Wow, a week with 70 girls who just graduated from 5th and 6th grades. I thought it would be hard, but it was truly a joy.
I heard the laughter and singing of girls coming down a trail from an afternoon hike, their shouts in the pool, their laughter and singing in the meal hall, and in the assembly room after breakfast. The sound of their laughter was like music, the silly songs like joy bubbling over.
One night was set aside for open questions with the priest (me). Who wrote the bible? Who created God? Is God a person? Why do people commit suicide? What should I pray for when someone is sick? What happens when a person dies? Can you still go to heaven even when you do something really bad?
These are the basic questions of living, of being human, and they are being asked by girls who are 11 and 12. They are wrestling with their humanity and the ills of society, the grief and sadness in everyone's lives. I was heartened to hear their questions and tried my best to answer them openly and honestly. It was like theology 101!
It gave me hope that our children are not just stuck in front of TV and video games and the internet, but are questioning life and God and death. They are truly engaged, if they have been thinking about these things.
They liked the open question time very much and so did I. During the questions and answers they were very quiet and I could tell they really wanted to discuss these issues. I was glad I offered a forum for their thoughts, and was honored I could be part of their lives for this week.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Happy Gardening
Growing up on a farm in the fertile fields of Illinois, I am not very able to relate to the parable of the seeds today. The idea that there are wimpy growing conditions, with rocks and dry ground and shallow top soil is not in my experience.
Did you have to grow something in elementary school in a paper cup? I grew a corn stalk in a Mason glass jar once. It was scary the way it shot up and the roots immediately filled the jar with their tendrils. I also think of the times I have seen seeds take hold in the cracks in sidewalks, bricks and stone walls and grow entire trees where they were not intended. Kudzu also comes to mind as an out of control growth. So when Jesus talks about seeds hitting poor soil and dying, I have to think hard of somewhere dry and rocky, with shallow topsoil, somewhere not Kentucky for sure.
In fact, agricultural parables probably elude most of us in the 21st century—we are not agricultural people. We may have our gardens and lawns, but very few of us till a field, plant and harvest wheat every year. As agricultural parables go, however, this one is straightforward, and in the Matthew version, comes with its own interpretation. That seeds that die or that only grow a little are like people who do not heed the word of God, or heed it and do not let it sink into their souls. They are not serious about their faith, they do not nurture it: water it, weed it, tend to it in the way that provides growth for their souls and a relationship with the Divine.
If I were writing this parable for today, what images could we use to speak to people of the new millennium? What do we plant but allow to die? How do we not nurture? Is it like a child who asks for a puppy, and when it arrives, plays with it for a while, then loses interest? The parents then end up with its care and feeding. This is a good parable for us. Our parent God reaches out to us, we think we are ready for mature faith so we initially respond enthusiastically. Then it becomes hard—we believe it involves reading and studying scripture, working on relationships with those who bug us, cultivating loving ways of being in the world, and having a right relationship with the earth and its creatures.
Being faithful, which is just responding to God’s love, does take mindfulness and a way of being in our skins that reminds us we are a gift from God, not a gift to God. That we really have to do nothing but respond to God’s love for us. That we have been created and loved just the way we are and don’t need to change the center of our very selves to be the recipient of this love.
But we tend to believe we must earn everything in this world, that we have to be good to be loved,
have to be perfect to receive divine attention,
have to be someone else who we think is more holy and worthy
and that sounds very hard. In truth, it is impossible!
So we try for a while, then learn to ignore God’s love for us, go to play with other toys that take less work. Toys that make us feel we are in charge of the world, not God. We get involved in working long hours for the promotion and job security, to make money, we work hard at being the best parent and having the best children, or being the best volunteer, the best housekeeper, to earn things and praise.
And that way of being is indeed very hard.
To not be in whole relationship with God because we are not accepting of the person God created us to be and just rest in the soil that God planted us in is not what God intended.
Tending to our needs by giving up our egos to God is not the way of the millennium—we feel we are not in control, that there is nothing we can do. But there is.
There is the very depth of prayer, the way we communicate with God and bring God into the decisions, the joy, the sorrows, the challenges of every day life. If our prayer life is strong, our relationship with God is strong.
Just like any other relationship, if we don’t have chances to talk to one another, the relationship will die. If God doesn’t become part of our lives through this communication, our relationship and our faith suffer. Episcopalians have an entire prayer book to help us with this task, but if you are only using it on Sundays, your relationship with God will not be what it could be.
