Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The Steadfastness and Faithfulness of Joseph

While my husband is at work and the kids are at school, I find some time to pull out the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations. Preparing the house for the season is a Herculean task, but one I adore and anticipate with joy every year. I love see each room transform as shades of red and green begin to litter the shelves, walls, and counters. I love some decorations simply for their beauty but many I love more for their memories.

I leave a few things for the family to do together. The tree is a two-person job and decorating it becomes a family affair, though, truthfully, my husband and I still end up doing the bulk of it as our children’s attention tends to wax and wane. They kids will find “their” ornaments, the ones with their names on them, and my husband and I will reflect on friends and family that gifted some ornament or another to us or on the time we purchased it together to mark a special occasion.

Special attention is reserved, however, for all of our nativity sets. We have the Snoopy set, the wooden set made especially for children to play with, one made of clay, and another of porcelain. We make an inventory of each one: Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the shepherds, the wise men, the angel, maybe a star, and certainly some animals. Usually there is a debate about which one is Joseph and which are the shepherds, they all look so much alike.

Poor Joseph.

It’s interesting how we say, “Mary and Joseph;” Joseph always being Mary’s “plus one” to the party.
I walk over and pick up Joseph from one of our sets and turn him over in my hands. Too often he is treated as an accessory, even in scripture. He disappears entirely after the story of the boy Jesus in the temple in Luke’s gospel. Mark never mentions him; neither does Paul in any of his letters.

I look at the small Joseph in my hands and wonder, anew, at his faithfulness. To marry a tainted woman, especially in Joseph’s time, was scandalous and Mary was tainted, carrying another man’s child. At least, that is how the world would see it. In a dream, an angel commands him to accept Mary, despite her condition, and trust that the child to be born is holy.

Against all odds, Joseph does as the angel commands. He could have written off the angel’s appearing as a dream. He could have bowed to social pressure and cast Mary out, as would have been expected. He could have walked away or cast out the son he knew wasn’t his own. But, instead, he stayed. He raised the child and loved the mother. He chose to bear down, deep into his faith, and remain steadfast and true to God and to Mary.

What would you do if every instinct, every societal norm, even every religious expectation told you to take one path but you knew God had called you to another? Would you be strong enough not to bow to pressure? What if it meant being abandoned by your friends and family? What if everyone called you a “fool” and shook their heads at your poor judgement?

This Christmas season, may we commit ourselves anew, not to the beautiful baby who smiles beatifically from his manger, but to the radical man who defies the world by dying on a cross, an ultimate sign of foolishness. May we find in our hearts the steadfastness and faithfulness of Joseph who dared to stay, dared to hope, dared to say “yes” to God.

I leave you with a poem I wrote many years ago during one of the first Christmases when I stopped seeing Joseph, the accessory, and started appreciating Joseph, the man.

A very blessed Advent and Christmas to you all.



Against the Screams

A young woman lies,
resting between the screams of pain.
A loyal husband waits.
Does he feel angry against the screams?
Does he question his decision?
Does he trust the angel in this moment?
Against her screams, can he believe?
Is he scared that the angel wasn’t real?
That it is all a lie?
Do those screams bring forth a savior
or a bastard son?
In this moment, does he have faith?
Can he?
Does he stay beside her?
Hold her hand?
Or does he go outside to wonder, wait?
He screams cut through the quiet dark of night.

And against the screams, he waits.

Monday, November 12, 2018

Dosas, Diwali, and Finding Home


V. starts the evening unsure and tidy, wearing a pressed button-up shirt under an approved uniform sweater bearing the school logo. This is a religious holiday, after all, and he has come as a guest to celebrate and honor the importance of the day. He comes into the kitchen to thank me for having him and hosting the dinner. Delhi is 10.5 hours ahead of Rabun Gap, a tremendous distance for a teenager feeling homesick as he watches videos and sees pictures of friends and family celebrations back home.

I give him a hug to welcome him, then turn to the stove, firing up the flame under a flat iron pan specifically made for cooking dosas, a south Indian specialty.

“Wait until it gets very hot,” V. hesitantly offers.

“Not too much oil,” he says next, as I begin to brush the pan to prepare it for the batter.

“Do you have the right batter?” he asks.

I smile and ask him if he would like to cook the first dosa. I am not offended, but genuinely want him to participate in whatever way will feed his soul and soothe his heart.

“May I?” he answers.

“Of course!” I say as I step aside and show him where to find everything he needs to start cooking.
Our house fills with more than thirty students and faculty members, but V. stays at the stove. K., another student from Delhi, arrives after basketball practice and sets up shop beside V. in the kitchen. I gather supplies for her to cook poha, one of her favorite dishes, and V. and K. enter a beautiful and joyful dance of cooking, smiling, and talking.

Soon, both of them are on Facetime with their mothers in India. I’m not sure how grateful the moms are for the calls since it is not quite 7 a.m. their time the day after a major festival with parties. But our cooks want to ask their mothers’ advice and show them the fruits of their labors.

“It’s almost time to eat. I’ll keep things going in here so the two of you can go to the living room and tell everyone something about Diwali,” I tell our cooks.

“No! You go and do it. We want to stay here,” they tell me with wide eyes as their hands continue to stir and flip.

K. finishes her dish then works the room as her friends load their plates with food from her homeland.

V. sheds his sweater after my husband encourages him to get more comfortable. It is hot in the kitchen, especially over the screaming pan. I offer to take over so he can eat but he will not leave his post. His friends line up, plates in hand, waiting for him to deliver a hot and fresh dosa. He laughs and chats with each of them, talking about the dosas and other foods from home. He stays at the stove until every last bit of batter has been slathered on the pan’s surface, flipped, then stuffed with potatoes and spices.

This last dosa is his. He takes a picture to send to his mother, proud of his progress in perfecting the dosas over the course of the evening. He loads a second plate with rice, daal, sambar, paneer, salad, and chutneys. He sits at the table, welcomed by the others like an athlete returned from a successful competition.

