Raising Teenagers, or Becoming an Adult

          I now officially have three young adults, ages 22, 20 and 18 as offspring.  While that seems to mean that there is really only one "teen" left in our family, my experience of all three is that they are still teenagers.  One of the ways this is true is that they are all still "pushing" up against me on a regular basis.  They test boundaries, they say things that I am sure have no purpose other than to upset me, they are making choices that seem to be focused primarily on being different from what I would do or would choose for them.  This is the job of being a teenager: to differentiate, to discover, to figure out who they are on their own, apart from the wishes, expectations or beliefs of their parents.  Each one of my three does this differently, but they are all actively engaged in it.  

       This week one of my kids informed me that I did not need to know their summer plans because they are handling it on their own and don't need my "help."  I tried to explain that I wasn't asking about summer plans because I wanted to control them, but so that I could make my own plans around any possibility of seeing them this summer, but this did not inspire more communication or information from said young person.  This same kid also informed me that I needed to stop asking about their friendships or other relationships because it was none of my business.  Ouch.

      Another one of my kids informed me that they did not need to be "pulled into my work," and they resented it when they had to "help" me by being present with my work in any way.  I pointed out that since they are working and yet not paying any rent, that perhaps their attendance at certain events (Easter Sunday?) could be seen as "rent" or contribution to the family, doing their part.  They said they'd rather pay rent.

      The third child, after being gone on a trip for almost a week, was rude and snippy when I picked her up at the airport, informing me that she didn't "need" to talk to me about her trip, and that she was not in the mood to answer any questions.  When we got home, she stomped off to her room, slammed the door and I haven't seen her since.  

       The subtitle of this particular blog post is "becoming an adult."  The one, though, who is being called to become an adult in all of this is me.  My kids are doing what they need to do to differentiate, to discover, to become who they need to be.  I know this.  I see it.  But I'll be honest and say that it is difficult for me to respond to this behavior in an adult way.  I want to respond by slamming MY door, by saying, "Fine.  If I am just a punching bag and a bank to you, this bank is going to start requiring something back to justify my paying for all of your fun and educational opportunities. I require you to be kind to me.  I require you to answer my questions.  I require you to be decent human beings to your mother!  If you can't do it, the bank is closed!"  But threatening, being nasty in kind: these are not adult behaviors.  It would be better if I could just say, "I am feeling hurt by the way you are speaking to me.  I would prefer it if you would choose a different tone of voice or different method of communication."  Being an adult means choosing not to threaten, choosing not to slam out and act out, choosing not to hit back when punched.  Being an adult means not moving into giving the silent treatment or becoming verbally aggressive in turn.  But boy, is this hard!

     You'd think that, at the age of 55, I would have learned by now how to be an adult.  But in so many ways, I feel my kids are pushing me to grow up in ways that are hard, painful, and sometimes feel beyond my abilities.  They are holding up a mirror for me, showing me that I have so much more work to do, so much more growing still to do.  

     I am grateful for the chances to continue to grow up, to continue to work on becoming the person I hope to be.  I am choosing to reframe their attitudes towards me as learning opportunities for myself.  We are all on a journey.  We can all choose how to see it and how to respond to it.  My hope is to grow and learn, to become an adult, even as they, too are becoming adults. We are in this together.  And in that realization I find comfort and hope.

All Saint's Day sermon (late)

 

Celebration of the Saints

1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13

John 2:19-21

10/31/21

               In the passage that we read today from 1 Kings, we hear of the amazing plans of Solomon for the building of the temple.  We also hear in that last line the intent of the temple.  “Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord said that he would live in a dark cloud, but I have indeed built you a lofty temple as a place where you can live forever.’”   We don’t tend to think of God as living in a temple, as living in a building, as residing in a specific place at all.  If we do, I think we envision heaven as the place where God lives.  But this is not really a biblical understanding.  And it is certainly not an Old Testament understanding.  The Israelites truly and deeply believed that God resided in the temple, in the Holy of Holies: the innermost part of the temple: in the Ark of the Covenant.  This was where God LIVED and could be found. 

               I invite you to think about that for a moment.  How would our faith, our practice of faith change if we believed God actually lived in the church, for example?  What would you do differently if we believed that this building was God’s HOUSE? 

               And then the next question is, if we believed that God lived here in this building and then the building was destroyed, especially by people we believed to be enemies, how would that impact you?  What would you do?  What would WE do? 

               That is in fact what happened to the Israelites.  For them the temple was sacred, absolutely holy in the highest sense of that word.  It was perfect, it was God’s home.  And then it was destroyed.  Twice it was destroyed.  And both times that destruction was beyond devastating.  It challenged everything they believed, everything they understood.  Did this mean that God was destroyed too?  Did it mean that God had left the “home” they had made for God?  And if so had God left them, too?

               They had come to a very unhealthy place in their understanding.  God had wanted a relationship with the Israelites.  But instead, they had made it into a set of rites, rituals and regulations.  But that became their core value, their core understanding.  And when that was destroyed?

               We all have beliefs, we all have “sacred cows” in our understandings and in our theology, but also in our mind sets.  Things that we cling to absolutely.  Those beliefs that we cling to become our grounding, our base.  They become foundational for us; core beliefs that effect everything else about the way we view the world.  They affect what information we can take in, what information we reject.  They also blind us to other pieces of information.  They blind us, many times to inconsistencies and to flaws in the arguments that support those beliefs.  They blind us to obvious truths that would challenge our way of thinking. 

But the thing is, sacred cows cannot survive in this world.  Anything other than God that we make into an idol is bound to fall, that we declare absolute, that we decide is “truth” cannot survive, ultimately.  Maybe not in our lifetimes, but everything that we make into an idol, or that we decide is unshakeable, or absolute will be challenged.  And when the beliefs or the idols or the sacred cows become challenged, as all sacred cows will, we will have a choice we must make. 

There are four ways people usually respond when their core beliefs are challenged. 

               The first is to continue to deny what has challenged our understanding.  This can only be done up to a certain point, but people do this.  Even when it is obvious to everyone around them that they are doing that, people still do this.  For example, if you were raised to believe that people who are rich have it because they deserve it, and people who are poor don’t have things because they don’t deserve to have good things, then these beliefs might be challenged the first time that you actually get to know a poor person, or someone who grew up in abject poverty.  Even so, I hear people find ways to cling to their old belief systems: “Well, this person is the exception”.  “Well, but MOST people who are poor are different.”  Or they discover how much harm someone who is rich has really done to those under them in order to climb that particular ladder.  Same deal: “Well, that action was the exception.  They don’t normally act that way.” 

               When I was in Ohio there was another clergy couple in our Presbytery who also went through a terrible scandal.  The male pastor was brought up on ecclesiastical charges for sexually abusing a bunch of different boys from three different Presbyteries around the country.  These boys were now all men, the pastor was past the statute of limitations so could not be brought up on criminal charges, but these boys were pressing ecclesiastical charges.  The pastor renounced jurisdiction, which means he gave up his ordination, in order to shut down the process so that no one would hear the charges or be able to confront him.  But the three Presbyteries involved decided this was unfair to the victims.  They hosted “listening” sessions that would simply allow the victims to share their experiences with this pastor.  When the charges were first brought, most people supported the pastor.  They denied the possibility that their beloved, charming, charismatic pastor could ever be found guilty of something like this.  But with the listening sessions man after man came forward to share their story.  And those these men had not previously known each other (some from California, some from Florida and now some in Ohio), their stories all had strong similarities and were all intensely painful.  Once those stories were out, it became much, much harder to deny the charges.  But his wife continued to hold on to her belief in his innocence.  She could not allow her core faith in her husband’s innocence to be shaken, despite the evidence. 