Think about it—in any relationship where you communicate once a week, and then only in broad, general terms, and don’t share your inner most thoughts and feelings, that relationship is not going to be very deep. It’s like seeds sitting on top of the rocks, in very shallow soil, the love cannot grow in a hostile environment.
I am on Facebook, which is a social networking tool on the web, being used by more and more people. A former student of mine recently found me on Facebook and contacted me. It was wonderful to hear from her after 20 years. And I lost contact with the daughter of my good friend Patty after Patty died in 1997. This week I googled her daughter’s name and found where she worked and sent her a letter. It feels really warm and comforting to make connections with people you have lost.
If this is true for us humans, how much more so is it with God. When you make connections with God, through prayer and communicating with God in your daily life, how much more so does God rejoice that you have been found. That your relationship is healthy and growing. And that by your reaching out to touch the God who has been reaching out to you all along, you make yourself more available to the divine in all your relationships. You begin to see the blessedness of all those you come in contact with. The love in your life blossoms in the deep soil of God’s love and attention.
Your seeds are spread when you are born, and what kind of soil you give them is up to you. You can provide good loam or you can ignore them altogether and let them die. The seeds of God’s love for you will not totally perish however. They are there waiting for your attention, for you to respond to the lovingkindness of God. To bring God into your daily life, your work, your home, your family and all your relationships. Who doesn’t need more love?
Did you have to grow something in elementary school in a paper cup? I grew a corn stalk in a Mason glass jar once. It was scary the way it shot up and the roots immediately filled the jar with their tendrils. I also think of the times I have seen seeds take hold in the cracks in sidewalks, bricks and stone walls and grow entire trees where they were not intended. Kudzu also comes to mind as an out of control growth. So when Jesus talks about seeds hitting poor soil and dying, I have to think hard of somewhere dry and rocky, with shallow topsoil, somewhere not Kentucky for sure.
In fact, agricultural parables probably elude most of us in the 21st century—we are not agricultural people. We may have our gardens and lawns, but very few of us till a field, plant and harvest wheat every year. As agricultural parables go, however, this one is straightforward, and in the Matthew version, comes with its own interpretation. That seeds that die or that only grow a little are like people who do not heed the word of God, or heed it and do not let it sink into their souls. They are not serious about their faith, they do not nurture it: water it, weed it, tend to it in the way that provides growth for their souls and a relationship with the Divine.
If I were writing this parable for today, what images could we use to speak to people of the new millennium? What do we plant but allow to die? How do we not nurture? Is it like a child who asks for a puppy, and when it arrives, plays with it for a while, then loses interest? The parents then end up with its care and feeding. This is a good parable for us. Our parent God reaches out to us, we think we are ready for mature faith so we initially respond enthusiastically. Then it becomes hard—we believe it involves reading and studying scripture, working on relationships with those who bug us, cultivating loving ways of being in the world, and having a right relationship with the earth and its creatures.
Being faithful, which is just responding to God’s love, does take mindfulness and a way of being in our skins that reminds us we are a gift from God, not a gift to God. That we really have to do nothing but respond to God’s love for us. That we have been created and loved just the way we are and don’t need to change the center of our very selves to be the recipient of this love.
But we tend to believe we must earn everything in this world, that we have to be good to be loved,
have to be perfect to receive divine attention,
have to be someone else who we think is more holy and worthy
and that sounds very hard. In truth, it is impossible!
So we try for a while, then learn to ignore God’s love for us, go to play with other toys that take less work. Toys that make us feel we are in charge of the world, not God. We get involved in working long hours for the promotion and job security, to make money, we work hard at being the best parent and having the best children, or being the best volunteer, the best housekeeper, to earn things and praise.
And that way of being is indeed very hard.
To not be in whole relationship with God because we are not accepting of the person God created us to be and just rest in the soil that God planted us in is not what God intended.
Tending to our needs by giving up our egos to God is not the way of the millennium—we feel we are not in control, that there is nothing we can do. But there is.
There is the very depth of prayer, the way we communicate with God and bring God into the decisions, the joy, the sorrows, the challenges of every day life. If our prayer life is strong, our relationship with God is strong.
Just like any other relationship, if we don’t have chances to talk to one another, the relationship will die. If God doesn’t become part of our lives through this communication, our relationship and our faith suffer. Episcopalians have an entire prayer book to help us with this task, but if you are only using it on Sundays, your relationship with God will not be what it could be.
