Wren

We had been living in our drafty old farmhouse for a while when I first identified the small bird that had build a nest in the massive lilac bush (multi-stemmed tree?) next to the clothesline out back. I had noticed its call and, unfamiliar with wrens, wondered what bird was making it.

Audubon Field Guide writes of the house wren: “very active and inquisitive, bouncing about with its short tail held up in the air, pausing to sing a rich bubbling song, it adds a lively spark to gardens and city parks despite its lack of bright colors.” Lack of bright colors, that was accurate! This plain brown bird would have been completely unremarkable but for its manner. Yet its lively movement – hopping and flitting from spot to spot, its jaunty tail twitching as it scolded me for coming too near the nest – was truly engaging.

The wren has featured in lore and literature through the years. An Irish proverb, “a wren in the hand is better than a crane out of it,” calls us to celebrate the wonder of the small rather than to chase after big things. William Blake once cautioned that those who harmed a wren would never be loved, a warning for us all as we fail to value our nonhuman fellows on this planet home.

Having read novels in which a subdued female character is compared to a wren, I likened myself to these birds which though obvious once noticed are also shy of attention. I didn’t draw attention to myself. While I prefer gray and blue to brown, I’d never been considered showy. Uncertain of my reception, I preferred to blend into the background rather than risk exposure. 

I also admired wrens for their determination to make something good out of a bad situation. Male house wrens build twiggy nests with which to attract a mate. (Imagine if humans so valued home-building skills.) After we moved to the farmette, an old leather boxing glove was found, yellowed and cracking. Someone hung it by its knotted laces from the rusty cross piece supporting the clothesline. That spring, a wren build a nest in it. After a spring downpour, I noticed that the still-empty nest was waterlogged but soon the wren was back, undeterred, rebuilding. As one who saw herself in the wren even before this, I was touched. I too had been trying to make a home in somewhat difficult circumstances.

We moved, then moved again. I forgot about wrens except for rare moments when I’d hear one while walking through a garden. I grew up. I found that I enjoy decking out in reds and stripes. I gave up frumpy and wore clothes that fit. I gained comfort at being in groups of people and learned to hold my own in conversation. I found the courage to stand in the center of a room and to speak as well as listen. I moved on in good ways. I’m more fully me and I celebrate all of this.

And yet… when doing a search on wren characteristics for this post, a list from What Is My Spirit Animal appeared among the birding links. While I’ve never considered that I might have a spirit animal (if you have experience with this, I’d love to hear from you!) the list of characteristics and words associated with wrens piqued my curiosity:

accuracy, adroitness, cleverness, cordiality, dexterous, graciousness, family bonds, focused, handy, joyousness, liveliness, movement, playful, quick-witted, shared responsibility, skill, spritely, versatile, and watchfulness.

While I’m not especially gracious or cordial and I’ve been challenged in sharing responsibility (I’m getting better!), most of the others might be used for me. Hm, maybe I’m a wren after all.

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on not knowing I had Lyme

Twenty-five years ago, we bought a farmette north of Pulaski Wisconsin and moved there from Wyoming. I was pregnant and not keen about coming to my then-husband’s home state but  I’d made a practice of following him and wasn’t ready to stop.

After living there a few months, I told a doctor that I was suddenly struggling to find words. I was dismissed in one word: “Stress.” I’d always thought I was healthy. When advancing through the ranks of tae kwon do, I could feel my muscles growing stronger. At home, I was aware that I burned out faster than expected but told myself I was doing a lot. 

I’d journaled off-and-on since I was a teenager, but it became a regular practice after I began serving churches in 2008. At the start of each week, even if only to write, “It’s Sunday so I’m writing,” I put pen to paper. It was in reading old entries that I realized how long I'd been tired. Now to be clear, pastoring was never easy for me. It was mentally consuming and, aware of my own deficiencies, I put in longish hours trying to be the pastor that people needed and expected. But not long before the disease ran over me like a Mack truck (and then back again for good measure) I finally took notice of how often words like “tired,” “worn out,” and “fatigue” were part of the written record. Something beyond my fear of “not being good enough” was a play.

A week before my fiftieth birthday (June 2010), Kay observed a tick embedded on the back of my arm. The ensuing fatigue followed by a bulls-eye rash prompted me to see a doctor who prescribed doxycycline and never suggested that this might not be the end of it. (I’ve written about this before.) Being rather busy I didn’t notice that I didn’t feel fine. Only in hindsight was I able to put things together. I’ll never know which parts are accurate but here's my hypothesis:

I had an acute Borrelia infection (Lyme) in 2010 but since ticks were a regular part of my life growing up this probably wasn’t my first encounter with the bacteria. I was likely exposed to that and/or other tick-borne infections as a child, and then again on moving to Wisconsin.