The second response that a person may have in the face of the face of a core belief being challenged is that a person may change lesser beliefs around the core belief in order to hold up their core belief.  I saw this with Martha Stewart.  People believed in her. Many idolized her. So when she was found guilty of insider trading, people changed other ideas they had in order to keep Martha Stewart as the idol she had been for so many.  “Oh, that’s not such a bad thing,” they decided.  Or “Well, she wasn’t really guilty.”  Or, “well, people make mistakes”.  And they forget that if it had been a poor, unknown person making that same “mistake”, they would have wanted them put away for life.

               However, if the situation is too big, too overwhelming, neither of these responses can be upheld.  Such was the case with the destruction of the temple.  It was far too clear and obvious that the temple had been destroyed for any denial to be long lasting.  So then again, they had a bigger choice to make about the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing.  One possible response is to throw out the whole belief system.  Some people decide that because a core understanding has been found to be flawed, the whole thing has to go.  We see this response in many situations.  When I was doing my dissertation on fundamentalism, as you know from a few weeks ago, I interviewed some people who had left fundamentalism to become atheists.  For these folk, they would find something in scripture that contradicted something else in scripture (like, for example, the order of creation in Genesis 1 versus the order of creation in Genesis 2, or Jesus’ constant confrontation and overturning of some of the old biblical laws: like the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” which he completely threw out saying “But I say to you, do not return evil for evil. But if someone slaps one cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”, etc.) then their core belief in a literal and inerrant scripture becomes challenged.  The reaction of some, then, is to throw out the entire faith.  “If this is wrong, the whole thing must be wrong.”

Another example I’ve often encountered is with the core belief that God is in charge of everything, and that everything happens for a reason.  If God is all-powerful and then something too terrible to be dealt with happens, what is a core belief for many is shaken.  If I believe that God can take control or is in control of everything, then I may have been able to say, “everything happens for a reason” when my brother died or when I lost my job.  But when an event such as the Holocaust happens?  Or when I know a child who is raped or tortured?  When I encounter first hand the thousands of people who die from starvation or dehydration?  Then the ability to say “well, God was in charge” and “everything happens for a reason” can be challenged.  The result for many who go through this experience is also one of choosing to reject faith completely.  There can’t be a God at all, certainly not a loving God, if these kinds of terrible things happen and God does not prevent them.

In the secular world, we see this happen when an idol is found to be human. When a politician or movie star or pastor is caught in a scandal that is so horrific that it cannot be denied, people may throw out the person all together.  They will flip from seeing the person as all good to seeing the person as all evil.  There is no in-between.  There is no humanity to be accounted for.  They were perfect.  And now they are the devil. 

Finally, the last, and obviously the most healthy response to that cognitive dissonance, to an irrefutable challenge to our core beliefs is to go through the grief and pain of adjusting them.  Can we make that choice to change how we think, to readjust our beliefs to include the new information?  This is the hardest self-reflective work that we will ever have to do in our lifetimes: to actually be willing to look at foundational beliefs, to accommodate information we did not have before, to change.  I cannot overstate how hard this is for people.  The grief involved in a complete mind-set change is so large that most people simply cannot do it.  It takes amazing strength, courage and wisdom to be able to look at new information and consider that we may have been wrong.

I think about the people who believed with absolute conviction that Hitler was doing a good thing for his people, and what they must have felt after WWII.  Were they able to see that they had in fact been wrong?  Were they able to change?  Where they able to see the evil in their own understandings?  Or did they die declaring he was right, or misunderstood, or that we just were focusing on the wrong thing?   Did they deny the evil he did?  Say it hadn’t really happened at all?  Did they deny the inhumanity of the concentration camps?  Or continue in prejudice, blind thinking?  Were they able to change?

We know that some were.  I think about Corrie Ten Boom’s writing about some of the guards she met when the Holocaust had ended.  I think about their confessions to her with sorrow and deep regret about the parts they played.  But how hard that must have been for them!  How hard for any of us to realize we have participated in something harmful, or destructive.  I’m reminded once again of Professor Dumbledore’s commentary at the end of the Harry Potter series about the evil Voldemort.   He said that even this evil man could heal, he could heal all the horrible, awful things he had done.  He could find “salvation” but only if he were willing to face what he had done and to feel remorse for it.  He also admitted that the pain of that remorse would be worse than he could imagine.  But it would save him.  Being willing to see and understand would save him.  But it would not come without a pain he was unwilling to experience. 

               Today we celebrate the saints.  And we tend to mean two things by this in the Presbyterian Church.  The first is those people who have gone ahead of us whom we honor.  When I think of the saints in my life, the people in my life whom I deeply respect, admire, look up to; they are, consistently, people who are willing to do the hard internal work of really looking at themselves, their core beliefs, and all of their actions throughout their lives that have come out of those core beliefs.  They are willing to turn, or go a different direction, when they have found that their most sacredly held beliefs have led them astray.  They are people, like Jack, who are willing to adjust, change, and go a different way.

               The other thing we in the church mean by “the saints” is all those whom we have cared about and valued who have passed before us.  Because we believe and understand that they are all children of God, all loved by God, all valued by God.  They have added to our lives, not always in a good way, but always they have added something, something we could learn from if not rest in.  They have made us who we are, they have made the church what it is.  They have struggled and suffered as we now struggle at times and suffer at times.  And their legacy informs ours and who we are and who we are becoming.  We remember them in all their humanity, in all their ideas that we now know to have been false, all their core beliefs that we have now come to see were flawed and limited.  Our remembering them can help us to be gentle with our own flawed beliefs.  Our remembering the building of the temple and the hope they placed in this building that was destroyed can help us to have compassion for those who remain stuck in their ideas, but also for ourselves when we are struggling to change.  It can also give us the courage to change: Remembering can give us the courage and strength to be willing to change our ideas when they are challenged. 

               So, on this All Saints Day, I call you to remember.  Remember a temple people thought housed God.  Remember that it fell.  Remember that the people had to choose how to respond when their core beliefs, their sacred cows, were destroyed.  Remember the saints we have known and their core beliefs that were challenged or shattered during their life times or afterwards.  And then remember to be gentle with yourself when you are faced with new information.  You have choices about how to respond.  Will we grow?  Will we learn?  Growing and learning will make our lives easier.  But know this good news: that even when we don’t, when we cannot stretch or cannot grow, God will still love us, hold us, and carry us into tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Gratitude Does Not "Jinx" Us

    Yesterday I was driving home from the store with Youngest and David in the car.  We were listening to music and the song "Good Life" came on.  Here are some of the words:

"Sometimes there's airplanes I can't jump out

Sometimes there's b*** that don't work now

We now got stories so please, tell me

What there's to complain about

Oh, this has gotta be a good life

This has gotta be a good life

This could really be a good life, good life

I say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight

Like this city is on fire tonight

This could really be a good life

A good, good life"

Or something like that...that's what I hear anyway.  I like the way I hear it, even if the words aren't quite right.  At any rate, it caused me to stop and pause for a moment, and think.  

    In that moment I was truly happy.  I had two of my very favorite people in the car with me, we were driving home at dusk, a beautiful time of day, we had music, we were safe, the drive was very pretty.  More, as I reflected in the moment, we have more than enough to eat, we have a lovely home, our family is whole and healthy.  We have friends, we have extended family.  We have work we enjoy.  Youngest is learning, and has amazing opportunities, really.  She is in the drama program at school, she takes Aikido after school, and these are things we can afford.  We are putting two kids through college, one of whom will graduate in the spring, both of whom are launching into life successfully and well.  The weather is starting to turn into lovely fall temperatures, we have opportunities to walk and to sing.... I could go on and on.  The reality is we have SO MUCH that is so easy to take for granted.  Health, limbs that work, brains that work, air to breathe, good foods to eat, clean water to drink, community.   

