community – Page 10 – Southwest Conference Blog

Call And… Response?

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
– Viktor E. Frankl

If I could pinpoint the moment that I understood I had choice over my responses in life, it would be the day I read and re-read (and re-read again) Viktor Frankls “Man’s Search For Meaning” and came across the quote above. I was 24 years old and reeling emotionally every single day. I didn’t realize I was reeling emotionally every single day because I had been reeling emotionally every single day for 24 years. You don’t realize there is a different way of being than the way you have always been until something pierces the pain in a new way. This book, that quote, pierced the pain and I was never the same.

I was in pain from a childhood that had lots of loss and trauma. I had found a lot of love along the way and it kept me going. It patched me up for just a bit until I got to the next stop and needed another fix. We do this (whatever our own “this” is) and we don’t know we do this until doing this stops working. It’s life and it gets lived in a way that makes the most sense at the time with the choices we have. Our development throughout life is about capacity to hold, to understand, to respond. We have some sort of event occur, small or large, and we respond. It’s living and we’re all doing it.

Some of us have more of what we need from the start and some of us have less. Some of us have circumstances that come alongside of us, that build us and shape us into having greater capacity within to hold hard feelings and emotions, to make decisions that match our inner desire to be safe and loved. Some of us operate from a place of surviving and overcoming because that is what had to happen at every turn. And many of us are a mixture of all of that. I see my life as a mixture of incredible love, earth-shattering loss, amazing joy, immense grief, reliable protection, harmful neglect, and a commitment (sometimes half-hearted) to try again.

Community helps and hinders. We are herd mammals and we need each other. If the herd is brutal, then need is neglected and treated as shameful. If the herd is protective, then needs are met and vulnerability is protected.

What happens, then, when the herd goes away? What happens when we look about and realize we are suddenly alone?

I attend recovery support meetings over video conferencing services quite a bit these days. They are constantly available. I have not been able to go in person to any of these meetings for years because I have been on medical restrictions long before the rest of the world joined me. Because everyone has been in quarantine, these resources have massively amped up and I am so very grateful for this.

The first few weeks that I attended, it was full of fumbling and bumbling. There was constant feedback, dropped meetings, messiness. It was lovely actually, seeing us all grapple and try. I love it when I can be aware of effort when the outcome is not what I expected. One of the things that was gradually realized is that everyone had to mute their mics unless they are speaking. It works. It also is so quiet.

When we talk to one another, we look for cues and responses. We look for engagement that we are being heard. We like to hear the “uh, huh.” We like to hear the laughter when we make the joke. We like to hear the clapping when we are being celebrated. We want the feedback. We want to know that our voices are traveling and landing into the hearts of the people around us. It is sustaining.

These meetings have been crucial and important to me. They have also been very, very quiet at times. I have heard people struggle with the change. I have struggled with it myself.

When we call, we need the response. We want it quickly and we want it in the way we are accustomed to receiving it. We don’t want our voices to echo back to us, we want it to land on the heart of someone else, have them take it in and emote it back to us.

The call. The response. The call…. The response. The call……………………… The response.

Between the call and the response, we have space. The space has gotten wider and in that space is the echo.

We often dislike the sound of our own voice because it is disjointed from what we think we sound like through the thunderous vibrations of our own vocal chords interacting with our own ears. It’s the same, I think, for the words we say. We want our words to land somewhere else, but now they sit outside of us and they bounce back to us in this space we now have. It sounds far different than when it landed somewhere else. We want these thoughts and these wishes and these ways of being to be swept up and taken. We want the response to be swift.

My loves… the space is a gift.

We will regret how we use this time if we do not use this time to become more comfortable with our own echo.

The thoughts we are having we were having before, we just got to distract ourselves more with the business of life.

The fears we are having we were having before, it is simply that our own awareness of our fragility and vulnerability is making it harder to hide from these things.

The pain we are having we were having before, we just can’t ignore it in the same way that we used to be able to.

