to what purpose?

I could tell you didn’t have many years left when I moved into the house that June. The grass under a mature crab apple tree is usually a cool and welcome relief from the summer sun but your shade was… dappled at best. Your leaves were sparse and small.

When I saw the arborist and the botanist talking together after church one Sunday, I asked for their opinions but they were already well into their own topic and their responses were brief: it could be anything. Finding the fungus growing up from a root while mowing that summer and later observing the woodpeckers that attacked your bark as they sought the bugs within, my suspicions only grew.

Your trunk is large with an equally large stump removed years ago, perhaps after a heavy rain caused it to crack and split. If I’d been around when you were younger, I’d have pruned you differently – to show off the beauty that your kin reveal. This single straight trunk seems out of place.

And yet you are beautiful, especially in May when you are bedecked with blossoms, their fragrance filling the small backyard. Soon afterward, petals carpet the grass in pink. In rain, your inner bark turns a rosy hue that contrasts handsomely with the brown outer layers. For five winters, I’ve watched eagerly as chickadees, finches, cardinals, juncos and woodpeckers visit your branches. Other times of the year, I watch and listen for your visitors. Who haven’t I noticed before? Last year, it was a cedar waxwing!

Is old-age beauty enough of a purpose?

For three years, I’ve been working toward healing. For two, I lived in near isolation, mostly for fear that Covid-19, if I caught it, would make the Lyme disease so much worse (as it has for others). But I have felt so useless. If I had a purpose, I couldn’t see it. Again and again, I threw my question into the void, toward the waves, at the darkness, “What am I supposed to do?” Strangely, surprisingly (even for one who once earned a living encouraging people to listen to that still, small voice), I heard the whisper. “Heal.” And again, “Heal.”

So I took that as my (hopefully short-term) purpose. Grimacing as I downed Japanese knotweed and cordyceps powders in an herbal tea that is recommended for rebuilding collagen. Imbibing more alcohol than I ever had before in the form of a dozen herbal tinctures. Swallowing tens of pills, morning, afternoon and evening. Soaking in Epsom salt baths. Taking far-infrared saunas. Journaling, making my peace with the past. Meditating, working at living in the now. Practicing compassion and gratitude (each of which has done wonders for my morale). Healing is s-l-o-w but it’s happening, body, mind and spirit. Someday my ears may quit ringing; I may go into remission. (Or not?)

In the old movie Ben Hur, the lead character meets a young woman who cannot walk who tells him about Jesus visiting her village, healing people and teaching them. Why didn’t he heal you? he wonders. She explains that he did. She used to be bitter, eaten up by her anger at the life she was forced to live. Now she sees the beauty, the love, in the world and the people around her. She recognizes that, for her, this is the healing that matters.

I’m aiming for remission yet I can honestly say that my life is really good, right now, today. And tomorrow will be too. What does this have to do with my old crab apple?

Most of us have been trained to measure our worth by how much we accomplish, how clever we are with numbers, how many books we read or items we sell. What if that’s not really our purpose? What if we could measure our worth by the quality of the lives we touch, the beauty we observe around us and share, the web of support we weave for each other and for all the world?

In the end, we may be not so very different from the old tree. One that lifts its arms to its neighbors as if to say, “Take a weight off and rest a moment.” That for one week out of the year blesses all who witness it with an unrivaled beauty.

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a tiny Easter rant

During 10th hour resource on Thursday, the last hour of school for the week, an eighth grader called to me, “What are you doing this weekend?” 

It was a small group, not like the forty-five of the previous hour. No need to maintain order, so I simply responded, “Nothing. What are you doing?” 

“Having Easter.” She turned back toward her friend. 

Oh, yeah, Sunday is Easter.

When I texted Kay a moment ago about topic ideas, she replied: “It is Easter… I’ve been thinking about Lent and celebrating and lack thereof. Particularly how insignificant Easter feels if one doesn’t observe Lent.”

I haven’t been observing Lent. Oh, I got ashes. A palm leaflet is wedged behind the thermostat above the piano. I stuck my hand into the water in the font – "Remember your baptism and be thankful" – after a Holy Thursday service. 

But I gave up giving up things for Lent years ago. Far better, I reasoned, to work on something that might help me better live God’s way. Did that happen?

During Holy Week, the 5 gospels accounts (for me) are:

• Matthew;
• Mark;
• Luke;
• John; and
• Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

They all have good source material, but Rice and Webber have the added advantage of music theater on their side. Saturday afternoon, I listen. The first half is enjoyable – I note the singers’ voices and styles – but somewhere around “Gethsemane” it becomes torturous for a fully attentive listener. I'm sure it was intended to be. (A pastor at a church I once attended preached on Palm Sunday that it’s impossible to fully experience the joy of Easter without first having gone through Holy Thursday and Good Friday. How can we celebrate resurrection if we have not walked through death?)

