Ministry: That’s Hot

Ours is a faith of paradox.

Magnificent,

Mysterious,

Maddening paradox. 

Losing our life means finding it, and finding brings loss.

The first is actually the last, and last place becomes first. 

Giving away brings wealth, while storing up leaves emptiness. 

Tiny David defeats gigantic Goliath, shy Moses persuades powerful Pharoah.

To violence we’re called to turn the other cheek, to transgressions forgive and love.  

Strength blossoms from vulnerability, resurrection springs from death

The savior is a teeny tiny baby, and redemption comes from naming our brokenness.

Magnificent?  Maybe.  Maddening and mysterious? As we say in Texas: You bet. 

Paradoxical faith is hard to understand and harder to explain.   

It’s hard not to have answers and outlines and neat packages tied up with string.  Hard to exist in the absence of solutions and happy endings and fairness.  Hard to live without logic or comfort or explanation. 

Hard to be a minister, one who guides and leads and embodies our faith, when there is no explanation.  When I have more questions and doubts than my congregants.  Hard to preach when our faith isn’t intuitive or easy, hard to teach the Bible when it’s full of contradictions, hard to comfort the grieving when their pain is real and raw.  Hard to bury and marry and pray when I don’t have words to convey God’s mysterious hope.  I’m starting to think I was called to help people understand a faith that is not to be understood. 

Mysterious, maddening paradox, making me a little bit mad.    

In a culture that thrives on answers, uncertainty is a dirty word.  So what’s a knowledge-seeking, control-loving, paradox-averse preacher to do?

My salvation has come from my senior adults.  If you wikipedia paradox, you will find a picture of older adults.  Seniors are talking, walking (or wheelchair riding) embodiments of paradox.  Of the mysteriousness of life and loss and love.  Of the hardness of a faith that makes no sense.  They, at the end of life, teach me how to live. 

Aging is at once hard and easy, graceful and undignified, beautiful and ugly.  Seniors live abundantly in these tensions, proclaiming the Word in their lives more than I ever could in the pulpit. 

Seniors live with battle-worn bodies, brittle bones that betray them with a snap.  Broken hips, broken shoulders, broken legs, and more broken hips.  One misstep leads to surgery and rehab and delayed summer plans. 

Magnificently, these same bodies hold strong, unbreakable spirits.  Spirits that pray and laugh and share gratitude that it wasn’t worse.  Spirits that continue to care for the sick person in their Sunday school class, play bridge religiously (and tell you about their winnings), and spend hours sharing stories about how they met their partners—smiling as they ignore their pain for memories of love. 

They live with incalculable loss.  Loss of a grown son to AIDS at age 25.  Loss of a teenage daughter to leukemia at only 17.  Loss of husbands and wives, of parents and siblings and 40 year long best friends.  They watch their peers disappear and are reminded of their own mortality.  They weep in my office because they don’t know how to live without their loved one. 

Magnificently, they also live with so much fullness and light.  Those with the most loss seem to share the most love.  They send handwritten notes, intimately revealing their hopes and gratitude and care.  They say “I love you” out loud, over and over again, and they mean it.  They have painfully learned to seize the moment and leave inhibitions at the door.  They don’t let pride hold them back from shouting their innermost joy and attachment. 

Some have minds that long ago lost precious memories and the ability to recognize family.  Yet these same bodies still smile, embrace, and light up when you enter a room.  They know the words to the Lord’s prayer, can sing familiar hymns, and say thank you over and over.  Minds that have weakened and bodies that hold the preciousness of the moment.  Precious, painful paradox.

They live all this in a society that rejects aging and worships youth.  Our culture lacks resources, language, and respect for what it means to grow older, to live in older bodies.  We treat older adults as invisible and expendable or see them as “cute” and child-like (if you want to see this preacher mad, patronize one of my senior adults…).  This is a reflection for another time, but remarkably, in spite of our anti-aging culture, the folks I meet embody grace and forgiveness and wisdom in the midst of self-denying forces. 

What they teach me, each and every day, is the power of living.  Living the paradox, embracing the ambiguity, accepting the uncertainty. 

Teach me that it’s ok for life not to make sense, because it doesn’t.  Help me understand that understanding isn’t the goal. 

Ok that a job that brings me so much love and joy often leaves me crying at the end of the day.

Ok that my deepest satisfaction comes from being with others in times of deepest pain.

Ok that I believe passionately in a God of peace, justice, and mercy, despite the fact I live in a world that surrounds me with the opposite. 

Ok that a naïve 26 year old minister can share intimate spaces and places with people 50 years my senior

As much as my heart aches and breaks, the exercise of embracing paradox makes it open for more love.  And loss.  And the ever-present cycling between them. 

I’m not primarily called to understand or explain or make it all better.  I’m simply called to live. Live love, live loss, live joyful abundance and devastating loss.  To live through crying and laughing, weeping and dancing, silence and talking, listening and hugging.  Living paradox, each day, each step of the way. 

So, thanks to my gracious seniors, I try to let the paradox wash over me.  To give in instead of fighting it away.  I’m learning patient acceptance, and radical love in the midst. 

What they teach me is the Gospel, the ultimate claim of our faith: they teach me to live a resurrection life.  To walk around the world believing and teaching and acting as if life really does overcome death.  That light lives in darkness and hope in despair.

They teach me to boldly live the paradoxical gospel. 

In all that I do, to live and to love

Magnificently

Mysteriously

Magnificently. 

There are moments, we say, when the Holy breaks in. 

Moments in our earthly messiness when God’s majesty soars down to meet us. 

Moments in our worldly brokenness when God’s perfect peace burrows up to find us.

