Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and in many ways, I will just being doing the things I usually do - walking with a friend, playing pickleball, maybe a cookout with family.  I don't know.

But I am aware of the meaning and importance of this day.  Yesterday in church I did the pastoral prayer and mentioned prayers for those who are serving, for those who gave their lives, for those who were wounded and came back changed, for the families that support and are affected by war.  

A couple of years ago I thought about the fact that my Uncle Harry - who I never met - died in World War 2 and I wondered what changed in my mother losing her only brother.  What changed in my Grandmother, losing her only son.  I am aware of several men who came home from Vietnam changed and men and women who have been greatly affected by their time in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Those who serve are so easily forgotten and those years can have an impact - not just on their lives - but on their families.  I know I live in an ideal world - believing that somehow the values of Christ could actually work in this broken world.  Regardless, I pray for the peacemakers and for the work of diplomats who seek to help us to avoid the perils of war.  

So on this memorial day I pray for all who have been affected by war and pray for a time when we really can live in peace.

 

• Who We Are
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
 
• Connect
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
  • 
    
 
• Digital
  • 
    
  • 
    
 
• 519stories
 
• On Demand
 
• Contact Us

When the World Spins Crazy
By Walter Brueggemann

When the world spins crazy,
spins wild and out of control
spins toward rage and hate and violence,
spins beyond our wisdom and nearly beyond our faith,
When the world spins in chaos as it does now among us…

We are glad for sobering roots that provide ballast in the storm.
So we thank you for our rootage in communities of faith,
for our many fathers and mothers who have believed and trusted as firm witnesses to us,
for their many stories of wonder, awe, and healing.

We are glad this night in this company
for the rootage of the text,
for the daring testimony,
for its deep commands,
for its exuberant tales.
Because we know that as we probe deep into this text…
clear to its bottom,
we will find you hiding there,
we will find you showing yourself there,
speaking as you do,
governing,
healing,
judging.

And when we meet you hiddenly,
we find the spin not so unnerving,
because from you the world again has a chance
for life and sense and wholeness.
We pray midst the spinning, not yet unnerved,
but waiting and watching and listening,
for you are the truth that contains all our spin. Amen.

From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann. Prayed at the Lay School of the Pentateuch on September 17, 2001.

It is finished

I begin this day listening to the "Pray as you Go" app and spend time with Mary at the cross watching her son die.  She stands with her sister and a friend and the disciple John.  Jesus looks at her with love and tells her that John will be her son and she will be his mother.  He takes her into his home.  And when he dies, he says - It is Finished.

It takes me back to the death of Chuck and what I think is - it is finished.  The life that we knew before together and now there will be a new life.  A different life without him.  And so for Mary, she will move into a new home and be cared for and part of a new family.

So, I start this day, this week, thinking about transitions.  It is May and soon 2 of my grandchildren will be graduating from high school and in the fall they will move away and start college.  The life that they knew is over and a new life awaits.

All of this is easy to write but hard to live out. I have been reading slowly Pema Chodrens book Welcoming the Unwelcome which is about being open to the difficult feelings that are part of life.  It is about "wholehearted living in a brokenhearted world."  Our world is brokenhearted because of these transitions - there is a part of us that wants everything to stay the same and it will not.  People will die and these kids - like it or not - will grow up and move away.

Right now we are in the midst of a lot of the fun parts of the transitions - proms and graduation parties and planning for college life.  It is exciting to see all of it happening.  At the same time - there will be some adjustments on both sides - the parents empty nest and the girls getting used to living with others in a new place.  

What is for sure is that all of this is cushioned by gift of love.  Jesus is the example of love incarnate and at the end gave his mother this gift of a new life without him.  I was blessed to be loved and to love Chuck deeply and they makes an enormous difference in going on without him.  My daughters have loved their daughters intensely over the years - enough to let them grow and to let them go on without them. 

With all of this, it is good to know that God is near and providing peace for all of us as we try to let go and live into the new life.  Here is a prayer by Ted Loder

Gentle me,
Holy One,
into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go
of heavy expectancies,
of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,
and open to the mystery.
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy
that is You.

The Blessing of a Pause

I have just returned from a week in Phoenix Arizona that I spent with my friend Susan and her family.  Susan and I were college roommates over 50 years ago and continue to be close friends even from a geographical distance all these years.  I have spent at least a week with her every year for over twenty years and it was disturbed by the pandemic. But last week I was able to fly there and just "hang out."

What I recognize this morning is that there is a gift to just going away from my "regular life."  It is as if I am dropped into someone else's life for a week and then return to myself. The flight over the United States is a transition and I come back to  familiar tasks of home that reorient me to my life.  I am picked up by a friend, have pizza with a daughter, do my week's laundry, pay a couple of bills, greet my dog Ginger and sleep in my own bed. 

Now this morning I come to this computer to reflect on the gift of a pause.  I feel replenished and refreshed and ready to continue living into my own  "wild and precious life."  (referencing Mary Oliver's poem The Summer Day).   Especially since retirement, I have had this understanding that we each essentially construct our own lives with the decisions that we make about how we spend time and money and attention.  The pandemic has been a bit of a pause as well.  Because of it I stopped doing some volunteer work and other activities like weekly movie viewing.  Now that we are coming out of it, I find myself wondering what to bring back and what to eliminate from my life.

The gift of the pause of this last week has been to return home in appreciation for what remains in my life.  I am blessed with family that lives nearby and friends who are supportive and work in the church and through spiritual direction that is very fulfilling.  I am also blessed with living in a home that feels like a womb and a safe place for me for  now.  I hold everything lightly as I know that health can change everything, but in this moment it is good to be home and present to my life's blessings.

Here is that wonderful poem by Mary Oliver.  

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?