Most everyone else has finished eating and moved to the piano. An American student sits at the keys and begins to play. The students around her are from the Caribbean, Afghanistan, Chile, India, Germany, and other countries. They find song lyrics on their phones and soon all are singing their favorite pop songs.

Candles burn around the room and a Bollywood movie plays, muted, on the television. I tidy the kitchen then plop into my favorite chair. V. sits with friends at the table behind me, talking about the food and his favorite Diwali traditions. In front of me, K. sings with her friends and dormmates.
Everyone is full and happy. No one is missing home because they have brought home here, into this room, with one another.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Jesus wept, so why can’t we?



“Jesus wept.”

The shortest passage in the bible, John 11:35.

Jesus wept because he heard of the death of Lazarus, a man he knew and loved, a friend who was like family.

Jesus wept out of love and grief, not out of doubt.

Jesus wept because it is the human response to loss and sadness.

Jesus wept because it is what anyone with a heart does when that heart is damaged or broken by news that is not welcome.

Jesus wept but the world didn’t stop. No one judged him. No one left him.

Jesus wept and no one questioned if he was fit to lead or fit to serve.

Jesus wept in front of his followers, in a public place for all to see, and no one turned away, no one tried to hide him, no one tried to quiet him.

Jesus wept without shame or embarrassment because weeping is as much a part of human life as laughter.

Jesus wept because tears are prayers of thanksgiving in the depths of sorrow. Each tear is praise for a life lived that now is gone, gratitude for a gift given that is no more but we loved while we had it; a gift so great that the absence of it pains us to our very core.

Jesus wept because we celebrate life not only with smiles and joy but also with heartbreak and sorrow.

Jesus wept because he loved and to love is to risk it all for the sake of the other. To love is to know your heart will swell and break because that’s how God created each and every one of us.

Jesus wept because the pain of love is as rewarding and important as the elation of ecstasy.

Jesus wept for himself and his friends but not out of selfishness or doubt. We can mourn loss in the same moment we have deep and abiding faith that death doesn’t have the last word.

Jesus wept because faith isn’t about 24/7 smiles and praise but about steadfastness in the face of loss and pain.

Jesus wept because he could, in a full embrace of his humanity and capacity for life, love, suffering, loss, joy, elation, friendship.

Jesus wept because he should, because that’s what we do when someone we love leaves us, sometimes even when we know it’s temporary.

Jesus wept, showing us yet another stone in the path that paves the way of life, the way of the cross, the way of faith, the way that is discipleship and dedication to following him.

Jesus wept, so why can’t we? Why don’t we? Are we less human? Do we feel love and loss any less? Do we think ourselves better or stronger than the almighty? Are we so ashamed and embarrassed by our tears whereas God himself cried openly and with abandon?

Jesus wept. And so do we, can we, should we.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Thanksgiving and the Radical Suffering of Christ



“Let’s go around and name one thing we are thankful for from the last year.”

We all look around the Thanksgiving table, wondering who will be brave enough to go first. Hopefully, it’s someone across from you. That means you have the time it takes seven or eight people to talk before you have to say something.

This is a Thanksgiving tradition in our family and I’m sure in other families around the country. I look forward to hearing what people remember from the year that has passed and what they hold dear. Some years, the exercise is easy; we can think of too many moments of gratitude to share. Other years it’s more difficult as we think of hard times, lost loved ones, or difficult days.

To be sure, it is a valuable exercise and is part of the purpose of our national holiday. Thanksgiving is set aside as a day for giving thanks, not presents. For celebrating the bounty of God’s blessings and the company of friends and family. It is one of my favorite holidays, not only because the food is amazing but because the purpose is simply to be with one another in gratitude. I hope this year brings you too many memories of gratefulness to number.

But it’s also possible this will be a year for you when you struggle to name just one person, one event for which to give thanks. We are human and suffering is a part of the rhythm of life. Perhaps this year brings one more empty chair at your table from the loss of a loved one, perhaps by death but perhaps by a broken relationship.

Too often we emphasize the risen Christ, the one reigning on high, liberated from the cross. In fairly typical fashion, Christ the King Sunday falls the Sunday after Thanksgiving and we look to the coming of the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven while also celebrating the ways the kingdom is already realized in the kingship of the risen Christ. It’s a Sunday about triumph and glory.

But we must remember the glory and triumph were preceded by the suffering and darkness of Good Friday. There can be no resurrection or ascension without betrayal and crucifixion. That, too, is something for which to be grateful this Thanksgiving. At the heart of the Gospel is Christ’s willingness to bear the pain common to all of humanity. We must never forget the radical and subversive action of the cross, on which Jesus of Nazareth hung in the very public act of humility that was the ultimate show if his power.

Why is this radical suffering so important? Because through it Christ defeated death and won for us liberation from all that would bind us. But also because it means we have a God who suffers as we suffer, who willingly enters into our pain and darkness. We are never alone, even in the deepest abyss, because Jesus is there with us.

I won’t say that all suffering brings transformation and revelation. Another habit we have is saying, “There must be a reason for this,” meaning that God makes us undergo the pain to teach us some valuable lesson or another. But to do so is a gross rationalization. We live in a sinful world and some of our pain is caused by another’s brokenness, not because there is some grand plan. Similarly, our souls inhabit human bodies and those bodies fail us, not as punishment but simply because of biology.

The message we first carry with us is not that there must be a grand reason for our suffering. The primary message of the cross is that we have a God who loves us so deeply, so completely, that God inhabits the depths of our suffering with us. We are never abandoned, even as we find ourselves taking up our own crosses.

Prayers and thanksgivings for you all, my friends. As the season of gratitude falls upon us, I pray you find quiet spaces to tuck away into, spaces where you can plumb the depths of your experiences and rest both in and from your suffering. This year, I lift you all to God in my prayers of thanksgiving, grateful for the love and light you share with the world.

