard four years for our identity as American, for that feeling that we are the greatest nation on earth. I’d imagine that most of you do feel pride in being Americans. That most of you do still feel like there is something unique and wonderful and blessed about this country. I do too.

But, I’m also one of the older members of Generation Y. And, to be honest, we’ve been hit hard. I’m not trying to whine. I know that other generations have faced incredible challenges. But there are some nagging worries when I look at the future.

I’m going to warn you in advance that this might feel a little controversial. But I resonated with this scene in a new TV show this week, Aaron Sorkin’s new show, “The Newsroom”.

At the beginning of the show, a successful news anchor, Will MacAvoy, is seated on a university stage between two news commentators, one liberal, one conservative, and a moderator is taking questions for them from students. The two commentators go at it as you’d expect. But Will remains moderate and quiet. He won’t take the bait. Until a student asks him, “  Is America the greatest country?” And the moderator pushes him. And he sort of explodes. He responds (angrily) to the student who asked, and says, no, he doesn’t think there is evidence to support that the United States is the best country on earth. He quotes statistics about where we rank in education, and health, economically. It’s a bleak picture.

So, where do we put our trust? In God? Or in country?

For the writer of Psalm 146, this is a no brainer. Trust in God or in Princes? He’ll take God, thank you very much. Princes are  only human, mortal, made from dust, to dust they reutnr, and so do all their plans and programs and policies.

Of course, for ancient Israel, this was a controversial thing to say. Their national identity was perfectly intertwined with religious identity. The judges, the kings, the princes were appointed by God, anointed by the priests and prophets.

They had, as a nation, a direct mandate from their God,  from YHWH, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebeccah…

But even with that founding and inheritance, that identity as God’s own country was still abused by strings of fallen, fallible rulers, who overstepped their role as God’s appointed leader; and forgot in whom was their trust.

The psalmist reminds us, it’s a good thing we put our ultimate trust in God: God’s policies and priorities remember the people the authorities often forget: the hungry, the prisoner, the disabled, the lowly, the resident alien, the orphan and the widow.

These were the people in the ancient world who were the most likely to be abused, the people no one was looking out for (maybe things haven’t changed so much in 30 centuries)

Now, I’m guessing that we represent something of a socio-economic spectrum here today. At the same time, if you will eat 3 meals today, and sleep in a safe place tonight, you are among some of the more blessed people in this country; and definitely in the world today.

And if Psalm 146 suggest that God places priorities on the outsiders (and we are, in many ways, the insiders) why ought we to trust in this God? Is God looking out for us?

Here’s the thing: we, too, in a way, are strangers and aliens.

Maybe we don’t feel like it. We feel like we are right where we belong. Even our religious heritage: it’s the historic majority in our country. And here we sit this morning, worshipping openly in a church that stands, quite literally, at the center of town, a place of prominence and authority.

But when Hebrews was written, it wouldn’t have been a church at the center of town. If you visit ancient Roman and Greek towns, the center of town is the temple of the local deities. Christians, by not joining in worship at those temples were opting out not just of the religious life  (and Jews, for that matter) of their communities but the civic life of their communities.

That, in fact, is also our spiritual inheritance: being wanderers, strangers and aliens. In the book of Hebrews, a letter to the Christian communities scattered throughout those Roman and Greek towns, there is a beautiful summary of the lives of all their spiritual ancestors: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, all the way through to Moses as he leads the people from Egypt to the promised land. All of them, wanderers. They went from country to country looking for a place of their own. And in the middle of this is where the author of Hebrews pauses to remind us of our religious heritage.

(reread passage)

In a physical sense, they were looking for a home, a land God has promised them. And that promise didn’t come true for generations afterward.

But the physical wandering was also a reminder that to follow God means we are looking for a home. We know that something is not quite right with this world. And we long for things to be aGod intended. As God created them. A place where we feel safe, secure. We are looking for a time and place in history where all of God’s work and intention will be fulfilled. In whom do you trust? In God alone…

And while, on one level, we are citizens of a country, even as we celebrate that, and eat apple pie and ice cream, and grill, and sit through fireworks displays, and cheer…

our fellow citizens of God’s kingdom are scattered throughout the world, strangers and aliens, like us, even in their own lands: in Mexico, in Guatemala; in Iraq; in Syria; in North and South Korea; in Greece; in Indonesia; in Egypt; in Kenya; in South Africa. In every corner of this world, the people of God.

