Advent Day1: Magnificat, magnificat, magnificat

So, as I was driving from Virginia to Pennsylvania yesterday, I listened to a recording of the Magnificat by Rutter.  I thought it would be a good break from memorizing Mary's song in Luke 1.  It was being sung in Latin, and my Latin is tenuous since, after all, it has been a very long time since high school.  But it was still fun listening carefully, figuring out where the choir was in relation to the English translation I was trying to memorize, and delighting in how the music painted the text.  So the music starts:  "Magnificat, magnificat...." which in English is "Magnify, magnify."  In the music the drums beat louder and each "magnify" rises higher. It is exhilarating.

Mary's song, the Englsih version, begins:  My soul magnifies the Lord.  If you are reading this blog, then you surely have used Google Maps or Mapquest.  You know, for example,  how we can start from a large area map and step by step zoom in closer and closer.  When my son was hiking the Appalachian Trail, he posted a link on his blog to a map of the trail up the east coast.  One could see how the trail went from Georgia to Maine.  But then one could click the "+" button and zoom in closer;  go click "+" again and zoom in still closer.  Pretty soon one could see the elevation contours, the shelters, the parking areas of the vicinity he was in. One could even zoom in and magnify what the challenges might be for the day, or where roads or rivers  need to be crossed, or the locations of towns where supplies could be gotten. 

My soul magnifies the Lord,  said Mary.

I wonder if Mary's life was like a map, where one could locate the "+" button, zoom in and see more clearly what God had done for her.  She actually seems delighted in letting people know what God was doing.  Her focus seems to be not about herself at all; it was about what God was doing.

So what about our lives?  Are we willing to get out of the way?  To hit the + button of our lives so that others can see more closely what God is doing?  Do we want to magnify and feature God or ourselves?  Who do we want magnified?

May soul magnifies the Lord, said Mary.

Important words.  Can I say the same?


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Twas the night before advent...

Twas the night before advent and today through the long drive of 300 hundred miles home, I worked on memorizing the "Magnificat" or Mary's song from Luke, chapter 1.  It is a beautiful hymn that has been sung by the Church through the centuries. As Luke tells it, Mary is  pregnant with Jesus and rushes to her kinswoman Elizabeth's house (you can surmise why the haste to get away) where she stays for three months.  Elizabeth greets her with warmth, joy and a surprising blessing---saying that she knows Mary is the mother of the Lord.  Mary's words of relief and response to Elizabeth go like this:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
      and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 
      for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
      for the Mighty One has done great things for me, 
      and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him,
      from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
      and lifted up the lowly.
He as filled the hungry with good things
      and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel
      in remembrance of his mercy, 
            according to the promise he made to our ancestors, 
                  to Abraham and his descendants forever.

A confession:  I had to make several corrections in the above typing which I attempted to do for memory and failed.  Obviously I don't quite know it by heart yet.  But I will continue working on it throughout the 23 days of advent.  Why?  It seems to be a good counterpoint to the typical frenzy of the season. It shifts one's gaze in a different direction---to noticing what God is doing rather than being consumed by checking my long personal lists. My goal for this blog is to post something each day as I reflect on the Magnificat's meaning for me in this time and place.

See you tomorrow.

We were never really lost

It never fails:  on a sunny afternoon with time on our hands, the GPS leads us off the beaten path where we see things and go places we have never been before.

Like today.  How many of you know where Ridge Rd. comes into Mt. Holly Springs?   You probably don't want to know unless you 1) have a pick-up truck or jeep that navigates stony dirt roads pretty well and 2) you wouldn't mind backing all the way back down this stony road if you meet a vehicle on its way into town. As Ridge Rd. comes off the ridge (or as you go up the ridge) there is only one lane and no place to pull over.   (For the record, the only vehicles we passed were on top of the ridge where there was enough passing room.)

But once at the top with the trees leafless and bare, you can see out over Mt. Holly Springs, across the  Cumberland Valley, the distant I-81 and the mountains beyond.  And if you are lucky, you might see a posse (we looked it up) of turkey crossing the road.  No, they didn't wait around to get their photo taken; it is hunting season after all and they were on the move.

