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What season do you inhabit?

Posted on July 6, 2015Leave a comment

Today in my organic ministry class, we were invited by Diane Glass to notice what season best describes our hearts, our relationships, our work.

It is one thing to notice the physical and environmental season that surrounds you… even on a cool and muggy July day. But I had never considered the seasons as a metaphor for my internal life before.

Personally, while I do not feel like I am coming out of a winter time, I do sense the awakening and longing of spring.

I am sensitive to the new life all around me: new babies and expecting friends.

I have the sense in my marriage during this time of renewal of a clean slate, a fresh start, and of nurturing a different way of being with one another.

Even our home, which has been lived in for a year now, is finally ready for some projects that feel like they have potential. We are preparing to finally put up curtains, refinishing some cabinets, deciding what kind of a space and environment we want to create. Outside, I’m doing clearing work and imagining a different sort of landscape and discovering what might be showing up.

So, how do I honor this “springtime” ?

Like with the crocus blooming, I can take delight in these signs of spring.

I can be curious about what I am discovering and learning, open to possibility, listening more carefully.

I can intentionally decide what to nurture and what to pull; where I want to really invest my time and energy.

And I can, like every farmer in the spring, test the waters, throw out possibilities, be flexible, expectant and hopeful that what is beginning will eventually bear fruit.

Intersections and the Body of Christ

Posted on June 28, 20152 Comments

Sometimes it is better if I keep my mouth shut.

The world doesn’t always need to know what I think.

And frankly, most of the time I can glimpse only one piece of the complicated fabric we call life.

I have one, limited perspective to share.

So instead, here are a few of the voices that have been challenging me this week:

Bree Newsome’s statement re: taking down the flag in South Carolina.

from @NineDaves – the reminder that you can get married in the morning, and be fired before the end of the day in 32 states.

“While We Were” by Marilyn Thornton

Isn’t crazy how literally every company is involved in the #LoveWins movement but we had to search to find people saying #BlackLivesMatter ?

— Susie Carmichael (@ms_allen5) June 28, 2015

Her remarks come a day after 35 members of Congress signed a letter that was sent to Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson requesting the released of LGBTQ individuals from detention centers and placing them under alternative supervision pending their immigration cases. The letter cites the Bureau of Justice Statistics which found that while transgendered women make 1% of detainees, they account for 20% of sexual abuse assaults while under custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

– Wendy Carrillo, firstlook.org , writing about Jennicet Gutiérrez, the undocumented trans woman who interrupted President Obama’s remarks during LGBT Pride Month

There is this term: intersectionality.

It describes how systems of oppression and discrimination are intertwined. You can’t talk about LGBT rights without also recognizing how gender and race interact. It is a term lifted by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 that explores how “various biological, social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, religion, caste, species and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to system injustice and social inequality.” (Wikipedia)

My life intersects with the struggles of others in some ways, but in many ways, I simply do not know or see the systems of injustice others face. I fully admit that I am limited in my knowledge of the sins we perpetuate against one another.

And while the world is full of injustices that need to be called out and named and repented of, these past ten days have brought multiple intersections into the public conversation in a big way.

I need other voices to call me out and help me understand a reality that is beyond myself.

I need to be quiet and listen.

I need to let voices that are not like mine speak.

I think that is part of being the Body of Christ.

Acknowledging I am just a foot.

Paying attention to what the hand and the ear have to teach me.

It must be exhausting to continuously be calling out to feet like me, “Hey! Pay attention to this, too!”

It is the reason we need specific and defined hashtags like #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivesmatter.

Because while it should be, it isn’t obvious and white cis-gendered folks like me assume far too much when we lump everything together and pretend it isn’t an intersecting, complicated mess.

Forgive me for too often putting my foot in my mouth.

Forgive me for perpetuating systemic oppression.

Forgive me for not understanding you.

Forgiveness requires repentance. A commitment to live differently.

And one way for me to begin is to not just listen to fingers and appendixes and hair when they are thrust into the spotlight or have to yell to get my attention, but to actively seek out those parts of this vast and diverse Body of Christ that are not like me… to honor them, to celebrate them, to support them.

Praying for the Church

Posted on June 24, 2015Leave a comment

One of the practices I have incorporated into my renewal leave is to use Bishop Job’s, A Guide to Prayer, each morning.