I didn’t go to church Friday because I couldn't bear to hear anything resembling traditional atonement theory. Atonement. You know, the reasons theologians came up with in the centuries after Jesus’ torture and execution for explaining why it had to happen. The ones that have gained traction in the last couple hundred years propose that:

• God needed a sinless Jesus to die as a sacrifice for our sin, yours and mine;
• Jesus was born for this purpose. To be a bridge, if you will, between us and the Holy;
• God is so good that having sin near God is impossible. Jesus has to wash us clean with his blood.

I won’t go on except to say that these ideas repel me. If this is god, it’s not a god I want to know or follow. Let's try instead that:

• Jesus died because religious leaders felt threatened and conspired to bring him down, working with a vicious Roman oppressor who was only too happy to do their dirty work;
• Jesus died because even though it was clear that powerful people were out to get him, he would not turn from teaching that, and treating every person as if, God loved them just as they were;
• Jesus died because he held up a mirror to people and while many saw God’s acceptance and their inherent worth, others saw that their lives were warped by one thing or another – by hatred or even the Law that they loved – and they could not bear it;
• Jesus died because people are fickle?
  We welcome the wholeness he offers us but depart without so much as a "Thanks!
  We say we'd die for him on Thursday, then deny him.
  We shout “Hosannah” on Sunday but Thursday we join the crowd for safety. We don’t want to die so we say, “Crucify him!” on cue, whether it’s two thousand years ago in Jerusalem or today when someone who looks or lives differently from us gets pulled over, seeks an abortion or escape from their hell, or…

Following Jesus is so easy. Just love everyone and everything. No buts. No exceptions. 

And that’s so hard.

Thankfully, we don’t have to get it perfect. What we need to do, what our “neighbor” needs from us, what the earth needs from us, is to be and do what we can in this moment without skimping (repeat ad infinitum). Some moments will be better than others. But you know what? That’s okay.

God makes us human. That means God makes us imperfect. And God is okay with that, loves it even. The only atonement that’s needed is for us to let God draw us in (that’s the real at-one-ment).

Blessed Easter

Good Grief

“Aren’t you over that yet?” Bob Albers, an instructor while I was at seminary, shared these words from a friend. They were on their way to lunch when Bob explained that he was feeling low about his young adult son who had died six months earlier.

Most people are uncomfortable with illness and death. These realities point to the fragility of life, which unsettles us. So we push sickness and death to the edges of our awareness. We send cards and balloons rather than visiting. We shelter the frail and dying (away from us) with nursing homes and hospice facilities. We deny illnesses with stigmas and poor insurance coverage. And when someone has a personal loss, we expect their grief to be completed quickly in a way that doesn’t discomfort the rest of us.

Grief is a normal part of life. It takes as long as it takes and doesn’t especially follow a pattern (though many stick to Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages idea). When we deny grief, it breaks into our lives in other ways, mind, body or spirit. Better to welcome it, pull up a chair and sit with it for as long as it takes, and in whatever ways it manifests.

Having said all of this, the rest of my words today focus on the losses that are part of our everyday experience. Grief describes our inner healing process after loss. A good cry, like laughter, helps us to process feelings that will otherwise gum up our ability to live fully. Acknowledging our grief allows this healing process to begin. In spite of our preference that it would just go away, grief is healthy and good. Charles Schultz was onto something when he chose “Good Grief” for Charlie Brown’s most uttered phrase. This character was seldom appreciated and often suffered the scorn of “friends.” I’m sure he reflects a grief many of us have felt with the ordinary pains of life.

While some losses are tangible like an empty nest, retirement, a job or relationship loss, bankruptcy, or a tornado-flattened home, we also grieve the intangible. We mourn lost dreams. We grieve losses of familiarity, social position, community, independence. In 1989, Kenneth Doka conceived the phrase disenfranchised grief for the grief we face when a loss cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned or socially supported.

What griefs were you unable to share? Which are not recognized by others? Through years of marriage, I grieved that it wasn’t what I’d hoped for and that I seemed unable to create something different. More recently, I grieved the loss of health. “Care” emojis are easy to come by but who is there to sit with us?

This week, I processed (again) a small disenfranchised grief. It was compounded by newly released climate change reports, a slowed-but-not-ended pandemic, a brutal land-and-resource-grabbing war such as we never thought we’d witness, oh, and a death in the family. When not otherwise occupied, I felt low.

