Highs and Lows

Wednesday nights during the academic year tend to find me in the congregation's library/conference room/makeshift office for our worship coordinator/director of music. With a group of very hilarious and wonderful middle school students. For ABC (= Affirmation of Baptism Class, aka Confirmation).
Middle schools house three grades here, 6th-8th, and so our ABC ministry follows the school district's lead and we use a three year curriculum: a year of Hebrew Scriptures, a year of Christian Scriptures, and a year of Discipleship in Daily Life (that would be Luther's Small Catechism). We're on the third year of the rotation this year, and the kids are getting in to the catechism pretty well.
Tonight we discussed the 8th commandment, with a couple of rousing games of "Telephone" - very funny. Whereas basic understanding (never mind real-life application) of the 6th commandment required some definition of terms (at least a third of the class members weren't sure what "adultery" even means when we started), they have no problem understanding how bearing false witness against one's neighbor makes a difference in life. They "get it" from their own bus stops and school hallways to American presidential campaigns.
As great as the weekly content of our conversations is, one of my favorite elements of our time together each week is a little life review of "highs and lows." Or "wahoos! and that sucks!" Or "roses and thorns." It's amazing to watch the level of disclosure and reflection deepen as the year goes on. And it is a privilege to be allowed into the minds and hearts of such a great crew of students.

Happy All Saints Day!

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween. And an even better All Saints Day.
(Yesterday we ran an errand to a new big-box-department-store (more on that another time) and there were already Christmas decorations up. Really!?)
Our Halloween was pretty mellow - we managed to carve a couple of pumpkins while the munchkin napped yesterday afternoon, the munchkin wore her (tags-still-on-it-79-cent gift from her Auntie) costume long enough to get a couple of photos snapped, and last night all of 17 trick-or-treaters landed on our porch to get bags of Cheddar Goldfish (something salty to balance all the sugar).

While we ate lunch yesterday, G asked me which saints I'd be remembering and giving thanks for today. I didn't give him much of an answer - asked him his own question, instead, but he did get me thinking. He mentioned a whole host of folks who were members of congregations he's served, and several family members. I thought of a couple of the great church ladies I've known and buried, but mostly thought of seminary classmates, colleagues, and friends who are very much alive and well.
I appreciated the emphasis on contemporary saints in this article, though I wish the author had suggested looking at the person sitting next to you in the pew as a saint for whom we can give thanks - or looking in the mirror and thanking God that God can turn even you (me!) into a saint.
Our congregation celebrated Reformation Sunday this past weekend. Our All Saints celebration will be this weekend. In addition to naming, and lighting candles for, members of the congregation who have died since All Saints last year, we've added the practice of naming and lighting candles for every person baptized in the past year, too, since in the 3+ years we've served this parish, only one member has died. And, everyone in worship will have the opportunity to light a candle in honor/thanksgiving/remembrance of the saints in their lives. The ritual action can be so powerful, and the solemnity of the day inspires awe and reverance in even the most pyromaniacal of kids.
I'm glad we'll have that time in worship, but I wish it could have happened today - so people would have a better chance of getting the connection between the EVENING of All Hallows and the DAY of All Saints.

Yes!

Yes! This makes me glad. Not that I've read it all yet. I may even head to the bookstore to pick myself up a printed copy. Or not, since it's "no impact week."

