Plant Lessons

     The last two days we explored Bath, home of my favorite author Jane Austen (and we went on a tour of her presence in Bath as well as spending time in a Jane Austen museum) as well as place of the Roman Baths (which we visited to learn the history throughout the years). I was also able to visit and experience a number of gardens including the Botanical Gardens within the Royal Victoria Park, the Parade Gardens and the Sydney Gardens. Today we drove through the countryside to Wales where we will spend the next couple days.  Soon after entering Wales we visited a well known kitchen garden (attached to a fantastic restaurant) and then had the extraordinary experience of meeting and being taught in an interactive outdoor classroom by Adele Nozedar, an author and foraging expert who talked about reconnecting with our roots, with the earth, with the plants around us.  As she talked about the spirituality of the plants, their sacredness and the lessons they teach, I felt I had met a kindred spirit.  After our lesson, she and I talked about books we both love and the power of gardening and being in relationship with the plants around us.  But there are two things she said that are really sticking with me this evening.

    She said she really hated the word “weed.”  “What is a weed?” she asked.  It is only a label we put on some plants and don’t put on others.  It labels some as “bad” and in need of being uprooted.  She said every plant has gifts to give, lessons to teach, and when we label some as weeds we stop seeing them.

    Hm.  I could take this in so many directions.  First, we do this with people as well.  When we label someone a criminal, a bum, an illegal, it is a way of dismissing them, of no longer seeing them, or, as with most times when we label someone, never seeing them in the first place. It is unjust and dangerous: for it separates us from one another and gives us permission to avoid really getting to know one another fully.  But secondly, I agree with her about our labels around plants. Yarrow is a common “weed” but also a beautiful plant in its own right.  Wild flowers are often seen as weeds.  I started to wonder as I planted my garden, and now continue to wonder, how to make the decisions about what plant should be allowed to live and grow and what should not. When I decide I don’t want a plant in my yard (and two that come to mind are thistles of various kinds and scarlet pimpernel), what is best to be done about it?  I struggle with this. Scarlet pimpernel, for example, is really quite lovely.  But it takes over everything in the yard, strangling and spreading as it goes. It is invasive, a non-native plant to the Americas and toxic.  But as I’ve read about it, it, too has gifts to give and has been used medicinally for centuries in many different cultures. Should I label it a weed?  Or is there another way to remove it without vilifying it?  

    The second thing that Ms. Nozedar said that I want to share is actually a story of a practice in Llanfrynach, Wales where we had our foraging lesson.  She said that there were times, as there always are, when two people would be feuding within a community.  If it became too much for the community, they had a practice.  They would send the two people to “the tree.”  As the two people walked towards the tree they were permitted to argue and bicker as harshly or loudly or argumentatively as they wanted until they reached the edges of the Tilia tree (linden tree) which creates under it’s big branches a quiet refuge.  Once the two came to the edge of the tree, they were to step inside the tree in silence, and stop talking.  They were required then to sit together in the silence under the tree until one or the other was moved to apologize.  Only then were they allowed to leave to return home.  

    What a powerful story!  I think we have forgotten how to fight with each other, or rather, how to reconcile and deal with our differences.  Perhaps it is time to resurrect this practice, first speaking honestly about our own thoughts and feelings, and then sitting quietly together, thinking about what the other said, being in the stillness until there is movement in our hearts and a place and space to see our own culpability in any conflict and to forgive one another.  The tree plays a big part in this.  It creates the sacred space of listening and quietly waiting for healing, for answers. It also acts as a witness. It stands as a testimony to all who have entered under its boughs and been brought to consciousness of their own failings, moved to repent and to ask for forgiveness which then opens the door to reconciliation.  It is a reminder as well as a symbol of what is possible when people are intentional about working through their disagreements.

    I am so grateful for these stories and all that I learned today.    