The other side of this is equally true.

The love that we have is what we had before, we just didn’t know how crucial it was to live in because this loneliness is so hard.

The joy that we have is what we had before, we just didn’t realize how much the presence of one another amplified it so that it was harder to ignore.

The life we have is what we had before, we just didn’t realize that it was about being more than it was about doing.

Between stimulus and response there is space. We have stepped into the space that is offering each of us the power to choose our response. Craft that response intentionally, lovingly and fully, my friends. It is where we will find our greatest growth and our truest freedom.

My Life Since Coronavirus

guest post by Laura Bever

The Coronavirus has left no one unchanged. Its grip extends to every part of our lives. This is true no matter our individual circumstances. We all could tell our story and each of us would have a unique and reprehensible way it has changed us. My life since the coronavirus is no different. We have lost work like so many, and while we worked/attended college online/homeschooled from home already, just like so many parents are finding, it’s very tiring, incredibly taxing, and often completely overwhelming balancing it all at once.

There is however an element of my family’s life that makes this situation incredibly difficult. We live a good amount below the poverty line. This isn’t a unique situation. Many families do. In fact, in America at a minimum, 39 million Americans live in poverty. It is, however, incredibly important. Living in poverty is hard, really hard. It’s often challenging to explain the intricacies that make this so. However, this pandemic has brought us all to the same basic level. We are all struggling to find supplies and struggling to find resources and in need of health care, which are struggles that people living in poverty experience on a day to day basis. For my family, these struggles have only been exacerbated.

One of our struggles is the home we rent. While affordable for a family living in poverty, it hasn’t been well taken care of. We’ve had many problems, from sewage backing up consistently in our house, the shower wall falling in, to many leaks in our roof every time it rains. Our most recent problem is in one of the bedrooms. The roof has been caving in since we moved in and could no longer wait to be replaced. We’ve had to maneuver having little access to our house as the roof was taken apart and is still being fixed, all while being under the stay at home order. It has made our day to day outrageously tough to navigate with the seven people that live here.

Another area that has been made difficult is finding and getting groceries. At first, this was because there wasn’t anything available in the stores and now it’s because new rules have been put in place to stop the hoarding. These rules limit the amount that can be purchased. For my family and most large families, this means going to the store every other day, something which is very difficult to budget. Things like milk and cheese only last so long with five children. It also means consistent exposure as we are making more trips out in public and though groceries can be ordered online, things like WIC are not options that can be used. So there isn’t really a choice but to go out often. And because we use WIC we often find that the things we can purchase aren’t in any stores anyways.

Beyond this, Joe has lost a work contract, my volunteer job as a sexual assault advocate is nearly impossible at the moment with emergency rooms being off-limits, school for myself has been put somewhere almost mentally out of reach, and we both worry what we will do with five kids if or when we do get sick. It is often said that living in poverty is like living with chronic trauma, the jumping and maneuvering to keep up seems very real, especially during a pandemic.

While we are all lamenting the extraordinary loss all around us, there is also something else important and worth acknowledging about how my life has changed since the coronavirus. Just as the rapid pace of this virus has penetrated our lives, so too have other changes quickly happened. Acquaintances have become good friends, family I haven’t heard from in some time I’ve had the opportunity to connect with, I’ve been able to witness incredible acts of kindness, and have been the recipient of amazing gentleness. I’ve been able to talk with, laugh with, and cry with so many I love. I have had the honor of bearing witness to other’s incredible pain, and feel oddly connected to those in my life. It doesn’t make any of this okay. It doesn’t make any of it better. It does, however, mean goodness is persistent, that vulnerability is brave, that caring for your neighbor is a determined act of ingenuity and cleverness, that loving others when we are so uncertain and scared is indeed heroic, and that sharing toilet paper can be a holy act in a time of scarcity. I’m anxious for what is to come and defiantly hopeful.

All Together. Separate.

