Surprising discovery

I spent last week attending a conference presented by PRIM (Presbyterian Reformed International Ministries) held at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   One of the best parts of the week was that I got to lodge and eat meals with my granddaughter.  How good is that?

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But why did I go?  What did I hope to learn?

I went because our congregation is beginning a time of renewal, prayer and discernment for mission.  I am more convinced than ever that it must be the power of the Holy Spirit that will guide the Church through the many changes in the next century.   A week from Monday our congregation starts "listening" in a focused way to where God is calling us to do ministry in our community.  So what better thing to do, I reasoned,  than to attend a conference on the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

This is what I learned.  Both Lutheran and Reformed traditions spend a lot of time in their "heads".  Our thoughts and therefore our doctrines and confessions are organized and logical.  What seems harder for us in our traditions is to be open to the free blowing wind of the Spirit that Jesus referred to in John, chapter 3.

And so in this past week I found myself identifying with the similar struggle of Reformed Christians to talk about the real and present power of the Holy Spirit.  Yes, Lutherans struggle with this as well.  I could respect the Reformed pains to articulate carefully their experience with the more charismatic gifts of the Spirit.  Since I too come from a very intellectually oriented denomination, I have had little experience with the more charismatic gifts alluded to in the Christian scriptures.  But in attending the conference, this is the discovery that really surprised me:  there is indeed  a common thread between, for example, speaking in tongues and prophecy in the more charismatic tradition  presented by these Reformed Christians and the more quiet, contemplative prayer of the mystical Christians which has been a part of my prayer practice for the last decade.  The common thread is listening.  Listening.

At last week's conference, I listened with other Reformed Christians for the prayers God might want me to pray for others.  These listenings were not merely random thoughts.  I learned these listening, prophetic prayers must be grounded in scripture and that they have to bring glory to God.  I realized that in my own contemplative practice, I too listen for the prayer God is welling up in me to pray for others.  I just do it with more silence and often without words.  Still, the end result is the same:  listening to how the Holy Spirit is directing and obeying where the Spirit leads.

I return to Pennsylvania and my congregation having witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit set loose in Reformed charismatic brothers and sisters.  How exciting and energizing!  But I am not envious to be like them.  Instead, I have come back witnessing to and honoring the power of contemplative prayer in my own experience.  I have discovered that the two traditions and practices are parallel.  While I have not been given charismatic gifts,  I have grown to cherish the gift of silence in contemplative prayer.  As I wait in silence before God, I am renewed and made whole both to pray and to act in tune with God's Spirit.  Silent, contemplative prayer has been and is a deep well of strength for me.   In silence before God, I am emboldened to pray clearly, directly and through the Spirit's power in specific situations.  This is the gift that I am called to practice as the congregation enters a time of discernment.  And so I return to Pennsylvania so glad to be a Lutheran contemplative Christian (which for some is an oxymoron).  More than that, I am grateful to be a follower of Jesus, a follower of the One who has invited us to pray in the Spirit's power (in whatever tradition and way we manage to do it) for the sake of the world.  Thanks be to God!

Not a normal Easter

I have been involved in worship leadership either as a pastor or as a church musician since 1978 and have never missed an Easter.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever missed being in church on Easter anytime in my six decades of life...until this past Easter Sunday.

No flowers.  No singing of "Jesus Christ is risen today."  No soaring organ or alleluias.  No crowds of people. I didn’t have any props at all to get me psyched for “Christ is risen.”  Instead, I experienced Good Friday and the tomb of holy Saturday and the breaking news of Easter morning in a very different way.

Early Saturday morning I drove 300 miles to help my parents in a medical emergency with colleagues filling in for the worship leadership I was leaving behind.  My one brother had traveled the same distance the previous afternoon.  My other brother held a vigil of concern half a continent away.  It was  the strangest, the most frightening and exhausting Easter of my life.  (And holy week is never easy for a Lutheran pastor or musician.) It was also the most significant, and I didn't step foot in a church.

