Hope and Love~My Walking Prayer

         

These past weeks we have lit the candle of hope and the candle of love for Advent.  I think of these words and I wonder, actually I know, that they may have lost their value for some. 

November and December have proved to be a time of great loss and sorrow for so many in our community.  I think of all the hope that has been promised, all the love and heart emojis that have been sent, and I wonder if those waiting for a new day can hear what is behind these words.

            I have taken myself to task as I say these words--what does it really mean when I say "I hope everything is ok--works out"? What does it mean when I hope for new jobs, healing, housing, food and peace?  What is behind the words I say?  I like to think that my "hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul"--as described by Emily Dickinson.

            How do I love? Is my love easy or hard to acquire? Do I throw the word around so that  my love for applesauce, my children, lilacs and my neighbor seem to be the same?  Does my love come with conditions or is it made perfect the more I give it away?  Can I really love my neighbor as myself?

            This is what I have discovered; while I do occasionally use these two amazing, life giving and life forgiving words too lightly, they are for the most part my walking, driving, gardening, knitting, sewing, cooking, simply sitting and even dish washing prayers.  These are the words that I bring to God in all the times I pray.  So as I am hoping for you in the digging, stitching, and gazing; I am bringing that hope to God.  When I love you, usually with only an image in my mind, I am bringing you fully to God in my prayer; the anxious love in the scrubbing, the overwhelming love in the sunset on the highway, the tearful love over a boiling tea kettle and the joyful love in the aroma of freshly baked bread. 

Genesis 8:8-12(condensed) Then, Noah, sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from

 the surface of the ground.  But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark...He waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark.  When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! --He sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return.

Like Noah I will send my prayers of hope out over the flooded areas and the dry, like Noah I will try to love what comes back to me and what is set free.

I Love to tell the story or Stop on by----

Barbara from AnnaBella's took this beautiful picture.

       

          This is the first week of Advent.  For Christians this is a time of waiting, waiting as Mary did for Christ to arrive.  Of course we are really imitating the wait.  For 4 weeks of the year we try to stop and listen a little better and to see a bit more clearly.  At the end of the year we try to weed through the chaos and muck of the world and prepare our hearts for more.  The candle we lit on our Advent wreath this past Sunday was the candle of peace, which seems appropriate given the anxiety of the world.  I imagine many people are waiting for a little more peace right now.

 

            I shared last Sunday that my niece (who is now 22) loved when I would tell her the story of when she was born.  When my sister brought Maggie home from the hospital, her husband was away at a good friend's wedding, I was more than willing to jump in and help out while he was away.  She loved to hear how we were so happy for a girl after so many boys--4 between the two of us! She loved to hear about how we dressed her in every cute outfit, how we would lay her on the bed and just look at her smiling. She loved to hear me tell of this time and I think in part it was not only what I said but the way I said it, she could hear the fullness of love in my heart in the telling.

            It seems that the Advent story is one to be told in such a way that people can hear that fullness in our telling.  What would it mean to imitate the waiting in such a way that when we spoke of it, it would bless all people? 

I love this picture of the stop sign outside of the church in Richmond. My reaction flip-flops as I look at it. 

Does it mean: "Stop! Don't go in!" Or "Stop! Don't pass us by!"

            We know that people are skeptical and resistant of going to church, not just our church but any church.  Many people stop outside the doors of a church thinking this is not the place for me.  Maybe thinking the church is judgmental, out of date and deaf to the needs of the world.  We know these thoughts, the church knows change is necessary but change is hard. Real change takes time and for great change to happen we need a change agent. 

"A change agent is a person

from inside or outside the organization

who helps an organization transform itself

 by focusing on

such matters as organizational effectiveness,

improvement and development."

 study.com

            Advent is the time of waiting for the greatest change agent of all, Jesus Christ.  So if you have been wondering about church, if you have been remembering the story of a birth you love to hear, and if you are waiting for change and a fullness of peace that the world cannot offer; I suggest that you stop and not pass us by. 