    I talk regularly about the importance of gratitude. Being grateful, remembering all the ways in which we are blessed, and taking time to be thankful actually improves quality of life, helps with depression, helps with anxiety, helps us to really see where God is, where good is, where love is.  

    But I realized as I was driving home that there is a part of me that has held that off: that is afraid to sit in the joy, in the gratitude.  In those times of well being I'm afraid I might "jinx" my current life.  What I mean is that there is a part of me that worries that if things are going well, it is a sure sign that something terrible is about to happen.  This life, after all, seems to be about growing and learning.  We grow most from the challenges, the hardships that we must face.  So if I'm happy, maybe I'm not doing the work of this life, facing the rough patches that will help me to learn and grow.  Maybe I'm only supposed to focus on gratitude when things are hard: looking for what is good in the midst of the struggles, rather than seeing what is wonderful in the good times.   Because maybe if I name a time in my life as "good" I will lose it to another growth opportunity. 

    Rick Warren talked about how he used to see life as ups and downs but now sees it as a railroad track: one rail of the track is everything that is good and beautiful and the other rail are the challenges and hardships that we face.  He said he had come to realize both tracks are constant.  There is always something to be grateful for and always something difficult to face.  And while I experience the reality of this (even now there is a handful of things I am deeply worried about), there are still moments of pure joy that seem to release me from the hardship track, at least for a moment.  Am I to ignore those moments, to avoid being thrown head first back onto the rail of pain and/or fear?  

    I believe the only way to change our thinking is to look honestly and deeply at our feelings and thoughts.  It was a breakthrough moment for me to realize my fear that happiness would jinx my life.  I do not want to be held back by that fear.  I don't want to miss the beauty, the good, the awesomeness of my life now because I am worried that it will make whatever is to come harder to bear.  I think remembering and sitting in the good can empower us to walk with strength through the challenges.  And yes, those challenges will come.  But they will come whether I enjoy today or not.  They will not be harder because I have rested in the gifts of now.  I believe they will be easier to bear as I remember that good things are also always around me to be enjoyed, to be celebrated, to experience in awe and with gratitude.  

    So, for today, I am choosing to delight in the good.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful, beautiful, challenging, and amazing life!

The Fragility and Unpredictability of Life

          On Thursday afternoon I drove to pick up my kids from their two different high schools.  I picked up Youngest first and then drove to get my son.  I pick him up on a side street several blocks away from the school since, without busing as a possibility here in CA, every other kid is also being picked up at the school and it is a complete zoo.  I had driven our electric car to the place where I pick him up.  In this car, the front door has to be open in order to open the back door to let someone into the back seat (it's a dumb design, but there it is).  Youngest opened the front door and before we could open the back door a dog ran over to the car and put his big head in Youngest's lap.  I said "hello, friend!" to the dog and reached over to scratch his head.  After I scratched his head, though, he then decided that he was going home with us and he tried to jump into the car, into my lap, crossing over Youngest.  At that moment two women who'd been walking nearby ran over, asked us if the dog was ours, and said they were on a mission to find the dog's owners since they'd found the dog wandering around by himself in the next block over.  "No, it's not our dog."  I said, to which one of the women responded, "Well, he clearly WANTS to be your dog!" before she helped pull the dog out of our car so my son could get into the back seat and we could head home.  The dog was very resistant to being pulled out of the car, and it seemed to me that he kept looking at me with a pleading in his eyes that was not unmoving to me.  If we did not have three cats, I would have offered to bring the dog home until the owners could be located, and might even have adopted him if the owners couldn't be found .
           The next morning I learned that the head priest of our local large Catholic parish was killed in a car accident that same afternoon (about a half hour before I was picking up my son).  I knew this man.  Not well, but we both were part of a local clergy group and I am the pianist for the choir at the Catholic parish that sings for memorial services.  Since it is a very large parish, they have memorial services on a weekly basis (the choir doesn't sing for all of them, but many of them) so I am at the church, often playing for services over which he has presided, on a very regular basis.
           Both of these incidents: the death of the priest, and the encounter with the dog, are very present in my mind.  I realize these two incidents cannot be compared in terms of gravity, importance or seriousness.  The loss of Father Mat is a huge, incomprehensible, deep loss for several large communities of people.  It is tragic and devastating in so many ways.  I spent much of the weekend talking with people who have been personally and deeply affected by this tragedy, and I imagine that these conversations will continue over the next few weeks and even months.  In contrast, the incident with the dog is only present in my own mind.  It is small.  I am hopeful that the dog's owner was found, and that the dog is happily back with his people.  I met this dog for all of five minutes and will probably never encounter the dog again.
           And yet, still, both of these incidents are strongly with me.
           To me they are both moments that emphasize how fragile and unpredictable life is.  Everything can change in a moment.  Life can be lost, devastation can occur, tragedy can hit in a second and the worlds of many people can be changed, instantly.
           At the same time, and what we notice with less intensity, less interest even, is that there are new friends to be made, new encounters and new opportunities, new "openings" of our minds, our thoughts, our experiences - all of these also can occur in a moment.
           Losses are often instant.
           Unexpected gifts of encounter or opportunity or new connection are also often instant.
           There is a difference.  Usually, we have no choice about the losses.  Often there is nothing we can do to control what losses come and how they change our lives. We can choose how to walk through them, but we cannot control whether they come.  People die.  People leave us.  Life happens and others make choices that affect us in ways we cannot predict, cannot control and cannot prevent. In contrast, gifts must first be seen, and second, accepted, if we are to allow them to change us, move us, and help us to become better, fuller, and richer.  Both the losses and the gifts call us to make decisions.  Will we accept with grace what life has to offer us this day, and what will that look like in this particular moment?  We don't control if they come, when they come, or how they come. We can only take what this life hands us and decide what we will do with what we are given in each moment, each day, each life-time.
            Today I find myself grieving.  But I am balancing that with the memory of the gifts that also come suddenly and unexpectedly.  I am easing my own sense of loss by remembering the encounter with a friendly dog who instantly loved us and wanted to be with us.  Does it make the grief go away?  Of course not.  But it does remind me that life is more than just the losses.  It is deeper than just the grief.  Life gives and life takes.  God is in both, walking with us, grieving with us, and celebrating with us, too.  In that realization I find peace, even when the healing has not yet come; and I find promise, even though the path through grief is often steep and long.  I am grateful for the journey, even when the road is rough, even as I remember how fragile and unpredictable life really is.

My Super Power is that I Zap Electronics.