Moments when the miraculous takes hold, and we are left breathless.  Filled with awe for the beauty that surrounds us, for the peace that passes all understanding.  Moments such as a baby’s birth or an illness cured. 

The miraculous moment when a couple says “I do”. 

These days, I find myself on the other side of that holy moment—initiator of the divine decision-making.  Asking a couple to repeat after me as I say those sacred words: vows to love and comfort, honor and keep, through health and happiness to loss and loneliness.  In richer days and poorer ones, having and holding even in the worst of times. 

The worst of times.  This is a promise of real, down-and-dirty, difficult love, not for the faint of heart.  This is a pledge of tough love—love that commits to uncertainties and absurdities, to sacrifice and self-giving.  I’m the closest witness to this intimate exchange.  To two people looking deeply into one another’s eyes, holding hands, surrounded by their family and friends, promising to love toughly and fiercely for the rest of their days.  The moment is intense.  

And, I admit, a little bit crazy.  Or at least that’s what I thought, previous to being on this side of a wedding.  Who can commit to that kind of radical love? Who can take on a whole new family, with their own systems and dysfunctions and demands?  Who can love so deeply that they commit to be present through cancer scares and infertility and the death of parents—even the death of each other?  Through bills and midnight feedings and demanding mother-in-laws.  Sure, companionship comes with its rewards, but it’s not easy. This is tough-love, for tough-skinned people. 

Of course, after being on the other side of the couple, holding on to their hands while they stare into one another’s eyes, my view has changed.  I see the tears in their eyes, feel the tender touch between them as they connect on all levels.  How could I not change? 

After being party to all this, I’ve concluded:

 They are a lot crazy. 

But I also think life is a lot crazy—filled with abundant absurdities that take us by surprise, jerk us out of our comfort zones, and call on us to take a risk for relationships.  Craziness that calls us to be vulnerable, adventurous, and most of all willing to give up control of our hearts.  If I’ve learned anything in ministry, it’s that love and relationship are what matter.  And we can’t truly love until we let go, open ourselves up to others, and take a leap of faith.  Love means letting go of ourselves to find ourselves, and finding God in the process.  Love means caring compassionately for the other and putting our ego and fears aside.  Love means letting someone in to love us unconditionally, in spite of our walls and borders and insecurities.  Love means not only giving ourselves, but letting ourselves admit that we are worthy to be loved and cared for.  Crazy? Probably.  Gospel?  Definitely. 

Goodbye, Sanity!  Hello, Holiness! 

So we do this crazy ritual known as a wedding as a worship service, with ministers. We sing the Lord’s prayer, take communion, hear scripture, because we know that we can’t and don’t and never will be capable of doing this alone.  We believe marriage is a covenant not just between two people, but with the couple, the community, and God.  And only through the grace of everyone involved can a couple make such a crazy, holy commitment.  Can participate in that Holy moment of saying “I do”. 

The kin-dom of God breaks in, affirming the absurdity of radical, endless love. 

But in that miraculous moment, something even more miraculous happens—the Holy stays around on earth.  Or at least, in the Knights of Columbus reception hall.  This is what happened at my cousin’s wedding. 

Turns out, the divine was as much a part of the dancing at the reception as the commitment at the altar.  Yes, the service was Holy, but so was the Hokey Pokey—friends and family gathered together for joyful, unbounded celebration.  So was the sacred meal—a buffet line of cheese cubes and deviled eggs was as much a sacrament of communion as wine and bread.  We gathered to celebrate love and commitment, joy and union, with our whole bodies. 

And if a five year old dancing the YMCA with her 85 year old great-grandfather isn’t Holy, I don’t know what is. 

I realized, on that dance floor, listening to the obnoxious DJ, we get it wrong.  We say the holy breaks in, in rare and precious moments, and we have to watch for it.  But if we keep our eyes open, we know that the holy is always already here.  Is around us and before us, over and above us, in our dancing shoes and plates of wedding cake. 

When we spend too much energy focusing on particular moments, holding them above the rest, the daily becomes a letdown rather than an opportunity for presence and praise.  And it’s why, sadly, too many couples focus on the moment of the wedding, and lose sight of the marriage. 

For life together, life lived in relationship, IS holy.  The fights, the grief, the dishes, the dances.  The carpools and movie-watching, the roadtrips and family dinners.  The laundry and cooking and crying and celebrating are all lived in divine splendor. 

My great hope, as I continue to marry couples, is that the wonder present in the I-Do moment stays with them day after day.  My hope is that the spirit of the wedding sustains the marriage.  That wonder fills their days and opens their eyes. 

This is my hope for all of us, who, regardless of our status, live in relationship.  Holy, absurd, radically loving relationship. 

I hope we all live with our eyes wide open to the Holy.  That we awake to the sunshine of grace each and every morning.  That the sounds of the sacred meet us as we rise.  That the divine dance of the daily inhabits our lives together, and that we always, always wonderfully live in awe and wonder. 

For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better, for worse. 

Most of all, I hope we dance our holy hearts out every chance we get. 

*For the record, I LOVE to dance.  Invite me to your wedding reception, and I will dance all night.  Usher, the Electric Slide, Moon River—I’m your woman.  So if one more person makes some kind of obnoxious comment about how they didn’t know ministers could/should dance, I will cha-cha-slide their ass out of the reception hall.  You’ve been warned. 

AND, if you are one of the few, brave single men who actually asks the minister to dance, please, for the love of God incarnate, do not spend the entire dance talking about Jesus. 

Confession:  I’m not very good at asking for help. 

(And by “not very good” I mean devastatingly awful.)