Psalms: Salvation History

Psalm 105

            This lent we will be focusing on the psalms and what they have to say to us, what they have to teach us, their piece in our faith lives.  As part of that, today I want to give a brief overview and then we will focus on psalms of history, psalm 105 being one of those. 
            The psalms are a collection of prayers, poems and songs that express to God and to God’s people a wide spectrum of human experience and emotion.  As such they express praise, thanksgiving, wonder, doubt, faith, lament, grief, trust, hope, joy, sorrow.  The psalms reflect all of these feelings, as well as all sorts of human experiences, and they do so as a way of connecting with, honoring and reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  As theologian Eugene Peterson says it, “When we pray the psalms, we enter into the centuries-long experience of being a people of God.”  Many of the psalms are attributed to King David, but not all of them.  Scholars have identified different types of psalms, and while many of the psalms fit into more than one category, generally, for our understanding and study, they are divided into the following different types:
Hymns of praise,
Enthronement hymns which recognize God as King over all the world,
Songs of Zion which recognize and lift up Jerusalem as God’s holy city,
Songs of lament,
Songs of trust,
Sacred History psalms which look at the history of God’s people,
Royal psalms which focus on ways in which God is actively involved in the politics, battles and national work of Israel,
Songs of thanksgiving,
Wisdom psalms which contain short memorable wise sayings,
And liturgies that were used in festivals and other worship experiences in the temple.
          If any of you would like a list of these different kinds of psalms with the psalm numbers that tell you which psalm fits into which category, I would be happy to provide those for you.
          As I said before, the psalms are prayers, they are hymns, they are poetry.  As hymns, they were sung, many as part of worship services.  As poetry, they tap deep into human experience, touching mind, soul, heart, and spirit.  No matter what you are feeling or thinking, a psalm can be found that mirrors where you are, that speaks for you, reassures you that you are not alone in that experience, and in those feelings as they connect to the Divine One.  The psalms call you into a deeper connection with yourself as well as with God.  In this way, psalms are very personal, and invite us into the second half of the second commandment to love neighbor AS self (or, in this case, to love yourself even as you love your neighbor!).  The psalms invite us to take the time to focus on our own spiritual journeys and to offer up prayers, thoughts, and songs as a way of caring for ourselves, since a deeper connection to God IS a way to care for yourself as well.  As prayers, they give us words when our own words do not feel complete or do not feel enough.  They give us words that have been said over the centuries, and prayers that therefore connect us not only to our own experiences but to our tradition and to those throughout the centuries who have prayed these same words before us.
         The psalms are also teachers, not only of how to pray, but of who God is, and of who we are as God’s people.  The psalms of history contribute in a special way to teaching and connecting us.  Today’s psalm is one of the psalms that recounts the history of the Jewish people and casts that history in a light that gives special focus to God’s role in that history.  In telling history through the psalm, we express care for our faith community and for ourselves as individuals.  We know ourselves and are known by others according to the stories we hear, remember, and retell about who we are.  We are shaped by the traditions with which we identify and we reshape those same traditions as we pass them onto others.  There is, therefore, great purpose and great meaning in retelling the stories, in inviting them to remind us who we are, WHOSE we are and why we are. 
        I read a recent study on the well-being of children.  And one of the strongest and most surprising finds was that when children know their history, and by that I mean their extended history, the history of their parents and grandparents, they fare much better, make better choices, tend to be more successful as adults, are happier, healthier, feel more grounded, more connected, and more confident in life than when they don’t.  Think about the truth of this: no matter what kind of support and grounding we give to kids who are adopted, I’ve supported many of these kids as young adults who often have felt a sense of being lost, a strong desire to connect to their biological history, and a stronger sense of connection and continuance when they do know BOTH their biological family’s history as well as the history of the family into which they’ve been adopted.  When we know where we are from, when we have a connection to the past as well as to the present and the future, we feel grounded.  We know ourselves better.  We see the long arc of history that can allow us to remember that whatever we are experiencing in this moment is tiny in the scope of time.  We have a stronger sense of long-term connection to everything when we know where we are from and what has created us in this time and in this place to be exactly who we are today. 
         These history psalms invite us into that time of remembrance, of re-centering in the story, or recommitting to being the people of God with a history, with a faith tradition and faith community, with a purpose and a meaning.  They invite us to step back and to see the bigger picture of God’s movement through time.  No matter what is going on today or how we are feeling in the moment, when we look at history, when we reflect on not only our own personal lives and history, but on the history of all of God’s people, we see God active and present, interacting with us, never leaving us alone, calling us ever deeper into our faith and into relationship with God. 