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Here we are. All together… separate.

What a weird time.

I have been doing this a while, this thing that we are doing now where we each take to our own homes and live a sealed life, trading handshakes and hugs for emojis and typed words. Instead of reaching for each other, we are reaching for computers, phones, devices. The phone becomes a portal to a world rather than a device to accompany the world. Our lives getting lived out on a small screen as the natural world around us does what the natural world around us does naturally without us.

The world is healing as we are retreating. We are getting an object lesson that we didn’t realize we had been needing.

I don’t desire to make light of it because people are dying. Alone. People are not able to mourn together because doing so will increase the reasons to mourn. We must wait to even begin the task of grasping that which is lost. So much loss. So much change. And here we sit. Wondering and waiting.

I have been doing this awhile. And yet… this is oh so different because you are doing it too. That matters somehow, doesn’t it? It matters to know that it’s not just you… Even when it feels like it is just you, it never is. Whatever it is you feel, that feeling has been felt by nearly every person on this planet. That’s true pre-pandemic and is mightily true now. Whatever intensity you feel, that intensity has rested heavily on someone else’s shoulders. It rests there now. You are not alone in this even as you are literally alone in this.

I have some isolation tricks to share, but before we get tricky, let’s get honest.

Some of us are loving the opportunity to finally slow down and rest. That feels a bit bad for some because they don’t want to be the one finding solace and slumber when others are exhausted and in a nightmare. Some of us are really loving the break, though. That makes sense.

Some of us are hating every single moment of this isolation. It’s the opposite of anything they would have chosen for themselves. They need people and it feels like they are slowly losing their grounding force as people go away. Some of us are really hating this time. That makes sense.
The disease spreading has impacted us each in different ways even if we have not been sick or known someone directly who has gotten sick. It’s starting to get closer and closer, though.A friend of a friend of a friend had it. Now a friend of a friend had it.Now a friend has it. Closer.

Allergies seem like cruel April Fools pranks coming early. A sneeze turns into a warning where it used to be an annoyance. Scary, scary stuff.
We are feeling things, all kinds of things.It all makes sense in the midst of something we don’t understand. That’s an understatement. I’ll try again. It all makes sense in the midst of something we haven’t ever imagined before. That’s a bit closer. Not there yet, though.

It all makes sense in the midst of something we can’t fathom because we have not had anything like this ever, ever, ever. We are very aware of what is happening globally in a way we never have before and we just can’t begin to wrap our single human mind around it.

There is a lot of stuttering and trailing off of sentences as we try to piece it all together. When the words fail us, we turn our attention to graphs and numbers to quantify the unquantifiable nature of this loss. High school math teachers everywhere are whispering, “I told you that you would need this!” Fine. Mr. Clever was right.

That’s the thing, though. This time is drawing on all the resources within us and outside of us. We are reaching into the recesses just to make sense of what the heck is happening. My goodness, that builds pressure within us and we are looking for a release valve. Some of us might be reaching for the things that have worked in the past and we may find that those things just aren’t working anymore, but we are alone and it feels too late to figure out how to manage this anxiety. I get that on a cellular level. Truly I do.

I don’t have answers. I do have experience in being alone and scared due to illness. I’ll offer that. In that offering, please know, I am scared too. I have the same moments you have still. My illness has not built up an immunity to being afraid of death. I just have a lot of experience of feeling that fear, thinking those thoughts, and having it lift.

My offering is to remind your precious self that you are definitely not alone and isolation breeds all kinds of things that you actually do have some ability to impact. I was surprised to find that out. I still am surprised when intensity lifts and reveals itself as just a part of living rather than the harbinger of demise.

First and foremost, your thoughts are just thoughts. I know they are really, really loud thoughts, but they are just thoughts. You constructed them and shaped them. You made them. We forget that. These thoughts are sometimes helpful, they are often not. There’s more noise and fuzz when there is stress and it gets hard to distinguish what is real and what is not. One of the ways we combat this is by taking in new information. We listen and we add the information to the flow. This may not help because it’s still the same thoughts sifting and sorting the information.