It’s clichéd, isn’t it?  I’m in a profession in which I encourage people to call on God, call on the church, call on the body of Christ to fulfill our needs.  To know and believe that the only way to live is in community, in mutual relationship with each other and the earth.  Basically, that we don’t do anything alone, nor should we.

And yet…..

I don’t always practice what I preach.  I know, it’s slightly pathetic and way overdone: the person in the helping profession who finds it hard to ask for help. 

The last two weeks, though, the you-need-help-you-don’t-do-anything-by-yourself-you’re-not-alone-you’re-a-self-sufficient-idiot-fairy has slapped me over the head with her friendship wand and left me baskets and baskets of grace. 

It’s been a rough time.  I’ve been kind of a mess.  I haven’t been able to sleep much, and when I do, it’s fitful and filled with unsettling dreams (not being able to save a senior adult who fell down some stairs after I accidentally dumped her out of a wheelchair; my new boss asking me hateful questions while people sat around and laughed at me; my college boyfriend repeatedly showing up at inappropriate times and places—see, better to stay awake watching infomercials, don’t you think?). 

Things have been stressful at work, including impending, major staff changes and an inordinate amount of illness and death.  I’m wearing out my funeral suit.  Personally, I faced the interview for the next step in my ordination process, and I was scared.  Shitless.  In the midst, we found out that my mother needs to have immediate back surgery, probably two surgeries, and that she faces the risk of imminent paralysis.  Again, scary.  And then in a routine doctor’s appointment, the doctor discovered something that she wanted me to go see a specialist to check-out.  I tried not to be alarmed, and to focus on taking a day at a time, but the word biopsy kept ringing in my ears.  Scared.  Shitless. 

So in these two weeks, I was living with fear, trying to be confident and hopeful, prepared and patient, comfortable with uncertainty, blah blah blah. 

Miraculously, I did, more or less, but only through the HELP of the most fabulous friends a woman has ever known.  They helped me, in every conceivable definition of the word.  My friends:

Bought me adorable shoes from Target

Cooked brownies and poured wine

Walked with me, laughed with me

Brought sushi and diet coke to my home

Even felt my breast. 

Willingly agreed to go to the doctor with me

Sent me affirming text messages and e-mails galore

Prayed, prayed, and prayed some more

Walked my dog

Encouraged me to take some Sabbath

Offered to bring food to my mom, the hospital, whatever we need.

Listened, listened, and listened some more. 

One dear friend, who spent the week in Italy, lit candles for me each and everyday.  And she sent me updates with the name and location of each of the churches along her journey where there was a light shining for me. 

The list goes on, and it’s embarrassingly abundant.  I must have been St. Teresa in my last life to deserve such a wonderful collection of folks. 

Most of the time, I’m content in my singleness.  Glad for the freedom to make independent decisions about my life, to be open to the vast possibilities of the future that aren’t necessarily tied to another person.  But when I had my medical scare, and let my mind wander at 3 in the morning, I wished desperately to be partnered.  I thought about the possibilities of a scary diagnosis, of serious treatments, and what I feared most was coming home alone at the end of those days.  Of not having someone to just be there with me, to sleep with me. 

But do you know what my next thought was?  That I do in fact have lots of friends in my life who would let me sleep on their couches.  Or in their beds.  Or who would come home with me.  And the wondrous truth is they would probably also have breakfast waiting for me when I woke up.  French toast and diet coke. 

If that’s not incarnation I don’t know what is. 

And that’s what these two weeks have been for me, the Word made flesh.  God in the flesh, in the flesh of my friends.  At the core of our faith is that God loved the world so much, SO MUCH, that God actually came to earth in a human body.  God took on flesh, and all the messiness and brokenness that it means to be human.  God laughed and cried (wept, we’re told), loved and suffered, knew blisters and hunger and hatred.  Enjoyed the pleasure of communal meals and the peace of silent contemplation. 

If I believe anything for sure, it’s that each one of us is created in the image of God.  And that what we must do is show God’s love to one another. 

The more I live into ministry, the more I think this is what my job is about, at its core: trying, for better or worse, to help people see that God is present and good.  That God uses each one of us to spread that kind of love.  God comes into our flesh, our imperfect, bruised, red-eyed fleshiness, and enables us to show up for one another and all of creation.  Ministry isn’t about saving the world, or even saving individuals.  It’s about being present and saying “you’re not alone”.  Over and over again, in thousands of ways.  Through bible study, pre-marital counseling, public and private prayer, pastoral care, preaching, etc…..we say “you’re not alone”. 

That’s what God did: God showed up, in a manger in Bethlehem, at a well in Samaria, on a cross in Jerusalem.  That’s what God does: God shows up, in a hospice room in Buckhead, in a birthday celebration in Decatur, in a memorial service in Sandy Springs.  That’s what God will do: God will show up, the Spirit will be with us, always and everywhere.

I don’t know how well I actually do this.  I imagine it will take a lifetime of ministry to really live this out, to help show God’s presence.  And if I ever, mercifully, am able to do this at all, it will only be through the grace of God. 

What I do know is that this week, I was the recipient of this kind of boundless love and presence.  Of God in the flesh.  Of God in beautiful, funny, feminist flesh.  God is good, and God is there: in Italian cathedrals and shoe sections at Target, over chips and salsa and under medical machines.  To my imago dei friends, more thanks than I can possibly put into words.  You are my hope, my faith, my love.  You are the Word made flesh, each and every day, in your silences and speeches, your comfort food and company, your dances and dreams.  You show up, even when I’m too stubborn to ask, and surround me with God’s comforting and loving arms.  Thanks be to God.* 

For you, a poem/song (but mostly a prayer) by Parker Palmer and Carrie Newcomer**

 Praise be that this thin mark, this soundCan form the Word that takes on fleshTo enter where no flesh can goTo fill each other’s emptiness.To Words and How They Live Between Us…To Us and How We Live Between the Worth…And in between the sound of wordsI hear your silent, sounding soulWhere One abides in solitudeWho keeps us one when speech shall goTo Words and How They Live Between Us…To Us and How We Live Between the Words… 

Amen. 