Two years after moving to Wisconsin, my left jaw froze. I couldn’t open my mouth enough to insert a finger between my teeth. (Singers notice such things.) Eating was painful so I stuck to soft vegetables for months until the muscles relaxed some. The pain continued; the jaw always cracking and grinding like sandpaper. Nothing helped so I assumed I’d have this for life. Until… three weeks ago when out of the blue my jaw was okay. Nothing had changed save that I'm a year into my Lyme treatment (and random symptoms have eased along the way) and had in February begun treating for mycoplasma.

I read the above and think, boring. I've laid this out hoping to convince you to take tick-borne illness seriously. Tests give lots of false negatives. The CDC doesn’t recognize that Lyme isn’t cured with a run of antibiotics, but many thousands know differently.

• One can get a borrelia-laced tick bite anywhere1
• in the woods
• in a city
• at the beach or 
• in their own yard (where I got mine in 2010).
• Like its cousin Syphilis, Lyme is known as a “great imitator.”
• Symptoms vary with the individual and can include: fatigue, brain fog, migraines, encephalitis, joint pain, balance or vertigo issues, heart problems, vision problems, tinnitus...
• People with Lyme are frequently diagnosed with MS, Parkinson's, or other autoimmune diseases before getting a correct diagnosis.
• The bacteria is present in blood as well as semen, vaginal secretions, and urine.
• Lyme has been found in every continent and in every U.S. state.
• Ticks carry Lyme
• So do mites, mosquitoes, and biting flies.
• Animal reservoirs include mice and deer, and also 
• desert tortoises, lizards,
• cows, horses, dogs, 
• raccoons, and songbirds. “You don’t have a bird feeder, do you?”2
• Nearly half a million are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease in the U.S. annually.3 The number infected is likely much higher.
• A course of antibiotics will effectively cure 70-95% of them, depending on the study and antibiotic.
• This means it doesn't work for a lot of people!
• This also doesn't consider that up to 35% who relapse. 
• 476,000 in the U.S. are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease. Diagnosed.
• This number doesn’t include those who don’t seek treatment because no one suggests that. 
• Most people who find themselves with Lyme never saw a tick. 
• Nymphs are the size of poppy seeds. 
• A lot of Lyme research is not making it into the hands of doctors and medical schools.

I don't mean to scare anyone but we need to get the word out. Someone wrote on the “Lyme Disease Support and Wellness” Facebook group page last year of telling her doctor she was thankful she didn't have cancer. The doctor looked at her oddly, “With cancer, there's an ending. You get better or you die.” For many, Lyme is a forever diagnosis. We work toward wellness while recognizing that any little thing can trigger a relapse.

Please, take your risk seriously. Get educated. And don't dismiss anyone else's journey.

1  To confirm information presented here, please consult the first chapters of Stephen Harrod Buhner, Healing Lyme: Natural Healing of Lyme Borreliosis and the Coinfections Chlamydia and Spotted Fever Rickettsioses, Second Edition, Raven Press, 2015 where he presents information from some of his extensive research.

2  Buhner's refrain in the first chapters of Healing Lyme, 2nd edition,

3  "How many people get Lyme disease?" https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html, last viewed on March 21, 2022.

one little book changed everything

Think of something that, when you were young, shaped your life in a significant way.

When I was a teen, my dad was head usher at our church. As such, he – and we, his family – arrived at church on Sunday well before just about anyone. I spent most of those Sunday morning half-hours in the small, dark-paneled church library. Often I’d flip through a concordance, going down a rabbit hole about whatever term caught my attention. (Bible concordance were huge books that, before the internet, offered alphabetical listings of words and phrases indicating where they occur throughout all the Biblical books.) I wasn’t a Bible nerd. I simply found this information cool in the same way I found the etymology in dictionary entries to be cool.

On days when I wasn’t looking at the concordance, I'd pull down and look at a book that caught my eye. Today’s post is about one such book. 

I was about fifteen when I found it, a small, adult picture book illustrated simply with line drawings. Details – both of the illustrations and the story itself – are lost to memory. They’ve been replaced with what I needed that book to contain. I read it only once perhaps forty-seven years ago...

A young woman, standing outdoors, began to build a wall around herself. One brick each day, sometimes two, she built it. And brick by brick, it grew. At first there were only two courses of bricks in a half circle in front of her, nearly within arms reach of her (and the reader) but slowly the wall grew as day by day she added more bricks – waist high, then higher still until eventually the wall was taller than she was.

It was quiet behind her wall. Peaceful. Safe. There was no pain or anger. No confusion. There was also no wonder or delight but this didn’t trouble her, shielded as she was from those other things. And for no one knows how long, not even the young woman herself, she remained there, content in her solitude.

But one day as she stood in front of her wall, soaking in all the ways that it protected her, she was surprised when a flower landed at her feet. It had dropped from above, from the other side of the wall she had built for her own protection and well-being. A token from someone she could not see and did not know. 