Can we agree that our thoughts sometimes may not be the best, most accurate thing and that news, in its effort to be the most newsiest news, is often riddled with errors? If we can agree with that, can we agree that solely thinking those thoughts and watching that news will only feed the cycle within that feels so bad? We need to break it up. We have to otherwise it will continue to hurt us.

An informed mind is not a panicked mind. Those are very different things. Your feeling of panic will not subside by exposing it to more panic. It will subside by stepping away from that panic because Panic is always inaccurate. We are not doing ourselves any favors by turning our attention to more of it when we are consumed by it. It will make us lose all sense of reality in our attempts to grasp reality.

We can’t be haphazard by the sources of information or our use of this time. If you went from having 60 hour work weeks to now having endless free time it leaves a void. What is filling the void?

The thing that will get us through is intention. Thinking about your day when you have endless time is crucial. I am not someone who adheres to a tight schedule and am not suggesting that you become rigid with your time, but the time will slip away and you will find yourself wondering what you did all day and why you are so tired. You are so tired because your brain was trying to gain purchase somewhere at some point and couldn’t because the autopilot mode feels far too slippery and you can’t seem to find solid ground. Time is a relative thing and if you did not know that before, you are about to know it in a very real way. The minutes can drag and the days can fly by. It’s odd. It’s very, very odd.
Structuring time to some degree is a necessity. Set-up a structure that is loose but something you can bounce around in and keep.

Next up: entertainment. Many of us have endless options to the point of being bored. Excess is overwhelming.

It helps to simplify it. Try to do it in parts and separate the binging of entertainment with something in the real world. Break it up with projects, conversations, connections. The entertainment will be far more enjoyable that way.

Relationships: if you are unhappy and resentful of the people you are quarantined with, it may be time to try and work on that. That’s doable. Truly it is.

If you are experiencing harm from them, that is something else entirely and please reach out to someone for help if it is abusive. If you can’t stand them because they slurp soup, that’s something we can work on.
It will all be amplified which means it is inaccurate. Amplified = inaccurate.

They don’t always slurp, they just are slurping now. This closed down world is mighty claustrophobic (I almost made a pun of cloister-phobic, but didn’t so I should get some points for that). The reason you feel locked in is because you are locked in. They slurped their soup before, your ears were just pointed somewhere else. Zoom out.

Make gratitude lists. Don’t just think about things you are grateful for, make an actual list and do it anytime you feel scared, annoyed, lost. It changes your perspective. Perspective is liberating.

Own your internal world. Your thoughts and feelings are your internal world and you are the only one who gets to construct it. There are endless thoughts we could be having so the thought that we happen to be on is just one of many thoughts you have access to. Pay attention to what gives you clarity and what brings in the noise. That’s yours to shape and yours alone. No one else gets to come in there without an invitation and that includes information and panic.

Lastly… we may find ourselves wanting to use the things that make us forget, the things that separate us from our living momentarily, but ruin us if used regularly. These things are usually addicting. They rewire the brain to search for ease instead of enduring whatever is going on. They overuse the good feeling chemicals in our brain that are finite. They become depleted and need time to regenerate.

The more we use these shortcuts, the less our brain has time to reproduce the neuro-chemicals we need to feel things like ease, comfort, happiness, etc. That’s why we feel so lousy after we use these things in excess. I can tell you that this is very slippery ground in isolation.
Our minds are already a tornado at times right now and if we add in more pressure from increasing drinking, drugs, overeating, porn, binging entertainment to the point of ignoring life, we will feel worse. If you feel like you have some choice over some of these behaviors, consider stepping them down a bit rather than ratcheting them up a bit. If you feel like you don’t have choice over it, reach out for some help because it will make it worse.