And so our primary allegiance is to that reign of God. Which means that in our lives as citizens of this country, God’s  priorities are our priorities. There’s no right answer, no one Christian answer, in terms of candidates or parties or policies. Except that each of us is called to ask ourselves how our whole lives and all of our decisions: social, economic; spiritual; political ; how they each line up with God’s priorities.

We are strangers and aliens. But this is not bad news. It means that our trust is finally in God, always faithful, who was is and will be. And God has called us out, from east and west,north and south, gathered us in and embraced us, blessed us to be a blessing to the whole creation.

Amen.

[ Filed under Sermons | 0 Comments ]

Planning for the Dads

I’m leading worship on Father’s Day for the first time in years…for the last five, it was almost always during the youth group mission trip, and my ministerial duties for the day normally involved 40 teenagers, 12 parents, and a long, long, long bus ride. I’d try to remember to leave cards behind for my husband and my Dad and my Grandpas. Sometimes a teenager would grab the bus microphone and wish their chaperone-dad a happy father’s day.

But I’ve not had to lead worship, or plan worship, on Father’s Day.

I put a lot of thought into Mother’s Day. How to acknowledge what I think of as a more secular celebration in a way that is appropriate for worship, and doesn’t take over the whole worship service. How to do so and be sensitive to all the pain that can come along with mother-child relationships and longings. How not to be bitter that I have to get up really early and work hard on Mother’s Day anyway. How to remind people of the ways that mothers and mothering mirrors God, and leave room for those who are perfectly comfortable with the idea of “God as Mother” and those who are  a little more traditional in their language (because I normally find myself in churches that are rather “Big Tent” on gendered language for God…and, honestly, I like living in that big tent myself: I can see arguments both ways on this one).

So it feels unfair to just dash off a quick Father’s Day litany without thinking long and hard and being careful like I am with Mother’s Day.

Here are the questions knocking around in my brain:

So many of the issues are the same, right? Relationships that aren’t perfect; desires for fatherhood that remain unfulfilled, or are fulfilled in ways that were unexpected; people who have stepped in to father us; unrealistic or unhealthy societal expectations about fatherhood…

And then, of course, there are the good things. You wouldn’t want to focus on the tough stuff so much that you deny those who have fathers who were wonderful models of God’s love for their children. What is it like to remind people that best qualities of a father, and for many of us, thankfully, our own father’s, were blessing from God, and glimpses of God’s love?

It sounds so different to write a prayer to a “mothering God” on Mother’s Day, turns the normal phrases over so that we see God differently. How do we do the same when saying “Father God” is something we hear all the time? How do we help congregations see God’s role as Father in a new way?

How do we find ways in worship to help people who had such negative connotations with “father” that it may have lead to their resistance to that traditional terminology of God as Father?

And, if our church did celebrate Mother’s Day, it only seems right to make sure to celebrate Father’s Day in a similar fashion. Even if it’s easier to let this one go, if seems just as important to acknowledge fathers as mothers, right?

I’d love to hear some other thoughts on this, I’d love some resources shared. Anybody? What do you think? Where would you go with this? What does your church do? What works and what doesn’t?

[ Filed under Journal | 4 Comments ]

Good Preaching

I love this little article by John Wilson from the Wall Street Journal. (Incidentally, I once got to drive John Wilson around Grand Rapids as a volunteer at a conference he was speaking at, and he was delightful, even when I screwed up the parking lot directions and Gerald Ford Airport and took him on a third trip around the parking lot. He pretended it was fun!)

First off, I love the note that there is a long historic tradition of people church shopping and wringing their hands about the state of preaching. And looking for THE BEST preacher.

I’ve heard some wonderful sermons and real stinkers (I’ve also preached some wonderful sermons and quite a few stinkers a well). And I’m in what I think is a fairly unique position to have heard and served with preachers of all stripes: conservative; liberal; undefined; young; old; famous; obscure; big church; small church; high church; low church; innovative; traditional; 30-minute preachers; 15 minute preachers. And I have to say: there is no great predictor of of where the great sermons come from. There are definitely people who are more gifted preachers than others (and, often, someone who is more gifted in preaching lacks a bit some other area of ministry…).