Enzymes and Hospitality


I confess: I’m a small science nerd. I’m not one to read books about the subject but I do love watching biological processes at work and taking note of the way the laws of physics govern our world.

My love and fascination for enzymes, especially, has not faded. Enzymes are catalysts that expedite chemical reactions. When atoms combine to form new molecules, often enzymes are the workhorses making that it happen. The enzymes are not a part of the new molecule, but they bring the elements together and make them happier. Nature provides a facilitator to move things along and bring things together that otherwise may not have bumped up against each other.

Enzymes create an active site for two substrates to connect. The enzyme brings these substrates together until they can meld into a new product. The new product releases from the enzyme, allowing the enzyme to reset its active site and prepare for new substrates. Isn’t that beautiful?

When we engage in the ministry of hospitality, we do the work of an enzyme. We set a table, dress up our lawn, arrange plates and napkins, and prepare food. We make ready our active site. Then our guests, our substrates, arrive. Some of the guests know each other and share a bond already but others will be meeting for the first time. They will introduce themselves, get to know each other, and form a new bond. By the time they leave, these substrates are in relationship with one another and we, the hosts and catalysts, can clean and reset the active site for another meeting.

Case in point: Recently we had a group of people to our house to celebrate our son’s birthday and mark Oktoberfest. There were people from four different parts of our lives in attendance. Once all of our guests had arrived and dinner was served, I walked around to watch and listen. On the deck, a family new to the area visited with school families and church members, learning why we all love Rabun Gap and Saint James. On the lawn, the parent of a kindergartener visited with a fifth-grade teacher. The parent called me over and said, “My new BFF!” wrapping her arm around the teacher. “We had the same nickname growing up! We’re just finding out what else we have in common.”

Yesterday, I happened to be on Facebook and saw a friend of ours of fifteen years comment on the post of another friend of twenty-two years. The two people live in different parts of the country and would not know each other were it not for our wedding thirteen years ago. Now, they are friends.

Enzymatic activity at work.

I feel the same way about being a priest, especially around the altar. So much of my job is connecting people so that ministry can grow out of their new relationship, organically and dynamically. I hear someone shares an interest that matches another person’s resources and my job is to bring them together to talk and see if a new product might result from our efforts. Similarly, I set the table on Sunday morning for the congregation to gather around and be fed by God. The action of gathering at the altar creates a new product: the body of Christ. I’m not the host, simply the catalyst. And I love this work.

I sometimes hear people either degrade themselves or one another around the art of hospitality. Some people say they couldn’t host people to their houses because they aren’t perfect and can’t create the “perfect” environment. Similarly, people will criticize someone for hosting parties because they want to “show off” their fashionable houses and perfect abilities to pull off a gathering.

These thoughts are wrong and, in the process, we are discouraging one another from performing one of the most fundamental ministries there is. Welcoming each other through acts of hospitality is a primary ministry that gives birth to many more. I don’t delight in having people into my home because I get to show it off. To the contrary, I don’t make extra efforts to have everything looking perfect or even tidy. I simply love seeing people meet, laugh, connect, eat well, and leave happier than when they came and with new bonds and relationships.

In an age of isolation and alienation, could we not do with some more enzymes? Do we not need more catalysts for bringing people together rather than fewer? To that end, I encourage you, brothers and sisters, to consider the ministry of hospitality. Consider creating active sites where new products might be formed. We hunger for connection and relationship, renewal and purpose. This does not happen if we do not first get people together. Won’t you partner with me, then, in some enzymatic activity?

Holiday Imperfection


I shared this on social media on October 30 and got lots of giggles, so I thought I'd share it here. Enjoy!


Typical and expected wording for social media post:
Yay! 48 monster pops made and cooling for the kids’ Halloween parties tomorrow!
Now for the realness:
1. I bought the rice crispy treats pre-made and we just decorated them.
2. I was reminded why I am a cook and not a pastry chef or candy maker. I HATE working with candy and candy melts.
3. I was also reminded why I generally kick everyone out of my kitchen when I’m cooking. This is the “Prayerful Kitchen” because cooking is a prayerful and meditative process of me. That said, God blessed me with three hyper-verbal children. Do you know how meditative cooking is with a 10-year-old talking the entire time? It’s not. Not in the slightest. I had to tell her that if she kept talking incessantly, I would have to kick her out if my kitchen.
As you look at all the perfect holiday pictures from now through New Years, remember most of them have a back story. You’re not seeing the temper tantrums, the relatives who aren’t on speaking terms, the burnt cake, the dropped turkey, and you certainly aren’t hearing the constant thread of curse words pouring through most everyone’s heads.
Friends, you got this. You don’t have to “do all the things.” Do what feeds you. Do what excites you. Do what fulfills you and your people. Don’t try to do it perfectly and don’t pretend that you did it perfectly.
Sending everyone love and light as we hop on the holiday train!

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Fog and the Mountain



The fog crawls up the mountain
Digging its tendrils deep between the trees
Hugging their leaves and licking their branches

As the fog reaches the mountain’s pinnacle
Wind rips it away from its lover
Never to meet again

The fog dissipates in feathers and wisps
Into tears of contentment
Satisfied by its one great union

Monday, October 22, 2018

Confusing King

A new king comes to power and immediately abolishes the old taxation system. The subjects wait with great anxiety to hear what will replace the system they have known. Past kings have demanded the subjects pay different percentages of their income and harvests every year. The people of the kingdom know punishment certainly awaits anyone who fails to comply with the king’s orders. Not knowing the expectations of the new king causes great consternation and gnashing of teeth across the kingdom.