Be gentle with your lovely selves. Your life on pause is still life you are living and choices you are making matters.

Even when you think you are the loneliest of the lonely, you are not alone. Not ever.

Of Course We Bought All The Toilet Paper

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Back in the day I used to go to see funny movies in theaters.
I say back in the day because we can’t go to theaters right now due to the mandatory quarantine happening in places all over where heartbeats exist and life flows. We are not alone in this. It is happening everywhere. That feels important to remember.

I also say back in the day because I have been living a life of isolation due to illness for several years now so I have been unable to go to a movie theater in a long while, even when they were open.

I used to love going to movie theaters, though. I loved watching really funny comedies in a room full of other people laughing. It magnified joy in a lovely way and I would feel connected, alive, happy. How amazing is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s lovely when it’s good.

How awful is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s hard when it’s bad.

The impact is immense. Your life and my life are so intertwined. My very survival rests in my ability to watch you live, see what I see and respond accordingly. My world and your world are so impacted by each other that the reality of separateness gets called into question all the time. We are far more connected and far more similar than we are comfortable admitting. I have choice and you have choice, but we really do make choices based on the smallest things we have no idea or awareness influence it.

You choose a lot because of me. I choose a lot because of you. That impact changes and fluctuates, but it always exists. We are connected.
The COV19 Pandemic has been a baffling and scary situation to watch as I sit from my long-isolated perch.

It is a world-wide flash mob called “The Dance of Our Primal Fears” brought to you by: “Toilet paper: Need it. Buy It. Wait. That’s too much. You don’t need that much… Hold on…Stop buying it! It’s not the stomach flu!”

It’s a new tag line that is being workshopped by the toilet paper industry. They’re working on it. Needs some polishing. They didn’t see this coming either.

The fear is bringing out the neuroses to the nth degree in all of us. The neuroses we have been polishing and working on for a long time, but we were gonna wait to unleash them upon the world, maybe after the election. They have been a-building for some time now.

Under this new pressure, we are rolling those neuroses out early. Here they come on out like a mighty powerful parade as we buy all of the toilet paper in all of the stores in all of the lands.

We are buying the toilet paper for a reason. And it’s a pretty important reason. We aren’t thinking. We stopped. Of course we did.

Our thinking is distorted anytime we feel fear and anxiety because of the neurochemical response that is just there to keep us safe. That reality is coupled with the long-time building of intense pressure that increased exponentially in 2016. It’s been intense for a while. We couple the fear with the intensity and we react. We see it on display as we take far more than we need and are indifferent to the scarcity we create for others for our own momentary, unsettled, and fleeting sense of relief.

We are having fear. We are having impulses. We are making choices.
I think about the first person that bought more toilet paper. I think about the next person in line who was like, “Why is he buying so much toilet paper? Should I buy more toilet paper?” Then she went and bought more toilet paper. Then the next person walking in the store as she walked out wondered “Why are people buying more toilet paper? There must be a reason.” They bought some more just in case.

That is why we bought all the toilet paper. We do that. We are ridiculous.

We just want to be safe. We are all looking around, assessing, acting and then hoping we got it right.

We are all choosing actions from the same place of fear and some of those actions will hurt us and some will help us and that is completely up to us to determine bit by bit and moment by moment and act by act as we navigate this in isolation-togetherness.

This paradox has to hold the meaning of life. It just has to be in there somewhere.

We have a worldwide shared thought distortion that is damaging on so many levels and in so many ways. It’s a filter that comes from that desperate part of us that just wants to believe that controlling life is possible.

I can control the moment I die if I just stay vigilant. This thought, though, is an absolute and absolutes are flags for thought distortions. It is also a thinking error. We cannot control death.

When we operate in thought distortions, fear is present a lot of the time. We also are about to do some damage if the distortion is the guiding part of our behavior. This distortion takes me from the reality that so many things are needed for my survival and makes me focus on one small thing, what’s in front of me. What I end up losing when I do this is, well…mainly – you.