        Bernard Anderson describes the psalms as “the songs that accompany the people of God on their journey through history.”  When we engage the psalms, and today as we engage the sacred history psalms, we invite the story to be our guide as we continue on our journeys with God.
             Even when the psalms of history reflect on hard times, on tragic times, naming those times and singing them reminds us that we walk even the hard times together – together with one another and together with God as God’s people.  Psalm 137, which also tells part of the story of God’s people, reflects this. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.  On the willows there we hung up our harps.  For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’  How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?  If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!  Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mount, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”   This psalm reflects the time when in 586 B.C. Jerusalem was captured and burned, the Temple destroyed by the king of Babylon, and thousands of people from Judah were taken into exile in Babylon.  This psalm recalls the pain and anguish of a displaced people in grief for their capital, for their temple, for their home for God.  I would like us to take a moment to sing this psalm together. And as we do, I invite you to feel the pain of the exiled Israelites, but also to see if singing their pain allows you to express grief, too, for things that you have lost as well – for those times when there is nothing to do except sit down and weep for what has passed…. #784
            What was that like for you to sing this psalm?
            In contrast to the reflection of history that shows pain and grief, today’s scripture reading was psalm 105 and after the sermon we will sing another history psalm, psalm 136.  Both of these reflect the beauty of God’s saving action through history.   Psalm 136 interjects the phrase, “God’s love endures forever” after every line.  We will sing, “for your love is never ending” as the alternate line each time reminding us that God does act, is acting, continues to act with love every day and in every place, even when we sit by the waters of Babylon and weep.
            Whether we are telling a story of sorrow or telling a story of God’s acts of salvation, it is the telling of those stories that grounds us, gives us continuity in our own stories, helps us understand who we are, and helps us to see God in history.
            I think about the movie, “Secondhand Lions”.  For those who have not seen it, a neglected boy is left with great uncles whom he has never even met for a summer by a mother who is more interested in meeting men than in caring for her boy.  Walter quickly engages his uncles in telling him stories of their adventures in Africa.  Until the very end of the movie, we don’t know if these stories are true or not.  But what becomes very apparent throughout the movie is that the telling of these stories, these histories, is life-giving to Walter, regardless of the veracity of the stories themselves.  The stories teach him what it is to be brave, what it is to be a man, what it is to be loving and faithful and strong and courageous.  They ground him and connect him to a sense of family that is more than just the here and now.  They transform him from being a boy who feels nothing but rejection, who is scared of his own shadow, who cannot stand up for himself into a boy who does stand up for himself and for those he loves, who claims his own rights and claims his own life.  The stories gave him the strength to be a person with hopes, dreams and a future. 
          Madeleine L’Engle, who wrote many wonderful Christian children’s stories, including A Wrinkle in Time, says that stories are incredibly important because they tell us who we are, and who God is in relation to us.  She says they do this more deeply than almost anything else because the stories get into our psyches, and transform us into God’s people.  The sacred history psalms are an important part of that story telling, combining the poetry that speaks to our hearts with the stories that speak to our imaginations about who we are.
            Psalm 78, another history psalm, begins with details about the way in which we are to hear the stories of God’s amazing work in history.  You can read the psalm yourself, but it is very long, so I will just sum up the call for us.  We are expected:
1.      To listen to the teachings.
2.     To tell others what God has done
3.     To teach our children
4.     To set our hope in God
5.     To not forget the works of God
6.     To keep God’s commandments
7.     And finally, to NOT be like our ancestors – in other words, to learn from history, and to choose a different path forward. 
           Each sacred history psalm, even when it tells stories of sorrow, also presents the same vision of God – the one who has done wondrous deeds, who has acted with justice, who brings salvation, who loves, forgives and rescues.  That is the story we are called to tell again and again with these psalms, with our songs, with our prayers, and with our readings. 
         I want to finish today by having us pray together a piece of Psalm 77.  Please join me in prayer:
           I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
           I will remember your wonders of old.
           I will meditate on all your work,
           And muse on your mighty deeds.
          Your way, O God, is holy.
            What god is so great as our God?
          You are the God who works wonders;
            You have displayed your might among the people.
         With your strong arm you redeemed your people,
            The descendants of Jacob and Joseph.  Amen.