What really makes the difference, though, is what I think Wilson is pointing to: people who are simply out there doing the hard work of preaching in a community. Month in and month out.

I once heard someone ask Barbara Brown Taylor, “Are there any great preachers out there you can recommend?” And she said something like, “The great ones aren’t really people like me who are out on the great preacher circuit. They’re often really obscure, just preaching over and over again in their congregations.”

In other words, just doing the work, taking it seriously, listening for the Spirit, listening to their community, and doing their best. It’s not really about technique or style or school of thought. (There is nothing new under the sun, right?) It never has been. Those things are helpful (and, I do believe that preaching can be taught and practiced; it’s not just something you are born with). But the real heart of it is the work and the connection to God.

It’s work, and it’s hard work. For those of us who love it and feel called to it, it’s good work.

And I suspect it’s always been like that, right from the beginning.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

Prayers of the People for Trinity Sunday

I love the prayer called “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”. There are little bits and pieces in it that I’ve known since I was little without realizing what they were (I remember a great Sunday School song based on the “Christ within me…” passage. What a gem that is for a child, a reminder that Jesus is always and ever with you and all around you!) The opening line seems perfect for use on Trinity Sunday:

I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity…

But it can take some work to fit it into your run-of-the-mill worship service. It’s lovely, but long. It’s not really written for a corporate worship setting (it’s really a personal prayer to gird oneself for the day ahead). The language is a little archaic (though, that’s one of the things I love about it.)

Here’s my attempt to adapt parts of it for use in the prayers of the people on a very busy Trinity Sunday, with guest preachers and communion and recognition of high school graduates…

It turned out great for use beyond Trinity Sunday, too. And there’s room for adaptation in the middle: for different petitions, for a time for open petitions. If I were to adapt it for open petitions after each section in the middle, I’d suggest closing the time for people to add their prayers with the following response:

One: Lord Jesus Christ,

Many: Be with us, within us, behind us, before us.

I’ll be using it again, and I hope it will be helpful for other worship leaders (if you want to use it, and there’s a way to give me some attribution, I’d be honored!)

We bind ourselves, O God, today, to the strong name of the Trinity.
And we name you: Three in One, One in Three; and claim our place in your community of love.

We are embraced, loving God,
embraced in the community that is the heart not just of our church,
but also in the community that is the very heart of who you are:
Three in One;
Creator, Redeemer, and Giver of life.
Within that great love, we are held and treasured.

And we know, as we pray, you have heard us before the words cross our lips. You ever and always hear our prayers. Hear our prayers this morning.

We pray for our hurting world. That war-makers will find peace. That the hungry will find food. That refugees will find shelter. That injustice will be answered with all that is right and good.

We pray for all who suffer. For those we love dearly. For those we barely know. For those whose suffering we have ignored. Be present in the healing touch of all hands that help the sick and suffering. And send your Spirit to comfort and protect all who need you.

We pray for all who struggle. For those who cannot see a way through broken relationships, difficult financial realities, emotional darkness, and deep, deep loneliness. May they find you even in the most hopeless places. May they find your people, too, in those places, bringing good news and hope to all who are longing for something new.

We pray for all who are joyful. We rejoice at the promise of new life, and old lives made new. We celebrate the movement through milestones: births, graduations; new jobs; new relationships; the promise of soemthing wonderful. We remember those moments of blessing in our own lives and we thank you for the opportunity to use our lives to your glory, to live lives that are full, and worthy of your calling.

We bind ourselves, O God, today, to the strong name of the Trinity.
And we name you: Three in One, One in Three; and claim our place in your community of love.
Be with us, within us, behind us, before us.
May we be your comfort, your restoration, and your peace and wholeness in the world.
Amen.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Good things

I suspect I’ve been a bit, um, whiney, in my social media postings lately. Also, about 80% of them have been about how I’m not getting enough sleep. Which is totally true. But I also really like sleeping. A lot.

However, I realized this morning that I needed to take a moment to recount some good stuff, things that I am thankful for, ways I am being blessed. So here we go.

1. My children are undeniably beautiful little beings. They are incredibly, luminously beautiful when they are asleep. But really, they are just lovely kids all the time. They grace people with smiles and hug their mama when she needs it most. What wonders!