If I operate in this distortion fully I begin to think that I matter more and you matter less. I then become threatened if you act on something I don’t understand. I then begin to worry that you will get to survive a bit more and I will get to survive a bit less. That changes me and my behavior. It leads to me clinging and clawing and climbing this small part of the world that I can cling and claw and climb because at least I am still moving and at least I am still fighting.

Then I will act selfishly. Then I will act harshly. And then it will be easy for me to become brutal.

It is what happens again and again and again and again when we are afraid on such a massive scale. If you mix our fragility with global panic then people overreact. Of course they do. Of course.

My friends, life is an endless grocery store trip for toilet paper in which people are stopping their carts in our way.

We are huffing and side-eying our communication of anger until it becomes socially feasible and acceptable to yell our frustrations or escalate in a worse way.

We then adjust our path as we lock eyes on the toilet paper we came for.

We then block someone else’s path two seconds later as we get what we came for, not caring for a single moment that they are feeling what we felt two seconds before.

This is us. This is us figuring out how to live while everyone else is figuring out how to live. We have done this before. It’s always what we are doing. It just is bigger right now.

Take a breath, my Dear One. Take a breath. Take another. My friend, take another. And if you didn’t do that. Go back and do it.

Slow. Down. Breathe. That’s fear. It lifts.

Breathe. Breathe. Remember.We have other options.

One of my favorite things written down on paper for my eyes to peruse (as often as I wish) is a line from a poem by ee cummings called “i love you”. The line I love is about the forgetting and the remembering that we keep on doing.

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it

I love this because it is the crux of living to me. We are always forgetting and we are always remembering.
We hold something that gives us an understanding of our aliveness and why it’s important.
We hold it for awhile. Then we put it away.
We live.
We exist.
Time passes.
We forget its presence.
We panic that we lost it.
We remember we didn’t.
We retrieve it.
Then we hold it again.

Let’s hold it again. Together.
We are scared and we’ve been acting like it.
We have other options.
We make other choices.
All we have is this moment and in this moment we can choose to do this together.
We are never really apart.
I need you and you need me even when we are healthiest apart. I still need you. You still need me. It just is.
We will survive better together and we forget that.
Now we can remember. We can choose differently.
Of course we can.
Of course.

Bribery Works!

by Abigail Conley

“Bribery works” is my very best parenting advice. I don’t have kids, but it’s born out of personal experience. Bribery works and works fairly well. I wouldn’t have made it through Kindergarten without it.

In the summer of 1989, I went to KinderCamp, the transitional, two-hour version of Kindergarten for kids entering school that fall. Preschools weren’t really a thing then, especially in rural areas, so this was new for most of us. Even full-day Kindergarten five days a week was new at that point. My birthday is in August, so I was barely five when the whole endeavor began. But really, the problem started at KinderCamp.

KinderCamp was held with Mrs. Robinson, a soft-spoken, incredibly patient teacher whom I was certain would be wonderful. (Years later, I babysat her kids. I remain confident in the opinion of five-year-old me.) A few weeks later, a decision to close a nearby school came down, and I got Mrs. Nelson instead. She was nearing retirement and very kind in many ways. She also was nearing retirement and was very done in a few ways. She was especially done with raising her voice, so she used a whistle to get our attention.

Barely five-year-old me hated the whistle. I was scared by it, and also an incredibly shy little kid. As a result, I both hated the whistle and wouldn’t tell anyone I hated the whistle. And so begins the year of Keeping Abby In School: A Community Effort.

Step 1: Let’s begin with the bribery. That was my grandfather’s idea, and he funded the bribes. He had a knack for figuring out little kid problems, so it was a solid plan. He previously had great success ending bedwetting by giving me a flashlight so I didn’t have to walk through the dark to the bathroom. His bribery plan was simple: fifty cents a day to go to school and not cry. I would report to him when I saw him on Friday and he would pay me for every day I went to school and didn’t cry. Fifty cents was the cost of a can of pop from the school vending machine. Back then, sugary snacks at recess were expected. My best lesson in money management comes from the whole bribery endeavor, but that’s a different story.

