Endings and Beginnings

Yesterday we announced to the church via email that I will be leaving my position at Gender Road at the end of June.  I made this decision two months ago and am happy in many ways that the news is OUT that I am leaving.  I shared it with my wonderful Bible study yesterday and there were the reactions that I will be missed and that they understand.  What I have realized is that I am tired of working weekends after thirty years in ministry. 

So, I am getting ready for this ending again - retiring a second time.  When I retired from full time ministry seven years ago I felt like I was walking off a cliff because I did not know what the future would bring.  It took a while to put together my post retirement life as I found myself preaching around the state, doing volunteer work and continuing as a spiritual director.   Then, after Chuck died, there were even more hours to fill and I found pickleball and the job at Gender Road. 

Now I will be ending this work and beginning again with something new.  Now I am not sure in what ways I will fill the hours that I currently spend working.  Maybe more reading, exercise, writing?  I really do not know.  I know about the ending - I just don't really know what the beginning will be.

.

What I have been told by those closest to me recently is that I am "too busy."  I am taking that to heart . 

I believe I am creating space for a new thing that God has for me to do.  And that space necessitates emptiness for a while.

Here is a prayer that seems helpful from Maxine Shonk

May God come to fill your EMPTINESS and the poaces that yearn for meaning and value.

May you open your heart to the God who created you with unconditional love and 

breathed divine purpose into your being, filling you with treasure beyond measure.

May you find this gifting God waiting and yearning for you in your empty places.

May the God of FULLNESS bless you.

Baptism

Yesterday I preached in Paulding Ohio at First Christian Church.  I was supposed to preach this coming Sunday as the regional elder for the district.  They do not have a minister and are filling the pulpit every week as they can.  Paulding is a 3 hour drive for me and so I will go once - but not more than that.

Allen Harris, our regional minister, was supposed to preach yesterday and do 5 baptisms and he has covid.  So at the last minute came to the rescue.  It was a real blessing to me.

It has been a long time since I have done a baptism.  As Disciples of Christ, we baptize by immersion which has its own challenges and blessings. The challenge is in the details.  When I got there, they assured me that they had waders.  I have never used waders and I did not yesterday - instead I wear a bathing suit under my robe and walk in the water in bare feet.  Hoping it will not be too cold.  Yesterday the water was chilly but manageable.  

Usually, when I was the pastor of the church, I had taught the kids in pastor's class over six to eight weeks and really gotten to know them.  We would meet weekly and often have an overnight.  I still remember having two girls spend the night at my home as part of pastor's class.  We really get to know each other.

This time I was walking in cold and did not know the kids.  So, I learned their names and had a little bit of a conversation with them before the service.  What I wanted was for them to feel confident in the process and not afraid of anything.  They walk down the steps gingerly - sometimes holding the railing.  I am in the water with my hand outstretched and a welcoming smile on my face.  I whisper to them to bend their knees and cross their arms and some of them hold their noses.  I say the words - "I baptize you in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit for the gift of the holy spirit and remission of sins"  or something like that.  I put them under and when they come up, I hug them and tell them that Jesus loves them or something like that.  It is all very fast and at the same time very intimate. The challenges are - my forgetting what I am saying, me falling, them falling, me not being able to get them under.  Just things like that.

The blessings are to be in that moment with them.  Not knowing what it is like for them, but trusting that this may be an experience they remember for the rest of their lives.  I sit here and am grateful for all the people I have been with in a baptistry - those I have hugged and told them how precious they are to God.  (and to me and to the church).  The hope is that these words may remain within them somehow so that when they go through times of self doubt and even self loathing, they may remember.  

Believer's baptism is a commitment made by the person to follow Jesus and contains within it the promise that Jesus loves them, forgives them, and gives them God's spirit.  I think it is a sacrament - meaning that God is in it in ways we cannot see or control but trust.  Besides everything else - it symbolizes the NEW LIFE that God offers us as we - again - die to ourselves - and open ourselves to the Holy one. 

