family – Page 13 – Salvaged Faith

Hewbrews Part 1: Disposable People

Posted on October 4, 20091 Comment

The strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary – the three year cycle of readings that is used in many churches in the world – including ours… the strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary is that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.

Each week we have a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a Psalm, and a Gospel reading. And while most of the time they go together – with the same message and purpose, sometimes they just don’t seem to fit.

Take today for instance. Worldwide, we are celebrating the fact that as Christians we all partake of communion with one another. It is a day to remember that a Christian across the globe is our brother or sister in Christ – that we all partake of the one loaf and we all drink from the one cup.

In the lectionary cycle – today is also the day that we start exploring the books of Job in the Old Testament and Hebrews in the New. Until Thanksgiving, in fact, we will be going slowly through the book of Hebrews as we worship on Sunday mornings. But those readings have very little to do with the Old Testament reading from Job where Satan begins testing the faithful man by raining destruction into his life. It has very little to do with the passage from the gospels about divorce.

In fact, I couldn’t figure out how any of these things hung together – what we were supposed to make of them until I remembered a conversation I had with a patient of mine from Nashville

This patient, Adam, was struggling – deeply struggling with his worthiness before God. You see, Adam had cancer. And on this afternoon he was in a particularly deep hole of doubt and self-pity. On this day, the illness had gotten the best of him. And as I entered the room to visit with him he wanted to know why he couldn’t just die.

As we got to talking, I wondered what kind of comfort I could bring him. I couldn’t take the pain away. I asked him if he wanted to pray with me and he barely lifted his head as he spoke.

“I’ve asked Jesus over and over again to help me and he hasn’t,” Adam cried out, “how can he just let me suffer like this?”

As we talked more I began to realize that Adam was expressing a deep feeling of being forsaken by God. Forgotten. Thrown away. He felt like no matter how much he cried out, God wouldn’t listen.

Instead he was being punished. In his eyes, the suffering he was experiencing was God knocking on the door saying “see, I told you so,” and Adam was going to withstand that suffering. Whether it was sheer pride, or self-loathing, or the medications, he felt like he was being punished and he was going to take it like a man.

I remember asking him at one point: What if God’s just waiting for you to let go? What if God is just waiting for you to stop fighting him so that he can actually heal you? What if who you are fighting is yourself?

And then, I’ll never forget what he said. “Even if I do let go, even if I do admit he’s really there, I don’t deserve it.”

I have no idea what Adam’s past was. I don’t know where he thought that he failed.

I do know that I wanted to shake him and tell him that no matter how unworthy he thought he was, God wasn’t done with him.

God didn’t see him, and God doesn’t see us, as some disposable thing – made and then broken and easily thrown away. God saw him in the words of Psalm 8 as the one who was made just a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. It didn’t matter what he had done – God’s grace and forgiveness was bigger and stronger than his mistakes.

The amazing thing about the book of Hebrews is that while it is a text that portrays very vividly what Christ has done – it is humans who are the focus. Hebrews is about who God is yes, but about what God has done for us – how God acts because of us.

In chapter 1, we are reminded that while God has always been speaking to us – in various times and places – God chose finally to speak by his Son. This Son is the Word of God that is God and was God and spoke all things into being in the creation. Jesus, the Son of God, the Word of God, is God and is fully of all glory and honor.

But then in chapter two we compare this glory and majesty with what was created. This world, that we live in, was not given to angels or to demons, but to humans. Compared with the moon and the stars we are nothing – and yet God has made us a little lower than the angels and God has placed this world in our hands.

Here, the author of Hebrews turns our eyes back towards Psalm 8. We are reminded that Adam and Eve were made caretakers over the garden – over the animals and the birds and the fish and the land and the seas. This is our world – a gift, given to us by God for safekeeping.

And while chapter 2 verse 8 says that we are supposed to be in control, when we are sick. When natural disasters like earthquakes and tornados and floods ravage. When a brother or a sister harms us – the feeling of control slips between our fingertips. The reality that we experience however is that we feel completely out of control.