The young woman stood contemplating this gift from the unknown stranger. How long she stood there, I don’t know. Maybe days, months passed as she thought about the flower and what it meant.

And then one morning, the woman began – one brick at a time – to take down her wall. It had taken her many months, maybe years, to erect. It would take at least as long to dismantle.

Earlier, I invited you to think of something that shaped your life. This book is one for me.

I didn’t recognize that the story was a parable. I understood parables only as stories Jesus told to get his point across. That other people might employ the same device didn’t occur to me.

The concept of metaphor also eluded me – well into adulthood – but when I read this story I knew the author was writing about my life. Already, I had begun building a wall to protect myself from the confusions and hurts that were (I later realized) a regular part of growing up. I didn’t know how to cope with them or with the emotions which seemed to be triggered too easily. Describing my reaction to the story in today’s vernacular, I’d say – “OMG, that’s me!”

I’m a loner who craves the company of others – but not too much – and only of a select few.* Still, I need them as much as I need green trees and a piano. Yet connecting is hard. Before learning about my Asperger’s, I’d noticed that innocent remarks could leave people offended. I thought there was something wrong with me

This book presented itself at just the right moment. I’ve never seen another copy. If I had missed it, another learning opportunity might have presented itself. (They have a habit of doing that.) What I know is that my world changed that Sunday. Though it’s still difficult every time I speak to a new person, or ask something new of a familiar one, I risk it, opening myself to possibilities. Another person might look at my thin circle of friends and say that I’ve failed. But I know what my life might have been like if I’d never read that book.

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*  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) identifies me as a gregarious introvert. I like 16 Personalities for learning more about each of the 32 types – the 16 original types each split into two subtypes. My daughter Kay who has delved deeply into the MBTI for character research in writing her novels tells me that this site’s assessment is the best (free one) she’s found.

Capernaum, a memory

Pausing after closing a document on the laptop, I look at the background picture. At the hammered-metal Tau (Franciscan cross). At the rope before the chancel. The simplicity of the chancel furniture. The shape of the altar and the parament hangings there. I study the shepherd’s hooks that comprise much of the fence around the central floor area and the pieces of glass within, laid like stained glass. The hazy sky through the windows. I wonder if the faithful collect missals before taking their seats on the plain, wood benches. Are the plants real? I remember the brightness of that afternoon and how my eyes had to adjust when we entered. And the coolness on stepping out of the October sun.

If I recall correctly this church, build amid the ruins of the ancient city of Capernaum, is named after the apostle Peter. (Quick check. Yes, it is.) The house of Peter’s mother-in-law is said to lie below the glass floor.

After leaving the synagogue, Jesus, James, and John went home with Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick with a fever, and they told Jesus about her at once. He went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her… Mark 1:29-34 CEB

After exploring the ruins of the synagogue and some of the now-open-air shops and homes of this long-ago town, a fellow pilgrim and I had entered this glass-walled sanctuary. While he wandered around the space eventually stopping at the glass floor at its center, I remained near the doors, transfixed. To the south is a good view of the Sea of Galilee, though I had to take someone else’s word for it; my attention was almost entirely on the ruins and this church.

It’s been three and a half years since the twenty of us who had joined that Living Stones Pilgrimage to Israel Palestine reentered our lives in the states. On returning to Wisconsin, I hit the ground running, feeling the weight of expectation that I would do and be all that seemed to be expected of me as the pastor of a mid-sized church. Two days before flying out, I had endured an aggressive tirade from a church leader who, speaking for themselves and a few others, let me know that I wasn’t doing my job. I was, but not as they wanted me to do it. For the nearly two weeks I'd been on pilgrimage, I had succeeded in setting aside the episode. As we landed in Detroit, I returned to thinking about how I might draw them into the vision.

I recall my surprise on reentering the life of the local church to find that the folks there seemed indifferent to hearing about this pilgrimage experience. (For clergy, a pilgrimage is undertaken largely for the benefit of the people with whom we minister. Yes, it's travel but it's not a vacation!) After the Wesley Pilgrimage in England – home of early Methodism – three years earlier, so many people wanted to attend my Wednesday evening presentation that I had to offer another one the following month. Folks stopped me in the halls of the church to ask how the experience had changed me. I reminded myself that I was at a different church now. Still, I expected them to be interested in hearing about what I had seen and learned while in the land of Jesus’ birth.

If they were, they kept their curiosity well contained.

Much has happened since 2018, in the world and in my life. I regret now – especially since I found it necessary to step away from pastoral ministry – all that I gave up in choosing to try to be what others expected of me as pastor. Regret it in part because I believe strongly that everyone is best served when each person – even pastors – lives our own truth as the unique creature that God intends for us to be. I regret it also because of all the memories I lost by not having taken time to catalog and savor them and by not having people with whom to share them.