            Change takes great courage, and patience; at the end of a crazy year we offer a place to sit and imitate Mary, so that we may be vessels of transforming peace.

A Village

Just around from this row of trees a village waits.

A funny story---after my first service at the East Pittston United Methodist Church, it was suggested that I visit someone who lived in the Village.  Now I have been serving churches for 12 years so my mind immediately thought that "The Village" was an assisted living facility.  As I drove out of church I looked to where this person had pointed from the door of the church, right toward the center of town, I did not see "The Village".  The following Sunday I asked this person, "Can you point to where this person lives?" The reply went something like this, "Right there in the Village."  Again I drove home looking left and right for "The Village", asking my husband to look as well.  At this point my husband convinces me that the large Victorian in town is "The Village", two days later as I sat in the parking lot I knew it couldn't be.  After several missed phone calls, I connected with the person I was going to visit and she gave me directions to her house...yes that is right...her house.  "The Village", come to find out, is exactly that--the village--the center of town, "larger than a hamlet and smaller that a town" according to Webster.

            This is the danger of any new relationship, the assumptions we make based on our own experiences.  It was my good fortune that the person I visited found this misunderstanding as funny as I did.  It was also our good fortune that we did not give up on each other. I kept searching for her and she kept waiting for me. 

But Ruth replied,

"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. 

Your people will be my people and your God my God." Ruth 1:16

            After three months of sharing our God together we are getting used to each other, becoming God's family and we are not turning our backs.  I am blessed to witness the commitment this congregation makes daily to the community surrounding our church.  Members check on their neighbors and share their needs not as gossip but in order to serve them best.  The "shop" below the stairs is a source of income but also a place for those in great need to actually choose dishes and necessities in difficult times of transition.  Amazing pot luck suppers, ice cream sundaes served at 10am after worship and a deep spirit of loving one's neighbor are just a few of the blessings I have found here.

            Like other churches we have our struggles, we would like a pianist and we would like Sunday School teachers, and yet we are able to recognize gifts in our wanting.  We have someone who plays the piano for us with her love of God, we have children (!) yes we do and they actually don't mind being in church!

            We have work to do together but we are firmly grounded in God's love, we are after all, right around the corner from a village...smaller than a hamlet, larger than a town, with enough to share, and room to grow.

Why We Remember.

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.  Rosa Parks

            Why we remember.  The Today show was full of people remembering.  They were remembering 9/11, the Holocaust, and slavery.  Lonnie Bunch was interviewed about the upcoming opening of the National African American Museum.  During the interview he said: "We try to find the tension between the moments that will make you ponder the pain of slavery and segregation and the moments where you find the joy in the resiliency of the community."  Memories-- we may run from them dwell too long in them or carry the sum of them into our future.

            When our daughter and her two friends were young they were constantly making memories.  This was before cell phones, Facebook, and Snapchat made this task a bit easier. Whether they were getting ready for a dance or peeling potatoes I would hear them call; "Take a picture, we are making memories!"  Even as young teens they knew they might want to hang on to this time together even if it were only in a photo. 

Facebook understands this desire to look back; "This day three years ago you posted this--!"  Of course not all memories are ones we wish to share again; occasionally the memory pops up that leaves you wondering about the “hows”and “whys” of life.

            From the drawings in caves to the social media of today, people have been preserving memories.  Diaries and blogs, letters stored in attics, antique stores and scrap booking are all trying to hold on to something, to say something to the "someone one day" who might look at what we saw and what we had to say.  We search old family photos of people we never new looking for some resemblance, some likeness to connect us to the past.

            Religion is a way we connect ourselves to the past while moving toward the future.  We tell stories of perseverance, courage and survival.  People gather and they pray familiar prayers, they sing familiar songs, they eat and they practice their faith that connects them to those who have gone before them.  Others celebrate through traditions of hunting, climbing mountains, art, music, fishing and food!

            On a PBS special on Hasidic Judaism, a grandfather told his grandson; "I survived so that you might live.  And there you have it--- why do we remember--so that life might go on.