The traditional day of taxation arrives but the new king still has not announced his demands. The people line up outside the castle with goods representing the ten percent tax rate required by the previous ruler. They wait and wait for the gates to open and the king to step forward, but nothing happens. After a full day of standing in line, the people become restless and even more worried. Finally, the king looks down from a balcony on the side of the castle and repeats his announcement that the old taxation system has been abolished. The people stay where they stand, waiting to hear how the king likely will increase the former rate and what day they will be expected to render such taxes. Instead, the king waves and tells them all to go home and back to their fields before he turns and goes back into the castle.


Over the next several months, the king walks through the fields and visits his subjects in their homes. No king has ever done such a thing. Kings don’t spend time with their subjects and certainly do not visit them in their fields where they work. The people assume the king spends time among them to see for himself how much they harvest or how much they make. Maybe the king does not trust his subjects to give him the full tax amount demanded. If he walks among them, he will have a better sense how much his people will owe him so as to guard against the subjects not giving their full amount.


The king’s presence among them makes them nervous and resentful, so they begin to inquire about the king’s desires and purpose in visiting with them in their fields. The king simply says that he likes to see their hard work and how they find fulfillment in the work they do. He wants to know their families and understand how he might better serve them as their ruler. He cares about his subjects and wants to provide for them the best way he possibly can.


Out of utter confusion and frustration, the subjects continue to fill the void of demands and expectations by coming up with their own. They tell one another stories of terrible punishment that is to come if they do not pay the king tremendous tributes of money and harvest yields. A rumor goes around that the king is building a massive dungeon under the castle where subjects will be thrown for decades if they fail to pay 40, 50, 60, even 90% of their harvest to him.


Once again, the subjects line up outside the castle on their customary tax day, this time with even greater offerings for payment. They grumble and complain that the king would demand so much of them, even their full livelihood. They fuss as they wait for the king to appear to take their taxes or throw them in the dungeon for failure of payment. The citizens begin looking at one another, comparing their offerings with others, worried they might not have brought enough because their neighbor seems to have brought twice what they have. They worry and argue among themselves.


Once again, the king comes out on the balcony, reminds them of his previous announcement, and tries to send them home. But many of his subjects stay where they stand. The next morning, he finds several of them have chained themselves to the walls of the castle. Some among them have told the rest that the king is angry because they did not bring enough on tax day and that is why he sent them away. These leaders have convinced people that the king soon will come to enslave them for their failures and the only way to gain favor and some forgiveness is by chaining themselves before the king does. He will favor them for realizing their wretchedness and locking themselves up.


The king comes out, breaks the chains, and sends them home once again.


The following year, on tax day, the people show up at the doors of the castle. This time, some have brought 1%, some 6%, others as much as 50% of their year’s earnings. No one is grumbling and no one is judging their offering against their neighbor’s. The king steps out on the balcony to ask why they have come since they no longer are bound to any tax system. The people tell him they have not brought taxes, but offerings of thanksgiving. They have come to understand the king. The day after he walks in their fields with them, he has supplies sent specific to the needs he has witnessed among them. If a farmer has a broken fence, he sends other farmers to help with fresh fencing supplies. If a family has lost their livelihood because their milk cow was killed by a wolf, he sends another milk cow. The people have come to show their gratitude for the king’s faithfulness to them, not because they have to, but because they want to. Life now is infinitely better than it ever has been before and they want the king to understand how thankful they are for his generosity, care, and kindness.


The king does not judge their gifts, assessing if they are adequate. Instead, he accepts their offerings, saying each one is enough. Before he brings the goods into the castle storerooms, he has his subjects consider who in the kingdom might have need of their offerings. If they know someone who needs what they have, he tells them to first take their offering to their neighbor, then bring it to him. What remains, the king stores and uses when he sees a subject in need.


I imagine this to be God’s experience in watching humanity. Patiently, God watches as we try to twist and redefine grace, unable to accept it as unbounded and infinite. We expect a certain economy, one that demands tit for tat based on bartering and exchange. We try to make God live by human rules of commerce by telling ourselves and one another that we must earn God’s grace and love or that we have received it and now are indebted to God to a crushing degree.


God wants a response from our heart of gratitude and love. We keep trying to make our offering compulsory. We cannot believe God would love us unconditionally and pour her grace upon us with abundance. We make new rules and spread misconceptions because we cannot accept such an immense gift. Meanwhile, God waits and watches, wanting us not on our knees but with arms open, ready and willing to return even a small fraction of the love she already has given.


To live in such love and grace is true freedom. Were God to require specific offerings or demand certain acts of contrition, then we would bound in chains. The minute something is compulsory is the minute we lose our freedom. But a gift, an offering, an act of love can only be given if it comes voluntarily and from the heart out of a pure desire to show appreciation.

The day we allow ourselves one another freedom, the day we all bring our offerings out of unbounded thanksgiving and love, is the day the kingdom of God will be made real.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

On Bumper Cars and Spiders



I watch as the red car with lightning bolts heads straight for the yellow car painted with the words “crash!” and “pow!” The drivers look devilishly at one another, pushing their little cars as fast as they will go, straight for one another. The drivers burst into laughter as the thick rubber bumpers around their cars make contact and jolt the cars apart. Only space exists between the cars where, for a split second, they became one mass of metal and rubber.  The drivers, still laughing, turn their attention to other cars and other drivers. A socially-acceptable maniacal obsession overtakes them as they plunge themselves once again into the fray.

We place a high premium on rugged individualism in the United States. We prize gumption and exalt people who seem to conquer life all by themselves. We crave stories of survivors who have managed to escape the worst of situations with little more than their bare hands. I chalk it up to the pride we have in our history of carving a great nation out of a wild and untamed land. I, too, want to know that I could take care of myself if placed in a truly arduous situation. It’s the reason I like to learn new skills.

Our hyper-focus on the individual leads us past the desired sense of self-sufficiency and into the realm of alienation and isolation. In our minds, we become too accustomed to thinking of ourselves as autonomous. We draw thick lines around ourselves imagining that these lines will guard us. We pretend these lines will serve as bumpers, allowing us to bounce off other people unscathed and safe. They will protect us from being tainted by the wrong ideals and impurities of those with whom we come in contact.