*Thankfully, I passed my interview and was approved.  Even more thankfully, the medical scare was jus that, a scare, and the specialist gave me a clean bill of health.  My mom continues to face surgery, has not yet had to rush to the emergency room, and we’re all a little more at peace with things.   **If you don’t know Carrie Newcomer, you should!  She’s a singer/songwriter of the folk/Quaker persuasion.  This is from her new CD, “The Geography of Light”.  You should buy it NOW.  If you don’t know Parker Palmer, you should!  He’s a teacher/writer/poet, also of the Quaker persuasion.  You should buy (or borrow—I have them all) as much of his writing as you can and devour it.  Immediately.  I find it wondrous that Quakers, who dwell in so much silence, are immensely gifted with words.  Why are you still reading?  You should be discovering these folks . DO IT. Go already.    

“Ashes to Ashes

Dust to Dust

From dust you came and to dust you shall return”

Words spoken, again and again, as I placed my hand into the oily, ashy pot, dipping anew for each penitent parishioner.  Placing finger to forehead in the shape of a cross.

For a silent hour, early in the morning on Ash Wednesday, I repeated this solemn, sacred act for each person that came forward.  For a not-so-silent hour, in the middle of the day, I repeated this solemn, sacred act for an intimate gathering of my senior adults.  For a blessed, haunting worship service in the evening hours, I repeated this solemn, sacred act for a congregation gathered to ask for forgiveness.

Soul-shattering words said again and again; a tangible, visible reminder of our impermanence.  Once we were dust, and dust we will be again. There is a devastating intimacy in the act of imposing ashes—making eye contact and touching someone’s forehead.  It’s a precious gift that people allow me to come so close.  In this divine moment, our vulnerabilities connect our deepest, flawed humanities.  We expose ourselves to one another, as fragile and permanent as the ashes marking our bodies. 

Lent invites this kind of intimacy…inward searching, raw vulnerability, nakedness before God, even a willingness to be touched–literally–by strangers.  We enter the desert, rolling around in ashes of remorse, coating ourselves with oils of understanding, inhaling the dust of desolation. 

Lent is more raw and real to me as a pastor as it ever has been before. I’ve always been drawn to this season, for the opportunity to be quiet and still, to take stock and begin again.  So what a privilege it is to experience this sacred season as a minister.  Being with these gathered communities on Ash Wednesday, I was actually looking forward to this Lent.  Overwhelmed by the holiness and ready to live this intentional life day by day, for forty days, with people I deeply love.  What could be better?  I thought I was prepared, centered, ready for the wilderness. 

Ashes to Ashes

Dust to Dust

I must have been smoking those ashes. 

My Lenten confession: Two and a half weeks in, away from Ash Wednesday, I am done. Ready to quit.  Willing to break my contract with Lent, no matter the consequences.  I’m ready to run out of the desert and dive into the cool waves of the ocean.  Trade my ashes for alleluias and dust for dancing.  Ready already for resurrection. 

Little did I know, praying in that sacred sanctuary on Ash Wednesday, that this Lent would be so Lent-ey. Lent-filled.  Lentalicious. 

It’s one thing to say, over and over again, that we will all return to dust.  It’s almost possible in those moments to transcend our earthly pettiness and impatience.  To become one with the reality that we are small and insignificant in the scale of the universe, in the scope of time.  That nothing is permanent but God, and that everything, everyone has a beginning and an end.  To achieve a Zen-like existence about existence. 

But it’s quite another thing to walk out of that sanctuary and into a dust storm.  As soon as I emerged, before the ashes washed off my fingers, I was confronted with the reality of real loss.  Cancers and car accidents that took lives too young—left behind fiancés in Iraq and children in preschool.  Strokes that paralyzed not just bodies but families.  Heart attacks that stole eighteen and eighty year olds, having no mercy for life.  Widowers who cried deep, pulsing sobs in my office, sharing the lament of the Psalms.  Senior adults whose fragility took over, day after day, week after week. 

Despite prodigious prayer, I’m not prepared for those whose foreheads I touched only days before to actually return to dust.  I said those words with confidence to others, but I don’t want to believe them.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

Wandering in the wilderness, drudging through the desert, I don’t have answers or solutions, I don’t have peace. I do have grief, anger, emptiness, exhaustion.  I have questions and many an unanswered prayer. 

Damn that dust. 

But it’s that same dust, the stardust of the universe, that connects us to all of creation.  The same dust that connects us to our Creator.  For in that dust I find comfort.  Comfort that the Holy Comforter came to earth as a vulnerable human being and spent forty days tempted in the wilderness.  Comfort that the Holy Comforter walked those dusty streets to Jerusalem.  Comfort that God continues to walk our dusty paths with us.  Comfort that the Holy Comforter held that slippery oil in human hands and cried over the death of a beloved friend.  Comfort that God suffers, cries, and cares with us.  Comfort that we’re not alone, but connected as the particles of the Universe. 

Loss and tragedy are as dusty and dirty as ever, and no amount of Scripture will remove our pain, nor should it.  But it can remind us that we don’t walk through that desert alone, but along the paths of so many who have gone before us.  If I could, I’d sprint out of Lent and into Easter.  But I don’t control the liturgical calendar, or the sacred rhythms of life and loss.  So I stand still, against my will, and pray. 