The point being Christ is risen in spite of us and where we are.  We not only can share the story of Christ's rising though glorious and inspiring worship, but just as profoundly, we can share that story when we see Christ living in our daily, nitty-gritty, close-to-the-tomb, difficult lives.  We sometimes meet the risen Christ in the darkness.

Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ when she was weeping.  The two disciples on the road to Emmaus saw the risen Christ when they had given up hope.  Thomas saw the risen Christ only after doubting that it could be possible.  Where in our grief, or in our giving up, or in our doubting do we need to see the risen Christ?  Or where in our not knowing what to do next can we see the risen Christ face to face?  Where in a home filled with anxiety did I see the risen Christ?

Love.  I saw the risen Christ in love.

Before I say more, let me be clear: if my mom had been diagnosed with a brain tumor (which at one point we feared), or if we would have had to move her to a memory support unit (which we also feared), the risen Christ would have still been there for us and would have been just as real to us.  The good news of Christ’s risen power always runs deeper than our immediate circumstances.  The power of the risen Christ in our lives cannot be thwarted by anything that is happening to us.  God's grace is too big.  God sends the risen Christ  to meet us at the tombs of our lives.  That's where I stood, while Christians around the globe were celebrating.

I think my previous Easter celebrations have blinded me to the fact that resurrection is not easy.  In fact, it is much harder than a soaring trumpet refrain or an exhilarating resurrection sermon or an awesome candlelight vigil.  First, only God can accomplish resurrection, not any of us.  Not any of our prepared liturgies.  Only God does resurrection.

Second, there may be things that we need to let go of to encounter the risen Christ.  Mary had to leave off looking into the empty tomb, Thomas had to risk leaving his doubts, and the disciples had to leave their hiding behind locked doors.  But look at what a difference it made!.  You and I know Christ lives and loves us because these first followers listened to the risen Christ and let his power do new things in their lives.


And so while others celebrated the Vigil and sang Easter hymns, I had to let go and sit quietly with family. There I watched the power of Christ’s rising in the tenderness of my weary dad rising to care for and love my confused mom, of our praying openly with one another, in the soft singing of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in the emergency room while holding my mom's hand, and in the lively, renewed dialogue between my brother and myself.

My parents are home now, back on their own with a support system in place and home health care checking in.  We've come out on the other side and all is well. We can call that resurrection, and I am grateful for healing.  Just as I am grateful for the many who prayed us through those difficult days. Things are back to normal---actually, better than the old normal since new lines of communication and support have been taken on.  But resurrection itself isn't normal; it is  inexplicably life-giving and life-changing.  It is God creating a new thing.

Thus I am different; there is something new and I still cannot quite articulate how yet.  Maybe I will in a future post.  But I know I have heard the risen Christ call my name in the dark, and I have seen what Easter is like in the silence.  And this quiet resurrection is full of love, not lilies.

May the risen Christ open our weeping eyes, our doubting minds and our fearful hearts to the love and grace that gives us life. 

A balm for all wounds

I had a few spare minutes before driving to work this morning, so I picked up the book that I was too tired to finish last night: Etty Hillisum:  An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork.  Etty Hillisum was a Jewish young woman, an avid reader, a tutor in Russian, who lived in the Netherlands.  The book is her diary and collection of letters of her last year in Amsterdam and her time in a Westerbork labor camp, ending with a postcard thrown from the "transport" train to Poland.  Records show she died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943.

I marveled at her written words which revealed how, over the last two years of her life, she grew in her spiritual faith.  Starting from someone who didn't know how to pray, she read the bible, both Hebrew and  Christian scriptures, and had a powerful sense of the joy of life and of the presence of God, even in the most inhuman and tragic circumstances.   Trusting in God's love, she was motivated by a deep compassion for all people, refusing to harbor bitterness or hatred in herself, even in the ugliness of war.