Despite what our shared culture delusion would have us believe, we do not simply bounce off one another to find emptiness between us as it was before we met. There are no lines. There are no bumpers. We reinforce this delusion by lauding people whom we perceive as having “thick skin.” We marvel at individuals who seem to bounce off of the worst of life with nary a scratch, not a tear shed or a scar to show for it. These types have been successful at drawing an impenetrable line around themselves and we admire their strength.

But we are not bumper cars. We are spiders. We leave a trail of webbing behind us that never breaks. It may fade, but is never severed. Our lives touch another’s and we lay down a pinpoint, a marker that we have been there and our silken web moves forward from that place. We do not bounce off of one another. We touch and part, not to find empty space, but two threads, one from us and one from the other. Forever our lives will be connected, no matter how tenuously. We may bear scars from the contact or we may be strengthened by it. We also may never remember it but we are forever changed because of it.

People who rode on the same plane as you; the clerk in the gas station; your third grade teacher; the girl in college you eyed in your history class but never spoke to; the child in the store who looked at you for comfort when he had lost his mother; you now have a thread connecting your life to theirs. We may try to break these threads or pretend they do not exist, but the Spirit created them and our power is nothing compared to hers. The threads may fade but they never disappear completely, try as we might to erase them.

Moses laments about the complaining of his people in the eleventh chapter of Numbers. He is tired of hearing them speak of their enslavement in Egypt as if it was infinitely better than their wandering in the dessert. Moses cries to God, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,’ to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?”

Dear, faithful Moses. We have heard your argument before. We hear it everyday: “I’m not their parent. Why should I have to take care of them? I don’t have any kids, why should I pay for their education? Where is that child’s parents to teach them better? Parents today are failing their children. If I were their parent, you better believe they wouldn’t act like that. At the very least our teachers should be doing a better job so kids today aren’t running wild and aren’t so disrespectful.”

Moses, you did not carry the Israelites in your womb. You will never know the honor and pain of carrying and bearing a child. That blessing belongs to Zipporah and Miriam. But you are their father, nonetheless, because you draw breath. You are responsible to them because you are a spider, Moses, and your life will forever be connected to theirs, as they are responsible for you. The Spirit blessed you with life and charged you to care for all of creation, the same as she created and charged every person who has life.

My friends, the bumpers are myths. As surely as you read these words, you and I are connected. No space lies between us, just as no space lies between you and anyone else who might read this. Our world is covered in silken webs. We may not see them, but they are there and they call out to you. “Do not forget me,” cries the memory of a grandparent. “Care for me,” cries the line to the lonely and hurting. We hear, “be blessed and loved,” in the vibrations sent over the connection to a most beloved friend.

May we strive not to forget who we are. May we tend our threads and care for and be cared for by those at the other end. May we be more intentional how and why we place our pinpoints, the newest connection, for in doing so we change one another’s lives.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Love and Bridges

Saturday night I closed my eyes to doze a bit while my husband, Derek, drove us home from a family gathering in Gainesville. I had been deep inside my mind, working on my sermon for the following morning. My brain was starting to quiet when I found myself suddenly singing, quietly at first then building. I couldn’t remember the name of the song nor who recorded it, but the words flowed out from some deep recess inside of me. I sat up in my seat and watched the familiar roads and signs of 365 slide by, the words of the song coming to me more quickly.

I smiled and remembered learning to play the tune on the piano as a young teenager. “I haven’t heard this song in a long time. I had forgotten all about it,” I said to Derek.

He replied, “Well, it hasn’t forgotten you.” It most certainly had not.

The DJ filled in the missing details, “That was ‘Love can build a bridge’ by The Judds.” Of course. How could I forget.

I hope you remember this song as well. The refrain says,
“Love can build a bridge
Between your heart and mine
Love can build a bridge
Don't you think it's time?
Don't you think it's time?”

Generally, I love the arrival of fall. I can’t wait for cool nights and open windows, the proliferation of pumpkins and spiderwebs. But my enthusiasm is dampened this year. It’s midterm election season, one that typically is contentious but feels more so this year than at any other time I remember. The promise of fall as the gateway to holidays entirely about love and thanksgiving starkly stands juxtaposed against the vitriol, hatred, and division championed by the campaigning happening all around us.

I cannot speak to the reasons behind our current love affair with division but I do know that I cannot believe it is of God. In our sinfulness, we have come to prize conflict and aggression. Scarcely do we meet a new person before we assess if they are “with us or against us,” that is, if they agree with our views and ideologies or are a part of the irredeemable other party.

The temptation of division is nothing new. The earliest Christian communities tried to divide themselves as well. The apostle Paul struggled to help the Roman community set aside their obsession with separating the Jews from the Gentiles among them. He wrote to the Romans, encouraging them to set aside their selfish resentments and delineations in favor of working together in kingdom building, rooted in the love of Christ.

To live in a community of love is not to agree with one another all the time or have the same vision for the specifics of the work we should commit ourselves to do together. Indeed, conflict and disagreement are inherent to any relationship. The test of our discipleship is in our ability to stay together as brother and sister and strive to do the will of God regardless of our differences. In fact, our strength can be found in those very differences. They are the things that enrich our community and our corporate understanding of God.

The Judds go on to sing in their song,
“I would whisper love so loudly, every heart could understand
Love and only love can join the tribes of man not trials
I would give my heart's desire so that you might see
The first step is to realize that it all begins with you and me...

When we stand together, it's our finest hour
We can do anything, anything
We're believing in the power”

Despite the animosity that pervades our society, I still hold onto hope. We are resurrection people after all, aren’t we? Imagine if our conversations began rooted in love rather than hatred? What if we started from a desire to understand rather than a desire to debate? I still believe deeply in the power of love to transform us and our community, our world.