My prayer for Lent is to let that stardust sparkle in the midst of illness and pain and suffering.  To know, deep in my dusty bones, that we’re all part of creation, and creation is good.  Good in its humanity, good in its dustiness, good in its ashiness.  To grieve its loss and walk through the desert of suffering, one step at a time, day by day, in dusty-covered shoes.  Dust that forms and connects us all. 

Ashes to Ashes

Dust to Dust. 

From dust we came and to dust we shall return. 

As we enter the season of Lent, I feel it calling out to me more strongly than in years past.  Lent is calling on me to turn inward, reflect deeply, to dwell in the depths of my emotions.  When so much of my energy is directed outward, Lent is whispering for me to stop. Slow down.  To face the loneliness and brokenness I encounter in myself and in others.  Lent is shouting for me to be intentional in my practice, in my relationships, in my spiritual connectedness.  Lent is gently reminding me to close my eyes and look within, because only then will I be ready to open them brightly and see the resurrections that occur all around us. 

My Lenten hope for you (if you are observant) and for me is that we witness an openness to and an unfolding of  the Spirit.  May Ash Wednesday be a day of deepest connection for us all. 

Besides, ashes are hot.  Almost as hot as ministry. 

 An Ash Wednesday  Meditation on Psalm 51 

Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 

Cleanse me, wash me, scrub me to the core. 

 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.   

Cleanse me, wash me, scrub me to the core. 

Soak my sins in scalding water until they melt away.  Sins of greed, wealth, and storing up.  Sins of anger, pride, and ego.  Sins of busyness, distraction, and inattention.

Rinse me in refreshing waters of justice and mercy. Showers of sabbath, simplicity, and compassion.  Rinse me with the renewal to work harder and more intentionally; to be present with the hurting, the hungry, the hopeless; renew me to be a friend and an advocate, a teacher and a learner. 

Cleanse me with hope. 

 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.   

Cleanse me, wash me, scrub me to the core. 

Purge my selfish desires, my inability to forgive, my complacency with the world as it is. 

Wash my sins of selfhood: being both too hard and too easy on myself. 

Drop your snow of gentleness, and allow me to bask in your love; wash away my insecurity and feelings of inadequacy; help me know I’m cherished and accepted just as I am.  Just as you created me to be. 

Drop your snow of right-action, and help me to take a hard, serious look at my life; to make constructive changes to bring about equity and peace.  Help me be the bearer of your kin-dom you created me to be. 

Cleanse me with justice.

Have mercy on me, Oh God, according to your steadfast love. 

Fill my loneliness with your presence, my doubts with your promises.                                              Fill my hardness with your soft touch, my complacency with your judgment.                                      Fill my fear with your boldness, my anxiety with your patience. 

 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 

Restore me, sustain me, fill me with your joy. 

May my spirit truly be willing: willing to go deep; willing to dwell in the depths; willing to befriend my brokenness;

May my spirit be willing to change, willing to love, willing to emerge with strength;

Willing to rejoice in your resurrections. 

Restore me, sustain me, fill me with your joy. 

Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 

Amen. 

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

–Jeremiah 17:7-8 

Like a tree, I’m growing.  Growing up.  This week, I turn 26. 

I yearn to stretch out my roots, low and wide and deep, trusting in the rich soil holding me together; I yearn to let go of fear and anxiety and turn them into ripe, green fruits of openness, faith, and vulnerability; I yearn to be strong and solid, peaceful and life-giving.    

I yearn to grow not just up, but deep and wide and strong.  This is my birthday wish. 

Unlike Jeremiah’s tree, however, I have trouble trusting and letting go; my roots are shallow and I often have the urge to yank them up and plant them elsewhere, especially when I’m afraid.  And I am afraid.  Often.  Drought does, in fact, make me anxious—droughts of loneliness, loss, uncertainty; and while I do bear fruit, they’re not always delicious: they contain bruises, bumps, or are just plain rotten. 

I’m growing into adulthood, but wilting and withering as much as stretching to find the light.   Turns out being an adult, even (or especially) a minister, doesn’t translate to a solid, strong tree of faith.   25 has been a year of transitions, many of those (seemingly) into adulthood.  I received a master’s degree, finishing forever full-time schooling and entering full-time employment.  I became a minister, and have struggled and celebrated with all that the title means and brings.  Friends moved and friends stayed, all facing their own transitions.  I moved, loved, cried (a lot), and learned more about life and loss than I could have anticipated. 

25 brought a kind of growing up that I still find hard to believe. I look at the adult-ness around me and wonder if it’s really my life.   I laugh when I see “Rev.” in front of my name, and I wonder if all those people trusting me with their husband’s funeral know that I relish a good America’s Next Top Model marathon.  My car is filled with trash, and I’ve never managed a successful, stable relationship with a man.  I often eat cereal for dinner, chocolate for breakfast, and potato chips for lunch.  I rarely scrub my shower, write thank-you notes (sorry grandmother!), or take vitamins. 

Me—a real, live, official adult?  I don’t know.  And I doubt these things will change when 26 comes knocking. 

What I do know is that 25 has been a year of tremendous growth, even if I’m more of a maple than an oak.  25 has been a year of planting and discovering roots, of growing branches and cutting them off, of producing flowers and fruits I didn’t know I had.  As I reflect back and forward, these are some nourishing lessons from 25 that I hope to carry into 26:

*Trust God and learn to let go*  Ok, so I haven’t so much learned and absorbed this as acknowledged that I need to work on it.  A lot.  A great irony, at least for me, is that I can put enormous amounts of time and energy and passion into preparing ways to offer and show God’s grace to others, but while I sink my heart and soul into this preparation, I can lose sight that God is always there with me, sustaining me and guiding me.  And that it’s not all about me (shocking!).  Turns out God will show God’s grace to others no matter what I do.  God is always present.  Grace is always amazing.  I MUST trust and know this in my bones if I’m going to keep on keepin’ on. 