"'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” Acts:2:17

            So take pictures, sew quilts, knit, sing, paint, build and cook your todays into tomorrows!

            Sunday will be 15 years since 9/11; some of us will be lighting candles by the water in Hallowell, where ever you are ---remember.

Hallowed.

         

The view down my road.

I have been spending quite a bit of time with people in transition these past weeks, some of the transitions are ones that have been chosen and others have been forced, all have a sense of looking down the road and not knowing what is at the other end.  As in this picture--there is mystery and beauty, some may feel ready for such a journey and others may feel anxiety.  All of this pointing to the fact that there is more than we know to our living, this life and what happens next.  It really is quite amazing that we have been able to continue on as a human race with all we don't know--which means all we really have no control over.

            Hallowed; I have been preaching on the Lord's Prayer and the word that stood out to me this week was hallowed.  Hallowed could be considered similar to the translation of sanctified--set apart.

            Every once in a while we get a glimpse of the sanctified and maybe that is how we go on, it is the fuel, the substance, the gentle nudge, it is what raises our eyebrows with the awe and wonder of a child; creating the curiosity to go around one more corner.

            There are times when we are given the insight to something that is so beyond measure--something that we cannot create new words to describe; no camera can capture the full essence of these moments.  It is of no surprise that quite often these moments are a part of nature-- God's creation belonging to all people, but there are times when we are so close to those things, set apart from all the others, that we feel in our souls, guts, eyes and throats--you know--that tight feeling that makes it hard to swallow?  Those times are like holding a bubble in the palm of your hand with breath held; making every effort to extend the moment.

         And there is God--right there--right there!  We look left, right, craning our necks behind us wanting others to share--asking "Did you see that?"  And suddenly there is reason to believe.

Frederick Beuchner shares: "Maybe we cannot manage to believe with all our hearts. But as long as the moments last, we can believe that this is of all things the thing most worth believing. And that may not be as far as it sounds from what belief is. For as long as the moment lasts, that hallowed, gracious time."

           

            

Edits from a Sunday Morning: Between the time for pansies and peas a garden wai...

Edits from a Sunday Morning: Between the time for pansies and peas a garden wai...: As a child I would help my mother plant annuals in our garden.  I am sure there were other plants in the garden but the only ones I remembe...

Between the time for pansies and peas a garden waits.

As a child I would help my mother plant annuals in our garden.  I am sure there were other plants in the garden but the only ones I remember are the pansies.  Purple with yellow eyes were my favorite and I loved working side by side with my mom planting, what I believed to be, the prettiest flowers in all of creation.  I would dig to China in that garden long after the planting was finished.  There were few things that pleased me more than getting dirty in that garden. 

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            Once we moved to a new home and I became a teenager there was little time or interest for gardening.  Time passed and soon I had a home of my own.  There was a lumpy mound of flowers and weeds at the side of the house that we walked around, weed whacked and mowed over, never giving it much thought.  In the meantime my grandmother made quick work of setting up my first vegetable garden.  Peas were the first to arrive and I was hooked.  I spent hours in that garden and our children grew side by side digging in the dirt as I once did.  Sweaty little fists gathered the peas and beans that rarely made it to the table.  When our daughter went for preschool screening they asked her what her favorite food was and                                                                                         she replied "chives." 

            I spent many years in that garden until my Multiple Sclerosis caused me to shift gears.  As I adjusted to my new circumstances I began to pay attention to that mound of overgrown flowers.  I soon discovered it was actually a little rock garden if you will; it had been waiting for me for a long time.  About that same time my mother began planting perennials and we discovered that I had struck gold in that little hill!  Sweet primrose, bachelor buttons, dianthus and more, their names were like music to my ears. That little garden could supply a church plant sale with over a hundred pots...yes that is right...break them up just right and they will create a whole new garden.

            A few years ago we moved to a new home full of perennials, and I mean full. I have vegetables mixed in with day lilies, daisies and thyme, and I am still learning how to dance with this garden. 