There were some rocks marked on the map that looked like a promising outcropping to overlook the other direction towards Pine Grove Furnace.  So we parked the truck and walked down an overgrown forest road in the direction of where we thought these rocks would be.  The dry oak leaves made a huge racket as the two of us and our two dogs tramped through.  Maybe the noise was a good thing; we had forgotten to wear orange for hunting season.  We walked maybe a half hour and there were no rocks, no cliff, until finally the forest road petered out into an overgrown path.  Since that path seemed to be heading back up to the ridge, and the GPS thought we were not so far from the road at the top,  we decided not to turn around  but to try this new path.  So we weren't lost exactly.

The path led us to a place that had just been clear cut of most trees.  I suppose we had a great view.  But have you ever tried walking over broken limbs and left over trunks and gouged earth?  That wouldn't have been too bad except that we had the dogs on leash to keep them from running off into a hunter's territory.  A dog likes to jump when I need to be a little more cautious in where I put my feet in order not to twist an ankle.  You get the picture.

We picked our way uphill and hoped that on the opposite end of the clear-cut we would find a road where the heavy equipment had come in and which would make our walking easier.  Forget the rocks we had been hunting; there was no sign of them and no sign of a service road leading out of the clear-cut.  So we checked our position on the GPS, determined the best direction of Ridge Rd. and decided to bushwhack.  The first ten minutes weren't too bad since we were no longer scrambling over broken trees but through the taller trees with scattered bushes.  But then we abruptly came upon a clear-cut from several years ago.   The small second growth trees---some pines, some thin leafless trunks---were thick and very close.  Rotten logs littered the ground.  Branches scraped faces.  Leashes got tangled.  We stooped and ducked, stopped and sidetracked.  The sun was making more progress getting lower in the sky than we were through that jungle.

Finally we literally stumbled into mature growth again, a forgotten campsite and another forest road.  It is hard to describe how wonderful it is to be able to walk upright and unimpeded again.  The grassy forest track we found was not marked on the GPS, but it seemed to be heading for something called Cold Spring Rd which would eventually take us back uphill to Ridge Rd---we hoped. Unfortunately, the forest road took us downhill.  (The more downhill, the more climbing back up).  But anything, even a longer, round-about path, was better than bushwhacking, and there was no way were we turning around now!

There was nothing left to do except to start enjoying the walk again on this crisp afternoon with a bright sun lowering behind the trees.  Sure enough, in twenty minutes or so we hit a genuine dirt Cold Spring Rd., climbed back up the mountain and turned right onto Ridge Rd.  We passed a parked car (hunting?).  A bicyclist and a couple of faster horses and riders passed us by.  And just as we were wondering how much farther to the truck,  we saw them---

The rocks we had been looking for all along! They were massively piled up where the road took a turn.  Huge boulders jutting upward, making nooks and crannies and caves and ledges.  All sorts of graffiti was painted in bright colors.   Lots of broken glass bits indicated that this has definitely been a party place.  Standing on the stones, we could see farmland way down to the left, we knew that the Appalachian Trail was nestled on the opposite ridge, and we couldn't quite spy Pine Grove Furnace in the direction where the sun was now getting close to setting. 

By now you do realize, of course, as we did standing on the rocks, that if we had just kept driving down Ridge Rd for another mile instead of stopping to walk, we would have found Hammond's Rocks so much sooner and easier. We were never really lost, but we sure did do things the hard way today.  And before it was all over, we still had another estimated mile or so of walking to the truck...and another chance to spot a turkey posse.







 

A particularly long walk

Chester and I went walking on Saturday's still morning.  The earth seemed to be holding its breath awaiting the coming storm:  a dead gray sky, the creek with a black sheen, the monotonous damp penetrating one's bones.  Thus, the dry leaves were made all the more brilliant in their contrast--bronzes, russets, crimsons, yellows---as they collapsed onto fading grass or scratched their way along the paved road.  They had my full attention for awhile, knowing their time was limited;  the hurricane on its way would see to that.