*The power of going deep and staying put* I tend towards restlessness, wanting to try new things, do something bigger or better, eager for new challenges.  This is why I had moments of resisting local church ministry—I wanted to win a nobel peace prize, save the world, fill in young-naïve-idealistic-fantasy-here.  And who does that in the local church? With ordinary people? In ordinary, everyday moments?  Well, you dear readers are no doubt wiser than I am and already know the answer.  But I had to learn.  And what I learned was that I love this ministry so much precisely because it is about the everyday living of our faith, in the everyday lives of actual people—in their brightest and darkest places.  It’s about developing relationships—deep, abiding, honest relationships.  I recently reread a Henri Nouwen book, in which he counsels a young pastor who wanted to leave and pursue a new career, to instead “go deep” where he was.  Plant those roots.  Dig in those heels.  Nouwen cautions against our culture that tempts us to always be on the move, for it never allows us to know the real value of any one place.  So I hope in those moments of wanting to run the other direction that I remember to instead “go deep”, stay put, and ultimately value relationship over everything else, even when that’s hard and risky to do. 

*I’m strong* And growing stronger day by day.  I’ve learned this year to believe in my own capabilities. This is a job that requires constant, radical, ever-present attention to others, often in their darkest places.  And this is scary. Petrifying.  Nausea-inducing.  I found myself at funerals, gravesides, and bedsides, called upon to be the representative of God to the hurting.  If that doesn’t make you want to vomit, I don’t know what will.  And yet, somehow I was able to be there, to be present, to offer grace and hope.  I learned I can do the things that scare me the most.  Also, of course, that I never go to those places alone (see lesson numero uno).  With God and pepto-bismol, all things are possible. 

*I’m surrounded by hopeful, loving, giving and forgiving, down-right fabulous people*  And they are my nourishment.  I keep a gratitude journal, and at the end of the day I write down 5 things that I’m grateful for, followed by “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it”.  As I’ve looked back over the last months, the vast majority of those entries have been for abundant blessings of loving people in my life. 

*I’m wordy*  Actually, we knew this when I was 2….but it’s no different now…

For 25, I’m immensely grateful.  Filled with gratitude for the people who have given me strength, let me cry on their shoulders, celebrated with me, supported me, been honest with me when I didn’t want to hear it, been gentle with me when I needed it, laughed with me, danced with me, prayed with me, grieved with me; for the people who have trusted me enough to call me their pastor, who have allowed me to stand with them in their darkest places, baptize their babies, officiate at their weddings, listen to stories of divorce, emotional abuse, and sadness over the loss of a child; for God’s abundant grace and presence, always and forever before me and after me, rooting me deep into the ground that will never be shaken. 

Will 26 turn me into that beautiful, rooted, evergreen tree?  I’m sure not. 

To quote the wise and wonderful Indigo Girls: “The hardest to learn is the least complicated”. 

And so the simple lessons of trusting in God, trusting in others, trusting in myself, will need to be repeated every year of my life.  But I am confident that each time I reach out to others, give and receive love, stay put instead of running, go to places that scare me, continue to discover and follow my joy, I will be planting those roots a little deeper.  I’ll be a little brighter.  I’ll remember that I don’t fertilize myself.

So bring it on, 26.

Because however shallow, I’m planted, not by myself, but surrounded by the love and grace of God and the beautiful, bountiful creatures God created. 

And I will continue to say each day:

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. 

Love hurts.

I know this because I am in love. Head-over-heels, feel-it-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach, write-giddy-notes-to-all-my-girlfriends kind of love.

I am in love with church. I’m in love with capital “C” Church, the place in the world where compassion, justice, and reconciliation dwell. The place imperfect people find a home in God’s perfect love. The place where hurt and healing, despair and hope, doubt and faith, all live side-by-side.
And I’m in love with this church, the place I work and minister each day. My heart bursts, so full with love I wonder if I can contain it all:
I’m in love with my senior adults, gracious and generous spirits; with my Disciple class, who make me laugh and cry with their insights into text and life; with the staff, who mentor me and are patient with my never-ending newbie questions.

I’m in love with the ministry I do in this place:
I’m in love with the gift of Eucharist, God’s grace made tangible—taste-able—for every single person. This holy mystery that we take into our bodies, thus turning ourselves over to God. I feel love when I say the words, reminding all of us that we are the body of Christ, that this is for all of us, always and forever. Love when I place the elements in each hand, making eye contact, so often tears in those eyes. Love for people whose stories I know…the lost children, newly-adopted babies, diagnoses of cancer. Love for the people I’ve never seen before, sharing this intimate moment of forgiveness and reconciliation with a stranger.
I’m in love with visiting people in the hospital, in hospice rooms, in their homes. I love holding their hands, hearing their stories, sharing prayer. I love meeting their families and forming lasting, intimate relationships.

I’m in love with the reality that I am paid to care for people, which is at the heart of all of my various tasks.
I’m in love with the possibilities of truth and faith and hope that greet me each morning. I’m in love because this place is all about loving, and who wouldn’t love that?

See? I have it bad.

Like all true love, we have our disagreements, disputes, and days of not wanting to be near each other. I’m not oblivious to the harsh reality of the deep humanity of church life. But that’s also what I love about the church: our imperfect and too often un-loving humanity makes it work. The Church is much like the incarnation: humanity and divinity dwelling in the same place. Lovely, isn’t it?

BUT (with love, there’s always a but….), I don’t always feel lovely. Often I feel lonely, sad, and worn out. Turns out that in the midst of this overwhelming love, my heart aches.