I like this quote from Pope Francis: We are called to live our baptism every day, as new creatures, 

clothed in Christ."

May the God of NEWNESS be with you,

freshening you with renewed energy and awakening you with new perspectives on old vision.

May you be free enough to let go of what is stale and used up 

and to embrace what is new and full of promise.

May God's grace be with you as you wrap yourself in what is right, if unfamiliar.

May you look upon your life and your ministry with the eyes of God,

ever new and ever transforming.

May the God of NEWNESS be with you.

Amen

Waiting

For healing. 

Last Wednesday I had a basel cell carcinoma removed which produced a hole in my face.  Not large - between my nose and cheek.  Thursday I had stitches put in.  And now I am waiting for them to be removed in 10 days and for the wound to heal.  I check it several times a day because I want to see something happening!  The good news is that it is healing.  The swelling is mostly gone and so is the redness on my face.  There is progress.

Right now the decision is - to bandage or not.  Part of it is the question - do people want to see your wounds?  At what point is it "in good taste" to share them?  Does having them "air out" help to make them heal faster?

I write this and wonder about the emotional wounds that we carry.  Many of them are covered up and no one knows about them.  And if they are not acknowledged, it is possible that they will continue to fester and do damage.

I am part of a group called "The Readers and Writers Salon" which has been a real gift to me for over three years.  Over these years I have written quite a bit about grief and loss and the wounds of daily life.  It has been a blessing - not only to put it down on paper in words - but to speak those words to trusted friends who have become closer over the years because of this sharing.  

I think all of us are waiting for some kind of healing.  And the gift is trusting in the presence of our healing God and finding ways to "air out" the wound as it become smaller and over time healed.

 Whenever something happens - either physically through sickness or emotionally through life hurts - there is a part of me that thinks it will never get better.  Will I be disfigured from these stitches?  Will I ever be happy after the death of my husband?  Will I ever feel better after I have covid?  I have thought all these things.  That is, a part of me has thought that.

At the same time, I live in faith that our invisible and loving and powerful God is working and bringing healing that comes slowly.  But it comes.  And I wait in faith and doubt.  I wait.

A Prayer by Maxine Shonk

May God be soothing ointment for all that is hurting in you.

May this God cover you with healing grace and presence as you are nursed back to health.

May the balm of God's love bring you to a place of perspective on your life while the pain and hurt take their proper place in your experience.

May this new perspective bring understanding and wisdom into the lives of all those who know hurt.

May God HEALING BALM of your life, Bless you

Amen

 

Easter People

The sorrow and struggles of Lent are over and now we are in the season of Easter.  And I love it.

The blessing of my life is that I am leading a Bible study on the book of Acts which means every week we spend time looking at the work of the Holy Spirit.  And that excites me. It is essentially about "the rest of the story" - what happens to the group of disciples who walked with Jesus and were part of that movement that he started.  That movement that continues to this day. 

We are now into the 14th chapter of Acts and you can see all the ways the spirit works:

Guiding the disciples in and out of missions

Giving them the words to speak

Creating signs and wonders

Getting them out of prison

Bringing people together

What is a constant message is that while the spirit empowers and brings "success" - it also encounters various forms of resistance.  And so the disciples go through rejection, imprisonment, stoning and being pushed out of town.

So, what does this have to do with our lives in 2022. 

Yesterday I had a zoom meeting with clergy friends who have been part of my "peer group" for over 10 years.  We started as we were all serving churches as senior pastors.  Now 4 of 6 of us are retired and we are watching the churches that we loved and served get smaller and sometimes close.  We talk about where to worship and what is next for each of us.

I have been blessed for the past almost three years to be part of a vital, loving church - Gender Road Christian Church.  The pandemic has been problematical for all churches and we seem to be bouncing back but it is different.  Church attendance is a habit and for many people, zooming online is enough.  And so, we continue to try to share the good news and be the good news in a world that is pretty resistant. 