Ultimately, we have one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace and to reflect it towards others.  And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubles world.

 She was brutally honest about her failures in life; her clear confessions and self-awareness were a good Lenten companion.  But along with acknowledging the wrong within herself, she was also radically contemplative at her core, aware of God's indwelling in the quiet center of her life at all times.  Here is a quote from when she was still living in Amsterdam but surrounded by the anxiety of people whose freedoms were being taken away:

 Despite the many people, the many questions, the varied studies, one must always carry a great silence within one, a silence into which one can always withdraw, even in the midst of all hustle and bustle and in the midst of the most animated conversations.

She felt called to extend compassion to others, even volunteering at one point to go to Westerbork so that she could be with her suffering people and offer some measure of care and compassion.   The last words in her diary are:

We would be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

It is Maundy Thursday as I write this.  Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you, to love one another as I have loved you."  We remember again how Jesus washed his disciples' feet and gave his life in a horrible death for the world.  He is a profound outpouring of God's love. He is God's embodied love.

I am also carrying around the mental picture of one Jewish woman who in the last years of her life enfleshed the heart of Jesus' commandment to us.  Tonight, after sharing holy communion and as the psalm is being sung, I will gratefully think of Christ's self-giving love, a balm for all our wounds.    While the altar is stripped and silence falls upon the gathering, I will also think of Etty Hillisum, daughter of God, committed to selfless acts of love, confident in God's care, tossing her last postcard from the moving box car.    

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

You know how some people have additions to their person that they can’t leave home without?  My son once had a red baseball cap for a couple for a couple of years that he wore almost constantly.  A couple of guys in our congregation simply can’t worship May through September unless they are wearing their Hawaiian shirts. Moses had his walking stick.

I guess he took it up when he started herding sheep and goats for his father-in-law Jethro.  A walking stick comes in handy when fighting off snakes or mountain lions.  It helps keep one’s balance walking down dry slopes with loose rocks.  He wouldn't have left home without it.

But when God gave Moses his new assignment at the burning bush, telling Moses to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt,  you could say Moses’s walking stick took on new meaning.  God told the reluctant  Moses to throw the stick on the ground; it turned into a snake.  God told Moses to pick up the snake; it turned back into his walking stick.  Strange, huh?

Down in Egypt, Moses held his staff over the Nile River;  it turned to blood, the first plague.  God told Moses to hit the ground with his walking stick, the plagues of gnats and later locusts arose.  God told Moses to hold his walking stick up to the sky;  a plague of thunder, hail and lightening devastated the Egyptian countryside.  When Egyptian armies trapped the people against the Red Sea, God told Moses to hold his walking stick over the water, and the sea parted for the people to escape.  When the people in the wilderness ran out of water, God told Moses to strike a rock with his stick; the rock split and water started flowing out so they wouldn’t die of dehydration.

One could get the idea that God, Moses, and that walking stick made an invincible partnership. Until the reading found in Exodus 17:8-13.  Suddenly the walking stick/Moses/God combination was not working smoothly.

A desert Bedouin tribe, distant feuding cousins of the Hebrews, had seen Moses and the people walking through the wilderness, a wilderness where there was limited water and limited grass.  The tribe started ambushing and killing small groups on the edge of camp.  Joshua reported the crisis to Moses.  Moses told him to fight back in the morning.  Now remember, these Hebrews were newly freed slaves, brick-makers unused to this wilderness territory, who had not had any military training.  Odds were stacked against them, and Moses knew they needed God’s help.  So while Joshua led the counter-assault, Moses climbed up a hill with his walking stick and did what he always did, held up his staff, invoking God’s help.