            Recently I went back to my old garden, easy to do when our son owns the home, and my hands moved in that garden as if it were yesterday.  I made quick work of weeding, thinning and transplanting (it was time to bring some of that garden to our new home).  There was so much that was familiar and yet so much had changed!  There were things that grew that I never gave a chance; being left alone our son gave them opportunity to shine.  My globe thistle never looked so good!  Yet there were things that were choked out and overgrown as well.  I sat in this garden and I was struck by its beauty and reflected on how coming back to it was like coming back to my home church. The beauty rests in the new growth and the reliable sweet scent of the lily of the valley.

            Perennials are the perfect metaphor for church.  We plant and we wait, we learn from other gardeners and use their "shoots" and we wait, we learn to wait a year or more.  Once we have done this a while we learn to trust as we wait.  When spring arrives we are amazed and then we start digging!  We move this and that to here and there.  We learn to prune, understanding that the growth that follows will be stronger. We forgive ourselves the overzealous clipping that takes down a freshly bloomed iris and we learn to begin again.

            Harvest and annuals are gone for the winter and remnants are tossed in a compost pile but perennials are put to rest, to bed, to sleep for the winter with the promise of spring and summer blooms.  After they are tucked in we wait some more.  

            This is often the life of a church: planting, fertilizing, pruning and lots of waiting.

  God calls out to us from the depths of the ground via the tangles of the roots and sings songs of delight as the first signs of green break through the icy snows of spring. “I am here, I am here, I am here.”

            There is a season for it all.

           

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

New growth comes---Emptiness-Gift of the Dark Wood

An early thaw reveals I have some cleaning up to do for new growth.

            Emptiness, we might think of emptiness as being a difficult place to be; an uncomfortable state of affairs.  But as I have reflected on this, I believe it is on our way to emptiness that we may struggle most.

            The unloading, the unpacking, the shuffling around, and the weeding out of our emotional and physical stuff can be difficult.  Full can be comfortable even when there is little room to move or for more.  The feeling of busting at the seams may be better than exposing what we have been covering up for a long time.

            I have begun having conversations with people about parting with our "stuff". It occurred to me that we do not talk about this stage in our lives when we begin to think about what it means to place our things, our stories (for better or worse) and memories in the hands of someone else.  I know from my own experience and from others that we have a natural instinct to hold on tight, even we don't know why or when it doesn't make sense.

            Eric Elnes reminds us that "standing in this place (emptiness) is the beginning of all wisdom and all true understanding."

            My grandmother's photos have been moved from house to house and some have finally landed in my home...I have witnessed them being moved from their home in Holliston Mass. To the attic in Amherst N.H. and each time I saw something new.  Preparing to drive them north to Maine, we sorted through and threw away what others couldn’t; we rubbed our eyes from dust and tears.  The tears of course were from laughter and reflection.  With each move I have seen something different, some new piece of my family. In this go through I saw the creases that both our son's have in their faces when they smile, in the face of my great-grandfather.

            Of course the frustrating piece of making room and weeding out is that just when we thought we were done---there is more!  I walked along my garden on this snowless February day and looked at the daffodils poking through.  I also saw that I while I thought I had cleaned out a space for them, that I had removed all the debris that could stunt their growth, I had not.  While I am comfortable with pruning, at the end of summer the stalks that had some green and color to them were too difficult to take down even when I knew they would fall on their own.

            I once had a person ask me as he was confronting a difficult situation from his past in counseling "How long do I have to keep talking about this?"  I compared this early stage of healing to the baling out of a boat, one keeps scooping and dumping until the boat stops sinking and continues at a slower rate with repair, and then every once in a while a plug gets loose and more scooping is necessary. Only at these times it will be done with wisdom rather than desperation.

            This is what Elnes is talking about---"this is the beginning of wisdom ...and what we thought would be the place of our greatest emptiness may be the safest and most beautiful place in the world in which to stand."