That is what my friend Adam in the hospital was experiencing. Completely out of control.

Hebrews tells us that while this world appears to be spinning out of control, we catch a glimpse of Jesus and we are reminded of how he poured himself out, became human – became one of us, and took the sins of the world with him through the cross. That becomes our reference point. That becomes our hope.

We are not disposable in God’s eyes, we are redeemable. As John 3:16 reminds us, For God so loved the world. God doesn’t abandon his creation – he loves it and he redeems it.

And through Christ, we become children of God. Or as verse 11 puts it – we all have one Father, one source – and Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

What I told my friend Adam is that it doesn’t matter if you feel unworthy or not. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve help or not. Heck, we probably are unworthy and we are undeserving. There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love. But God loves you anyways. You are not a disposable part of God’s creation.

Christ invites us each to the table because it is more complete when we are all here. And when we sit at this table, we look across and see our brothers and our sisters. And just as you are not a disposable part of God’s creation – neither are they.

Gathering at the table means that we speak the truth about those we have hurt. It means that we acknowledge that there are people in the world that we have treated as if they can be used up and easily tossed aside. They may be people we never see like sweatshop workers in Vietnam, or coffee farmers in Columbia, or diamond miners in Africa.

But they might also be people who are close to us, people whose lives we share on a daily basis.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus makes a plea with his disciples not to separate the bonds of marriage and to honor the lives of children. And in both of these instances, he is speaking against cultural practices that allowed spouses and children to be considered disposable people.

If your wife burnt your dinner, you could write her a certificate of divorce. If you didn’t like the way she wore her hair, you could write her a certificate of divorce. While this had been in part Jewish custom, Greco-Roman culture also allowed by this time that women could divorce their husbands in a similar manner.

The same was true for children. They were seen as not fully human. Until they reached a certain age they had no voice and no standing. They were non-persons who could be sold and traded.

But just as Christ doesn’t give up on us – doesn’t throw us out with the slightest irritation, so too are we supposed to love one another. The relationship between two partners in marriage does not entitle either one to see the other as disposable. The relationship between parent and child means that the parent should care for the child and the child should honor the parent.

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be brokenness in the body of Christ. We all know situations where divorce has divided a family. We all know situations in which divorce was the only way out of an unhealthy situation. We can all think of instances in which children were not cared for by their community.

And we bring that to the table. And we speak the truth about the ways we have failed one another through confession. And here we receive forgiveness. In this bread and in this cup, we are restored. Whether we deserve it or not. Whether we think we are worthy or not. You are not disposable in God’s eyes and this table is set just for you.

what I love… part 1

Posted on October 2, 2009Leave a comment

1) I love having someone (or some cat) to cuddle with. My cat curled up under the covers with me and I felt so loved
2) I love watching television and looking for the humanity and redemption in the characters.
3) I love it when someone cooks for me
4) I love eating dinner with friends/family around a table.

Every week, we go to my sister/brother-in-laws house and have dinner with them and our neice and nephew. We each bring something to the table. Tonight, we’re bringing the pizza bread and dessert and they are making homemade soup. We laugh, we talk about our weeks, we plan for our futures, we tease…

At least once a month, we gather around a table at my in-laws with the whole family for a meal. It’s usually the same thing – something off the grill, barbeque chicken, potatoes, green beans, and salad. It’s all simple food and it’s SO good. we do a lot of teasing and we play cards and we have a good time.

This week I had two other table meals. First for a funeral supper. And while I sat at a table with people who were strangers, by the time we left, we were acquainted. We talked about what a good man the gentleman who had died was. We talked about the food – and holy cow was that walnut nut cake GOOD! We talked about where we were from – and everyone was curious about who I was – how old I was – where I cam from.

Our other table meal was at the church. We are starting a new monthly tradition of a potluck during youth group time. And so around this table was some of our normal youth group crowd, plus parents and grandparents and other people from the congregation who just want to be there. And when we finished eating around that big huge table, we played games together.