You have a similar list, no doubt. Do you honor it? Do you allow yourself to experience the sorrow? Give yourself time to be still and simply feel what you feel? I wrote “when not otherwise occupied” above, because when we’re busy it’s easier to pretend we’re not suffering. Sometimes we can be fully functional! That doesn’t mean we should be a flurry of activity. You know folks who do this. Please, don’t be one of them. Strange as it may seem, we need to give ourselves permission and opportunity to grieve.

Part of my vocation is to encourage self-care. So hear me, please. Take care of you. Especially when our lives are so full that it’s easy to skip that which leaves us uncomfortable or embarrassed. Especially when national and world news distresses and even terrifies. Especially when society would rather we pretend that grief doesn’t exist beyond our losses of beloved people and pets (and then, only within preconceived boundaries). Especially because the world has become a scary place and we are small and too much alone, please make space in your days to rest and feel. Give yourself permission. Give yourself this gift.

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following Jesus is more complicated than we might suppose

You have searched me, Adonai.
    You know me.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I escape your presence?  Psalm 139:1, 7

I don’t pray much anymore, not with words anyway. I hope I’m not fooling myself but I’ve concluded in recent years that God is less interested in wordy prayers or even I-Thou gazing than in our leading lives of prayer – trying to be and do as we are led by the Holy.

Sometimes I miss prayer times but in honesty I seem to be in a post-Christian part of my life. There I said it. Almost two years ago, I left my pastoral role at a local United Methodist Church and while I’ve made peace with not going there – did you know UM clergy aren’t allowed to attend a church where we served? – and am attending First Universalist Unitarian, I do not have a church home. While grieving this loss, I’m beginning not to miss it.

Ever since Constantine converted in 312 CE and subsequently declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire (from England to Turkey, the Holy Lands and northern Africa) Christianity has kept company with empire. Hear that. For all but the first 300 years after Jesus’ life and death, Christianity has been the religion of empire. Among other things this means that Jesus’ message of radical love for the other was compromised in favor of an easily measurable “say-the-right-words” religion.

Although some hold onto the word Christendom to mean the body of all Christian believers, its historic meaning was more about the power of the Church – in Europe, particularly – after it aligned itself with governments, and the ways that this power was wielded.

(When I write Church with a big C, I’m speaking of the Christian Church as a whole. For a thousand years, we were (almost) all one Church. Then for another five hundred, we were two branches of the same faith tree. That’s most of Christian history. Don’t give in to the luxury of thinking this isn’t about you.)

Christendom led to lots of wars. It encouraged colonization, the usually violent conquest of peoples for their own spiritual good (and to line Christian pockets). Even when atrocities were committed without the express support of the Church – and usually, it was right there in the thick of things – it seldom condemned the genocide, murder and rape. Kings were believed to be chosen by God. They sought and received blessings from their bishops before every endeavor.

When we find ourselves despairing about people’s religion today, we want to remember that, along with examples of faith, our spiritual ancestors offer us a long history of oppression and white supremacy. This history of treating peoples as if they are “less than” while also instructing them to seek atonement for their very existence is what we must own and for which we must repent. Last week, Pope Francis did so in regard to Canada’s boarding school horror. Historic white Christian supremacy fuels homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny. White extremism is build on the premise of Christendom.

In recent years, I’ve felt helpless to confront the hatred that’s exhibited in the name of Christianity. After saying I was Christian I'd taken to adding, “not that kind of Christian.” But saying this leads me into an “us” versus “them” mentality that I don’t want to perpetuate.

Maybe you’ve had similar thoughts. I’m aware that many of the folks with whom I ministered at Appleton: First UMC left after the denomination’s governing body could not agree that our LGBT+ siblings are as fully beloved of God as anyone, ought to be able to marry in our churches and to be ordained if they feel so led and that leading is affirmed by those charged with guiding them.

What are we to do?

When I used to meet with individuals toward the end of their Confirmation classes, I tried to impress upon them the importance of resting with the questions and not accepting easy answers. Most thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds haven’t gained the maturity to understand that important questions require spiritual wrestling in order for us to grow into answers we wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. (Sadly, many adults never allow themselves to do this either and spiritually stagnate.)

All of this to say: I don’t have an answer. I try to resist hiding in my own silo but admit that exposing myself to another’s anger or ridicule is scary. Still, I believe that as a Jesus-follower (what I call myself), I need to love the haters as much as the outsiders, not feeling-wise but with words and actions. It’s hard. But when following Jesus is easy, there’s a good chance we’re doing it wrong.

Take care.