I have taken to setting up office on our back porch in the cool mornings where I can look out on the garden, feel the cool breeze, and breathe in the air.

I have gone through the devotions like normal, but when I get to the section where I pray for the church, for others, and for myself, I pull out a stack of postcards and labels and stamps, and I pray for the people of Immanuel UMC.

Each day, I pray for between 10 and 20 families in our church.

I pray for them by name.

I pray for their health and struggles, their joys and the people they love.

To be honest, I don’t know every name on the list. Some are people who remain members but have been disconnected from our community. Some are people who live far away but have maintained their membership. Most are faces I see in worship every Sunday.

No matter who they are or how well I know them, I know God knows their lives and I lift them each up in God’s hands.

In part, the idea came from receiving a notecard from two different people at Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Their pastor, Adam Hamilton, came to our annual conference as a guest speaker and his congregation lifted up the churches and pastors of Iowa in preparation for his arrival.

It was moving to get that card in the mail. To know that someone out there was praying for me and my ministry that day. I began to wonder how I might incorporate that personal prayer outreach within my own ministry and this is one way I am beginning this practice.

When I return, I am thinking about how to do this on a weekly basis – to connect via calls or postcards with the folks in my church and let them know that whatever is going on in their lives, I’m praying for them.

2 days, 3 houses, 7 niblings

Posted on June 22, 2015Leave a comment

This weekend, we made a road trip to spend some time with family. Since we have moved, it has been harder to make a quick trip over to see our parents or siblings and the kids.

One of my primary goals during renewal leave was to spend more time with family and to re-establish patterns for seeing and communicating with them. As I shared with my congregation when we announced the leave:

this is a time to enjoy the simple beauty of spending time with those I have been called to love.

I do believe that our families are part of our calling. You almost never got to choose who they were. Some of them were around long before you and some have come into your lives as you have grown and changed. But each one of them are part of your responsibility to care, to teach, to listen, to play, to love.

Since my husband and I are child-free, I have in particular embraced the role of aunt to my niblings. I love their little footsteps pattering towards the door as we walk in to get hugs. I love the sloppy messes. I love the silly things they say and their wild imaginations. And as I have watched them grow… including the one who now towers over my head… I have loved to see how kind and responsible they are and to hear all about the things that they now love.

A dear friend, who is also a child-free aunt, posted this to my facebook wall the other day and it made me tear up. I do love my niblings. And this weekend, I got to be that aunt. I loved their snotty faces and their tears and their shrieks of joy. I loved hanging out on the floor and putting together legos with them. I loved writing silly stories with them. I loved the cuddles. I loved teaching them something new. I loved listening to what is going on in their world. And, as a pastor, I also love that I can bring the gifts of my work into their lives and can wrestle with questions and be a part of blessing them… literally!

That is what the picture above is… a celebration of new life as we blessed my newest nibbling. We gathered around him and prayed for the life God has in store for him and for his parents and grandparents as they all love and care for him.

But I also love my brothers and sisters and if an ounce of what I can do and share with and for them makes their lives any easier, that brings me great joy, too.

Alternatives to Herbicide

Posted on June 18, 20151 Comment

I always through there were two options when it came to weeds.

1) you could spray chemicals all over them and hope they die… or use more natural chemical reactions like vinegar and hot water to cause them to wither.

2) you could get out there with a hoe, like my deda (grandpa) always did, and take them out by hand.

This year, I’m taking a course on organic ministry at a farm near Norwalk. We spend roughly half the day in conversation and reflection, have some personal retreat time, and do some work in the gardens themselves.

So far, the thing I have learned that has stuck with me the most is that there are other options when it comes to weeds.

Weeds thrive, you see, because the soil conditions promote their growth. And the weeds themselves tell you what the soil needs in order to be more healthy OR what type of plans you should be planting there instead.

Stinging nettle can indicate that the soil is acidic… so maybe you want to plant hydrangeas or blueberries there. Or, you could work to improve the soil conditions by adding dolomitic limestone and making the soil more neutral.

Chicory or mustard weeds are a sign that the ground is hard and too compacted. You can break up the soil by planting sweet clover that will help break up the soil and replenish nitrogen. Brassica crops (like broccoli and cabbages) also will flourish under these conditions.