What do I love about eating around a table? It’s eucharistic. We get to know one another better around the table. We have to look other people in the face. We talk. We share. We pass the plates and we pass stories. Especially when young and old, rich and poor, strangers and friends gather in one place there is a sense that without this larger community, we are nothing. We need one another. Our lives are incomplete – the table is incomplete – unless they are there.

Sometimes the table is awkward. Many times we do start as strangers. There were times during each of those last two meals I mentioned when there were silences we didn’t know how to fill, or clique conversations that left others out.

But there were also moments of pure grace and fellowship. An older gentleman who reconnected with a youth that hasn’t been in church for a few years. A beautiful woman who is 93 years old who wanted to send me one of her cookbooks – that she has handwritten. The congregation seeing glimpses of the lives of our young people and the ways that they take care of one another. Hearing hurts and pains – and knowing you were in a place safe enough to share them.

There is a reason that we gather at the table. There is a reason Christ gathered his disciples around a table. It is where community happens.

My husband and I rarely eat at the table. Dinner time comes at the same time some of our favorite shows are on and so we normally fill our plates and plop down on the couch together. And for some reason, to be honest, the table for just two seems pretty empty. But when we have friends over, we eat at the table. When family comes over, we eat at the table. And when our family gets bigger – eating at the table will be required =)

Holy Spit Balls

Posted on September 6, 2009Leave a comment

Thursday night we had a wonderful and amazing event at our church. Over 25 people gathered together for fellowship, food, and fun. We had people of all ages – babies crawling around, preschoolers squealing for joy, teenagers running up and down stairs, parents and grandparents and friends.

As I sat there eating with everyone, I got to thinking about something. It felt just like a family reunion. It felt just like all of us gathered there were a big old happy family. Babies got passed from person to person. Teenagers pitched in and helped clean up. Adults took turns wiping the faces of little ones.

Both of my parents come from bigger families, and so these types of gatherings are something that I am very familiar with. Especially all of that face wiping! When I was little, I remember my mom, or my grandmas, or an aunt here or there spitting into a napkin to wipe a face clean. How many of you have had that done to you? How many of you have done it to others?

You know, spit is an intensely personal thing, and we don’t normally think of it as that clean – but I myself have spit on a napkin to wipe the face of my neice and nephew. I don’t know where the impulse to do so comes from – or why we do it, but it works! Spit can clean a face, a kiss can heal an ouchy. Hands can wipe away tears from faces and the pain that goes along with them.

But it’s only amongst family that we do those sorts of things. It’s only among the people we really and truly care about that we are willing to swap these sorts of bodily fluids. It’s only for our brothers and sisters that we are willing to get down and dirty and personal.

In the book, “Touch” Rudy Rasmas recounts to story of an orthopedic surgeon who for years performed surgery on all kinds of patients. As he tells the story he says, “Some of them, to be blunt, stank. When these people came to my office before and after surgery, I’d treat their medical problem, but I got in and out of the examining room as quickly as possible, and except for the medical examination, I avoided touching them. About a year ago, I was reading the Gospels about Jesus touching lepers, lame people, blind people, and all kinds of sick people. My heart was shattered. Those people He touched were the same kinds of people who come into my office every day.” (page 51-52)

This surgeon saw the people around him just as patients. They were clients that were to be dealt with as quickly as possible. In his eyes, it was easier not to see them as people who needed a healing touch, harder still to see them as brothers and sisters that he would go the extra mile for. Until he was reminded of how Christ treated those who were sick.

We have one of those healing stories in our gospel reading for today. A man is brought to Jesus who is deaf and who because of his deafness has problems speaking. In these times, any physical or mental deformity was seen as the direct result of the person or their parents sin – it was a punishment from God for their disobedience. And when people understand disabilities that way – it makes it a whole lot harder for that person to be fully accepted into a community. It becomes harder for others to see them as a human being. It is harder for that person of find love and care.