But for the first time, results were not instantaneous.  The fight was long and bloody and his arms got weary.  So Moses rested the stick on the ground and gave his cramped arm muscles a chance to relax.  Then he glanced downhill and realized in horror that the desert tribe was recouping and winning the battle over the Israelites.  So immediately Moses raised his staff again, and Joshua’s men started to rally...until Moses could stand it no longer and had to lower his arms again. This happened over and over.  Why was it taking so long?  Why wasn't praying with the walking stick working?

Finally, Aaron (Moses’ brother) and Hur, realized what was happening.  They ran to Moses, got him to sit down on a rock, and together stood on either side of Moses, each holding up one of his arms which were in turn supporting the famous walking stick.  They stood as partners with Moses in prayer until Joshua’s men finally defeated the desert tribe.

I don’t believe for a minute that God needed a raised walking stick to be cajoled  into answering prayer.  Nor do I believe any of us would  think that God would turn God's back on the people when Moses arms were hurting too much to keep holding them up.  So what’s going on?

What I really think was happening was that God was helping Moses be a better leader.  It’s becoming apparent in the story that Moses felt like he carried the burden of the people alone, and he was getting weary.  He was the one that prayed for the people.  He was the one God talked to.  He was the one people complained to, and it was more than his arms that were getting tired.  (Read Exodus chapter 18 and see what happened next).

So high on this hilltop, God was teaching Moses that he couldn't pray alone.  He needed to sit down on a rock and let others pray with him.  Not until Aaron and Hur shared the burden of prayer did things begin to change.

Have you ever found it hard to share with others a special burden that is on your heart? We don’t like to be vulnerable, do we?  If we share this struggle or that problem, what will people think of us?  If we talk about how we are having a hard time, won't they question our capability or our spirituality?  How can we share our deep concerns and struggles with one another?

But sometimes burdens are too heavy to bear by ourselves and we need partners in prayer and support and presence.  Of course, God hears us no matter where we are or who is with or not with us.  And yet, there is something crucial about a faith community.  Jesus used to take a couple of disciples with him during the times he was especially burdened.  And he is the one who said wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there he will be in the midst of them.

There have been times, when I have avoided sharing with others a deep concern; I tried to carry the weight of prayer by myself.  God hears my prayers, I said.  But, while God is always faithful, I have slowly and stubbornly learned that it often takes sharing and praying with others before God’s answer becomes evident.  We need to let a few trusted Christians know how they can be praying for us.  This is not only true of individuals.  We as congregations need to be praying, not just for ourselves, but for one another in these challenging times.  Yes, it takes the Body of Christ to be in prayer together for us to be able to see and hear and point to how God is working.  One person, one congregation, and not even Moses can carry the burden alone.

Where I come from

I have been participating in a Lenten retreat with Jan Richardson.  This week the theme involves thinking about stories, including our personal stories.  This is a piece of my story, much is left out, based on my growing up years.  Of course, it is also based on a few threads of the story that I happen to be thinking about today.  What from my childhood is woven into me now, I wonder?  What have I let go on the way? If you were to tell your story, or a piece of your story, about yourself and about your relationship to God, what would it be...today?  

I am from mountains---where winding roads on Sunday afternoon rides would throw us unbuckled (no seatbelts then), giggling kids against each other.  Where our burning muscles could climb us  to the top of the world.  Where cold spring water tumbled over rocks and numbed dangling feet.  Where we tunneled paths through rhododendron thickets on Mountain Lake.

I am from a home on a hill---where its ever-changing shadows on the green lawn created even more shifting shapes for our play “houses”.  Where milk and cookies and conversation at the kitchen table were the after-school special.   Where we roller-skated on the carport to the rhythm of our singing under the mountain’s amused eye.  Where I planted myself on the piano bench in the afternoon while others practiced cheers or field hockey.  Where I turned pages of music until I found one too hard for me and tried it anyway, and imagined what it could sound like one day.

I am from books---where the county bookmobile made summer stops in front of my house, the neighborhood exploring its depths and I emerging with several treasures. Where my bed had a bookcase to hold them and my father made one for my wall.  Where I tried on different personalities and work and loves and adventures.  Where I grew bigger on the inside.