2. I am working for a few months at a church that is one of the most grace-filled embodiments of Jesus I have ever encountered. Not because they are doing anything unusual or super-remarkable. Not because they have it all figured out. They are just following Jesus the best they can. And seeing that and having the opportunity to serve them is blessing me incredibly and reminding me why I love ministry, and reminding me that this is the work I am called to do.

3. My husband, in the midst of a recession, has stumbled into a career field that has continued to work for him, and where he’s been given opportunities to grow and excel. He is happy as a clam in California at the new job. I will be happy as a clam when I get to join him there and take a break (or a nap).

4. Our backyard was full of peonies these last few weeks. And a couple of other flowers that smelled wonderful. But the peonies: so many of them that I could pick two huge bunches for the house and there were still plenty. I’m sure these have been growing there for many many years. I love thinking that some previous residents of our two-flat took the time to plant and nurture them. And I love these flowers for their big, crazy showiness, and even for the short blooming time that makes them so precious.

5. I’m finding it difficult to get in the running I was doing earlier this spring. Mostly because Erik’s not around to take over with the kids. But I am up to the point where I can, when I figure out a way to go, casually decide to run from my house, around Wrigley Field and back. This was my goal last fall. I did it! And, even if it will take some work after this wild summer to get back into more regular running, I no longer have any excuse for not doing it. I’ll just have to find a new goal after we’ve settled in the new place.

6. We get to say goodbye to Chicago in the summer. And, we will end that farewell, the kids and I, with a couple of months living with my Mom and Dad, who live on the beach on the north side of the city. So, prime beach months in Chicago: I will be steps from the lake. Couldn’t be better.

7. My sister Emily was home last weekend with her fiancé, Tim. I love them together. Isn’t it amazing when you can tell that people you love have found someone who really makes them more and more the person God intends them to be?

And, we’re just going to go with seven items right now. Because, can you believe it? My kids are asleep! And I should be, too!

[ Filed under Journal | 1 Comment ]

“Friends”: Is social media wasted time?

So, full disclosure before I start ruminating on social media (and, for many of us, facebook in particular): as of last week, I am a facebook wife. Not that that’s a thing. in fact, my web-developer husband says he was pleasantly surprised by how many women were working at facebook, even in the tech-ier positions (low numbers of women is a concern, I guess, in the tech world).

Clearly I’m not going to tell you that facebook is a sign of the end times or anything. In fact, lately, I’ve been joking with many of my pastor friends that I would appreciate it if they stopped giving facebook up for Lent, since my family’s finacial future may depend on whether or not people are using it.

My friend Bethany (visit her brilliant blog on inappropriate quotation marks here) just tweeted this:

“Confused by how frequently folks refer to facebook time as “wasted.” A lot of my facebook time is interacting with and supporting friends.”

I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe not coincidentally since a conversation I had with Bethany’s dad a month ago.

And her tweet is a good example of this social media phenomenon and the term “friendship”. By no stretch of the imagination could I say that Bethany is a close friend of mine. Nor her dad. In fact, I don’t think Bethany and I have ever met face to face. And I’m bummed out that just as I’m leaving the Chicago area for California, she’s headed to Chicago, where she’ll be working with a bunch of people who I happen to know in “real” life. (Hey, Bethany! Let me know if those were totally inappropriate quotation marks!)

But, she’s a friend of my friend Katherine who, after being someone I mostly knew online, has become one of my closest in the flesh friends (this friendship, by the way, never would have happened without social media). And those two, actually have a relationship that goes back to some old internet forums. Which is how Katherine met Bethany’s dad online. And why Katherine was excited when he came to speak at my church a year ago. You know how this goes.

Anyway, back to Bethany’s tweet.

I replied to her:

“w/or w/out social media, the question to be asked is: are my dealings w/ friends superficial or deep & redemptive?”

(I do hate that we mangle the language like this on twitter, but there you have it.)

The thing about social media for me is that it has been a lifesaver. I’m a pastor. This is a profession that is often professionally and socially isolating, in part because you are ripped away from the support network you develop while training to be a pastor. I value deeply those people with whom I went through seminary. And I value the other pastors who have come into my life as mentors and colleagues since then.