But Jesus takes one look at this deaf man and leads him off to one side. And Jesus gets up close and personal. I want you to really picture this for a second. He sticks his fingers into the man’s ears. He spits into his mouth! And he cries out, “Be Opened!” And the man can hear! He is healed! All because Jesus was willing to get close enough to him to spit in his face.

That’s the thing about Jesus. He doesn’t treat anyone differently because of who they are. He doesn’t shy away from people who look strange, or who talk funny, or who might smell bad or were born in the wrong family. He takes them by the hand, and he treats them like a brother or a sister. He isn’t afraid to touch them. He isn’t afraid to love them.

Philip Yancy said that, “Jesus moved the emphasis from God’s holiness (which is exclusive) to God’s mercy (which is inclusive). Instead of the message “no undesireables allowed,” he proclaimed, “in God’s kingdom there are no undesirables.” None of us are unworthy. None of us should be shut out.

That is a very hard message to follow. As we have already heard in our passage from James this morning, it is something that early Christians struggled with. They showed favoritism between the rich and the poor in their congregations. And they probably did amongst other people as well. They knew they were supposed to love everyone, but like we talked about last week, they were hearers of the word and not doers. Like the orthopedic surgeon, they would rather love from a distance than get up close and personal with someone. It was better for the poor man to sit at their feet, or to stand in the corner, than to take the place in the pew next to them.

Now, I know that this is a fairly welcoming congregation. I have seen us really treat one another like a family. We are willing to help out, we are willing to pitch in where we are needed. But how do we respond when strangers come into our midst? Or perhaps a better question – how willing are you to go out into the world into the parts of town and neighborhoods and cities where the strangers are?

In that same book, Touch, Rasmus includes an exercise that I want to share with you this morning. I want you to take out the slip of paper that was handed out with the bulletins and really think seriously and prayerfully and honestly about how you would answer this question. I want you to either mentally note, or if you have a pencil or pen handy, go ahead and circle, the descriptions of the people that you wouldn’t feel comfortable touching and sitting next to on a Sunday morning…

…few minutes…

Now, there are a few people on this list that make me uncomfortable. There are definitely people on this list that I wouldn’t go out of my way to touch – much less spit into a napkin to wipe their faces clean. But simply knowing that Jesus would, makes me want to change – makes me want to be better. Makes me want to love them, because Christ first loved me.

Remember that orthopedic surgeon? He heard about how Christ loved other people and he committed himself from that day on to giving big, long hugs to every person – especially the smelly ones – that come to see him.

The church that Rudy Rasmus helped to revitalize in Houston is probably the opposite of the church we hear about in James. It is a church where the homeless and drug addicts sit next to people wearing thousand-dollar suits and who are rising in the corporate world. And he writes that “unconditional love isn’t just good theology or church theory. It’s our practice, and we are very intentional about it. We teach our people to make it a point to reach out to every single person who walks in the door…”

He tells the story of a woman named “Neighbor” who carried everything she owned in a shopping cart. This woman came to church “every time the doors were open,” and she often did some covert panhandling at Sunday services. But after two years of this, she went up to the pastor and said, “Pastor Rudy, my name is Carolyn. Don’t call me ‘Neighbor’ anymore. You can call me Carolyn from not own.” Because the people in that church cared for her, reached out and touched her, her heart melted as she began to trust them. And she let them into her lives. She took off her mask of anonymity. “Carolyn would tell you that God has surrounded her with people who accept her just as she is. They didn’t try to fix her, they didn’t demand that she get cleaned up, and they didn’t expect her to respond quickly. They just kept loving her day after day, week after week, and they let her respond in her own good time.”

That is what church is all about. Loving people. Sharing the grace of God with them. Seeing them through the eyes of Christ. Bringing healing and wholeness to their lives by getting up close and personal. We can’t do that if we see one another as strangers. We can only do it if we recognize that we are all children of God – brothers and sisters in Christ – and if we are willing to get a little dirty rubbing against one another- and if we are willing to spit in a napkin to help make someone clean.