Fear and Trust

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

               All of today’s lectionary passages speak to us about fear, and remind us that God is a God of life who tells us “be not afraid”. 

In the first passage, Haggai is speaking to the Israelites at a time following their return to Jerusalem after their exile.  The returning Israelites believed their well-being was intimately connected with the well-being of the temple, which their tradition told them was literally the house of God.  During the time of the exile, the temple had been destroyed, but now the Israelites have returned to Jerusalem, and the temple has been rebuilt.   For outsiders this would appear to be a time of great celebration and renewal.  But for the Israelites who knew the original temple, who remembered its former glory and believed that it and it alone was worthy of housing their God, this new temple in no way matched up with their images of what was due, it in no way matched up with the old temple.  For them, what should be a time of great joy and new beginnings had instead become a time of despair, and more, of fear of what this portended for their future.  What does it mean that the temple, the house of God is not what it should be?  Will God be angry?  Will their future be half what their past was, as the temple is half what the old one was?  It is within this context that Haggai is speaking to the Israelites and reminding them that they do not need to live in this new existence with this new temple in a state of anxiety.  He tells them that poor beginnings do not mean poor endings if you go forward holding onto and trusting in God.  God is a God of life.  God is all about bringing new life out of any death.  They can, therefore, go forward without fear because God is with them still.

               The passage from 2 Thessalonians gives a similar message.  The people in Thessalonica are also living in fear and anxiety about their future.  They are afraid that the day of the Lord has already come and that they have missed the boat, they have missed the second coming, they have missed out on ultimate life.  Paul, too, is telling them to not be anxious about what is to come, that God is the God of life and that their faith will keep them tightly in the loving arms of God.

               And finally the third passage from the book of Luke also shows a group of people in the midst of fear.  In this passage it is the Sadducees who are afraid.  They are afraid of Jesus, fearing the influence he is having on the people, fearing how Jesus’ radical messages of love might influence the people, their faith, and as a result, their actions.  Jesus is in no way a legalist.  And the Sadducees (and Pharisees) retain control of their world through the Jewish laws.  With Jesus teaching something broader but less containable, less structured, the Sadducees are terrified.  Their reaction is to try to trick Jesus, to trip him up, to catch him in an unacceptable position that will discredit and harm him  by asking him questions that it appears he cannot answer without alienating part of the crowd, part of his following.  Among and within the Jewish people were different groups with different beliefs about the resurrection, among other things.  If Jesus agreed with the Sadducees and said there is no resurrection, he would have alienated those Jews who did believe in the resurrection and visa versa.  So they confront him with a question designed to destroy the unity and size of Jesus’ following that they fear.  This question they pose to him is the third in a set of questions intended to trick Jesus, intended to get him into trouble either with the law or with his followers so that Jesus will be discredited, rejected, or worse, brought to trial.  All of their questions have been motivated by fear, and all three are intended to help them regain their power and control.

               To Jesus’ credit, and what gives us huge insight, once again, into the nature of God, is that Jesus  did not flee from or avoid any of these questions.  He also didn’t seek revenge or retribution.  Instead, Jesus chose to respond to these fearful people.  He engaged even those who were attacking him with their fear and trickery.  In answer to the trickery that we read about today, he basically stated that those who asked the questions didn’t understand what they are asking.  He backed this up by stating that they needed to look at their own scriptures to see where they were wrong in their own beliefs.  And while his answers, his lack of “falling into the trap” may have inspired even more fear in those who tried to trick him, still Jesus’ message, too, was one of letting go of fear, of trusting in God, of seeing that God is “the God of the living”, the “God of life” and not a God of death and destruction.

               We live in a fear based society, and I believe this is becoming more and more true.  We see this in every aspect of our lives.  The news is not just telling us bad things, but filling us with fear about what is to come.  They know that fear sells and they capitalize on that.  No matter what side of any issue you are on  you are told to be afraid, very afraid.  Each side fears different things, but still we are each told to vote out of our fear, rather than out of our hope.  Our fear culture includes more than this, though.  People are afraid to trust each other so we set up fences, walls, security cameras, alarm systems.  We have background checks for everything and we put into place outrageous airport security checks.  We surround ourselves with police and emergency call systems and the many, many other “things” and systems in our lives that are supposed to protect us and keep us safe.  Our business choices, who we give to, IF we give at all, how much we feel we can spare to share and care for the world – these too are usually reactive and fear-based responses.  We know the result of acting out this fear.  We no longer have any privacy in this country, for one thing.  We alienate and separate ourselves out from our brothers and sisters who are at all different from ourselves because we are afraid of them, afraid “they” will take what is “ours”.  In the extremes, we have all heard of people who won’t even leave their homes out of fear, or who are so germ-aphobic that they can’t engage life normally.  But even for those of us without that kind of extreme fear, we are governed in so many ways by our fears.