What I know to be true is that we have to be Easter people - aware of the miracle of the Risen Christ that is lived out in our lives on a daily basis.  This morning in "Pray as you go" we pondered the third resurrection appearance of Jesus - when he met the disciples at the beach and guided them to the best fishing and fixed them breakfast. In all of that we were invited to imagine what it was like for the disciples and all I could think was that they just loved being with him - sitting around the fire and drinking in the miracle of his presence before they went out to share the good news of the power and love and grace  of God.

And maybe that is the beginning task for all of us Easter people.  Lets just start with savoring the resurrection and all the resurrections of the life that we live.  The Holy Spirit is real and at work in our lives and in our world.  It is so easy to get caught up in the negative resistance to life and to goodness and to love.  But God brings both extraordinary miracles as well as ordinary messages every day of our lives.

Today I get to write in this blog, have lunch with an old friend and lead a wedding rehearsal.  Acts of creativity, love and new beginnings.  Signs of spirit at work.  Always.

So, here's to drinking in the good news, spending time with Jesus, reflecting on and savoring the work of the spirit.  Happy Easter!

An Easter Prayer

O Source of all living things, we praise you for the power of recurring recreation of life we see around us,

and for the timeless resurrection of Jesus our Christ.  

May these signs inspire us to manifest your presence in our relationships and actions,

that those cries of joy first heard on Easter morning may echo through the centuries to our time and place.

Amen

(Ruth Duck)

The Cross

This is Holy Week and a time to consider "The Cross of Christ."

Yesterday I preached about the crucifixion and it gave me an opportunity to be able to express my understanding of what this central image of my faith means.  I want to continue to explore and expand on that this morning. 

Jesus calls us to "pick up our cross daily and follow him."  I think it is easy to think about the cross as a piece of jewelry or a symbol.  It is - however - a method of execution.  It is a painful, public and humiliating method of execution.  Is that important?

Clearly at the center of "picking up the cross" there is death.  It means a daily decision to "die to self."  And then there is the question - what does that mean?  Is it dying to the ego?  to the false self? Is it a letting go?  A surrendering?  The answer is all of these and more.

I found this quote Tulian Tehviditan

Daily Christian living, in other words, is daily Christian dying: dying to our trivial comforts, soul-shrinking conveniences, arrogant preferences, and self-centered entitlements, and living for something much larger than what makes us comfortable and safe. 

Like the crucifixion of Jesus , our dying to self  always involves suffering. I think of some of some of the important times I had to face the "self" that needed to die.  There was  the time I caused an accident that could have killed someone,  or the time my husband announced he did not want to be married to me. There were the times  I made mistakes that affected my children, and the recognition of my prejudices and white privilege.  It is the times when I have had to face my imperfections and humanity - I was wrong, I was selfish, I was thoughtless,  I was impatient, I was clueless, I was inadequate.  In my experience, the dying to self sometimes involves humiliation and always humility. It when  that i realize - in the deepest part of myself - that  I cannot do this on my own - I need God's help - guidance, forgiveness, strength. Those big awarenesses have led to daily practices of remembering that God is present with me and always in some way - "I am weak and he is strong."  And I pick up the cross again.

There are two foundational beliefs that enable me to do the work of picking up the cross.  One is the understanding that in some mystical way Jesus is present with me in the  suffering.  There is nothing that we have experienced in life that he did not encounter and he sits with me in times of pain and isolation bringing comfort and healing.  I frequently  image him entering a room and looking at me with love and saying "What do you need?" And it helps. 

And the other belief is the understanding of God's constant and abiding love for me.  I frequently quote this sentence I learned years ago from the late preacher John Claypool: "God loves us as if we are the only one and God loves all as God loves each."  I believe this because I have experienced that love - over and over again in small and large ways.  In the beauty of an April morning, in the constant love of friends, in the music at a church service, in a mystical glow during prayer.  And I also experience times of genuine guidance - an inner knowing, a voice, a path that emerges and brings new life.