Until I left my role at the church to focus on healing, I used my laptop only on Saturdays to finish Sunday’s sermons. I seldom had energy for more. But one weekend about a year after the trip, when finally sorting pictures, I found the one above and made it the screen's background. Much of this pilgrimage experience is lost in a haze but because I saw this photograph regularly the memory of that space stays with me.

Before I wrap up I’ll ask you three disparate questions:

1. Is there a part of your life where you’re still struggling to be yourself just as you are? Can you think of something you might do differently to make it easier for the real you to show through?
2. Do you have a plan for how to respond to bullying when it occurs? I was not prepared that day. Preparation would have helped me.
3. When was the last time you looked at keepsakes of a special experience? Maybe it’s time to dig them out and remind yourself why that day or week was so important to you.

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“A song of peace for their land and for mine”

The National Flower of Ukraine

Driving across the bridge, past Interstate Park and into Taylor Falls on my way to United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, I regularly passed a small group of people standing at a street corner with placards. Returning home the next day I would see them again. Always at the same spot. It looked like a memorial, all cement with a raised dais. Maybe there was a plaque at the top of those three steps. Maybe they had good reason for choosing this place to stand and sometimes call out to passing drivers. These few individuals were protesting an invisible war that leaders of our nation had decided to wage in someone else's homeland. Maybe that spot was a memorial to those who had served and fallen in a previous war. Their “never again.”

As I passed I thought, our nation’s leaders probably think they have good reasons for the war. But what I was learning, and would learn, while in seminary left me skeptical.

Until seeing a film at UTS recreating the “recruiting” of boys to serve in El Salvador’s civil war, until reading The Massacre at El Mozote and more in preparation for traveling there with a class of 14 others in January 2010, I had believed I was a pacifist. After that, I knew better. If my child was threatened, I would do anything to keep them safe. And for me, as apparently for Glennon Doyle, “There is no such thing as other people’s children.”i

To see 11-year-old children lying still and silent on the corrugated metal roofs of their homes so that recruiters would not claim them made my heart sick. To watch as each boy taken had to choose, while a gun was to the back of his head, whether or not to “serve” left me sick and angry.

Though I mentally supported those protesters I passed in Taylor Falls, I would forget them by the time I was climbing the hill on the other side of the river. My mind and my time were full. I was pastoring three churches while also attending seminary a couple days a week. I was parenting a teenager. I was... Well, isn't that the way it is? We have so many reasons to excuse ourselves from doing more of what we know is right.

Maybe my reasons were valid. I don't know. What I do know is that seeing those protesters – week in and week out – I committed to myself that I would never again sit silently by.

War is an affront not only to our faith but to our humanity. Like many others, I’ve struggled for as long as I can remember against the nationalistic notion that military might, soldiers, and war are necessary and even good. The only thing war is good for is the economy. (Remember that!) How could people support having such a huge military budget? Didn’t this make war that much easier? Sadly, we have been so inculcated by our society that we see war as the norm.

In 2015, Pope Francis was speaking to an audience of 7000 children (!) during an event sponsored by Peace Factory. “Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war.” Responding to a question from one of the children, he continued, “This is serious, some powerful people make their living with the production of arms. … It's the industry of death.”ii

Last week, a picture of the Dalai Lama came across my Facebook feed with these words:

“Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous – an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.”iii

There is nothing remarkable about this way of understanding governments’ inclinations for mass violence. Such beliefs have been recorded many times through the generations. Men's words shouting into a void. Men's, because, though most mothers who watched sons leave for battle would have had some choice words, women's voices were seldom memorialized.

If the core of Jesus' teachings is about living in beloved community – and I believe that it is – then we must strive to build community with our worldwide neighbors. To claim the name of Christian and yet fail to do this is to reject Christ. Should we not be shouting from the rooftops about every abuse? Each act of oppression?

I do not say that standing by as a bully attacks another, innocent or not, is right. It never is. I don’t pretend to know what is the one, best choice for the current circumstance – if there is one. What I do know is that, for me, remaining silent was not an option.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.iv

i Glennon Doyle, Untamed, chapter title “racists,” 2020.

ii Many powerful people don't want peace,' Pope tells children,” RT International, May 11, 2015, https://www.rt.com/news/257545-pope-francis-war-arms, last viewed on March 2, 2022. Also, Jen Hayden, “Pope Francis: 'Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war,'” The Daily Kos, May 11, 2015, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/5/11/1384007/-Pope-Francis-Many-powerful-people-don-t-want-peace-because-they-live-off-war, last viewed on March 2, 2022.

iii The 14th Dalai Lama, https://www.dalailama.com/messages/world-peace/the-reality-of-war, last viewed on February 28, 2022.

iv “This is My Song,” 2nd stanza, words by Lloyd Stone, 1934 as found in The United Methodist Hymnal #437.