On that drive home, my mind and spirit compelled my body to sing out words I had long forgotten and it came as a balm to my soul. May the Spirit move us to reach deep inside to find more messages of hope, connection, love, and redemption, rather than the easily accessed hatred and selfish conceit that fills the air around us. If only we would begin with love, rather than division, even if it starts as a mere whisper.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

FICTION: What would I take?

Preface Note: Recently I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with my writing teacher and a group of marvelous women writers. While we were tucked into the mountains, our brothers and sisters in the Carolinas were preparing for hurricane Florence to make landfall. Our writing instructor asked us to connect with those fleeing the path of the storm by considering what one thing we would take with us if we had to leave home in a hurry. The following is my imagining of being forced to consider what I would feel had to leave home with me and my family.
I can tell you that this exercise was a prayer for all of us. More than a few of the writers shed tears as they shared their reflections. This prompt from our teacher gave us a way to access the compassion and heartache we were, and are, feeling for our neighbors to the East.
I know I haven't shared fiction before, but I was encouraged to make and exception for this one. May it kindle prayers for those who are and will be returning home to flooded homes and communities.

Derek runs out in the rain, carrying William and yelling at the girls to hurry as they trail behind him. He grabbed the baby portraits and the only photos we have of his father, dead these past eighteen years. My life already is in the car, all that I hold precious to me, in those four souls. I’ve never been sentimental about things because all is illusion except the desperate love that pours out of me towards the car that now shields all that is important in my life.
I turn back to look at the house, frantic to consider last things. What do I take? What would break me to leave behind? I run back in, hoping those quick steps will spur my heart to yearn for something tangible.
I pass through the front door, glancing at my daughter’s room then up the stairs. No, nothing there will matter in the end. No books or clothes or even photos will change the reality of what is to come. I round the corner into living room, already mourning the loss of our favorite evenings spent curled by the fire. We filled this space with our favorite things and bought furniture and art to match our lives rather than any fad or fashion. If I could box up a room, I would take this one.
My eyes look across the room to my beautiful table, a gift from Derek to me and I to him when we married. We knew then that friends, food, and family would be fundamental to our life together.
Behind it, I eye the item I would grab had I the room and the strength: the cupboard made by my grandfather’s strong hands. He was a barrel of a man who built furniture to match his boxey and burly frame. It sat in my grandmother’s dining area in their small home then waited in storage for Derek and me after she departed this earth. The cupboard is hulking, imperfect, wholly unique. The china and crystal it holds is nothing compared to my memories tucked into the corners and drawers. My life and my heritage reflect back at me in the crude doors with their glass panes. One grandparent made it, but within the grains of wood I have tucked every one of my ancestors, my German, Scottish, and British bloodlines painted in the red of the stained wood.
No. I cannot take it with me. It too will have to disappear like the people before it.
I force myself to pass through the kitchen. This is my room, my refuge, my identity, yet I’ve cooked in enough kitchens to know that I can make a home in any one of them. I’m tempted to grab the vegetable cleaver Derek gave me this past Christmas. I love the feel of the wooden handle and the heft of the blade as it slices with ease through round butternuts and beautiful onions bursting with sulphur. To hold and wield this knife is to hold my husband himself, his dichotomy of rough and smooth, strength and ease magnificently manifest in it.
But I move, instead, to the wall at my left and take down my massive cast iron skillet. The survivor in me knows that this is the thing that must travel with us when all else cannot. It is not a family heirloom - it was a gift from Derek the year of our iron anniversary - but my women have used skillets with these same deep walls and sound metal to survive for hundreds of years.
I know that in it, I can make home anywhere for my family. I can feed them, keep them alive, keep them healthy, kindle their souls, and bring them comfort, all through the magic of this pan. Out of its round blackness, the skillet will conjure the memories of generations of our people, something no other item in our lives can do. It will teach my children that out of the blackest of moments, the depth of an iron pot grabbed in desperation, out of darkness can come survival, then memory, then beauty, then newness. It can bear our tears, collecting them for a balm rendered out of that salty broth only our pain can offer.
The weight of the skillet in my hand moves me from desperation to power, not to hope, but to confidence, not that all will be well, but that I will not be broken by this moment and neither will my family.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

The Stewardship of Words


I spent my weekend with words. My writing teacher is a beautiful, eighty-something Greek woman who lives with a fire in her belly and a passion for words. Twice a year, a small group of dedicated women gather at Valle Cruces Conference Center to spend the weekend under her tutelage. She give us prompts then sends us out for thirty or forty-five minutes to see what we might be inspired to write. We return and share with one another our vignettes, poetry, short stories, and essays that have tumbled out and onto the page unexpectedly.

She left us with one last prompt: What are your words worth?

My initial thought was, “nothing.” I had some sentimental thought about how my words are freely given and released into the world without a price or value, save that which will be placed upon them by any heart who receives them. I write and preach because I have to and I love to, not with any concept of value or merit.

But, then, the apostle James shows up in this Sunday’s readings for the church and, with a booming voice and priceless words, castigates me for my feigned naivete, 

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue-- a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” (James 3:5-9)

“Unbridled words.” This idea storms in my mind and I sigh. We live in a society that values unbridled words wielded like guns and fired like canons. Words have become blades, not for vanquishing some evil foe, but for slicing through the humanity of others. Compulsively we draw and fire our weapons of words, long before we have any clear target in sight. The speed of fingers on a keyboard hammer out the steel of our best and worst thoughts made manifest on the screen. With no effort, we press a button, click a mouse, and in silence our daggers fly across the world in mere seconds.

There’s no small irony in the nostalgia and admiration we hold for the letter writers of the Civil War. Notes sent home by the most ordinary of men jerk our modern sensibilities because of their beauty and craftsmanship. The language of their era, set with intention and deliberacy to paper, confounds us in our era of compulsion and impulse. When paper was scarce and ink was hard to come by, the writer took more time than just that of putting hand to pen to paper. They understood the value and power of their words and did not want to cheapen or waste them in haste.