Step 2: Next up was getting me to school. I had loved watching my sister get on the bus each morning, but was not so keen on getting on myself. My dad started dropping me off on his way to work. The fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Swint, always took the early morning bus duty. She was waiting in the gym for me, ready to take me from my dad. I’m told I was both cute and pitiful, wiping tears from underneath my Mickey Mouse glasses as I went from my dad to Mrs. Swint. Who knows how long it took her to settle me at the Kindergarten table.

Step 3: Breakfast. I started to write food, but we should talk about the two school meals separately. I have never been great at mornings. Food has never been great for me in the morning, and I stopped believing the “you’ll grow out of it” promises around age thirty. I need to be awake for about two hours before I eat in order to not feel sick after eating. I was also a strictly cereal child, with limited likes. This resulted in my mom packing a baggie of cereal for me each morning, and buying milk at school. The lunch ladies would always give me a bowl so that I could eat my breakfast at school. This was the system unless the state inspectors were coming and we couldn’t break the rules. They would make sure and tell me this so I could adjust my plans.

Step 4: Then, lunch. Yes, I was a picky eater. My mom would pack my bologna, cheese, and ketchup sandwich if needed, but preferred if I would eat school lunch. While we received the monthly menu, it would occasionally change. This meant a phone call to my home early in the morning to notify me of any changes, especially if the lunch ladies knew it was something I didn’t like. They would make a peanut butter sandwich for any kid in a school where many kids didn’t have something to pack. They also knew I didn’t care for peanut butter sandwiches. (We were a peanut butter crackers family.) A phone call was an easy way to make everyone involved much happier.

Step 5: Keep up steps 1-4 for an entire school year.

Step 6: Make special allowances on days when things do not go as normal. One day we had a substitute teacher and I freaked out. Mrs. Kenni, the secretary, let me sit in the office with her, which was just fine with me. She even showed me how the giant safe worked and let me lock myself inside and let myself out. She made her son try it first, so she knew it worked and I couldn’t actually get stuck in there. I’m sure there were other things, too, but I mostly remember her rescuing me the day Mr. Mason was there.

I should mention that there are failed steps, too. My mom thought I missed my family so she sent me with pictures. She was wrong on that one. My dad likely tried, “Dry it up,” a few times; that was his standard response to crying. I’ve also probably forgotten the ineffective attempts to help. I realize things would have been much harder in a different school. My class had twelve or thirteen kids at any given time; once, we might have gotten up to sixteen. My school had about a hundred students.

Still, let me tell you: bribery works.

An Invitation – Let’s Get Busy!

by Karen Richter

As (I hope) you’ve seen, the theme for Annual Meeting 2020 is Stories That Transform. This is maybe the most human, most exciting theme I’ve experienced over the last decade of annual meetings. Sharing stories, listening to the stories of others, crafting meaning and connecting events: these are the things that humans do. Over days, seasons, and lifetimes, these story activities form family, community, and culture.

So what better way to prepare for Annual Meeting and share ideas and experiences than a Southwest Conference Book Club! But here’s the rub… when you ask churchy, bibliophile people what they recommend to read, you can get overwhelmed. Take a deep breath and check out the recommendations below.

From Bill’s Reading Pile:

Conference Minister Rev. Dr. Bill Lyons is a serious guy. It’s no surprise that there are challenging reads on his shelf. Try any of these for a mind-expanding experience, leading to great conversations.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Reading Guide
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Summary
Charity Detox: What Charity Would Look Like If We Cared About Results by Robert Lupton
Executive Summary

Something interesting from Barb:

Associate Conference Minister Rev. Dr. Barb Doerrer-Peacock is a lifelong learner and a lover of narrative. She’s sharing this recommendation (and it’s in my To-Be-Read-Pile too!).