         Yes, that's a cumbersome title for a post.  But it's what I want to say here.  I have this amazing super power.  I zap electronics with a touch of my hand.  Or rather, when I use my electronic equipment, it goes bizonko, consistently, continually, until it dies.  Ask anyone who's worked with me or lived with me and they will confirm it.  I touch it, and it stops functioning correctly.  Let me give you some examples.  I've killed every computer that I've ever had, usually within a year.  When I go to have them fixed, they are always declared dead, unfixable, beyond help.  Then I buy a new one, and inevitably within a month, I have zapped it.  I take it back, get a new-new one, and this often repeats several times until we find one that can last a little longer than a month, and we hope will take us through a year or so.  This is the case with other electronics as well.  We got a new portable DVD player - nope.  Had to go back because I made the mistake of being the one to open it and touch it first.  We bought a keyboard for a tablet that we'd received as a gift.  Again, I made the mistake of being the one to open it, so it didn't work and we had to send it back.  The list goes on; printers, phones, dish washers... anything electronic.  If I forget and in my excitement rush to be the one to open and turn whatever the new electronic item is, on, it gives up the ghost before we even get it started and it will have to be replaced.  If someone else initiates its opening, it will often work for a short while until I...well, as I said, I kill electronics.  It's just a matter of time.   It's irritating, annoying, sad, problematic, and at some level a bit humorous how consistent and inevitable it really is.
       But as with every other challenge in my life, I choose to come at them, to see them, as gifts.  So what is the gift in this challenge for me?  What is the lesson here to be learned, to be faced?
       I've realized there are a few things that this particular "gift" is teaching me.  The first is patience.  In this instant gratification society, when things, even brand new things that didn't exist a year ago, don't work, we get very upset and want them fixed immediately.  We EXPECT things to work constantly and we see the times when they don't as great inconveniences and wastes of our time.  But I've been given the gift of having things that tend not to work immediately for me with some consistency.  It takes time to send back the products we've bought that aren't working and to wait for replacements.  When this happens several times in a row, it can take a LONG time (well, relatively - weeks.  In the larger scheme this is still really a very short time) to obtain what I am hoping for. I am trying to accept these delays as exercises in waiting, in remembering that it is a luxury to have things as quickly and easily as we do now, as a chance to step back and breathe.  I am striving to see these times as invitations to move a little more slowly and to take the time to take time, to re-learn patience and to find meaning in the waiting, in being still.  These are also opportunities to practice "doing without", which brings me to the next lesson.
       I am learning to take these times when my electronics aren't working as a break from said electronics, an invitation to not depend on these as much, a chance to return to the basics of talking to people in person, writing by hand, and reading actual paper books.  It is good for me, it is good for my family, to have spaces and periods where we can't do all the computer, phone, media stuff that we normally do.  And I see these periods of electronic failure as opportunities to let those things go for a short interval.
      I am certain there are other gifts in this, too.  But for today, I am striving to remember that even difficult situations and challenges are opportunities, invitations, and gifts for growth, learning, and being in a different way.  So for today, I am choosing not to see it as a "flaw" that I zap electronics, but as a super-power that is helping my family and myself to grow and learn in a new way.

Reassuring Signs - and the threat within.

          I have shared with many of you my "Lean on me" story.  But for those of you not familiar with the story: When we were truly in our darkest time, when I wasn't sure how we would get through the next hours, let alone the next days or months, I had to drive to the hospital to visit someone I loved who was dying, was at the very end.  I turned on the radio for the first time in many months.  The song that immediately began playing was "Lean on me" - a song I've always heard as being an invitation from God to let go, to trust, to live in the love of a supportive, caring "other" that is beyond and above and among us.  I was happy to hear the song, but didn't think too much about it until, on coming out of my visiting time and again turning on the radio, the song was playing a second time.  At that point, I had a conversation with God that went something like this, "Okay, I hear the message here.  At the same time, I tend to think that twice is just a coincidence and that if you are really there trying to communicate with me, there will be a third time."  I drove home and was walking into my house when the telephone rang.  On answering it, I discovered it was one of my parishioners, a man who was in charge of picking the movies for our faith and film nights at church.  He had called to tell me that even though we had scheduled a particular movie for the next evening, he felt this strong sense that he should show a different movie this week.  "What movie are you wanting to show instead?"  I asked.  "Lean on me," he said.  Okaaay…  That night I had choir practice and as I drove to church the song "Lean on me" played yet one more time on the radio.
            Ever since that terrible time, there have been other challenging times in my life.  And very often when I am in those times, the song "Lean on me" will show up at exactly the right moment, reminding me to let go, to trust, to feel the presence and love and care of God surrounding me.
           All of that is wonderful, and awesome and good.  But there is another piece of this with which I'm struggling.  Whenever that song comes on the radio now, or the phrase or movie or anything connected with "Lean on me" pops up in my life in some way, I now feel a sense of fear.  "Why are You reminding me of this?  Am I going to need particular care right now?  Is something terrible about to happen that you want me centered and grounded in You, in my faith, at this moment?" And I have found myself left with the very weird realization that sometimes these words of comfort and care feel more like threats than reassurances.  
        I'm trying to hold on to the memories that usually the song's appearance has come as a needed reassurance during a difficult time, not as a pre-curser to a difficult time.  But this is not completely true.  Things did get worse for us during the week I spoke about above, and I can't forget that.  The person I loved did die that week, for example.
        This is one example, but there are other cases in which words of reassurance and signs of care are more a burden than a gift.  The phrase, "This, too, shall pass," is a wonderful reassurance when things are going badly.  But what about when things are going well?  That, too, will pass.  The words of comfort are also words that create fear.  Nothing lasts: the good and the bad will all pass away.
        We walk a life that is full of ups and downs.  And much of how we hear and experience what comes our way is dependent on our mind-set, our perspective, our approach to life as a whole.  We all know the dualistic idea that one is either an optimist who sees the glass half full or a pessimist of seeing the glass half empty.  I don't actually see myself in either of those categories.  I love the solution that sees the glass as half available for something better (alcohol for some, chocolate for me).  But while I love that solution, it doesn't mean that I can always live in that place.  A long-view perspective sees the complexity in the glass: it is both a glass that is half full and half empty, it has room for more, AND when something else is added into a glass already half full of water, that which is added will be necessarily watered down: in other words, it will still be a mixture of the good and bad, of what we would want, and what we are handed, a mixture of our own control and the worlds' influences, a combination of what is good and what is ordinary or even distasteful when mixed with something else.  Part of maturing and growing older is being able to see it all: all the nuances, all the angles, all the wisdom of a life that is both beautiful and challenging, dreadful and wondrous, that is full of many colors, not just black and white, nor shades of grey.
        I cannot be in a place of seeing life as an either/or.  I can no longer hear even words of comfort as 100% positive, life-affirming support.  That depth of vision is a gift, but not always a comfortable one.
        In terms of our faith, I celebrate that a God of love and grace and wonder is there, always.  But the other side of that coin is we are then called into action, to live out our faith with courage and love for others.  That, too, is both a blessing and a challenge.  There are times I would choose, if I could, to return to a more child-like view of the world and all that is in it as being either good or bad.  There are times I would choose a dualism that simplifies everything.  But I can't.  And so I am working to embrace this reality of gifts that are challenging; comfort that encourages growth, movement and change; and an overabundance of love that calls us into an action of risking everything to love "the least of these".  One day at a time.

Some times are just like that... AND the bigger picture

        This has been a challenging month. David remains out of work, which, though he doesn't live with us, means finances for all of us are extremely tight; Eldest has left for college, which is both financially and emotionally very taxing; David moved out of his apartment (both because lease is up and also because he can't pay rent without an income) so we moved his stuff to my house and he is staying with my parents - a strain for all involved; we had a flea infestation which meant daily vacuuming the entire house including the furniture as well as combing cats daily, using sprays, chemicals, washing sheets, etc; the cats dealt with it by also peeing inappropriately on my stuff (like my computer bag with computer and papers inside of it, as well as the air purifier - go figure); then this was followed by a pantry fly issue, which involved more cleaning, bagging, spraying; the dishwasher died; the air conditioner/heater completely broke beyond repair (a 10K cost to replace); the car is having issues; I spent hours and hours standing in lines to get my kids the things they needed to start school and get Middle his driving permit; work has been very demanding lately while these other time-consuming things have been going on; and the air has been filled with smoke for a long time now, which has caused illness over here and the kids have missed school days because of being so sick.  These are only the big and hard things.  Other stressors are also abundant as we try to plan a wedding (good thing, but stressful), as my other two kids begin a new school year and are trying to adjust to one less person in the house, as well as the daily annoyances that fill each day. It's been a challenging time. I know some times are just like this. Stuff happens and we just have to deal with it. Sometimes a lot of big stressors all come at once. There are times when even the good things still bring additional stressors to all of us.
         But in the midst of all of this I've found myself truly feeling how blessed, how lucky, how privileged and how loved we all are.  I think it is easy to focus on what is wrong.  For one thing, sharing our troubles can help us connect with other people, can deepen friendships as we open up about the feelings that may not be as attractive or as public.  Also, if we give time and attention to the things that are difficulties, we can often (usually) find the resources to deal with them. So I understand the inclination to dwell on what is hard.  But again, I've found myself really reflecting a great deal of late on what is so good in my life in the midst of all of this.
        I have three amazing children and an incredible partner.  While David being out of work has been a challenge financially, in other ways it has been a real gift because he's been available to help more with kids, and with just being present.  I've needed that, especially as I've dealt with all of the other things going on.  Eldest is doing her best to stick it out at college as well as to stay connected.  I'm immensely proud of her.  My youngest daughter entertains me on a regular basis with her creative and funny additions to the house:

And my son blew me away the other day by telling me he thought I was an awesome mom.  That came out of nowhere.  My son, who has come with so many challenges of his own, is becoming this unbelievably mature, caring, committed, hard-working young man right before my eyes.  For my 15 year old boy to tell me he appreciated me and to choose to come give me a hug... well, I thought I must have entered heaven, which, in a way, I did, at that moment.
          My church and family have been amazingly generous during this time of stress: the men's group buying me a new dishwasher and installing it, as well as just expressing care and love and support in so many ways, as well as the constant care of my extended family.
          But the biggest gift I've been able to appreciate lately is the realization of what time, growth, and previous hard times have given me. They've given me a deep appreciation and awareness of how quickly things change, how the hard times pass, and that things really do continue to move forward. They also remind me to keep looking for the good, for Love, for God, in every moment.  I'm getting better at remembering that. The fact that I can keep walking through, facing each new challenge and still feel happy, content, at peace, has been an amazing gift for me.  I'm not the same as I was ten years ago: and that awareness of inner change and growth, amidst continuity, is a deep gift.
          I choose to be a person who sees the good.  I choose that for my kids, for my church community.  I choose to be a person who walks in gratitude and with a vision for what is beautiful.  I choose to respond with compassion in the face of unkindness, and with grace in the face of evil.  I can't do that for myself, as much as I want to; but I can do that for my kids and my faith community.  Even so, those choices are hard to make.  But I am learning that practice is a really good teacher and that staying in grace and in light becomes easier each time I choose it.  So I am also learning to see the hard times as the true gifts they are: they are opportunities to practice being the person I want to be.  They are chances offering me the choice to respond each time to each crisis in a better way.  I can't learn without the stressors that push on that learning.  So I am grateful for this last month, and for the gifts that come from walking in a path of growth and learning.
        Thanks be to God!

Being Pruned

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Malachi 3:1-5

I have found myself on many occasions wondering about the purpose of life.  What do you think the purpose of life is?

Our Western culture tells us that the purpose of life is to be happy.  Our TV ads bombard us with statements like “You deserve it!” and “Do it for you!” and “You can make yourself anything you want to be!” 

But the Bible never tells us that the goal in life is to be happy, or even comfortable or at ease. This is not the message that we get from our scriptures, and today’s passages especially show us instead a God who is not seeking our comfort, but is seeking instead to make us more holy, more whole; to make us more godly, to “prune” us as the John passage says, and to “refine” us as the Malachi passage says.

As Rick Warren, author of Purpose Given Life said in an interview, “We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense…Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.  The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than (God) is in making your life happy.  We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.”

As we know, this isn’t easy.  The Bible tells us this isn’t easy when it compares the process to the pruning of branches, to the refining of metals.  We know from the 1^st John passage what that looks like.  Growing in character means loving more fully, more deeply, even those we don’t like.  But getting there is hard.  And knowing exactly how to do this, how to love more deeply and fully, is again, a challenge.  So, God calls us, throughout our lives; God challenges us, God “refines” us and “prunes” us so that we might bear more fruit, so that we might be the pure, refined silver we are meant to be.

Some women in a Bible study came across this passage from Malachi, “God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”  And so one of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study. That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work.  She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining Silver.  As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.  He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.  The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says:  'He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.'   She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time.  The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. It was a difficult and uncomfortable job, holding the silver, working the silver, constantly watching the silver over this very, very hot flame that was hot for the holder as well as for the silver.  But, if the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed, so this was the only way to do it.  Since he loved his work, loved the silver, the pain and discomfort to the Smith were worth it to him.  The woman was silent for a moment.  Then she asked the silversmith, 'How do you know when the silver is fully refined?'

He smiled at her and answered, 'Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it.'

   “…When I see my image in it”. 

To be in the image of the God of love, is to love.  To be in the image of the God who loved us so much that that God was willing to die for us, is to love each other so much that we are willing to die for each other.  Again, not easy.  But that is what being in relationship with God pushes us towards, and challenges us to do.

I want to clarify here, and I will say it again later, that I don’t believe that the bad things that happen to us happen because God is trying to hurt you or test you or make you better. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, I don’t believe people are murdered or children are raped or monsters are allowed to damage the world because God wills it.  I cannot believe in a God for whom the only way to bring about the kingdom is through the torture of God’s children.  That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that I deeply believe in a God who takes our deepest, hardest, most intense times and will stand with us through them and will work with us to bring the highest good out of them, to refine us through them, to make us better on the other side of whatever we have gone through.  I believe deeply in a God who encourages us to have vision for the good and beautiful in the midst of horror, to look for it, to see it, and to allow it to change us for the better.

I invite you for a moment to think about the hardest times in your life.  For some this may be obvious, but my guess is that if we are really honest with ourselves, sometimes the hardest experiences are not the most obvious ones.  So I invite you to think about what you have lived through that is truly the hardest, most painful time in your life.  I know it is not pleasant to go there, but I invite you to sit with it for a minute.  And then I invite you to go deeper: to remember anyone who might have been kind to you during that time, or any little silly thing that may have brought laughter during that time.  I invite you to remember food you might have enjoyed eating during that time, or a sunset you saw, or a tree or plant in bloom.  I invite you to go even deeper and see if there was anything about you that was strengthened through this time.  Did you grow in your ability to be patient, in your ability to withstand hardships?  Did you grow in your compassion for other people who are suffering?  Did you come to understand your circumstances in a different way?  Did you gain appreciation for the little gifts that life hands you?

I think about the hardest times in my own life.  I realize that they are nothing compared to what some people go through.  But they are more than others have experienced.  So from that place, I look back and I see what I gained.  I learned to be more patient.  I learned to stand up for my kids, for myself.  I learned not to trust systems and I learned of their inhumanity, but while this may seem like a cynical or bad thing, I feel it helped me to grow in my willingness to confront corrupt systems and the pawns (people) who are used by them.  I gained a better picture of what I have control over and what I don’t.  I came to understand more fully that there really are things I cannot change at all, and that there are other things I certainly cannot change overnight, without work, without other people, without a long commitment and a plan.  I learned to accept help: support, affirmations, care from other people.  I learned to ask for help when I needed it, even when my natural inclination is to think I can do it all myself.  I learned to work on relationships, and to make the conscious decision to still be engaged in the world, to still love and allow myself to be loved in return.  I am learning to pray for and to genuinely care about the well-being of people who hurt us.  That’s a big thing: to learn to have compassion for people who hurt us, but I started that path for real.  I began to learn to respond to meanness and cruelty with a presence of honest, open grace.  I learned that I can choose to be who I want to be and that I choose to be a person of forgiveness and love rather than of vengeance and hate.  I continue to learn that loving and being loved are deeper challenges than I knew, challenges that call for all that we are, all that we can be – but challenges, none the less, that make life worth living, that deepen life, that deepen our relationships with God. I learned to take the hard times for what they are – a time of growth, of refinement in a hot fire, a time of challenge for God and I together to work out some kinks and blemishes in my being.  Of course the journey continues, the challenges continue, the refinement continues.  But through it all, I have felt closer to God than ever.  Through it all, I feel at a deeper and deeper level God’s tangible presence.  Through it all, I have hope that I will grow to be more like the person God calls me to be each day.