The list goes on and on.

I was spending time with a group of clergy colleagues this week and we were talking about difficult people in our churches. People who take up a lot of time or who talk too much in meetings, or are always complaining about something. We all have them in our churches, and if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes WE are that person.

Our tendency is to see these people as weeds. We wish they weren’t there. We’d like to pull them up by their roots or change them.

But what if, instead, we stopped and asked what were the conditions that allowed their behaviors to flourish?

What if someone talks too much in a meeting because we haven’t created space for other voices to be heard?

What if someone is constantly complaining because there is something else going on in their life and it is a sign of a pastoral care need?

What if that person who always takes up too much of our time is a sign of our lack of good, healthy boundaries?

And what if instead of focusing so much of our worry on the weeds, we instead worked to strength and plant things that we want to flourish in that space?

What if we shifted the meeting format to have more small group conversation time?

What if we made a policy to only accept a complaint if there was a constructive response along with it, or a commitment to volunteer to be part of the change?

What if we nurtured a community of care with trained lay folks who helped with congregational care instead of trying to do it all on our own.

All of a sudden, our lives are not consumed with stamping out weeds, but with promoting growth and health and vitality in our gardens and in our churches.

Ever creeping, creeping charlie

Posted on June 17, 2015Leave a comment

Creeping Charlie was already flourishing in our backyard when we moved in last summer. We had been working on hand pulling some of it and forgot to apply a herbicide on it last fall when it would have been a good time to do so.

So this spring, when we worked to till the southern portion of the lawn to make a garden, I knew I really needed to get down on my hands and knees and work on pulling out the Creeping Charlie before the machine ripped it all to bits and I ended up spreading the annoying groundcover.

For the most part, that helped. One good afternoon of pulling cleared out that space and made it a mostly acceptable spot to till and garden.

But these last few days, as I have had time to spend in the garden weeding, it is all over the place.

Not the big swaths of it like before, but little tiny clusters here and there.

Trying to come back.

Trying to grow and spread.

Trying…

In our spiritual lives and in our ministries, there are things we want to get rid of or stop doing as well. Bad habits. Old priorities. Outdated methods.

Just like the Creeping Charlie was once touted as a excellent groundcover with its pretty blue flowers, these things might have had their time and place. Or they might have always been unwelcome in our lives and in our churches.

Either way, when you try to change something and go in a different direction, there are bits and pieces of the past that keep coming back.

A change in worship styles that keeps being invaded with requests to sing the old hymns.

Deciding to offer only healthy snacks after worship until someone brings donuts, again.

Setting aside time for devotions that keeps getting eaten away at by the kids waking up earlier.

Trying to quit complaining (gossiping, smoking, you name it) but continuing to hang out with people who do.

This summer, I’m learning persistence and patience in the garden. Keep at it. Expect growth of those things you tried to set aside. Take a deep breath and just keep pulling it back out. Calmly. Consistently.

Attracting Butterflies

Posted on June 16, 2015Leave a comment

This morning as I sat on the back porch, drinking a cup of coffee, I found a white butterfly flitting around.

It is the first one I have had a chance to notice since we moved in. Maybe they have been here before and I just hadn’t stopped long enough to see. Maybe our butterfly garden is actually working.

This spring I planted a grouping of perennials in the back yard designed to attract butterflies. We have milkweed and dill, bee balm and lavender, coreopsis, and more. Some of the plants have already been eaten by the rabbits (ugh, they eat everything!), but some are growing slowly but surely.

Of course, seeing as how it is probably a cabbage white butterfly, it might also have been attracted to the vegetables in the garden.

The whole business of attracting, whether it is bees, butterflies, or people is tricky.

First, you need to figure out what kind of creatures you want to attract. I have had in the back of my mind monarchs the entire time we have been planting our garden. I know how rare they are and how much they need habitat. So, some of our plantings are intentionally focused on monarchs. That doesn’t mean other butterflies, like the cabbage white won’t show up.

And when they do, you need to adapt to welcome them as well. The cabbage white looks beautiful, but it is also a pest in the garden because the larvae eat the leaves of many plants in the garden. I took a chance and planted some cabbage and cauliflower this year, but it died before the butterflies emerged. I wonder what would happen if I planted more… not in the vegetables, but in the butterfly garden… not to be eaten by me, but by those very creatures I would love to make a home here.