So. ......what does the cross mean to me this year? It is about  the practice of  surrendering,  letting go, confronting of self  and yes - at times -   suffering . .And it leads to a freedom to be me, a sense of peace about the future and a gratitude for the gift of this day and this time.   

Here is a wonderful prayer by Maxine Shonk

May God accompany you and bless you in your times of dying.

May God walk with you into the unknown as you say goodbye to what is familiar and beloved.

In this time of letting go may you give yourself over to all that is

loving, lifegiving, and eternal and all that lives on in memory and in mystry. 

May you be blessed by the ones who know you and received by the One who created you 

and has loved you from the beginning of time.

 

Amen

Discipline

That is the title of the chapter that I read this morning in The Breath of the Soul by John Chittister.  This little book has been part of my library for years and I decided to re read it for Lent this year.

The discipline that she writes of is the intentionality of putting God in the center of our lives.  Or another way of saying it - it is the discipline of daily prayer.  She writes:

The fact is that we become what we think about.  What we seed in our souls grows in us, becomes what drives us from moment to moment.

I told a friend recently that if I don't engage in morning prayer, my whole day reflects that.  It is in my time with God in the morning - usually with the "Pray as you go" app - that I am able to center myself on Gd's presence, God's love and God's call upon my life.  Otherwise, the news will take me down a path of despair or cynicism or I can fall into allowing resentment or anger to fester within me.

So today I hear that I am called to be HOLY - set apart in my behavior and my thoughts.  As I listen this morning I learn again that this WAY of following Jesus is a series of choices.  I choose to spend time with God, I choose to pray, I choose to allow God's word to seep into my soul.  I choose the path of compassion and love and service.  Again today.

This is what discipline looks like.  This is what it means to be a Disciple of Christ.

May God's HOLY LIGHT be with you, 

shedding God's radiance upon your everyday.

May you perceive your life in a new way, revealed in the light of God's love and desire for you.

May this God light up the hidden places of your life where visions and posssibilities dwell.

May those visions give birth to peace and justice in the world.

May God, HOLY LIGHT, be with you.

Amen

Ash Wednesday and Lent

Today is the first full day of Lent - yesterday was Ash Wednesday.  At our church we had people "drive by" to receive their ashes.  I was so blessed to get to help with that.  I love putting the sign of the cross on the forehead of a person and say to them - in some form or fashion - Jesus Loves YOU. The ritual can have such a deep meaning that goes beyond the mere act - even in a car on the way to shopping.  God shows up.

So today marks the beginning of the 40 day journey to the cross and then to the celebration of Easter. As I sit here I realize that I need to have some intentional act that might anchor me during these days.  It is so easy to be distracted and "too busy" to focus on a regular basis.  My life experience tells me that spiritual disciplines - practices - really can make a difference.

My prayer practice for the last year has been to begin the day sitting with journal in hand and just writing in response to the events of my life. It is prayer with a pen as my sense is that God and I are looking together at what has been happening to me, through me, and in me.  And I write - most often prayers of gratitude and prayers for guidance.  Then I listen to the app "Pray as you Go" and continue to write and wonder and be with God.

During Lent I will add time with Joan Chittister in her little book - The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer.  I remember spending time with this book about 15 years ago and will - during this season revisit it again.  And allow it to speak to me.  There are 42 chapters in it which will surely take me through this holy season.

The first chapter is called "Self Knowledge" and she writes about how we must bring all of ourselves to God in prayer.

" the temptation with which we must grapple if we really want to learn to pray is \the temptation to pray as if we were more than we are.  More pious,. perhaps, More accepting of the will of god, maybe.  More ethereal in our concerns.  more otherworldly, more a citizen of the next world that a pilgrim in this one. 

But when all we bring to prayer is our holiness, what is the use of being there?  What am I not facing in myself that really needs my prayer..."

"To grow spiritually, I cannot hide - even from myself.  I must pray for self knowledge, the searing honesty that, with the grace of God, brings me to the heart of God.

Self knowledge saves us from ourselves."

And so I being this season praying for self knowledge and with the mantra of this day:

God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

Amen