Amen and Amen.

FF: Recharging

Posted on September 4, 2009Leave a comment

A few weeks ago my lap-top battery died, suddenly I found myself looking at a blank screen and was rather relieved to find that it was only the battery and not the whole computer that had failed. This morning a new battery arrived in the post, and suddenly I am mobile again!

After a week with what feels like wall to wall meetings, and Synod looming on the horizon for tomorrow I find myself pondering my own need to recharge my batteries. This afternoon Tim and I are setting off to explore the countryside around our new home, I always find that walking in the fresh air away from phones and e-mails recharges me. But that is not the only thing that restores my soul, so do some people, books, pieces of music etc….

So I wonder what/ who gives you energy?

1. Is there a person who encourages and uplifts you, whose company you seek when you are feeling low? I think family does this for me – especially my husband’s family. I can go there without having to be “on” or really do anything, and I know I’ll find good food and conversation and I can let it all out.

2. How about a piece of music that either invigorates or relaxes you? “I believe in a thing called love” by the Darkness – it gets me moving and pumped up

3. Which book of the Bible do you most readily turn to for refreshment and encouragement? Is there a particular story that brings you hope? I’ve always liked the story of Jeremiah planting a tree even though he was going into exile – it’s that symbol of hope in the midst of whatever we are going through and its a reminder that we will be back where we are supposed to be eventually.

4. A bracing walk or a cosy fireside? Hard choice!!!! I think a strong walk lets me work off some of my frustrations, however the fireside just melts them away!!! I’m trying to convince my husband to build a firepit in our backyard – because currently the walking is my only option. I could sit in front of a fire every single night.

5. Are you feeling refreshed and restored at the moment or in need of recharging, write a prayer or a prayer request to finish this weeks Friday Five….

Gracious God, on mornings when we don’t seem to want to get moving, help us to see the sun rising. Help us to hear the birds. Help us to know that your creation is alive and awaiting. May the wind gently push us. May the rays of light gently awaken us. May the colors of your creation open our eyes to the possibilities that this day holds. Remind us to sit – even for just a minute – to rejoice in the splendor of the morning. Help us to find even just five minutes of Sabbath with a cup of coffee, or tea, or juice, or a cat curled up on our lap, or a newspaper, or a blog entry and help us to listen for your Word in the midst of it all. Help us to be still and then send us forth to your task. Amen.

ancestors and language

Posted on May 20, 2009Leave a comment

Part of the reason I have been conspicuously absent lately is that I was getting ready for and now being invigorated by the Miss Czech-Slovak Iowa pageant and Houby Days.

I was invited to be a judge at this year’s competition and I was honored to do so. For those of you who aren’t aware – I was Iowa’s first ever (official) Miss Czech-Slovak Iowa and was sandwiched between two amazing women who not only represented Iowa, but were also national queens. So, this was a great chance to reconnect with something I have been away from for oh, about 7 years, but it also was a good opportunity to get back in Czech Village after all of the flooding last spring that devasted the Avenue.

Can I just say first of all how much I love kolaches?! I had 3 by the time it was 10am. Seriously – they are good… go get yourself one!

The only disappointment for me that day was that I did not have a kroj to wear. Kroje are the traditional costumes worn for festivals and special occasions and I have one that I wore as the Czech Princess in high school and then another I wore as Miss Czech-Slovak Iowa. (you can’t see it in this picture – but I’m third from the left… pictured with the other contestants in Wilbur, NE at Nationals and our “little sisters”).

Unfortunately, neither of them fit. And I haven’t had enough time to do the proper alterations. And I need to find the time to get it done – it just wasn’t going to be in this last month. So, I was kroj-less.

BUT – with all that went on, with all the beautiful kroje worn by men and women all day long, I really wanted to think about making another one. One that more accurately represents where I am now, as a married woman, and as someone who also wants to learn more about her history.