It was a particularly long walk.  It took time for me to begin to notice the stray, rather unremarkable life tucked here and there. One flimsy strand of goldenrod drooping among brown stalks.  One periwinkle blossom five months tardy.  A thin queen anne's lace over-extended like an umbrella.  A few brown-eyed susans in a field.  One dandelion.  A pink clover flower, and a small white one too.  Honeysuckles blooming on a branch hugging the ground.  A small campion on the roadside.  A little fleabane and pale aster among stiffened siblings.  Soon it became the morning's game to discover what still lives and could still invite a bee or two to eat.

Little did I know how much I would need that walk.  The next day, Sunday, was a glorious red festival of worship.  The early service celebrated  "Reformation Sunday" with two baptisms: one a teenager whose two friends in her confirmation class stood as her sponsors.  I had worked hard to make the message about God's grace as simple, clear and full of gospel as possible.  The seminarian played the trumpet with the choir anthem.  It was good.

But suddenly I knew it would be a particularly long morning when I walked into the second service and less than a dozen people were there.  A few more arrived at the last minute so that the four worship leaders processing, along with the organist, made up a quarter of the congregation.  I sang a thin sounding "A Mighty Fortress is our God" with discouragement penetrating my bones, hope collapsing and energy fading.

I would like to say otherwise, but the heartache of scarcity never left me during that worship. Nevertheless, I had to preach through it and ultimately know that the message coming out of my mouth about grace---that one's trust itself is an unearned gift of God's grace---was a message directed to me.  I kept aching, even while little one-year-old Ava, standing in the pew, became a spontaneous illustration for the message.  Aching while I shared the peace with two guests who somehow keep returning to this sparse (but usually not this sparse) service.  Aching even as little Maura, receiving a blessing at communion, announced to me that she knows Jesus loves her.   As you can see, there was plenty of life tucked here and there which simply took some extra concentration to notice.  My questions and doubts and self-judgment, however, remained noisy.  Fortunately God's promise shouted louder:  wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus name, he is there.  And so I had to walk through the second service by grace noticing where faith still lives and Jesus invites the few to feast on his meal.

Of course, I am aware that, in the larger picture of North America, Christendom is waning.  That my colleagues and their congregations are going through similar struggles.  That the Church, nevertheless, will "reform" once again.  That "God's word shall forever abide."  That although, in the informality and secularism of our culture, liturgical "mainline" congregations are feeling it particularly hard, "decline" is not the final or truest word.  But that is for others, probably those much younger than myself, to write about and lead the way.

This is what I know to write:  what is important is not success as defined by statistics, but a faithfulness and openness to God's call both in the dying and the living.  And so I continue to love and serve this small group of God's people where, on most days, I notice life and believe God still calls me to be.

But I am going to need to keep taking lots of long walks.

One ruffed grouse follower

On our vacation this bird started following us.  We were bushwhacking from the campground down a ridge to where we knew there was a creek.  We were hoping for some good photos.  On the way, my husband suddenly stopped: “Look at this bird!”  And there walking in the leaves was a game bird, which we later identified as a ruffed grouse. It paced back and forth, pranced on a fallen branch, made soft throat noises and seemed to be enjoying (an anthropomorphic conclusion if there ever was one) the fact that it had my husband's undivided attention. 
 
After about ten minutes and dozens of photographs, we decided to move on.  Low and behold, this bird started following us.  It followed us down the ridge.  It followed us through the creek's bottom-land weeds, although whenever possible it tried to walk off the soggy ground on fallen logs.  The grouse seemed in its glory when it was lightly hopping along side of us while we, on the other hand, laboriously scrambled on all fours up the slope, hefting our bodies upwards by grabbing onto roots and trunks.  Often the bird was so camouflaged in the brown dead leaves that we couldn’t see it.  But if we got still, we would soon hear its strange soft whine nearby, almost like a whimpering dog.

After traveling for over an hour, the three of  us made it back to the edge of the campground.  Rick waited with the bird while I ran to the camper to get some peanuts, some bread, some cereal.  We figured it was likely that a summer seasonal camper had half-raised it.  We put the food on the ground and it went after the peanuts and some of the bread, but after an experimental toss, left the bran flakes alone.  Slowly we walked back to the trailer, half hoping that it might keep following us the short way through the almost empty campground, but it would go no farther.  Later that afternoon sitting outside reading, I kept listening for it in the leaves near our trailer, but it  never reappeared.