The apostle James commands us to “be doers of the word and not hearers only.” James 1:22 Alongside breathing and blood pulsing through our veins, words flow over and through every moment of our lives. When we wake, words fill our minds to answer the questions that come with every awakening: ideas of where we are, what the day holds, and reverberations from the dreams that may have passed in the night. Long before a single syllable journeys through our throats and across our lips, our minds have been a thunderhead of words firing off and lighting the cavern of our skulls. All day we grasp for our tools of words to make order out of chaos so that we can think, speak, plan, and execute. Then, as night falls and the energy of the day drains away from us, the words are there to sweep and mop the floors of our minds and tidy the shelves of ideas that have been in heavy usage over the course of the day. Even as we drift off, the words are there to convert conscious to subconscious, lining up the letters and syllables that will give meaning to the images our brains will paint in the dreams of our sleep.

How can we live with ourselves for cheapening the very thing that holds our sanity together? How can we forgive ourselves our carelessness and gluttony? Words may be in infinite supply but they are precious and powerful. We should weep over the fields littered with bloodied and dying words, thrown out with no regard for the value of their lives.

Perhaps our most powerful testimony as people of faith is to be found in our reclamation of the sanctity and sacrament of language. If we are to witness, let us first witness to the power of words, not just of those that speak of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, but of the power of every word we produce. Let us pound the swords of cheapened words into the plowshares of speech that once again cultivates compassion, beauty, and grace. Let us bridle our tongues with the depth of appreciation and respect our words deserve.

Monday, September 10, 2018

Marking an Anniversary with Honesty: 9/11

All day I have felt depressed and have lacked motivation. I’ve accomplished most of my chores on this, my day off, but it has taken me three times as long and has required plenty of breaks for some mindless tv watching. There are plenty of other ways I should have spent that extra time but I just didn’t have it in me today.

Derek came home after his last class to change clothes before going to football practice. I asked him how he was doing and he said he had felt off all day, like something wasn’t quite right. I shared with him that I had felt the same all day. He listed the various things that had bothered him today and then he offhandedly said, “And tomorrow’s 9/11.”

It took him saying it for me to realize why I have felt lousy all day. Even now, the kids are in the living room with me, wanting my attention for math homework and to share articles in the magazine they are reading, but I don’t have the heart to give them much of my attention. I’m trying hard to give them my patience. It’s not their fault I’m in a foul mood or that I dread this anniversary every year. It’s merely a typical Monday evening for them.

I can’t claim that the anniversary has somehow snuck up on me. People started talking about it well over a week ago and I agreed to say a few words about 9/11 to my middle school students tomorrow during their convocation. But I had boxed up the emotions of the anniversary and set them on a shelf, willfully denying they would have any effect on me this year.

And yet, here I sit, the night before the anniversary and I am all kinds of sideways. I’m cranky and feel like crying. I have a deep sense of isolation. I want to vent my depression, frustration, and memories but there’s no one to call or text who understands and Derek has dorm duty tonight, putting him in the dorms until well after 11. I pray I’ll be sound asleep by then and away from these feelings.

Tomorrow I’ll share some of my story of living in New York City on 9/11. I volunteered to be available to the teachers to talk to the kids because I want to help them understand what it’s like to live through an event like that. But now, I’m regretting telling anyone, much less volunteering. I rarely tell people that I was in the city on that day because it feels like a strange sort of bragging and I don’t want to have to answer too many questions. But I also feel the burden of responsibility because I know people are interested and need to know.

So, this evening, I sit in our living room with the kids chattering around me and I feel nauseous. Deep in my belly is a sense of foreboding and dread. Thankfully, I don’t have to turn on the television tomorrow and I can choose not to read the news. Every channel will rush to cover the anniversary, their particular focus will be in the service of using the events of 9/11 to further their agenda. The abuse of the memory of that day brings an acrid taste to my mouth as my stomach roils with disgust. I have to brace myself for the annual sentimentalization and politicization of the 9/11 tragedy.

I also live with the shame of leaving. A few days after the terrorists ripped a hole in our city, I left for home and didn’t look back. I had been planning on leaving after the first of the year but the discomfort and dis-ease that filled the city hastened my departure. My parents, in their love and concern for their baby girl, drove all night to meet me in New Jersey when I told them I wanted to come home.

The summer leading up to 9/11, I had worked as a hospital chaplain and been part of a peer group to do the challenging work of self-exploration. It had been a wonderful yet exhausting summer full of deep dives into my identity and personality. I returned to seminary with no reserves, nothing left to give anyone who may need me. Once the planes hit the twin towers and the city froze in terror, I knew I would have to leave for my own wellbeing. I had nothing to give any effort to help minister to a city in need.

Even though I did what I had to for my own wellness and health, I still carry the guilt and shame of a person who left when there was trouble. I lost relationships and friendships were broken. I became someone that they used to know. Others were weakened to the point that today we only exist in each other’s lives as online acquaintances. I left because I had to, it was my first act of self-care and taught me a valuable lesson that has saved me from burnout and emotional exhaustion as a minister. But, in leaving, I also became a deserter. I abandoned my community and nothing will change that.

It’s been seventeen years but the wound isn’t healed. Every year, it gets a little better, though some years hit me harder than others. The saccharine remembrances and anniversary specials knock the scab off and, for twenty-four hours or so, I’m left to fester, again.

There is nothing redeeming about 9/11 for me. I’m broken hearted that people would board planes with the sole purpose of bringing them down to destroy as many lives as possible. I’m broken hearted by the decades of events that preceded and caused the 9/11 tragedy, for the ways our country and the world failed to look after one another as a community because of our xenophobia and fear. I’m broken hearted by the ways the events of that day are twisted by some false sense of sanctity that wreaks of sanctimoniousness and artificial sentimentalism. I’m broken hearted that we don’t seem to learn our lessons and tragedies like 9/11 are happening around our world all the time but we don’t seem to care because the violence is perpetrated against black and brown people in neighborhoods and countries too insignificant to garner our attention.