I was bible-belted with stories and revivals---where I once played the do-not-dance version, but another time the short-skirt-electric-guitar version.  I am from mostly hearing God talk to me in between lines of my open bible while curled on my bed.  Or when I would creep to my raised window and feel the night breeze that stirred the neighbor’s hemlock tree, hear the cricket ostinato, see stars blinking and something in the depths of me would leap and stretch.

I do not know where the preaching pastor belatedly came from.  Because where I am from, I did not want to talk much in large groups.  That talk certainly did not come from the mountains where I would rather sit on a rock and be quiet.

But I am from Bob and Beverly, who have loved the Lord and have loved each other for 65 married years next week.  Who sang to me almost every night of my childhood that “one of these days you’re gonna rise up singing, then you’ll spread your wings and take to the sky....”  Who were puzzled when I left home walking into unconservative, take-to-the-sky ways.  Who could not follow, but loved me just the same.  That’s where I’m from.

The necessity of wilderness

(Last Sunday we heard about a hungry Jesus in the wilderness facing temptation and letting go of making stones into bread.  I have been participating in an on-line retreat for Lent which has touched on wilderness and the "letting go" that we all must do....This is from my journaling.)

Most of the time in the wilderness one feels the letting go deeply,
and is aware of the doing without, little things and large, of the saying no,
and then of the stillness and, yes, the monotony,
and space, empty, long wilderness space.
There is hunger and cold, both in body and soul,
aching and fear, itching for more of something
and uncertainty about the nothing. No, nothing
is certain in the wilderness that's for sure (or not).

It is tempting to bail out. To jump back into noise and busyness. To be distracted into filling the emptiness. To filling expectations. To filling time. To filling the chatter. To fulfilling a pull to move on out and manage the universe so that contentment reigns for to whom we have responsibility. To save the world, or least my corner of it. "If you are the daughter of God, take...." 


But wilderness is slow work. It takes a long time
for hunger to grow and then lose its demanding grip,
a longer time for silence to speak.
It takes a while to know the difference
between howling wind and life's breath.
And so one Lenten foot stays in the wild while
one hand attends to the 'must do'
and the rest is falling into a pile of things dropped in the dust.
How much will be relegated in the end as so much rubbish,
and how much will be picked up again, rearranged into a pastor's backpack
with wilderness priorities and finally brought back into the community
is yet a part of the wilderness uncertainty. Either way,
it is not easily deemed part of a job description to wander for Lenten hours
in the wilderness when one must
water the soil.
There's a scent of neglect.

Or is it holy necessity?

Underneath a gray day

A week into February, the winter seemed a drab washout of grays and browns on my morning walk with the dogs.  After taking them back home,  I went out again, needing more exercise and wanting to put in more miles before the snow descended on us.  But this time with no dogs to distract me, I vowed to open my eyes and look, to stop along the way so that I could listen to something other than the rustle of my jacket.  What I noticed for the next few hours was a lovely world of subtle color, the rushing sounds of water, the calls of woodpeckers and a kingfisher, the tiny, almost unnoticeable movement of tall grasses in the stirring air.  All I had was my cell phone camera, so here are a few photos that ended up somewhat focused.  The burnt orange pine needles and the crushed red bittersweet skins didn't make the necessary focus cut, so we'll have to use our imagination to add those colors into the winter walk list.    

Translucent white ice dangling over Stony Run...

A rosy stem of black raspberry...

White grass skeletons beaten down...

Blues, greens and maroons of ivy...

Deep evergreen and faint blue...

And an even more brilliant blue...

Cream and toffee...

Variegated olives in sycamore bark...

Okay, the great heron is simply gray in the shadows, so this blue is sheer hope.  I know that when he spreads his wings in the spring noon sun, we will all marvel at how blue he is.

So now it's your turn to go looking.