Think about it—in any relationship where you communicate once a week, and then only in broad, general terms, and don’t share your inner most thoughts and feelings, that relationship is not going to be very deep. It’s like seeds sitting on top of the rocks, in very shallow soil, the love cannot grow in a hostile environment.
I am on Facebook, which is a social networking tool on the web, being used by more and more people. A former student of mine recently found me on Facebook and contacted me. It was wonderful to hear from her after 20 years. And I lost contact with the daughter of my good friend Patty after Patty died in 1997. This week I googled her daughter’s name and found where she worked and sent her a letter. It feels really warm and comforting to make connections with people you have lost.
If this is true for us humans, how much more so is it with God. When you make connections with God, through prayer and communicating with God in your daily life, how much more so does God rejoice that you have been found. That your relationship is healthy and growing. And that by your reaching out to touch the God who has been reaching out to you all along, you make yourself more available to the divine in all your relationships. You begin to see the blessedness of all those you come in contact with. The love in your life blossoms in the deep soil of God’s love and attention.
Your seeds are spread when you are born, and what kind of soil you give them is up to you. You can provide good loam or you can ignore them altogether and let them die. The seeds of God’s love for you will not totally perish however. They are there waiting for your attention, for you to respond to the lovingkindness of God. To bring God into your daily life, your work, your home, your family and all your relationships. Who doesn’t need more love?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Rest for your souls
Proper 9 A
I had the opportunity to spend January term with a family in Germany to satisfy my language requirement in college, but could not pony up the cash to do it. My brother offered to lend me the money, and even so, I could not get my head around how I would ever be able to pay him back, given that I had no job prospects looming after graduation and wanted to go to graduate school. Now whenever I look back at that lost opportunity to live with a family from another culture, I kick myself. It was a wonderful chance to learn, to live in another country and make international friends that would have been fun and enlightening and expanded my world greatly. In my farm background no one in my family had ever done anything like that, so I know my lack of vision was a little based in lack of experience. I know better now, and during the years when I was a professor, then campus minister, I used to encourage young adults to take risks that I knew would expand their horizons.
Making connections with other people takes time. Getting to know others of a different culture is sometimes scary. I know that for me, I have lived in three different states, apart from my native Illinois and each time, I encountered different ways of speaking, different ethnic groups, different foods. In Rochester NY, I was a farm girl in the big city, surrounded by people of Italian descent and I met and became friends with my first Jewish friends. I learned to love chopped liver and had my first real bagels. In Ann Arbor, I went to Greek town and had wonderful middle Eastern foods, one of my professors brought baklava to our doctoral seminars, and I heard music from around the world at the University of Michigan. Here in Kentucky, I encountered more southern culture--cheese grits and barbecue. And until I could get the hang of the local accent, I once went to the car wash, not understanding what the man with a thick Eastern Kentucky accent was asking of me, I finally just agreed and ended up with musk scent in the car.
When we lived in the Chicago area, we also had access to wonderful food and music, including Mississippi Delta blues, of course Chicago style pizza, and many cultures who have immigrated there, including Mexican people and the biggest population of Polish people outside of Poland. Riding on the El there, you could hear a myriad different languages being spoken.
We hear Jesus say that his generation is like children in the marketplace who complain to each other--we played the flute for you and you would not dance, we wailed and you would not mourn. Trying to be connected, to have vision and take opportunities where they are given to be in relationships with others, to hear their flute and mourn with their grief, is a challenge that we don’t always live up to. But there is some good news too—after the attacks of September 11, 2001, many people have taken the opportunity to dialogue with Arab and Muslim people in interfaith listening. Unfortunately it took something very drastic to wake us up to the fact that as Americans we can become very insular in our cultural ideas. Even so, we have taken this opportunity to listen to the flute of another religious group and try to learn its melodies. We also began to understand the wailing of Muslin extremists who do these suicide missions, and how people in extreme poverty may view the richness of our country.
Right now my family is in the middle of the Mississippi floods—they can only get to work by going out of their way several miles to another bridge to Iowa, some have been laid off until the waters recede. Some have lost whole farms and this year’s crops. There is much suffering when floods arrive. The Episcopal church is listening to their grief, and has mobilized assistance—the bishop of Iowa has a video on Episcopal News Service that you can watch to see the devastation and learn how you can make connections with the people’s grief, hear their flute and dance in sympathy with them.