When newcomers enter our church, they bring gifts and challenges and opportunities. They cause us to rethink our priorities. If we want to build relationships with them and keep them around, we need to ask what we might need to let go of and sacrifice to help create home for them, too, in our midst. What needs to be transformed or moved to make space?

Not only do you need to have the foresight to identify what it is they want, but you have to have growth that will keep them coming back.

At first, I had a beautiful bee balm that was blossoming in purple. But the rabbits nibbled away at the stalk until its no more. The coneflowers and liatris have yet to blossom, so there is very little color right now in the garden.

I wonder how that relates to our efforts to attract guests to our church with something that catches their attention… yet whatever was new becomes sidelined by the other work of the church. If we are going to change and invest in truly reaching new people, we have to continue to nurture and sustain those things that brought them in the first place.

Plural Pronouns and Prayers

Posted on June 14, 2015Leave a comment

Yesterday, our family was boating on the Cedar River and we pulled into this little cove we like to visit. Often, in the summer, it is full of people, but since it was cloudy and cool with sprinkles here and there it was calm and peaceful.

Another boat pulled up with two little girls inside… twins, five years old.

They hopped on the shore to play in the sand, but that water was just too tempting.

First their toes dipped in.

Then the ankles.

And then there were squeals as they ran back to the safety of the sand.

After a few minutes of this back and forth, they held hands and jumped in together.

They reminded me of mornings at my grandparent’s lake house.

We’d start out the day by putting on our swimming suits and after a rushed breakfast we’d run down to the dock and dip our toes in.

But the water was so cold that early in the morning none of us was ever brave enough to do it on our own.

The only way we got wet before noon is if someone pushed us in…

or if we grabbed someone else’s hand and we did it together.

Today, we, too, are diving in.

We are diving into a series on prayer.

For some of us, prayer is as scary and daunting as the ice cold waters of a lake. We like to dip our toes in, but we run back to the safety of the shore as quickly as possible.

Others of us are more familiar with prayer. We make prayer part of our daily lives like swimming laps at the pool.

But here is what I have learned about prayer… just as I have learned about diving into the waters… it is always easier to do with a friend.

And, as Jesus taught us in the most basic prayer, it is something we are supposed to do together.

In fact, when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he taught them a very simple prayer without any singular personal pronouns.

Let’s say that prayer together… Our Father…

Not once we do we say, “I” or “me”… it is always “us” or “we.”

And that tells us a little bit something about our faith and our life of prayer together.

OUR FATHER: It’s not my father… it’s our father… we are brothers and sisters

GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY BREAD: our faith is based around the table… we pray for daily doses of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness, but we also practically pray for real food and sustenance to be given to our brothers and sisters. And we become Jesus to one another when we provide food and assistance through our food pantry and when we pray for hunger relief.

FORGIVE US OUR SINS: not just personal sins, but corporate sins: economic justice, our greed, ignoring the cries of the needy. In Iowa, there are 117,000 children living in poverty. And it is a sin that we have allowed that to be a reality. God calls us to respond to the needs of others and when we turn our backs, we need to confess that sin and act.

As the United Methodist Church of Iowa, we are committing ourselves to respond to poverty and reach out to help support and educate our young people. Our Bishop has challenged us to donate 500,000 books to children in poverty and to commit to 1,000,000 hours of reading to children who are in the most need in our communities. And we will be talking about ways to engage in this work in the coming weeks and months. Together, we can help change a child’s story. Read More Here

AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO SIN AGAINST US: read the story of Farmer’s Chapel UMC, forgiving their arsonist and inviting them to worship (pages 20-22)

SAVE US… DELIVER US… We are in this together. We pray for one another, we hold each other accountable. We watch each other’s back. Like recovery groups that provide partners and support, a place where you always know there is someone else on this journey with you, we are that for one another.

Matthew 18: When two or three are gathered, I am there…

Turn to your neighbors. As two or three people, I want to invite you right here and right now to pray for one another. You don’t have to have a specific prayer request in mind, but turn to each other in prayer and lift up those who are closest to you right now…

Amen.