            To be empty is to know there is more, something is missing, not what was but what can be.  “Fill my cup Lord; you lift me up Lord----“

Quotes from Eric Elnes' Gifts of the Dark Wood --Emptiness chapter

The Gift of Uncertainty--or simply put the gift of saying "I don't know"

“Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.”

― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

            We are working with Marcia McFee and Eric Elnes material for “Gifts of the Dark Wood" this Lent.  This past Sunday we talked about the gift of uncertainty.  We really don't like to be uncertain as a general rule but it is in this very vulnerable moment when we can be our full risk taking, God reliant, glorious selves.

            Brene Brown did a Ted talk (Ted Conferences on line) about vulnerability and she spoke of how we know that people are afraid of being vulnerable when we hear statements like "I am right your wrong-now shut up!"  It is interesting to think that the desire to be right, the desire to know the beginning, middle and end, the desire to know should make us feel safer yet it often distances us from relationships.  At the end of the day does being right or knowing more keep us company in a way that a trusted friend might?  Mind you by trusted I do not mean all agreeing, all right, all knowing friend.

            We talked on Sunday about being okay with saying "I don't know."  I took this picture of Swan Island in Richmond.  Now I know a lot about this place, I lived across the river for over 25 years.  I know that there are deer there, and I know where homes once stood and what the inside of some looked like.  I know where to get water, and that wild rice grows at one end, I know that children who once lived there drowned in the river because of the strong undertow and I know that the raccoons are enormous!  I know about Swan Island, I know how my heart feels when I remember it but----I do not know what is behind the mist in this picture--I think I know--but really "I don't know." 

            There is something beyond the mist and if you and I stood there together I could fake my way through telling you what was there, and you may or may not be interested, and you may or may not believe me but what if we stood there and wondered together?  What would it feel like to be open to no clear answer until the fog lifted?  Would we turn to each other in surprise or disappointment? Would we laugh or exclaim aha at the same time?  The truth is we would connect in a way that only our shared vulnerability would allow.

Eric Elnes reminds us of this-“The great saints did not become saints by moving from uncertainty to clarity.  They moved, rather, from uncertainty to trust, which requires the ongoing presence of uncertainty…they also moved from failure to faithfulness rather than from failure to success, which requires the ongoing possibility of failure.”

What do I know about the morning?  Not a lot.  How do I face the night anticipating the unknown?   I share the stars with others who wonder with me.

Brandi Carlile sings In the Morrow

“I found myself today

I took my cross and walked away

With amazing grace and open eyes

Even though I’m born to lose my way.”

One Sky

          

Etched by Keith Hart--from East Pittston UMC

                                                               

          Each year Epiphany comes and I think of the word "Aha" usually associated with the awareness of who Jesus is.  But this year I kept thinking the real "Aha" was realizing that the Magi, the dabblers in magic, dreamers and star gazers, were not only welcomed to the stable, to Christ, but invited.

            How did they feel the welcome when so many might have excluded them? Could it be their understanding of the vastness of the sky, gave them hope for more? Maybe they knew that life was more than what we see in front of us.

            Did they know then that many people share the same stars at different times?  Imagine wishes made star after star, minute after minute from continent to continent. Wishes and prayers are tossed out to the evening sky, asking for peace, love, food, housing, healing, forgiveness, friendship, safety, direction, a future. Maybe they knew because of this visionary thinking that we are not so different after all.

Paul Simon's War Time Prayers runs through my mind:

“A mother murmurs in twilight sleep

And draws her babies closer

With hush-a-bies for sleepy eyes

And kisses on the shoulder

To drive away despair

She sends a wartime prayer”

        The wisdom of the Magi can lead us to remember that while much has changed this has not---voices continue to come together bouncing off the stars, different tongues, yet if we listen, we can understand--like a Pentecost in the sky!

            I keep looking at the sky in awe as I imagine how the magi were able to look up and see beyond themselves, beyond a vindictive leader, beyond the skeptics, beyond their own fear.  The saw beyond these things and then they thought for themselves and took the first step.

Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect Light.

           

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