I believe seeing this, seeing the good, looking for ways that the things that are bad can move us, change us – all of that takes work and a strong commitment.  But it is a commitment to your own well-being, a commitment to your own growth, a commitment to your own resurrections, a commitment to living and loving fully, to deciding who you want to be and working to become that person.  This is not easy.  But it is a commitment that is worth our time, attention and care.

The Malachi passage ends with the phrase, “So I will come to put you on trial,… but do not fear me.”    This may seem oxymoronic – how can God declare that we will be put on trial and then in the same breath tell us to not be afraid?  But the message I receive from this is that it is a gift to us to be in God’s intense gaze as we are refined.  It is a gift to us to be challenged to grow and become more the people God calls us to be.  Yes, life hurts.  Not all of life is good.  Certainly, not all of life is easy.  But we need not fear it.  Because God is there with us – keeping God’s eye on us, and working with us until God can see God’s own image in our very beings.  Thanks be to God!

Being Heroes

        "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way." (1)

       What is it to be a hero or heroine?  We know what it is.  All of our story books as well as our histories tell us.  To be a hero is to find ourselves in the place and time where we are called on to do something hard, and to say "yes" in that face of that call.  We don't choose whether or not that call will come.  We don't choose where we will be in that moment or what the challenge is that will call us into action.  All we choose is whether or not, in each of those moments, we will say "yes" to the call or not. When we don't have any idea how to do what we are called to do, when we "do not know the way" but we choose to do it anyway because we see it is something that needs to be done for the good of others, that is heroism.
      Every time I have read this part of the Lord of the Rings (right now I'm reading it to my middle child and have just come to that point again) and every time I have seen that part in the movie, I find myself weeping.  Today I showed that small scene at our evening family service, and once again, I was overcome with tears. It touches me because in the story it is the smallest, most unnoticed, apparently unexceptional person who appears to be called on to do this all but impossible task, and he answers that call with "yes" despite the fact that he does not know how to get there.  I looked at our children this evening at church and I saw in each of them the ability to answer that call with a "yes" as well. I saw that God often does use the unexpected, the unnoticed, and that all it takes is a "yes" to become that hero.
       But I also was struck by something different this evening.  In the story, Frodo saved his world. In most of our classics and histories, the hero making the decision to say "yes" to the impossible saves something, someone important: the family, the country, the planet, the universe... something big.  But how many times is it not also heroic, when we really look at it, just to say "yes" to the burdens we are given each day? Burdens that we also, often, don't really know how to carry? When we say "yes" to the incredibly difficult job of daily parenting a challenging child, when we say "yes" to sitting up with someone in crisis even when we ourselves are beyond tired, when we say "yes" to choosing to live each day while struggling with chronic, debilitating pain; when we say "yes" to working a job in which we are miserable because it supports our families; when we put up with meanness for the sake of someone else, when we stand up to someone who is unkind to others, when we risk loving the unlovable or talking with the person society rejects, when we choose to do that which is unpopular but which is the only thing we can do if we are true to our values, when we get up each morning after the death of a child - in all these actions, we are choosing in that moment to be heroic.  All of these things may not change the world or make the news or seem that big of a deal in the larger scheme of things. But each time we say "yes" to carrying the burdens we find at our feet or facing the challenges or making the world a tiny bit kinder and gentler for someone else, we are choosing to be heroic. Other people don't have to know or record or celebrate what we've done for it to be big and for it to mean something in God's eyes.
         All we are called to do is that which is in front of us to do: for some of us that is big and changes the world.  For most of us it only changes us.  But that is enough. All we are called to do is to say "yes" when the call shows up.
         To phrase this another way: I see that it is a big deal, that it is in fact heroic for each of you to walk the journeys you do, to face the difficulties you face, to keep going in the midst of adversity and to keep saying "yes" to life, especially when it is hard.  I hope you can see it too and that you can celebrate the choices you have made in each day.


1. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, (Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1966) p. 164.

Sunday's Sermon - The Rain Falls on the Just and Unjust

Luke 13:1-9

I wanted to begin today by discussing Lent. Lent is a time to repent - or, to put it in less “churchy” words, to look at our lives, to reflect, to try to make some changes, to turn from one direction and go in a new direction, to grow, to try to be more worthy and more whole and just plain more Godly, as we anticipate what Jesus sacrificed, as we remember the things that we are a part of that lead and led, inevitably towards the cross.           

As part of that, what is the most common Lenten practice that we know of? Giving something up. What kinds of things do people give up? There can be something good and healthy about giving something up: if we are really looking at our lives and we find something that is getting in the way of our wholeness, of our serving God and others. Then we can decide to make a practice of limiting, for a set period of time, but perhaps with the idea that if we can do it for a short time, we might be able to do it for longer, whatever it is that is interfering in our growth, wholeness and service to God. 

But I found myself thinking about the falseness, so many times, of these deprivations or sacrifices. A good friend of mine told me that for years she gave up chips every lent. Chips were her favorite food and a staple in her diet. Every lent though she went through the tortuous ritual of throwing out all of her unfinished bags of chips. Of course there weren’t many by lent; fat Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi-gras, allowed her to gorge and cram down as many as she could ahead of time. And she told me that every year she felt sick for the first three days of lent; whether it was withdrawal symptoms or whether it was a chip hang-over from Fat Tuesday she was never sure. But after six long weeks of agonizing deprivation and anticipation, lent finally came to an end. The day before Easter her kids would go out and buy every kind of chip they could imagine, open the bags, and line them up in front of my friend. They would have a count-down and at the exact moment lent was officially over she would eat and eat until she was too full and sick to eat anymore, leaving her, once again, sick for the first few days of Easter.

These sacrifices on many occasions are almost like a game we play - “let’s see if I can give this up,” or they are a way of feeling like we’re really doing something in the name of our faith. But they represent a choice that a privileged or wealthy person (and we are all wealthy here by the world’s standards) makes for a short and specific period of time: a choice that can be “cheated” and even changed at any moment. 

What do these deprivations actually mean in the bigger scheme of our faith? What does it mean in terms of our dual call to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves? What does it mean to the people God really calls us to care for - the oppressed and the poor?

To put it in more concrete terms, what does it mean to those who can’t afford and therefore don’t own a television that you give up watching TV for a month? What can it possibly mean to the person who struggles to find enough of any kind of food to eat that you give up chocolate or ice cream for a month? What does it mean to God that you “give up” something but aren’t giving to someone else who might really need it? The intent of these sacrifices is to focus on God. But often the Lenten practice of sacrifice gets warped and trivialized. And do we then use those deprivations to focus more on God, or do we end up focusing on something else - like on our own “religiousness” or even more, on a sense of deprivation? Are we taking the time that we would otherwise use watching TV or whatever else it is we have given up to volunteer with the poor, to meditate on the direction God wants for our lives or even very simply to pray? 

As I said before, this Lenten practice started with good intentions. Get rid of the things that separate you from God and develop a closer relationship with God through doing so. But I think that many of our spiritual practices, this being one of them, have instead become bargaining chips in an “If I do x, God, will you please give me y” kind of way. You may not be familiar with the term “prosperity gospel” but it is what is espoused by many of our rich and powerful preachers and their followers in the United States, people like Joel Osteen. It was reflected in the theology of the movie, Leap of Faith that we showed here on our first movie night as well. It is an incredibly popular theology because it promises that if you just do “a” right or “b” right, if you give enough money to these prosperity gospel preachers, if you pray enough, if you give up something for lent, that God will reward you with riches, with prosperity, with “stuff” beyond your wildest dreams.