I was so inspired in fact by this weekend that I’m looking into taking a Czech language class this summer (although right now, it appears the class is full) AND I immediately hopped online to do research about my ancestors. I have discovered that unlike what I previously thought, my ancestors on both sides (at least the ones I have found information for) are from Bohemia, not Bohemia and Moravia (although there is a Moravia connection there also). I have even discovered a few little villages where some of family is from!!! From another woman’s family tree (if we are indeed connected like it appears) the Benes family that I am descended from has roots in Krasolesi, Bohemia – a village kind of half-way between Prague and Brno. On the Ziskovsky side, Cathrina Toman was born in Litomysl, Bohemia – with her father being from Jevisovice in current South Moravia.

I am sooooooo interested in finding more about these people and where they lived and what the local kroj are like. I would love to design one that represents a married woman’s kroj for that area.

FF: Ritual

Posted on May 1, 20094 Comments

From Rev Gals: I believe that we live in a ritually impoverished culture, where
we have few reasons for real celebration, and marking the passages of life.
So…

1. Are ritual markings of birth marriage and death important to you?

Absolutely! They are how we make meaning out of these very difficult and beautiful transitions in our lifes. Even when we think that we are bypassing rituals, we are usually creating our own practices for coping and celebrating what has happened. Even something as simple as placing your baby into the crib for the first time is filled with significance and meaning and how you do it that first time will shape how you do it from then on. As a pastor, I see my role as to speak to where and how God is present in the rituals that I help a family perform.

2. Share a favourite liturgy/ practice.

In my wedding ceremony, we wanted to acknowledge that we had already been on a long journey together. We got married on our seven and a half year anniversary. So this was one more step in a relationship that we committed to long ago. I found this piece of liturgy and we used it at the beginning of the service:

President: We have come together in the presence of God to witness the marriage of Brandon and Katie, to celebrate their love for each other, and to ask God’s blessing upon them.

2nd Voice: Through the ages, people on great journeys have stopped at important places, and at decisive moments, to build cairns at the roadside – to make the spot, to measure progress, and to leave reminders of their arrivals and leavings to which they and others can always return.

3rd Voice: Katie and Brandon’s relationship is a great journey that, in different ways, we have traveled and will continue to travel with them. Nothing will ever be the same: for Brandon and Katie; for us who know them; or for the community in which they will live and move. They are to be married.

President: God’s Word reveals to us that the very nature of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, along with all human experience, for we are made in the image of God, is to be understood as relationship. In the great stories of God’s people and in the coming of Jesus we are shown how God binds himself to us, in a relationship that we can only call love. Jesus himself gave us a new commandment, “that you love one another as I have loved you.”

2nd Voice: We grow through relationships, for they give human life its purpose and direction. This is why we reach out to others. Our live consists not only in being but in becoming. Loving relationships are always on the move. They cannot stand still. They are a journey.

3rd Voice: Let us mark this decisive moment in Katie and Brandon’s journey now, adding to the cairn the stones of our love, our support and our prayers for them as they make their promises.

President: Creating and Redeeming God,
It is your love which draws us together.
Through the love which we have for one another,
May we also grow in love for you.
Walking with Christ as our companion on the way,
May we come to share the joy
Which you have prepared for all who love you;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[New Zealand, p. 802, adapted]

The two other voices besides our pastor were members of each of our families. The only thing that I wish we had done that we didn’t have the foresight to think about was to actually have family members bring a stone and to build a cairn… then we could have taken those stones with us to our new home.

3. If you could invent ( or have invented) a ritual what is it for?

wow, I guess see above! Something else that we kind of invented was at my grandpa’s funeral. He was a farmer and was always outside in the fields or in his gardens. He died in October and we couldn’t not make the fall harvest part of his funeral. We brought it tall stalks of corn from the field and placed it around the casket. And each of the grandchildren picked a pumpkin and we placed them at the base of the casket – one for each of us. We also had a number of significant others among us grandchildren – three of us were engaged… and the “SO’s” picked out squashes to represent themselves. We created meaning and remembrance out of that moment… we still call our “so’s” squashes. And everytime we do so, we remember Deda’s funeral.