10 years + 10 days

9/11 was 10 days ago. Does it feel like more or less than that? I was intrigued (and to be completely honest, slightly annoyed) by all the media coverage of the anniversary. Somehow it felt like no one was asking the right questions. And I'm not sure how helpful it is to watch footage of planes flying into the World Trade Center on endless repeat.
I thought a lot about "where I was on 9/11" - in Randalstown, Northern Ireland - sort of a suburb of Belfast. I was upstairs at my friends' house, reading something theological, when Liz hollered at me to come downstairs and look at the TV. My first question, upon arriving in the family room was, "What movie are you watching?" Of course, it wasn't a movie.
Having the BBC as my primary news source in the days following 9/11 shaped my experience of those days differently than Americans watching network news or CNN 24/7. And being in a country that's had more than its fair share of terrorist activity in the last multiple generations shaped the way I started thinking about the events of that day, too. Over and over again I heard versions of "I'm really sorry for those who lost their lives, and for those who lost loved ones, but it's about time Americans felt what it's like to live anywhere else in the world." The naivete (and arrogance?) of the shock and "I-can't-believe-this-could-happen-here-this-is-America-and-everyone-loves-us" attitude portrayed in European media was, frankly, shocking to folks in Belfast - as it was also in France, where I spent a week at Taize in mid-October 2011.
I didn't think I had much to say about the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and I guess my own rememberings havven't really said much. I've appreciated these people over the last few weeks - people who've said what I wanted to say, far better than I've found words to say it.

Will Willimon, presiding bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, wrote for Christianity Today:

On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.

The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusively martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt very vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.

September 11 has changed me. I'm going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what's wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God's own Son.
Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today

Diana Butler Bass is brilliant, here.

A colleague I hope to meet someday posted this sermon.

And thanks to Mary Hess, one of my favorite seminary profs, for posting an Indigo Girls rendition of the first couple verses of Finlandia, below. I hadn't even considered putting a patriotic song in the liturgy on 9/11 (a Sunday, remember) until Saturday afternoon, September 10th - too late. And on Sunday morning, during Communion, a member of the congregation handed me a note asking to sing America the Beautiful before worship was over. I knew I had to do it, but I didn't want to. It's not that I'm unpatriotic, it's just that too many American Christians get their patriotism and their faith blended and confused in ways that aren't good for either. I'm thankful that Finlandia is in our hymnal. A little perpsective - and humility - is good for us.

The Postcard Project

A new month, a new project (since my last project didn't actually turn out as well as planned - I did TAKE the picture that should have been posted on Friday, August 12th, but clearly didn't manage to POST it).
This next project has several sources of inspiration: Katy, at the Non-Consumer Advocate has a 52 Weeks, 52 Letters project going this year - writing one letter every week. And Tammy, at Rowdy Kittens has been doing a Postcard Project since mid-August. Both have served as reminders to do something I love to do anyway: put pen to paper and send people REAL mail, that can be touched and stuck to the fridge or bulletin board. One of the best parts, though, is that this project is going to cost me very little money. In fact, I'd bet good money that I could send a postcard a day through the end of the year and never have to buy a postcard to make it happen. I've got something of a collection going... (stamps may require purchase, though several of the postcards I have were previously stamped - and some even addressed to folks who have long since moved. Mostly, I need to stock up on those pesky 1, 2 and 5 cent stamps).
SO - don't be surprised if some random postcard shows up in your mailbox. I've got 'em from the 1994 spring break mission trip to Jamaica, from my 1993 sojourn in Norway with a stop in Copenhagen, a 1997 visit to London, and more recent trips to a Benedictine monastery in Idaho, and several other exotic locales. Not to mention all the artsy fartsy postcards I have accumulated along the way.
Ah, how I love me a project...

How I spent my afternoon -

 - in Munchkin land. Wonderful.

Simple Steps

Sometimes simple steps aren't so simple. Or, perhaps more accurately, simple steps aren't always that easy. At least not in our house. Here's what caught my eye today, every single time I came in the front door or had to go upstairs.

Naked stairs!

They are the stairs in our house, and what's different about them is this: there's nothing else there. For pushing 30 hours now, the stairs have been completely clear of anything needing to go upstairs, go out into the garage, get recycled, or generally find some sort of more permanent home. I'd say it's been close to 6 months since this has been the reality in our house. I just got used to walking past all the piles. I got used to putting things down and picking them up again, at whatever stair-height seemed convenient. I nearly broke an ankle and dropped the baby on more than one occasion. And now I can't stop looking at all that naked carpet.
I wonder how long this will last?