I believe that these connections among peoples, whether they live right here, in a couple states over, or across the hemisphere, are part of Jesus’ words to us to ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’
When we take another person’s burden, we dance with them, we mourn with them, we become light as feathers, our souls have been joined in a way they could not be any other way. When I went with a youth group from Chicago to the Gulf Coast to help with rebuilding two years ago, we worked on the trailer of a young single mother not much older than some in our youth group. She would come after work and help us, with her little four year old girl. Our youth played with her little girl and we got to know her and her hopes and dreams. She cried and we cried with her. We made a real connection and our souls were joined together in this short week we were there. We helped carry her burden for that week, and we became lighter, our souls found rest in the work we were doing. I believe that had we merely worked on houses without meeting people we were helping, it would have been a much emptier week. We would not have known the people we were helping, there would have been no human connection, just some physical labor in hot Mississippi.
To get to know anyone, really know them and understand their life, their sorrows, their joys, is to know their blessedness in God’s eyes.
It is a way to take on the yoke of Christ,
to hear the flute and learn another person’s dance,
and to find rest for your soul.
I had the opportunity to spend January term with a family in Germany to satisfy my language requirement in college, but could not pony up the cash to do it. My brother offered to lend me the money, and even so, I could not get my head around how I would ever be able to pay him back, given that I had no job prospects looming after graduation and wanted to go to graduate school. Now whenever I look back at that lost opportunity to live with a family from another culture, I kick myself. It was a wonderful chance to learn, to live in another country and make international friends that would have been fun and enlightening and expanded my world greatly. In my farm background no one in my family had ever done anything like that, so I know my lack of vision was a little based in lack of experience. I know better now, and during the years when I was a professor, then campus minister, I used to encourage young adults to take risks that I knew would expand their horizons.
Making connections with other people takes time. Getting to know others of a different culture is sometimes scary. I know that for me, I have lived in three different states, apart from my native Illinois and each time, I encountered different ways of speaking, different ethnic groups, different foods. In Rochester NY, I was a farm girl in the big city, surrounded by people of Italian descent and I met and became friends with my first Jewish friends. I learned to love chopped liver and had my first real bagels. In Ann Arbor, I went to Greek town and had wonderful middle Eastern foods, one of my professors brought baklava to our doctoral seminars, and I heard music from around the world at the University of Michigan. Here in Kentucky, I encountered more southern culture--cheese grits and barbecue. And until I could get the hang of the local accent, I once went to the car wash, not understanding what the man with a thick Eastern Kentucky accent was asking of me, I finally just agreed and ended up with musk scent in the car.
When we lived in the Chicago area, we also had access to wonderful food and music, including Mississippi Delta blues, of course Chicago style pizza, and many cultures who have immigrated there, including Mexican people and the biggest population of Polish people outside of Poland. Riding on the El there, you could hear a myriad different languages being spoken.
We hear Jesus say that his generation is like children in the marketplace who complain to each other--we played the flute for you and you would not dance, we wailed and you would not mourn. Trying to be connected, to have vision and take opportunities where they are given to be in relationships with others, to hear their flute and mourn with their grief, is a challenge that we don’t always live up to. But there is some good news too—after the attacks of September 11, 2001, many people have taken the opportunity to dialogue with Arab and Muslim people in interfaith listening. Unfortunately it took something very drastic to wake us up to the fact that as Americans we can become very insular in our cultural ideas. Even so, we have taken this opportunity to listen to the flute of another religious group and try to learn its melodies. We also began to understand the wailing of Muslin extremists who do these suicide missions, and how people in extreme poverty may view the richness of our country.
Right now my family is in the middle of the Mississippi floods—they can only get to work by going out of their way several miles to another bridge to Iowa, some have been laid off until the waters recede. Some have lost whole farms and this year’s crops. There is much suffering when floods arrive. The Episcopal church is listening to their grief, and has mobilized assistance—the bishop of Iowa has a video on Episcopal News Service that you can watch to see the devastation and learn how you can make connections with the people’s grief, hear their flute and dance in sympathy with them.