I share this confession because I believe we all need to do a better job sharing with one another when we’re not at our best. We need to see each other at our weakest moments, not just when we’re thriving. I share with you because you are friends and you are family, you are brothers and sisters who suffer from the same human condition and I need you to know that I hurt as well. We are never alone in our pain, which I am reminding myself of now, even as I sit in my sense of isolation thanks to the burden of my memories.

I share because I want you to have a reference point when you slip into your own times of alienation or pain. My reference point is the cross. I know I’m never alone in moments like these because there’s nothing I can suffer that Christ hasn’t already. He waits for us wherever we go, even in the deepest recesses of our minds and at the end of our roads of denial. And he has excellent company, a communion of saints who are our brothers and sisters, everyone who has ever sat with this same sense of foreboding and nausea. We never journey a path that someone hasn’t already traveled.

By now, my kids have finished their work and have migrated downstairs. I hear their shouts from the basement as they challenge each other in their video games. Only the dog is left to occupy this space with me and she demands nothing but my presence. My kids don’t have a sense for what I’m feeling or why. But someday, they will. They will survive their own 9/11s and, when they do, I hope they can remember their mother survived something similar.

Friends, lift a prayer of remembrance; lift a prayer for broken hearts; lift a prayer for lost lives and lost opportunities; lift a prayer of confession for our continued failings; lift a prayer that we can honor without trivializing or abusing our collective memory; and lift a prayer of hope that our world can be reformed, that we can set aside our evil and nasty ways in favor of a way of being that shows real concern and love for one another.

Hoping for all of you that your 9/11 be one of reflection, introspection, prayer, and peace.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Symmetry and the Siren's Call

What if we got what we really wanted? What if perfection were attainable to a universal standard? What if there was one correct and perfect way to decorate your home, dress, raise your children, behave in a marriage, cook a meal, paint a portrait, write a story, breathe? And what if you managed to meet all of those demands, standing high above on the pedestal of perfection, what then?
Millenia ago we, as a human race, constructed a concept of “perfection.” We created a standard for existence by which to measure one another’s success and failures; actually, more for measuring failures. We all bought into the myth that if one worked hard enough, practiced long enough, spent enough money, gave or sacrificed “enough,” then somehow we would become the absolute best human being possible. We collectively decided on the standard for “perfection” and have been grasping for or racing after it ever since.
Or have we?
Could it be that our supposed lust for perfection is, in fact, the biggest shell game in human history? Could it be the best example of herd mentality that ever existed?
Stop for a moment to clearly define, “perfection.” What does it mean? What are the standards for perfection? Go ahead. List them in your mind or visualize a person you think best exemplifies perfection.
Do you actually agree with that idea of perfection? What about that person isn’t perfect? What must be sacrificed in the name of these standards of perfection?
Now, the essential question, “Who handed you those standards?” Another way to say this might be, “Whom did you allow to define perfection for you?” Spend some time considering these questions and be critical. Do you agree with these definitions? Our understanding of perfection seeps into our psyche without our being much aware to its arrival and formation. We see others point to a person and say, “She’s beautiful,” or point to a work of art and say, “”That is absolutely brilliant.” Step back for a moment and consider whether or not you agree with their assessment.
Think for a moment about the people and things you appreciate and admire. What do you find truly perfect? What is perfection for you in your life?
I’m in love with the August 27, 2018, cover of Time magazine. On it, tennis legend Serena Williams stands boldly, confidently, and comfortably behind a quote from her interview that reads, “Nothing about me right now is perfect. But I’m perfectly Serena.”
I think she and this cover are perfectly wonderful.
We say we want perfection and symmetry but, the truth is, we don’t. Not deep down. In fact, truly perfect and symmetrical things disturb us. In Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time, it is the perfect synchronicity of the children’s bouncing balls that clues the reader into the evil that rules the world of IT. The mothers call the children in perfect time to come into their perfect homes for, an assumedly, perfect dinner. Our instincts tell us there is something profoundly wrong with actualized perfection.
We claim to want perfection but also criticize individuals who appear to be perfect, saying they are “fake.” Truthfully, we crave asymmetry and imperfections because they testify to authenticity and integrity. We may place seemingly perfect people on a pedestal but it is the survivor we seek when we need someone to trust, someone who bears her battle scars with pride and who isn’t afraid to show her wounds. Fundamentally we need people who have lived to tell the tale, who are relatable and genuine. In other words, we want to admire people who are perfect but need people who are, instead, just like us in their imperfections and weaknesses.
Serena defiantly declaring the power of her imperfection seems to be essential and necessary medicine for a culture that has grown sick on its airbrushed and photoshopped regular diet. For the sake of our collective health, we need a dose reality as a seemingly perfect specimen of a woman and an athlete standing before the world - one quick to criticize her body, her blackness, her confidence, and her charisma - claiming her generally accepted imperfection in favor of a perfection that is more personal, more honest, and more real.
T. S. Eliot gives us a character who is paralyzed by his imperfections and his lack of confidence in the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The character can’t move beyond “watching with women come and go,” because he has played out every scenario in his mind and has predetermined he is doomed to fail. Pitifully, he decides he is too insignificant even to star in the drama of his own life, relegating his role to
an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
Friends, let us not play the fool in our own lives. Let us not believe the immense corpus of perfection mythology and, instead, dare ourselves into lives of asymmetry, one’s full of life and imperfection. In doing so, we will be perfectly ourselves, enjoying days basking in authenticity.


Fleeting Life and Ash Wednesday

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” from the imposition of ashes in the Ash Wednesday service, Episcopal Book o...