So in Mark 10:17-31, the scripture for Sunday, a man came running up to ask Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"  He obviously was longing for something more.  For Jewish people at the time, eternal life was not necessarily a place to go when you die.  Eternal life was a code word for the time when God would make all things right, when evil and violence would be banished, when justice would prevail.  That’s what the man yearned for and wanted to be a part of.  Jesus, being such a good rabbi, would surely know something about this.

What did  Jesus do?  He first reminded the man of the commandments, and the man protested that he had been there, done that.  And Jesus loved the man (an unusual statement in Mark's gospel), which leaves us, the readers, with no doubt that Jesus must have wanted the best for him.  Then Jesus suggested something drastic, something that went to the heart of having a relationship with God (and others).  Jesus told the man to sell everything he had, give it to the poor and follow him.

What?  You got to be kidding?

Here’s what I think: Jesus knew that what the man was longing for (whether the man knew it or not),  was not more commandments to keep, but a relationship with God.  So Jesus out of love invited this man into a trusting relationship with himself.  It couldn't happen, though, without the man letting go of the stuff that was holding him back.  It's hard to trust anyone, including the Messiah, if as your back-up you are still hanging onto whatever gives you the most security.  In the end, the man couldn't do it.  He simply couldn't follow any further.  Like the ruffed grouse. 

Like me.  I'll be honest.  I (perhaps each one of us) has stuff that makes it hard to let go and trust Christ, to trust his love for me, trust his ultimate goodness in a tough time.  How many times do I come just so far and can’t go further?  Within  reach of a feast, but turn away?

"Well, then, if this wealthy man can't do it, then who can be a part of this eternal life," asked Peter?

Good question.  Who can?

Not me.  I am a ruffed grouse when it comes to following Jesus.  I stand camouflaged on the sidelines.  I can think of plenty of things of which I can’t let go:  my plans, my expectations, my grudges and, yes, my material wants (not needs). 

Fortunately, the story isn't over.  At the very moment the man was sadly walking away, too afraid to let go, too anxious to let himself trust and follow, Jesus was meanwhile turning to walk the other direction to Jerusalem.  To the cross.  Loving that man so much.  Loving you so much.  Loving me so much.  Loving the world so much that he actually let go of his life in order to set us free to participate in God's new resurrected eternal-abundant-forgiven-sharing-with-the-poor life.  yes, the life that we will proclaim at a baptism this Sunday.

How is this possible?  Not by anything we humans have done, that’s for sure.  After all, when asked Jesus himself said to Peter, "With humans it’s impossible."

So, again, how does this yours-truly-ruffed-grouse follower make it out of the camouflaged sidelines?

"With God all things are possible," concluded Jesus who then headed on down the road with the cross and his own trust of an empty tomb ahead of him. 

Did you hear that?  With God all things are possible, Jesus said.  Even learning to let go, trusting Jesus in a deeper way, and walking down the road with him.

What I didn't notice

This past week I drove the three hundred miles to visit my parents.  They still live in the house I grew up in, so going back home always brings back memories of a half century ago.  When I enter the town, I have long since ceased to sigh about the old structures and roads that have disappeared or to be surprised by the new that has replaced them.  But what does continually amaze me is finally to realize that I grew up living on the very crest of a mountain but never noticed it.

For many years I trudged from my bus stop up the rather ordinary slope to our home near a rather unremarkable hilltop.   Only one house separated ours from the last cross street in the neighborhood, in the town really.   Along the eastern side of this boundary street, "Sunrise Drive," were a few homes backed by woods that sloped downhill to who knew where.  I never thought much about it, although I had heard my dad say that our town was situated on the edge of a plateau.   And I knew my brother followed deer trails and hunted black walnuts back there. Still.