At some point we have to decide if we are going to live in the world or live of the world.  If we choose the values of this world, if we choose to trust our methods of security and if we choose to trust those things that we set up to protect ourselves in a scary world, we are not trusting God.  And what’s more, we are not really living.

How many of you have seen the movie “French Kiss?”  The movie begins with Meg Ryan’s character, Kate, acting as a typical middle class person, saving money, planning for the future, working hard to make the dreams of many a typical middle class person come true.  She is engaged to a Doctor, and living in a home away from home, which for her is Canada, hoping to become a Canadian citizen.  She has saved enough money to buy a wonderful house and she is dreaming and planning for the family and kids she hopes to have.  She seems happy and excited about her life and the only clue we are given that things are not all that they seem is that she is terrified of flying.  So when her fiancé invites her to go with him to France, she declines, despite all his urgings.  The crisis in the movie comes just a few minutes later when her fiancé calls from France to tell her that he has met another woman in France and that he will not be returning to her.  She feels the secure walls of her life begin to crumble and she pushes herself to fly to France, despite her terror, in a desperate attempt to “get him back!”   When she arrives in France, it seems she is met by a number of people who block her attempts to connect with her fiancé and finally, everything she has with her in France is stolen from her.  So now she is across the world from her home, without fiancé, without possessions, without security, without her passport or any other form of id, and on top of that because she left Canada to fly to France before her resident visa to live in Canada was approved, neither Canada nor the United States will give her a new visa.  She has, in the span of a day, gone from being a complete “has” to being a total “has not.” 

At first, she is devastated.  But as she later explains, “I thought, there is no way that everything I was building for could be destroyed (by some stranger... and so I bought a plane ticket, got on the plane, somehow made it over the big blue ocean,... and then the most extraordinary thing happened.  Everything went wrong.  I was wandering the streets of Paris, penniless, without a hope in the world.  And let me tell you, you can do a lot of soul searching in a time like that and I realized that I spent most of my adult life trying to protect myself from exactly this situation.  And you can’t do it.  There is no home safe enough, there is no country nice enough, there’s no relationship secure enough.  You’re just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall and having an incredibly boring time in the process.”

While it makes sense to be cautious and to not be stupid or fail to do what needs to be done in this life to take care of things, the reality is that choosing to live in fear prevents us from living at all.  God’s message again and again is “be not afraid for I am with you.”   Another consistent message is that we are freed by our faith in Christ.  And yet when we continue to live in fear, and when we continue to live in slavery to our fear of losing all the things we have, when we spend all our time working for things that will “protect” us from whatever it is that we fear so much, we fail to really live.  The very things that we set up to protect ourselves, keep us from living.  I think about this when I look at the way that we now protect our children.  I remember hearing one of our favorite comedians say that my generation was the last generation of children allowed to be children.  In my own childhood I wandered in the foothills of Mt. Diablo on my own.  At very young ages we were allowed to go out from homes to play with neighborhood children and we would be out and about most of the day before coming home.  We had play equipment at parks like those spinning merry-go-rounds and monkey bars.  This is no more.  All of this play equipment as been deemed “unsafe” but the reality is that most parks and cities are just now afraid of being sued.  We no longer let our children run around and explore and get scraped and banged up and hurt because we fear it.  But those bumps and scrapes and even breaks are what gave us the greatest lessons and frankly, the greatest experiences too.  More than that, they strengthened us for what life really is, the prepared us for adulthood in so many ways.  I am sad that my kids never got to try to build a fort out of wood they found laying around as I did, or face wildlife in the same way I did as a kid, running into huge spiders and even snakes on the hill and needing to make decisions about how to handle it.  Yes, our kids are protected.  But the result of this “protection” is that often when they are faced with the real problems of the world, they no longer know how to handle them, they no longer have the strength of having faced hardships as children to know how to handle hardships as young adults.