Paul so beautifully tells us that love is patient, kind, never boastful or arrogant. Love rejoices in truth and never ends. Is the greatest amongst faith and hope.

What Paul doesn’t tell us is that love hurts. (Apparently he wasn’t a Bon Jovi fan). My heart loves, yes, but it is also broken. Breaking, really, a little each day.

Because when you love people so much, share in their pains and joys, surgeries and celebrations, you hurt when they hurt. My heart breaks a little more each day, when they die, when their children die, when they slip into Alzheimer’s.

For a time, this was paralyzing. This tension between holding so much love and feeling so much pain. Of being full and empty at the same time. Of forming new relationships only to have them torn away. Because each time you fall in love, you take the risk of getting your heart broken. This tension of the ups and downs of love is out of my control.

I like control. Ok, I love control. The thing about love, though, is that it requires the opposite of control. Love requires letting go.

Letting go is scary. Petrifying, really. Letting go means realizing that all the planning in the world won’t stop cancer, heart attacks, and automobile accidents.
Letting go requires being vulnerable, going deep where we are, and letting people in. Vulnerability means letting myself be moved by experiences that are outside of my control. For a control-lover like myself, this isn’t easy. It means entering into situations knowing that my heart might break and ache.

Recently, I was tempted to give up on love, or at least take a break. I was tempted to break-up with the church, at least the visitation aspect, because the act of vulnerability was just too scary, too hard, too painful. I was done risking my heart.

A woman who had battled cancer for years decided to give up on chemo and accept hospice care. She was facing the end of her days, slipping into pain management and practicing saying goodbye. I didn’t know the woman well, but she is a senior adult, in my area, and I was asked to visit her. I could see where this was going…I’d been down this road before, visiting the dying, and getting my heart broken. I actually wrote in my journal: “I can’t do it. I don’t want to form another close relationship with a woman dying of cancer. I don’t want to fall in love with somebody new just to lose her”. I was scared, and I didn’t want to let go. I was tired of being vulnerable, of feeling empty. Goodbye love, hello self-protection.

But I went anyway, reluctantly. And it turns out I could do it. And I did fall in love with her, with her family–her sisters and sons and daughters in law. I loved her bravery and strength, her honesty and compassion. I loved the way she continued to clip coupons until she couldn’t use her hands anymore. I loved her, and I lost her.

My heart ached. But my heart also grew and filled in ways I’ve never known. I learned something remarkable: instead of running away from love, my time spent with her helped me run towards it, to embrace it with open arms. I learned that I am strong enough to sustain pain, and that this pain isn’t the opposite of love, but a deep and abiding part of love. I realized that if I had run away, broken-up with pastoral care, I would miss out on rich, intimate, deeply Spirit-filled relationships. My life is better because I knew her, and I hope I had a fraction of that impact on her.

I was afraid that experiencing loss would cause me to lose love…this euphoric, giddy, deep feeling I’d grown to treasure. But the surprising thing about love is that instead of shrinking away, it grew. In pain and loss and suffering, in emptiness and loneliness, love expands. I still hurt, but the love lasts. When my heart breaks, love is there, filling in, repairing, letting me cry. Turns out love is bigger than my fears, my aches, my control, my protection. When I let go and let love in, let other people in, let myself break and ache, love will endure and fill me up.

Being vulnerable to this place, these people, this call, actually fills me up instead of leaving me empty.

I’m still learning to live with this tension, with the radical knowledge that love and pain are partners, not enemies.

But this is what the Gospel’s all about, isn’t it? Subversive surprises that save us from ourselves. Ultimate love came into the world as a vulnerable, crying, tiny baby. Our ultimate love risked and ached and opened himself up to heartbreak.

Turns out Paul was right. Love is patient and kind, even with a control seeking, imperfect human like me. Love endures all things, bears all things, hopes all things.

Dear faithful readers (which at this point, is probably limited to my father—hi dad!),

As you may have noticed, there’s been a blog-drought in my life as of late. The blog and I have been on a break. Not a Ross-and-Rachel, betray each other kind of break, just a temporary hiatus. But now we’re reunited and it feels so good. I missed the blog, the reflecting, the self-indulgence of it all. Why have I been so distant? I’m glad you asked… First, I have been the party queen. No one tells you this in seminary, but this is what you do during advent when you work at a church: you party. Dinner with the altar guild, drinks with Disciple class, more drinks and carols with the staff, sing-alongs with the administrative board, light tours and luncheons with seniors, even Elvis impersonations with the District. Throw-in 2 weekends away for weddings (at which I officiated) and you have a very busy, quite puffy, slightly hung-over me.

Oh, I know, that’s no excuse—you’re right, there’s always time to write. To reflect, to process, to grow closer to God, blah blah blah….But wait! (More excuses…) I have been writing! And writing and writing and writing. December saw 4 sermons, 2 devotions, and Sunday school lessons. And most consuming, writing papers for Commissioning, which is my next step in the ordination process.

This week, I turned in all 75 pages about my call to ministry, my theological beliefs, my skills for sermonizing and bible study creating, even a paragraph about how I manage my acid reflux. Minus the small-potty incident of 1987, readers of these papers know me inside and out. These pages contain my innermost convictions, divestments of my thoughts and soul to a group of strangers for judgment. But in this laborious, tedious, often anxiety-producing process, I fell in love. Or I was able to name and express a love that was living inside me. A love for the local church, a love for the people in my congregation, a love for what I get to do everyday, and what I hope I get to do for a long time to come. During the writing, I was able to name and claim my place in this world. The deep feeling I experienced in my bones was my calling to the local church. This articulation was worth the stress and anxiety and hours (and hours and hours and hours) in front of the computer screen.

