All By Myself

Well, mostly all by myself. My supervisor preached. But I did everything else. It was terrifying! I survived. The spirit showed up. I was washed in grace. I survived! Did I mention I survived? *big sigh*

Wrestling

Noting all our fears, our broken hips, our battles with God and angels, and our blessings.... I am exceptionally comforted by this passage. It is one of the most beautiful reunions in the entire human story. Jacob is limping to meet his brother who he fears will destroy all he is and has or at the very least turn his face away and reject him.

"But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept."

Distance

There isn't a person I know that doesn't miss someone who is far away. And though most of us miss someone who has died and is no longer on the planet, I'm talking about the missing that could be fixed by a walk or a ride in a car or on a boat or plane.

I have "people homes" scattered around the world. Most are in Tennessee. More are in Chicago, on internship around the US, or in a foreign country. Others are elsewhere. The point is, they aren't here. And that makes being in relationship with people difficult.

From where does your energy come when you know that you are beginning another relationship that will soon be challenged by distance? And though there are no guarantees in any relationship that it will last beyond tomorrow (for life is constantly changing and challenging us), there is comfort in knowing one will get to enjoy it for a while.

I remember telling my friend Rob a few years ago when I knew I was moving to Chicago that I hoped when he turned 21 that he'd have a beer on my behalf to celebrate (knowing I wouldn't be there). And he looked at me like I just said something horribly offensive. "Um, you can just buy me one. You'll see me when I'm 21." He made clear what I was too scared to hope for - that we'd be friends two years later even though our paths were pulling us in absolutely opposite directions on the planet. We'd be friends despite the distance.

In May 2010, a day before he moved to Florida and a week after my semester in Chicago ended, we sat on the rooftop of one of our favorite Chattanooga locals and shared a beer. It was a beautiful affirmation of our promise to remain friends no matter where life took us.

I thank God for my friends though I still don't like the distance that separates us and the time in between our visits. Here's to phone calls, skype conversations, snail mail, and warm fuzzies shared with friends that are friends no matter the distance. I thank God for each of you.


EDIT: I shared this post with Rob and he replied with this. "on the roof of that restaurant, an overwhelming peace of mind came over me. call it crossing things off of a list. call it para-kletos. call it love incarnate. call it friendship. whatever it was, i was able to turn and walk away knowing that distance no longer mattered.

i will never enjoy a beer quite as much as i enjoyed that one. love you, al." He put it into words in a way I couldn't - distance no longer matters.

Taste and See

----> http://tasteandseelstc.blogspot.com/

This is LSTC's blog - stories from seven different students across campus (and the country) post once a week. I'm Saturdays if you want to check mine out!

Lessons in Empathy

I caught the Norwalk virus Friday. Well, I'm not sure when I caught it, but my stomach started getting REALLY cranky Friday. Thankfully, it is a 24 hour virus so I was starting to feel better on Saturday. I don't think I could have taken any more gut wrenching than I did. I'm still trying to be gentle to my body and eat smaller meals of easily digestible food.

What I've discovered? This is a lesson in empathy. As I lay in bed resting still today and letting my stomach digest a larger lunch, I think about all the people who spend their lives in bed. Not by choice or laziness but by virtue of their bodies giving out, being sick, or some other reason. And perhaps even for those who choose it, I feel their pain.

It is hard to lie in bed and wait for your body to feel better. I cannot imagine thinking that it would only get worse from here on out. Where does one's hope go? Additionally, there is only so much one can do from a bed. You can watch movies and read books or other literature but your activities are severely limited. But hope flutters in other ways, too. It gets old looking at the same view but you learn to pay attention to your visitors, the noises around you, and the changing of the light. You become very aware of where you are and very aware of your body. You cannot not notice.

So for all those stuck in bed today, I wish you visitors, change, relief, and joy in the movement of the sun.

Patterns and Cycles and Tree Houses

I was discussing self fulfilling prophecies earlier today and my brain is still crunching away on them. How much does a defeatist attitude lead to the failure of the task before us? If someone began a project to build a tree house by saying, "Well this is never going to work. It's going to be ugly and no one will want to play in it," to what extent will this promise an atrocious piece of crap in a tree?

I think we do this about a lot of things. No, this guy will never like me and it won't work out. Then, when it doesn't work out, who is surprised? Perhaps it is a self defense mechanism. We throw out these statements at the beginning so that in the end we can look back and say, "Well, it was never going to work anyway. I said so from the very beginning."

What are we so afraid of? Are we more terrified that we might actually build a stunningly beautiful tree house? Create a life long relationship? Be successful?

... I am. C'mon! That's terrifying! Failure is so much easier to swallow because it plays into all the myths the world tells us about ourselves - that we aren't good enough, lovable, or able to build tree houses. I'm not sure why I listen to those voices so much but they only seem more valid when I do fail at something in life. It almost seems to prove all those negative voices right. So we say, "The tree house is ugly as sin; they're right, I'm a horrible builder."