We can think of so many other examples of the damage that our fear has done in the world.  When we become afraid of our money being lost in the bank, a “run” on the bank is disastrous, as we know.  When we fail to take the risk of trusting in our relationships, our relationships can’t deepen.  When, out of fear, we set up protections against others, defining them as “enemies,” treating them as enemies, we make them into the very enemies we fear them to be.     

               The movie French Kiss ends when Meg Ryan’s character, Kate, learns to let go of her fear.  At the end she is still without country, she is still without her fiancé.  But even in this place, she makes the decision to help an outcast whom she has befriended.  She gives to a man who has also isolated himself from his family and friends, who has been acting out his own fear, who seems to be beyond hope and redemption – she makes the decision to give to him her “nest egg” of $45,000.  She does so in an anonymous way that he will never know she has given him this money, and she does it believing that she will never see him again.  She gives away all of her “security” and “protection”- out of love - just because. 

In freeing herself from her fear, Kate frees herself to really live.  And while at first there is some sorrow and grieving for her, in the end, letting go of her security and choosing to live in a sense of openness and trust allows her finally to really live the life she wants.

Fear leaves no room for anything else.  Like Truth.  Like Beauty.  Like Love.  It leaves no room for trying new things, making new friends, living with fullness.  It creates no space for seeing God or for hearing the words of the angels.  We have a choice to make.  Do we choose to live in fear?  Or do we instead trust in the God who loves us beyond anything, the God who came to be with us, who died because of us, who rose out of death into life: do we trust instead the God who says through the voices of the angels, “Do not be afraid.”

The thing I'm NOT looking forward to.

         Weddings are exciting events.  They are times of transition, times of hope, times of promise.  As I'm gearing up for my New Year's wedding, I have all of the normal feelings of anticipation and excitement.  But I've also done this before, and because of it, I am aware of one big thing that I am dreading.  That one thing is the loss of my personal identity.
         Don't get me wrong: I'm not changing my name.  I didn't the first time, and I won't this time.  I know too much about how that practice began, what it meant (and what it sometimes still means) to make that choice. I'm all too aware that marriage used to be an exchange of property, said property being the bride who was literally purchased or sold (hence dowries, bride prices, etc.).  The bride's name change would symbolize the change in her ownership.  Often she would not only lose her last name, but her first name too, "Introducing, Mr. and Mrs. George Smith!"  The wife would become a person without her own identity: simply the Mrs. to a man with a full identity left intact.
        This passing on of property is the same reason at weddings we still, more times than not, have the father walk the bride down the aisle and we still ask the question, "Who gives this woman to this man?"  Yes, it is still a real and active part of our weddings that the ownership of the bride is passed on from one man to another.  In case you were wondering, that, too, will not be part of our ceremony.  Many people tell me that the question and the tradition no longer mean that.  But what else can that question possibly mean?  I am not the possession of my father, something he could therefore "give" to another man. At fifty years of age, having supported myself and having raised my kids on my own for many years now, the very idea of being my father's possession is preposterous.  But even when I was young, I would have balked at the idea.  I hope to God we have moved past the idea that children are simply possessions of their parents, objects that parents can "give" to anyone.
         People will also tell me that changing one's name to that of one's husband is no longer a symbol of female ownership or possession.  I believe that for many it is not and I do not question their decision to change their names.  But I also know that my decision NOT to change my name will be met with by anger on the part of some people.  The first time round, I cannot tell you how many people turned to my husband and said, "You LET her keep her own name?"  And that in itself is pretty telling, don't you think?  Who was he to "let" or "refuse to let" me do something that was about me and my identity?  My answer, of course, was always the same, "And I let him keep his, too.  Lucky man!"
         But despite the decisions David and I have made for an equal partnership, decisions that state that we will not continue to honor symbols and rites that at any time were signs of spousal possession, I know that people will question and be bothered by both the decision not to be given away and the decision to keep my name, ALL of my name.  And so, despite the fact that we have made these choices together (as I told David, I was more than willing to adopt his last name as part of my own if he would take mine as part of his: he declined saying his name was part of his heritage, part of his past, part of his history, part of his identity... hm.  Imagine that?), there will be people who will not accept it.  I am dreading the first Christmas card that we receive addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. David Louttit."   I am dreading the first phone call that asks me if I am Mrs. Louttit.  I am dreading the conversations I will have to have with people at work and in other places where I will have to explain over and over that at 50 years of age, my heritage and my history, my past and my identity also matter to me and that I would be giving up a great deal to part with them.  I am a published author with this name; I am active, socially, politically and spiritually in the larger community using this name; I have served as a pastor with this name for twenty two years. I am proud to be part of my family of origin and I value the name connection to my parents and grandparents. These, too, are a big part of my identity and parts I don't feel I need to sacrifice in the process of joining with another person in marriage.  I am dreading the constant need to claim my identity as my own, the constant need to defend a choice that is really David's and mine to make.
         Of course, I could potentially thwart all of that by stating that I want to continue the connection to my kids that our shared last name maintains (they have a hyphenated last name, half of which is mine), and no doubt I will fall back on this also-important-answer at some point in time.  But it is just a part of the truth of the decision.
         I'm certain that in every union of people there are things that one may dread or fear.  This is mine.  And I guess I am hoping that by putting it out there in this post, perhaps I will limit, just a bit, the hassle that will come my way as a result.   As I said, I do not judge others' decisions to come together in their last names.  I understand that sharing the same last name can be an important symbol of unity for many people and since traditionally the name taken has been that of the man, that it just becomes easier for many to practice that tradition.  I also understand that for many women, "wife" is the primary identity that they happily claim.  But my hope is that others will also understand and respect the decisions we are making that are best for our marriage as well as for the rest of my family. The world is full of diversity and difference.  This is a difference we are choosing.  And I hope it can be met with respect or at least tolerance.