4. What do you think of making connections with neo-pagan / ancient festivals? Have you done this and how?

I haven’t really thought to do it explicitly, but I’m also very aware that Easter and Christmas fall when they do, in large part because of pagan/ancient festivals.

I think that there is a very fine line to balance when incorporating those traditions and rituals into your life. You don’t want to impose your own values on beliefs on something you don’t completely understand and in doing so possibly undo the meaning of the original ritual. There was an awful lot of imperialism and conquest involved in our original appropriation of some rituals.

But at the same time, we always bring to any rituals we encounter our own meaning. We adapt the rituals we encounter to fit our lives and our circumstances. And so if we encounter a new ritual, I think the best thing is to learn as much as you can about it and practice it with (if you feel that is appropriate and not denying the God you follow) others who know it well, and then make it your own.

5. Celebrating is important, what and where would your ideal celebration be?

In my back yard with good friends and family… with a roaring fire =) Conversation, laughter, music, some wine and some good food off of the grill.

FF: Bucket List

Posted on April 24, 20092 Comments

From Rev Gals: Do you have a “Bucket List”? In other words, from the movie of
the same name, five things you want to see, do, accomplish, etc. before you kick
the bucket?

I actually don’t have a “bucket list”! I have a friend who I know has all of these lists of things that she wants to accomplish in her lifetime, but I have never ever sat down to make a list of those kind of hopes and dreams. I am actually having a really hard time coming up with a list, but here goes (these things are subject to change!)

visit the Czech Republic with my Babi.
Visit NYC and see a show on Broadway.
learn to play guitar ( I know… this is one I’m working on already – but it’s going to take me a while!) and lead worship at my church with the guitar.
plant and grow all of my fruits and veggies for a year in my own garden.
be a mom. (we are hoping to have two kids, but right now my hubby’s totally not ready for them)

knock-knock

Posted on April 23, 2009Leave a comment

I have posted on here many times that home visitation is not my strength. And if I’m to be honest with myself, even though it is the number one priority of my PPR, it’s not as high as it should be when I sit down and schedule myself for the week.

And reason #1 – I’m a huge introvert. We’ve been there and talked about this before.

These past two weeks, two very active people in the congregation fell (at different times) and have required surgery. And one of these people in particular is the woman who does SO much behind the scenes that no one even thinks about, until she wasn’t there. My own grandma (Babi) was also having her knee replaced.

My own ability to visit them was compromised by the fact that I was at School for Ministry and then came home with the crud… but I discovered/remembered some amazing things about my congregation and my ministry in the meantime.

1) Yes, the PPR puts visitation as my number one priority, but they also have it as the main priority of the congregation.

2) The people in my church know how to look after one another. They have made countless visits and delivered countless meals without being asked and simply because that’s what they do.

3) At SFM, some colleagues helped me remember that my calling/vocation gives me permission that no one else has to “intrude” on people’s lives – that if the congregation has made that a priority, they are in many ways inviting me to know things others don’t know and to see them in vulnerable situations.

4) sitting for 2 hours in a waiting room with someone – even if you have nothing to say – is rewarding ministry.

5) I have never lived in a community or family where people stopped by to visit if you were sick. Living in the country, we weren’t that neighborly – at least as kids. There were regularly scheduled Sunday evening visits to my great grandparent’s house, and we always came and went from Babi’s, but I never learned the art of “dropping in”

6) I was blessed to sit with my Babi for well over four hours in the hospital. I didn’t want to leave in part because it was good to catch up and spend that time with her, but also because I didn’t want to leave her there alone.

7) I really don’t want to leave my church family “alone” either. It is part of my calling to drop in and help them to know that they aren’t alone – that we are thinking about them and that God loves them.

8) everytime… and i have to keep reminding myself of this… everytime I “drop in” I am blessed.