Of course, you don’t need the internet to keep in touch with these people. My Dad and my Grandpa are both pastors, and they managed to do it. But sometimes, those treasured moments of contact were few and far between.

(My Grandma tells the story of a time when my Grandpa was leading a tour of New Testament sights in the middle east. By some strange sequence of events involving a broken down bus and back roads, he wound up getting off his bus on a dirt road in the middle of no where in Turkey, as one of his seminary classmates got off the other bus, and the two men embraced in the middle of that road. You never know when you’re going to be able to see someone again sometimes!)

Things like blogs and facebook and twitter have allowed me to keep up relationships that might fall away as I’ve moved, as my seminary friends have moved, as time has passed. And often they’ve also enabled me to jump right back into a face to face, in the flesh moment with one of those people.

I’ve also made new friends this way. Friends of friends, people I’ve gone to conferences with, other members of organizations. And some of these people have become my dearest friends.

I’ll admit. I should check these sites less often. They are a terrible curse for the procrastinator who may have a little side of AHDH.

But there are lots of other things that I do too much of, as well. I eat too much chocolate. I listen to NPR too much (no, really, it’s a sick addiction). I am way too in love with my iphone (members of my previous youth group, who are probably not reading this, would giggle at that one, because I used to gently, I hope, poke fun at their constant need to be touching their phones). I bite my fingernails. There are times when I really shouldn’t have another glass of wine. I buy too much yarn. And let’s not get started on my cheese problem.

And there are times when I need to turn off the social media and pay attention to the in the flesh life that I am living in the here and now.

But, that doesn’t mean that social media itself is bad.

It’s how you use it. And how it uses you.

My parents grew up in a denomination that had a number of bans on social vices. Specifically: theater-going; movies; dancing; card playing and gambling (note that smoking and alcohol were OK…not every branch of Christianity had trouble with the same things).

Those bans were lifted when people pointed to the fact that it wasn’t those things in themselves that were bad (although, I’ll admit I sort of feel that way about gambling). The problem was how they could be abused and used inappropriately.

Most of the people of faith I hang around with are not of the sort who would all out ban social media in their faith communities. (Remember that pastor who banned facebook in his church because it made it too easy, he said, for people to commit adultery? And, it turns out that he was involved in a little sexual impropriety himself, perhaps with no help from facebook at all?)

But, I do have friends, like I said, who give it up for lent or talk about getting rid of it altogether.

That might be a good thing to do. I really should “fast” from social media myself sometimes.

But it’s not the thing itself that is the problem. As with so very many aspects of our human condition, it’s what we do with the thing.

One more story about this: my husband’s Grandpa Orville, as a farmer in Northern Wisconsin, helped start the telephone coop in his area. One time, he had to go out and install a phone at the home of an Amish family. The gentleman asked him to put it on the porch. Orville pointed out that it was an odd place for a phone. But the man said he wanted it on the porch so that “I can use it, but it can’t use me.”

The solution is not to ban things, unless we are so deeply addicted that there’s no other way. But to recognize and evaluate how we use it to order our lives in a way that helps us to live in the fulness God intended, and helps us love others into that same fulness.

[ Filed under Journal | 2 Comments ]

“…God’s grace and his faithful provision of leadership for the church”

(A caveat: my new short-term church position is going really well. All things considered, it’s lovely. I’m happy.)

Overall, when the sun is shining and life is good, I’m quick to say that Church belongs to Jesus, and it’ll survive in spite of us.

But, there are times when I’ve been reading a bit too much about the decline of the Church: how we aren’t doing it right anymore, the pews are emptier and emptier; young adults are absent from our congregations; churches are closing; there will be fewer and fewer positions for “professional” pastors. (And, darn it, what am I supposed to do about that when I was encouraged to shoot straight from college to seminary and into the ministry? My job skills are a little limited!)

And, on top of that, I start to wonder if I am hip enough to be one of the professionals who will survive. Plus, it’s really hard sometimes to do this and be a Mom (have you heard about our horrible nanny saga?); and my baby didn’t sleep last night and I’m tired and he won’t take his afternoon nap, so I can’t catch up on phone calls or work on my sermon.

Did I mention that my husband is moving us across the country and I have to navigate a whole new region of the country and figure out if there’s a place I can serve?