"It's the end of the Church as we know it, and I feel..."

      I had the great privilege of spending a day and a half with some of my fellow clergy folk over the weekend. We were on a retreat together that for me was very helpful and centering.  But while we were focused on spiritual practices, what I want to write about is more the recurrent themes that I heard throughout the retreat of frustration, depression, and feelings of discouragement.  I want to talk about the pervasive feelings of many (most?) pastors these days of insecurity, of being in a wilderness that seems to have no end, of not knowing the path, of feeling a bit lost in a turbulent and changing sea. As I've mentioned to my congregations both present and past on more than one occasion, the national Church is dying.  Conservative estimates are that within 10-20 years the Church as we know it (across denominations, and even across different faiths in the United States) will no longer exist.  20 churches a day closed in 2013, and that number is on the rise. The estimate was that over 10,000 churches closed in 2015.  In terms of members, 1.2 million people stopped going to church in 2015 alone.  The reasons for this are numerous, and if you are a pastor, you know that there is another article written every day about why and who and how to reverse this trend, what successful churches look like, what the dying ones are doing wrong, what has worked and failed to work.  Article after article and seminar after seminar tell us how to do it differently, what someone believes is the thing that will change this all around.  AND, the reality is, none of it is working.  What might work for one congregation seldom works for another.  We have seen attempts to slow down the decline that have bumped attendance at particular individual congregations for a while, only for a dramatic loss to follow a few years later.  Most successful churches currently center on a charismatic personality, until that person moves on, is caught in a scandal of some kind, or dies, at which point their church usually collapses.  The reality is that our congregations are all aging.  Church is not a priority for our younger families at all, if it is even on their radar.  Church has become very suspect, in large part because the ultra conservative churches are the loudest and espouse an exclusive, judgmental world view that is a real turn off for most of us. Fighting among different faith beliefs and religions doesn't help.  The bad things churches have done shout from our history books, the good we have done is often forgotten. Liberal churches don't believe in evangelizing so we allow the term "Christian" to be co-opted and we don't speak out about who we are. Progressives are afraid to ruffle feathers so we keep quiet, and often become irrelevant: country clubs rather than places that actually do the work of God.  Or we do the work (feeding, housing, advocating, caring for the poor and oppressed), but again, quietly, without fanfare, and so go unnoticed and un-noted.  But even without this, other priorities have taken our time and attention. Spirituality seems to be more individual and less rooted in community at the moment.
     About every 500 years there is a reformation of sorts: things change, dramatically, as far as the religious scene. The Protestant Reformation began exactly 500 years ago this October, so we are due for another one. The clergy I talk to see this. We recognize that God will be doing a new thing, that we can't see it yet, but there will come a time when we know what that is, and that death is just a step towards a new life that looks different; that times in the wilderness often precede very fertile growth and change. It won't be the same.  There is comfort in that, in the belief and hope that a new thing is coming.
      When I can step outside of myself and sit in meditation or delight in the beauty of the creation that God has made; when I can look at my children and hear their ideas and hopes and dreams for the future, when I can do all of that, I am more than okay with where we are heading.  I can be excited to see what is coming next, not seeing a new thing as a judgment on an old thing but as a step into something different for a different time.  I can see the mistakes we've made and make, and I can hope that the new thing coming will be more loving, more giving, more true to what I believe is the intention towards Love and connection and community. The future of faith can look radically different and I am okay with that.  I want a kinder, more understanding, gentler world where we do stand up for the hungry, for the poor, for the underprivileged.  I want a world where people understand that we are all truly connected and that therefore it is in our best interest to make sure everyone has what they need: food, shelter, community, kindness, respect. I can and do hope for a more inclusive, uplifting, empowering sisterhood and brotherhood of love, hope and practice. I am okay with anything that moves us in that direction. I know it will be different, and I look towards the beauty in that.