Just to be clear, I find no justification for this in our scriptures. Today we hear in two different gospels Jesus telling us that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike, that bad things and good things happen to all people. We know the story of Job. Despite his faith and goodness, he lost everything. And while at the end, he is doing fine again, every time I hear the story now I am now reminded of a wonderful poem by Carl Denis about Job that ends with these words, “How foolish … To … assume that Job's new family, New wife and children and servants, Would be an ample substitute for the old.” A loss like the death of one’s children is a loss never to be recovered from. And no faith can protect against that.

Bad things happen to good, God-fearing people. If you are faithful to God because you envision God as a kind of Santa Claus that rewards good action or even faith, and punishes the bad, or those who lack faith, you might want to find a new religion, one that emphasizes karma more. Because that just isn’t how the God shown to us by Jesus works. 

As Cathleen Fasani wrote in a recent article to the Washington Post, “Few theological ideas ring more dissonant with the harmony of … Christianity than a focus on storing up treasures on Earth as a primary goal of faithful living. The gospel of prosperity turns Christianity into a vapid bless-me club, with a doctrine that amounts to little more than spiritual magical thinking: If you pray the right way, God will make you rich.  But if you're not rich, then what? Are the poor cursed by God because of their unfaithfulness? And if God were so concerned about 401(k)s and Mercedes, why would God's son have been born into poverty?... Jesus was born poor, and he died poor. During his earthly tenure, he spoke time and again about the importance of spiritual wealth and health. When he talked about material wealth, it was usually part of a cautionary tale.”

The bigger problem with prosperity gospel theology is that it completely wipes out grace. In the prosperity gospel model our faith becomes an economic system of rewards and punishments. You get what you earn, you get what you deserve. But God isn’t like that. God causes the sun to shine on all of us. The rain, too, falls on all of us. And God loves ALL of us, no matter what.

I think historically, people have done many things in an attempt to earn God’s favor. A large part of the protestant reformation was in response to the Catholic church charging people “indulgences” as a way to pay off their sins and to earn God’s forgiveness and grace. And if you are a person who struggles with guilt, it is likely that that guilt is a remembrance, especially when things go wrong, of the ways we have failed. We start thinking that somehow the bad things that have happened to us are because we haven’t been enough, haven’t done enough, haven’t been faithful enough. But the good news is that this is not true. God love you just the way you are. And out of that love, God offers grace, free undeserved gifts and forgiveness and love and care. God offers that grace to all of us, not as a response to anything we have or have not done. You cannot earn grace by its very definition. It is a gift freely given. 

I believe with all my being that Grace is always there for us. But receiving that becomes possible when we see it, if we are able to connect the dots and trust that grace is from a God who loves us, if we can see the many beautiful good gifts that surround us as the sign and promise of God’s love, as they are. But whether we are able to see it or not, that grace is offered to everyone, NOT because any of us deserve it, or have failed to deserve it. It is there because that is the nature of God: God is the One who offers grace, every single day, to each of God’s children.

So, then, if we do not do our Lenten practices and other spiritual disciplines in order to earn God’s grace, why do them? Again, the original idea behind any spiritual discipline is to increase our closeness to God. We don’t do this to “earn” grace because grace can’t be earned.  We do this out of gratitude and love for a God who has already given us grace. We do it to build a relationship with the amazing God who does love creation so much that She/He offers that grace to everyone. We do it because in growing closer to God we find that, no matter what else we are going through, we come to learn, experience and trust that we are truly held and supported and loved by a God who walks with us graces us even through the hardest times. 

Today’s story from Luke is not an easy story. Jesus first says that bad things don’t happen to people because they sin, but then he goes on to say “I tell you unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” The second half of the lesson isn’t much more comforting. The fig tree doesn’t produce fruit and so the owner wants to tear it out. The gardener persuades the owner to give the fig tree another year to produce, but even then, the owner still says that if it doesn’t produce good fruit in another year, it will be ripped out. Not a really reassuring story, is it?

Except that the fig tree is not left to its own devices. The gardener promises to dig around it, to put fertilizer on it, to care for it. That gardener working hard to make us into the beautiful fruitful trees we are called to be is Grace, straight from God. That care for us, that pruning, that nurturing takes many forms: our life lessons, the church, the things that happen to us which confront us to change and to grow and to truly be servants of God, the many places we experience God’s love. When we remain open to God’s grace, we find ourselves in that place where we are dug around, where the hard places are pointed out and softened with some digging, some aeration, and in a place where we are nourished and fed, replenished, and given the best nutrition possible in order to grow so that we, too may produce fruit.

God does indeed call us to be the people of love, finding, searching, seeking and serving with that love. And when we follow God, we see grace all around us. But I remain convinced that it is not because we have “earned” it that God gives us grace. Still, through our faith and through our actions of faithful living we learn to see the grace that is offered. So, do we do our Lenten disciplines? Doing anything that brings you closer to God is always a good plan. And Lent is a good time to begin to do it (though truly, any time is). But we are called to these tasks out of love for God, out of gratitude for the grace already given. Amen.

The gift of my friend

Another hard day.  House closing has been delayed, and delayed, and delayed - until today.  But it won't happen, again.  Seller is done with this, which is understandable.  Which means that schooling for kids is still tenuous.  And it means still not having our stuff, and still having our poor kitties in a kennel.  And it means still sleeping in other people's houses, trying to be careful with other people's things.  And it means still feeling displaced, homeless, and unsettled, to say the least.  This has gone on for a month and a half.  That's a long time to be "homeless" and it is hard.  The house in Ohio is not selling, which is part of why our lender doesn't want to loan us money for a house out here. And there is not one thing I can do about that. I've put it to the universe.  I've put it out to God (though I don't think God micro-manages house sales).  But otherwise, there is nothing that can be done.  I put a ton of money into fixing it up, did a lot of work on it myself. But now I am in CA and there is simply no more to be done.

It is hard on the kids who don't know if they are coming or going, don't know when they will have their stuff or access to their cats (who are NOT doing well in the kennel), don't know where they will be attending school this next week or next month.

I continue to try to take everything a day at a time.  I continue to try to look for the things to be grateful for in each moment.  I continue to try to focus more on my work and caring for my kids than on the lack of housing or even the future and what it might, or might not, hold.  But there are too many moments lately when I just want to rail at God, "Where ARE you?  What is it that I'm supposed to be learning here?  I know 'this too shall pass' but the last 4 1/2 years have been HARD and frankly, I'm ready for something different. My KIDS are ready for something different!  Do you really want these experiences to define who they are and how they relate to the world?  Where ARE you?!"

And then...

Today, in the middle of a good long cry, I got a call from a very dear friend who I don't talk to but once every few months.  He is someone I respect and value so deeply for who he is, and what he gives to the world and all those he encounters on a daily basis.  I value him for all he has given to me, personally, over the years - the wisdom, the centering, a model for how to be in the world (he is a fighter who has stood up to injustice in concrete and impressive ways), and his constant, unwavering friendship.  He lives in New Mexico, so our contact over the last 23 years has pretty much been restricted to these occasional phone calls.  Still, I have found that his timing is consistently uncanny. He seems to always call exactly when I need to hear from him.  Today was such a day.  Before I could even launch into all of my woes and struggles, he told me he'd been reading my blog and was really impressed by my ability to hold on to gratitude and reflection in difficult times.  He said he felt I'd grown in my ability to be compassionate as well and he saw me continuing to mature and truly deepen through the struggles I'd been through.  He said I modeled all of that for him.  Huh.

My first response was to feel shame.  I wasn't feeling gratitude or compassion in the moment he had called me.  I'd just been feeling sorry for myself, frustrated with the world, "picked on" by the universe.  I wasn't acting particularly mature, I was crying in my office at work.  I wasn't feeling strong or deep, I was feeling like a 5 year old kid who just wanted to be held and told that it would all be okay.