And…and…and…yes, this is the anxiety speaking.

But then, I sit down at my desk, and see this little slip of paper that escaped from a pile of files I organized yesterday:

It’s the announcement of my ordination in the Ebenezer Christian Reformed Church bulletin (my home church during college and seminary). My Grandma Garry clipped it for me. She would give her grandkids envelopes of things she’d clipped, things she thought related to their lives. I think it was part of how she prayed for us. I also know that she clipped and saved those things that made her particularly proud.

And I start to think. Someone wrote that: “God’s faithful provision of leadership for the church.” Someone thought that of my, that I was God’s faithful provision. Chuck and Millie were sent on behalf of an entire congregation.

My Grandma, who grew up in a church that would never DREAM of ordaining a woman, would spit fire at anyone who suggested that her granddaughter perhaps was a little too female to be a pastor (and, spit she did, because I was ordained into a denomination that was still figuring this out while I was in seminary).

There were people who invested in a scholarship for women students at my seminary, and invested in me becoming a minister.

Not to mention other family members, the good church people, classmates, friends, mentors who affirmed my call and pushed me along the path when I wasn’t sure.

I have no idea, most days, what “church” will look like down the road. But there are a whole lot of people standing behind me who pushed me forward because they thought I was part of this faithful provision.

So I’d probably better get off my sorry, anxiety filled rear and get to work on that sermon and start thinking about polishing up my resume for some place somewhere in California that, eventually, somehow, needs someone like me.

Because I’m sure my Grandma and whole lot of other good and faithful saints would be spitting fire if I just threw up my hands in frustration.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Any May A Beautiful Change

(In honor of the release of my dear friend Katherine’s book Any Day a Beautiful Change, I’m participating in a blog carnival, Any May a Beautiful Change. Katherine’s book is about motherhood, so here’s a little May-themed motherhood post.)

My first baby, Zora, was easy in the begetting. (I’ll just leave it at that.) Number two: not so much.

Erik and I planned, in our not so infinite wisdom, to have kids a bit closer together. Maybe two years apart? But as Zora approached four years old, the plan wasn’t working out so well. Our first baby was old enough that she was verbally begging us for a sibling. We decided to get the medical people involved.

The short version of this is that we really only had to dip our toe into the world of fertility treatments. I hesitate to use the term “infertility” because I don’t want to demean the level of struggle and pain that a much longer sojourn toward a baby is for many people.

And, this post is not about what it took medically to get us pregnant. It’s about the day in May when I found out, for certain, that the beautiful change had taken hold.

The call from your clinic, when you are in the midst of this, is the monthly moment of truth. You might be in the car, driving off on a short road trip. Or at at your desk slogging through an e-mail inbox. Or in the grocery store. Chances are, you’re somewhere mundane, because the truth is that most of life is mundane.

But, in this case, for the call when the nurse said, “Yes!” I was somewhere perfect. It was a monday in May, and we drove the 45 minutes to my parents condo in a highrise that backs up onto a sandy beach on the North Side of Chicago. I had gone down to the beach alone.

I wanted some time. I had a strong suspicion, backed up by certain calendar-related physical evidence, that this month might be the month. So I was sitting alone on the beach. It was warm, but not too warm. There was barely anyone out there. The cars running on Lake Shore Drive, just south of the beach, blended in with the little waves. With your back to the city, Lake Michigan went on and on.

My phone rang.

The nurse said, “Congratulations…”

I don’t know what I said next, or what she said. I worried that I didn’t sound excited enough because I didn’t whoop or holler.

But I do remember the exact way that the sand by my toes looked. I remember the little bits and pieces of shell, mixed up with pebbles and flat beads of sea glass. I remember the lake smell, part life, part rot. I remember that the sun was only a little warm.

And I remember that I waited a few minutes to call my husband and then my Mom. Because for just a few minutes, it was just my news.

Abram is 15 months old now. He is, without question, beautiful. Strangers stop in their tracks when he smiles at them. His sister says he’s the thing she’s proudest of (although she hates the mess he makes of her stuff). Now that he’s walking, I’m going to make sure he gets as much time as possible on that beach, in the sand, in the water, with the city behind us and the big lake stretching out to forever.

[ Filed under Journal | 1 Comment ]