      But for those of us who have made this our career, I have to be honest and tell you that however faithful we are, however hopeful and trusting and convicted of resurrection we may be, that there is fear that accompanies all of this. From a practical place, finding hope and joy is more challenging. First of all, people need someone to blame and the clergy are the obvious scapegoats for the anger felt by those who are losing their communities as churches close down and can no longer afford to continue. While there are arrogant clergy, most of the good folk I know err on the side of taking on more than is their due.  We take it in, a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and we take that in deeply. Depression is a very common experience among clergy these days as we work harder than ever, longer hours, lonelier hours, with less result, less return, less sense of accomplishment, community, growth. In the world outside of the church there is a huge mistrust of clergy.  To have the constant experience of meeting others, and in conversation sharing what we do for a living only to see the walls come down and the judgments descend, to experience the distancing response of those around us, is disheartening at the least.  We feel like pariahs, too often, and can end up isolated within our declining churches. Along with the depression comes anxiety as we face the questions of our own futures. I need to be able to work another 20 years at least.  I am the sole support for three children.  And not a week goes by now when I don't wonder how I will be able to get them to independence before my career is defunct, along with my ability to support them.  I have had the experience of applying for different work, only to find that the distrust of clergy makes stepping into another career as difficult as remaining in this one. Some of you may say that sounds unfaithful. But my experience is that God gives us freewill, does not micromanage our lives.  Bad things happen to good people, and yes, people are given more than they can handle on a regular basis. (Look at the folk around the world struggling with famine, lack of clean water, war, deportment, exile, and then tell me it is unfaithful to fear bad things coming.  As scripture itself tells us, "the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.")
      Fear can be a gift.  It can motivate and move us to look ahead, to start the wondering, "what if..." and to try to plan accordingly. But in a world where the future is increasingly unclear, where each day brings new uncertainties and new concerns, the future that we fear is very dim.  The "what ifs" are unreal glimpses at what is very cloudy.  We stand at the entrance to a cave.  What is beyond is anyone's guess, and the way through is not marked.
      So we wait.  And we watch.  And we listen.  And we try to hold each other up as we walk forward, reminding one another that we are beloved children of a gracious Divinity.  We search our dreams and our meditations for meaning and direction.  We study and read and attend conferences. We pray.  But we see what is coming.  It is the end of the Church as we know it.  And we feel all sorts of things in response to that: hope, joy, excitement; also fear, anxiety, depression and worry.
       Each day is a gift.  And I rest in that reality as well.  It helps to know we do not walk this alone, even as we often feel alone in our individual faith communities.  And it helps to trust that we have been called to the places we currently serve.  We are called here for now.  This time in the desert is meaningful. We will wait and look for the next summons, the next beckoning forward.  And until then we will be faithful in our work, striving to do what God would have us do, striving to serve as the people call us to serve, stepping forward on the journey even as we wait for the next turn in the road to come.