What do you do when you’ve spent months writing? Well, if you’re me, you write about the writing. Thus, my first blog post in a long while, inspired by realizations during the writing process. Warning: it’s long and a little saccharine, but when you reunite after a break, what else do you expect?

“Be still and know that I am God” the psalmist instructs us. 

Be still.

Be still.

Be still.

With varying degrees of success, this has been my mantra as of late.  Ministry is quite the opposite of stillness; ministry requires moving—running ahead of deadlines, walking with the hurt, throwing out hope, catching blessings, dancing and leaping for joy.  Stillness won’t write the monthly newsletter, prepare a congregational prayer, lead retreats, authorize bus repairs, exegete a text, teach Disciple, answer e-mails, serve communion, visit the homebound, and then squeeze in time for a social life. 

And still, I try to take a moment each day to be.  Stealing away to the sanctuary during a particularly hectic day, sitting outside in the beautiful fall air.  Sometimes I simply shut my office door and close my eyes for five minutes.  Stillness, being, knowing God. 

My hope, in doing this a little each day, is that this stillness will sustain me when I’m on the move.  That in the inevitable movements of hectic hospice visits and frantic phone calls, I can be and know. 

Lovely, isn’t it?  Peaceful, even.  I’m finally on my way to becoming one of those people I’ve always admired, who are centered, set aside time for God, prize silence and sitting.  You know, Ghandi, Henri Nouwen, Mother Superior in the sound of music.  Trying my hardest to overcome my extroverted, ambitious, multi-tasking, over-analytical tendencies, even if it’s just for a few moments each day.  Being still, being still, being still. 

Until yesterday, when stillness betrayed me. 

I found myself on the move, literally.  Sitting in my Honda civic, headlights and flashers blinking, as the cop had instructed me.  Following a hearse and leading a mourning family.  Cops on motorcycles dashing around our procession, halting traffic, clearing the way.  I was on my way to my first burial.  Moving between the celebration of a life and the committal into the ground. 

I was sheer panic.  Turns out my brief, random moments of stillness hadn’t turned me into the Dalai Lama.  Damnit. 

I was being many things, but still was not one of them. 

Neither was quiet.  I found myself repeating, in a loud voice in my empty car:

Oh God

Oh God

Oh God

Not a contemplative, Benedictine chant.  Not a calm, Buddhist mantra.  More of a Mick Jagger, open-mouthed kind of yelling. 

Instead of being still, I was being frenetic: being tense, trying to hold back tears so I could be present for the family (besides, you can’t show up to give pastoral care looking like you need it yourself); being lonely—sitting in my empty car, all by myself, nobody with whom to share this experience;  being scared–to be the minister, about to perform a ceremony I haven’t witnessed, much less led.  Being sad—this was a lovely, inquisitive woman, who became my friend at the end of her life.  And in the midst of this panic, realizing this will be the first of many times, over decades, I will be making this drive, behind a hearse.  Being doubtful: really, this is the life I chose? Spending lovely fall afternoons at gravesides? Then, as if my emotional musical chairs weren’t enough, my stomach began to move.  I was too anxious all day to eat, and now my belly was starting to notice.  I managed five diet cokes, yes, but food I could not stomach.  Now my stomach was speaking to me.  Oh God, I thought, please don’t make loud rumbly noises as I bless the body.                                                                                                           

Oh God

Oh God

Oh God

I’d love to report that in the midst of my panic, I closed my eyes, recited a psalm, and sank into calmness.  Became still. 

No such luck.  And still, I managed.  I didn’t cry.  I greeted the family as we poured out of our cars, giving her son permission to cry, hugging the grandchildren, gathering people to sit near the grave.  I greeted in the name of a resurrecting God, read scripture, prayed, blessed.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, earth to earth.  More hugging at the end, words of comfort, sharing memories and stories.  Somehow, I was able to be.  Be present for the family, be present to the scripture, be present for the one who died. 

As soon as I got in my car and drove around the block, I fell apart.  My body releasing what I had been holding inside.  Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.  Only this time, words said in sheer gratitude, not panic.  And then, the psalm did come to me: “Be still, and know that I am God”. This time, however, with an addition.  I realized after my experience at the graveside (and my panic-ridden car ride) that the psalm should be: “Be still, and know that I am God, and you are not God you-control-seeking-mortal-you”. 

In my car ride home, grace slapped me upside the head.  I’d like to say grace wrapped me in loving, gentle arms.  But really, this was more of a kick-in-the-pants.  A not so gentle reminder that I don’t do any of this alone.  That, yes, I am worthy to be in these sacred places, with these hurting people, to bury their mothers.  I, in all my panicky, 25-year old, overly-empathetic, teary-eyed self, am worthy.  And at the same time, I am not worthy, to commit a body to God, to send a person to eternal life. This is God’s doing, not mine. 

Not mine, not mine, not mine. 

And that’s why God is there with us, holding us, letting us lean on those everlasting arms. 

When we’re still, and know, really know….we know that God is grace.  Grace that is giving and forgiving, abundant and awe-inspiring, before us and after us.  In our stillness, we seek to know this, and believe.  But, the amazing thing about grace, is that it doesn’t only show up in our stillness.  When we’re at our most monk-like, contemplative, model-Christian moments.  No, the amazing thing about grace, is that  even when we’re on the move–panicky, busy, feeling unworthy and lonely–God is still there, knowing us.  Knowing us and loving us, giving us strength and wisdom, humility and hugs. 

Yesterday, grace at the graveside added to my mantra:

Be still, Be still, Be still.  Let go, Let go, Let go.  God knows, God knows, God knows. 

How sweet the sound.