But he is not a "shaming" person.  It wasn't his intention for me to feel that way.  And so that feeling passed pretty quickly and I was left instead with the reminder that what I feel in the moment is not the totality of my being.  What we all feel in this moment is not all of who we are.  What we are experiencing in this moment - not only will it pass, but even in this moment it is not all of who we are.  It is a glimpse, it is a moment, it is a breath in a life time of breaths and moments and glimpses, all of which make up who we are, and who we will become.  Even when we don't feel God's strong loving arms surrounding us, that too is a moment, a glimpse, a breath in which we are not letting go and relaxing into the love that holds us through it all, even when it does not feel like it does.

God was there for me today...in my friend, John.  Thank you, John, for being that face of God for me today when I needed it.  Thank you for reminding me that I am more than I feel I am in those hard moments.  Thank you for showing me that love is still there even when I feel alone.  Thank you - for being one of the angels in my life each day, and especially today.

Sunday's Sermon - Finding Meaning in Suffering

Malachi 3:1-3
I Peter 4:12-18, 5:6-11

 “There stood Beethoven, gravely ill and totally deaf.  Eyes closed, he kept conducting the orchestra even after they had ceased their performance and the audience had risen to its feet in thunderous applause.  As a singer stepped from the choir to turn him around to see those whose shouts of “bravo” resonated throughout the concert hall, tears of elation filled his eyes.  Perhaps the worst loss a composer could experience had been the catalyst for a remarkably adaptive creativity that allowed him to transcend his tortures to become immersed in the thrill of conducting the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the “ode to Joy”.  At that moment, and not only in spite of but BECAUSE of his adversity, Beethoven had experienced the thrill of thriving through adversity.”  _ prelude of Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, VA., 2003)

I’ve found myself thinking a great deal about suffering lately.  And today’s passages really explore it and call us to look at it once again.  The Christian Education study that we have been doing on Wednesdays with Gary has been awesome.  It is called, If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat by John Ortberg (Zonervan, 2003, Michigan) and explores many aspects of stepping out in faith to walk as Jesus has called us to do, with God and each other.  The study explores our fear, the risks we take, how we perceive failure and also what we do with suffering because when we do take the risks of stepping out of the boat and stepping onto the water, there will be times when we suffer as a result, when we fall into the water, when we fail.  And yet, even though we know there will be suffering, we are still called to do it.  We are still called to step out, take the risks of faith, go through the fire to come out on the other side, purified.  In one of the chapters, John Ortberg looks at what he calls the “resilience factor”.  He says, “People who not only survive but grow through difficult situations have (been found to have) three qualities in common:  1.  They take action, seeking to reassert some command over their destiny rather than viewing themselves as helpless victims.  2.  They have a larger-than usual capacity for what might be called moral courage – for refusing to betray their values.  And 3.  They find meaning and purpose in their suffering.”  In the book, the Beethoven Factor, the new positive psychology of hardiness, happiness, healing and hope, Paul Pearsall says a similar thing, especially in regards to finding meaning and purpose in suffering.  He says that some people who suffer don’t become victims or even survivors, instead they become thrivers, people who actually grow through and because of their pain and suffering.  He lists twelve characteristics of such people, but many of them also have to do with finding meaning and purpose.  Number one on his list is that reasons can be found behind the things that happen to us, though it is up to us to figure out the reason.  Number eight is that thrivers make sense of what has happened or is happening to them.  In other words, both of these studies emphasize again and again the importance in finding meaning and purpose in our suffering if we are to come out stronger, thriving and resilient on the other side.
For much of the world, suffering is pointless.  Our culture tells us the purpose of life is “fun”, or happiness.  And in that context, suffering can have no meaning which I think is why so many people in our culture have such a very difficult time when pain does come.  Where is meaning and purpose in suffering when the goal is just to “be happy”?

But for Christians, it is different.  The Bible never tells us that life is about being happy or comfortable or at ease.  Meaning and purpose have many levels and many layers and therefore we can’t say there is one reason or one purpose behind any individual’s suffering, we can’t determine for anyone else what their suffering is about, or why is it happening or what good God can bring out of it for any one person.  None the less, what we can and do know as people of faith is that God can and does bring purpose, meaning and new life out of suffering if we work with God, if we are open to God’s movement through the pain.  God creates meaning even when we can’t find it.  God brings resurrection out of death.  And for me, today’s passages really touch on the “reasons”, the purpose, the meaning behind all that we suffer.  The passage from Peter says that God uses suffering to “test” us.  I don’t really like the word “test” because for some that can imply that God authors our suffering to see how much we can put up with.  That isn’t my experience of God.  The God I experience does not create our suffering, but does use it to challenge us.  And that is actually the truer meaning behind the Greek word that is here translated as “test”.  It is more accurately translated “challenge” in the sense that God uses our suffering to challenge us to grow, to learn, and to deepen in our connection with God and with life.  I find the same meanings present in the Malachi passage.  Our suffering purifies us, it refines us.  As John says, it also “prunes” us.  Our suffering can lead us to be more godly, but only if we are open to the purpose God has in it, open to being “refined” through the hardships.
As Rick Warren, author of Purpose Given Life said in an interview, “We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense…Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.  The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than (God) is in making your life happy.  We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.”
As we know, this isn’t easy.  The Bible tells us this isn’t easy when it compares the process to the pruning of branches, to the refining of metals.  Growing in character means loving more fully, more deeply, even those we don’t like.  Getting there is hard.  And knowing exactly how to do this, how to love more deeply and fully is a challenge.  So God pushes, God “refines” us and “prunes” us so that we might bear more fruit, so that we might be the pure, refined silver we are meant to be.  That hurts.  It just does.  But that also gives meaning to the suffering that comes.  Again, I’m not saying that God causes our suffering.  What I am saying is that when we do suffer, God can use it and DOES use it to refine us if we are open.  While I don’t believe God purposely wants us to hurt, I do believe God can bring and create meaning through our suffering by allowing it to teach and refine us into more godly people.

I shared this story with you before.  Some women in a Bible study came across this passage from Malachi, “God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”  And so one of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study. That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work.  She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining Silver.  As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.  He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.  The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says:  'He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.'   She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time.  The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire.  If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.  The woman was silent for a moment.  Then she asked the silversmith, 'How do you know when the silver is fully refined?'
He smiled at her and answered, 'Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it.'
   “…When I see my image in it”.
God refines us until we are truly in God’s image.  What an amazing and wondrous act of love on God’s part, to be with us in that suffering to the point where we are truly made in God’s image.  To be in the image of the God of love, is to love.  To be in the image of the God who loved us so much that that God was willing to die for us, is to love each other so much that we are willing to die for each other.  Not easy.  But that is what being in relationship with God pushes us towards, and challenges us to do.
The last time I mentioned this story, Fran approached me afterwards and said something that I also think can help us through times of suffering.  She said, “How hot it must be for God to sit there and refine constantly.”  That is the other part of Jesus on the cross as well.  God is with us in our pain, God is with us in our suffering.  And God is standing alongside in the heat, also suffering but still intent on helping us grow through and beyond our trials.

A Hawaiian elder once said, “God sometimes tears at the fabric of our lives so that we will learn to be better weavers and to show us how to more deeply appreciate being given the chance to weave.  We may not see the final pattern, but we are wise if we try to find new patterns and become more patient and creative weavers.” (Beethoven Factor, xxviii)

And it doesn’t end there.  As the passage from Peter tells us, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you.”  So finally, the other side of suffering comes.  We are refined, we are made new, and in that newness we are brought to healing, to strength and to a stronger place.  Thanks be to God.