How do we break the cycle? Bust out of the pattern? Tell the negative voices to shut up and just be confident about whatever and wherever life has brought us? I am still shocked to see how many of us, me included, are trapped by fear. The text this last week was about faith the size of a mustard seed. The topic of the sermon I heard was, "You have faith enough to do the work." And I thought, really? I'd be right there with the disciples saying, "Increase my faith!" Because, sweet Jesus, I don't feel like I have enough of anything to do all that God is calling me to do. I want to save the world... but I'm exhausted from the small tasks of internship!

I digress. Perhaps it all goes back to that "enjoy the journey, not the destination" saying. If you want to build a tree house, forget about how it will turn out and who will enjoy it. Put your heart into it. Have fun. Paint it blue. Laugh at yourself when you hammer a board on sideways. In the end, it will be the tree house that you had a wonderful time making. And who wouldn't want to go and be there?

The Care of Mothers

I don't know much about magic but I am figuring out about the spirit and it has a lot of magic to it. Elements I don't understand. Something magical? My mother. The way she can come into a house and turn it into a home. The way she has the ability to smile at me and I feel at peace. Her insight. Her thoughtful observations of the world. Her energy. I love my mother. I am so blessed to be her daughter.

Take a moment to tell your mama how much she means to you. She's magic, I promise.

Blank Stares and Smiles

Last Monday: hell.

This Monday: heaven.

Is this ministry? Is this working with elderly? Is this being 25 in the middle of Montana on internship to become a pastor?

... all of the above?

Last Monday that wonderful woman who shared her life story with me didn't remember me at all. Not even my face. She had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that she had shown me her apartment and talked with me the week before about life and love.

Let's just say that was a bit of a blow. Unexpected but yet, completely understandable. How do you do ministry when you cannot build relationships in the traditional sense? So I'm rethinking ministry and relationships and how I relate to elderly. Some of my cheerleader/happy-go-lucky/sunshine qualities are serving me well. Other times, of course, the elderly look back at me like "SHUT UP STUPID YOUNG GIRL." (Yeah, last Monday again.) Other times, they look back at me and beam with the brightest smiles you've ever seen.

Can I blame it on the moon?

Words

A resident was talking yesterday about the beauty of Christmas hymns in German. He said they are just more beautiful. And then I told him how I absolutely loved Psalm 150... in Hebrew. Not only because I was forced to sing it in Hebrew class last year but because there is something lovely and beautiful about the language and the way it describes sound in that chapter. Even the word for spirit or breath in Hebrew is gorgeous - RUAH. If you say it, you breath out - "Roo-ahh." I find myself immediately contemplative of my own spirit and the breath of life. Then there's the likes of Sarah Brightman and Josh Groban who sing songs in many different languages. Are they beautiful because we have no idea what they mean?

So I'm thinking about language and the craft of writing and composing. Purposefully putting certain words next to certain other words to create a pattern, a process, a certain way of pairing words that speaks to an entirely new thought. It is an art. This isn't to say that once the words are translated that they have lost their meaning. On the contrary, one of my favorite poets does not compose in English. I rely on a poet who speaks her language AND English to rewrite her poems. I count on that poet to take the essence of the poem and convey it to me in my language. A word for word translation will not do. It does not translate. It does not convey.

And this leads me to wonder about the task of a preacher. We study the original languages so we can then read them and find a way to translate them into a message that conveys the meaning. I never knew that studying poetry would come into play so much as a preacher. Who would have ever thought? I'm not writing poems after all, I'm writing sermons. But it isn't about the words and yet, it is. If the words cannot carry the message, the message falls flat. This is my task.

Have you ever heard of Eugene Peterson? He wrote a translation of the bible into contemporary, modern language called The Message. Here's a quote from him about why: "While I was teaching a class on Galatians, I began to realize that the adults in my class weren't feeling the vitality and directness that I sensed as I read and studied the New Testament in its original Greek. Writing straight from the original text, I began to attempt to bring into English the rhythms and idioms of the original language. I knew that the early readers of the New Testament were captured and engaged by these writings and I wanted my congregation to be impacted in the same way. I hoped to bring the New Testament to life for two different types of people: those who hadn't read the Bible because it seemed too distant and irrelevant and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become 'old hat.'"

In a smaller way, every Sunday, this is the task before: make an impossibly distant and hard to relate to text be entirely real and entirely relate-able. And you know what? I absolutely love it. There is always a moment when I am writing where I go, "Oh shit. There's absolutely no way out of this misery of a parable. What was Jesus talking about?!" And yet, every single time, a light bulb has clicked on, the spirit has shown up, and I have been humbled into realizing yet again, how great is the love of God.

Oh, do I love words and the Word.

Preachin'

A link for you! (It's my first Sunday Sermon Manuscript!)

http://messiahlutheranbillings.org/2010/09/september-19-2010-manuscript/