I believe that these connections among peoples, whether they live right here, in a couple states over, or across the hemisphere, are part of Jesus’ words to us to ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’
When we take another person’s burden, we dance with them, we mourn with them, we become light as feathers, our souls have been joined in a way they could not be any other way. When I went with a youth group from Chicago to the Gulf Coast to help with rebuilding two years ago, we worked on the trailer of a young single mother not much older than some in our youth group. She would come after work and help us, with her little four year old girl. Our youth played with her little girl and we got to know her and her hopes and dreams. She cried and we cried with her. We made a real connection and our souls were joined together in this short week we were there. We helped carry her burden for that week, and we became lighter, our souls found rest in the work we were doing. I believe that had we merely worked on houses without meeting people we were helping, it would have been a much emptier week. We would not have known the people we were helping, there would have been no human connection, just some physical labor in hot Mississippi.
To get to know anyone, really know them and understand their life, their sorrows, their joys, is to know their blessedness in God’s eyes.
It is a way to take on the yoke of Christ,
to hear the flute and learn another person’s dance,
and to find rest for your soul.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Back to the Blog
Its been a few weeks. Many things have happened, but the most profound has been the loss of a family member in very rapid decline.
The shock of losing someone is still with me. Just yesterday I was able to write in my journal again, to feel up to a long walk in the sun, to breathe deeply. Grief is not handled well in our society, not given its due. We don't seem to want to acknowledge the emotional toll, we want everyone to buck up and move on.
I was watching a World War II era movie last night about the home front. One of the main characters, the grandson and fiance' of two other characters, dies in the war. The grandfather wears a black arm band in memory of his grandson. Another minor character loses his son and also wears a black arm band.
This was a good idea--the arm band signified that the person was still in the grieving process. Others could be signaled to respect them and to know that they perhaps were not going to "be themselves" during this time. It was helpful, I am sure, to all involved to have this sign of grief given publicly.
I have no black arm band, only dark circles under my eyes. I have no signal to give total strangers of my not being totally myself these past weeks. I have only a far away look, a tear that sneaks up on me unannounced. There are no signs alerting others that I am in a process of intense emotional energy. So, in some ways I feel I owe it to the world to hide my grief from them. Not to bother them with my tears and sadness, with my stares of disbelief, even my rants of anger at the person who didn't take as good care of himself as we, his family, thought he could have: Could he have survived this illness if he had taken precautions?
Some of the family are mad at God. I don't know what God had to do with his death. I ask questions of God, and am mad that our family seems to have had more than its share of death and grief. What is any family's share of death and grief, anyway? I can't answer that. It may not even be a question, it may only be a rant of anger and holds no real meaning. It is real nonetheless.
So, I am back with this blog. I ask your prayers--again. This time for me and my family as we enter this journey of grief and loss, and learn to live without our dear loved one. Not for just a year, but for the rest of our lives, we enter this grief. Every day the loved one is gone, we remember...
The shock of losing someone is still with me. Just yesterday I was able to write in my journal again, to feel up to a long walk in the sun, to breathe deeply. Grief is not handled well in our society, not given its due. We don't seem to want to acknowledge the emotional toll, we want everyone to buck up and move on.
I was watching a World War II era movie last night about the home front. One of the main characters, the grandson and fiance' of two other characters, dies in the war. The grandfather wears a black arm band in memory of his grandson. Another minor character loses his son and also wears a black arm band.
This was a good idea--the arm band signified that the person was still in the grieving process. Others could be signaled to respect them and to know that they perhaps were not going to "be themselves" during this time. It was helpful, I am sure, to all involved to have this sign of grief given publicly.
I have no black arm band, only dark circles under my eyes. I have no signal to give total strangers of my not being totally myself these past weeks. I have only a far away look, a tear that sneaks up on me unannounced. There are no signs alerting others that I am in a process of intense emotional energy. So, in some ways I feel I owe it to the world to hide my grief from them. Not to bother them with my tears and sadness, with my stares of disbelief, even my rants of anger at the person who didn't take as good care of himself as we, his family, thought he could have: Could he have survived this illness if he had taken precautions?
Some of the family are mad at God. I don't know what God had to do with his death. I ask questions of God, and am mad that our family seems to have had more than its share of death and grief. What is any family's share of death and grief, anyway? I can't answer that. It may not even be a question, it may only be a rant of anger and holds no real meaning. It is real nonetheless.
So, I am back with this blog. I ask your prayers--again. This time for me and my family as we enter this journey of grief and loss, and learn to live without our dear loved one. Not for just a year, but for the rest of our lives, we enter this grief. Every day the loved one is gone, we remember...
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