One summer afternoon I was doing something in the basement when a storm roared through.  A clap of thunder exploded at the very instant the sky lit up.  Not more than an hour later a neighbor's house next to the eastern woods had burnt to the ground.  At the time I considered it such a freakish occurrence---that out of all the surrounding space, the odds were so remote that that particular house should be struck by lightning.

Unless, of course, the house was situated on the crest of a mountain.

About fifteen years ago, maybe more given how the years run together, a developer got hold of the forested land and cleared a road that descends partway down the slope   Estate homes now nestle in the trees, practically hidden.  The road seems a beautiful parkway and deer still treat the area as their personal breeding grounds.  It is a pleasure to walk the dogs there in the morning and a workout to climb from there back up to my older, more modest neighborhood. 

But now I can stand on Sunrise Drive, catching my breath, and look at what the trees had always hidden.  Far beyond the new winding street below me, on to the valley even farther below, and then to the mountains beyond that,  I now can see that in this one direction, at least, I am on the highest ridge for miles.  From this perspective, I indeed grew up on the crest of a mountain top, or at least what is one half of a mountain, but I had simply never paid attention for all the trees.

Once again, life is like that, isn't it?  Beauty where we hadn't noticed before.

Maybe that partly explains why I am currently a Lutheran Christian.  I used to think repetitive liturgy must lose its meaning, that Lutheran worship wasn't sincere, etc. etc.  I totally missed the Lutheran deep appreciation of Mystery, the tenacious trust in God's grace, or that most of the liturgy is really memorized scripture which returns to hearts and minds at the most needed of times---all very beautiful things.

That's just one example that comes to mind.  But it certainly is also true about people---that there is often a beautiful aspect to any person that I simply may not have noticed before.

Have you been surprised to find beauty that you didn't know was there?

On a day off

What do pastors do on a day off?  Laundry?  Often.  Errands?  Frequently. Lawn mowing? Sometimes.  Checking in with family?  Of course.  Hikes?  Not enough.

So Friday I headed up to a portion of the AT west, or "south" in the trail's larger scheme, of the Susquehanna River .  I climbed up a mountain and walked along a ridge, turned around and came down again---about 12 miles in all. My daypack was about 16 pounds which included a camera.  But when I took it out at the beginning to take the first shot above, the battery was dead.  So these pics are only from my android.

I began to see the need for me to use hiking poles.  My balance isn't what it use to be over the rocky, unstable trail.  I took 5 bottles of water and should have drunk them all since I am pretty sure I was dehydrated over the last stretch of trail.  I was dripping sweat by the time I got back to the car, and I had a whopping headache that evening.  BUT even though feet, legs and back were aching the last several miles, I was not hurting at all the next day.  No blisters either (older broken in shoes).  Next time, more water and hiking poles.

On this section of the trail, a lot of my time was spent looking down to watch where I was stepping.  The ascent (and therefore descent) had a lot of loose rock.  Along the ridge there were rock screes that crept into the trail, so the challenge was to look for solid flat places to put my feet.  The advantage was that the concentration demanded I leave the details of the work week and an undone sermon behind to pay attention to the present moment.  The disadvantage was that a few times I finally looked up to discover that I had veered off the trail!  

In looking down to pick my way around stones, I noticed many of the smaller creatures that share this space.  I avoided stepping on plenty of granddaddy long legs.   There were a couple of kinds of millipedes or centipedes (I don't know which).  One kind was hanging out together in a rock puddle.

A little brown toad about an inch in size hopped off the trail and was so camouflaged I would never have seen him except for the movement.  Too camouflaged, in fact, for me to try to get a photo.  I passed a young hemlock that hadn't been taken by the blight.  A spider wasp with a purplish black body and golden antennae flew, or more like floated, by slowly as if it were royalty in a parade.

After crossing my path, a green walking stick climbed a tree.

A patch of butterfly weed was covered in dew in the farmer's field, and fungi was prolific on the mountain.



Think of all I might have missed if the trail had been easy.  Keeping my eyes on the ground and noticing the details can be delightful....as long as you look up every once in a while to check where you are going.  Life in the congregation is like that too.

And sometimes its good just sit down and take in the long view.  That's what this pastor did on her day off.

Pipeline headed to the Susquehanna.