Know Your Story and Lead With It: The Power of Narrative in Clergy Leadership by Richard L. Hester and Kelli Walker-Jones

On Karen’s Side Table:

When my family left middle Georgia to move to Arizona, the moving company’s notes said, “An unusual number of books for a house this size.” True story. Here’s your intrepid annual meeting coordinator’s reading suggestion.

Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need
by Moth Grandslam Champion Margot Leitman

So get busy! Find your way to your local bookseller and crack the spine on one (or more) of these great books. Look for encouragement and discussion questions, along with ways to connect with others who are reading, via In the Loop and on the Southwest Conference UCC Facebook page.

The Gift of Community

by Abigail Conley

If we want to schedule something out of the ordinary, it means working around the AA groups. I’m guessing many of your churches have people in some version of a twelve-step program in your buildings throughout the week. A small building means ours is a little fuller with these groups.

There’s the early morning group well on their way by 8 a.m. They meet six days a week. There’s the giant men’s meeting, and a mixed-gender meeting, and now a speaker’s meeting. That version is open to anyone, it seems, including people who just want to know more about AA. We’re home to an Atheists and Agnostics meeting as well. They asked tentatively if we were ok with that. I laughed and said, “Yes. We’re Christian, so we have crosses and things like that around, though.” Oh, and then there’s the itty bitty Sunday night one. I think that’s all, but no guarantees.

I know more about Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever thought I would. And I know practically nothing. I am grateful for the leaders who are so kind and helpful to my congregation. Many of the members of the groups have plumbing and handyman skills and so will make small repairs. I offer to reimburse for supplies and they always say no. I return phone calls to people who call the church asking about AA, and give them times and what details I do know; it makes sense to them, at least. Mostly, I know they gather often and without fail, holidays and all.

As a culture, we don’t know as much about addiction as we should. We don’t know how to effectively treat it. There’s little evidence to reinforce the abstinence-only model of AA. The organization started in the 1930s, with no scientific backing. But it works for many people and works shockingly well.

I grew up in one of the many places where drugs have become part of the economy. Dealing or cooking or running drugs is viable employment when nothing else is; using drugs will make many problems go away for at least a little while. We know even less what to do with these addictions than alcohol.

A topic for another day is how addiction is related to economy and to lack of healthcare, especially mental healthcare. But as I watch AA folks in my building, I am also deeply aware that one of the successful treatments for addiction is community. There are twelve steps, sure, but many of the people I see day in and day out have been sober for years, often decades. Somehow, that sobriety and community are linked. While it’s unlikely I’ll ever have medical expertise to talk about addiction, I remain amazed that an effective treatment for addiction is community; that has been true for nearly a century.

This year, my church set some intentional growth goals. As someone who has been a part of a church my entire life, I sometimes forget that church can be the good kind of weird. Sure, you encounter little kids and old people in an increasingly age-segregated society. But church will also put you in rooms with much more wealth than you have and much less than you have. You will learn friendship with people with a wide variety of skills and abilities. In fact, every church I’ve been a part of had at least one adult who had an intellectual disability who was a valued member.

When talking with people who don’t go to church, they are often shocked to find that we expect to visit people in the hospital. There are plenty of other terrible life things where churches are long-time companions for people. Yet, on more than one occasion I’ve heard shock and awe about hospital visits from people who have never been part of a faith community. I find it much more shocking that my own congregation has cultivated a place to talk about infertility, one of those cultural taboos. On a few occasions, news of a pregnancy was shared well before the expected thirteen weeks; one of the people sharing said, “If I have a miscarriage, I need my church through that.” It is decidedly not AA, and yet, there are striking similarities in how trusting those relationships become.

I wholeheartedly believe a church cannot exist just for its members. The Gospel absolutely turns even the church outward from ourselves. Yet, I cannot escape the reality that deep, abiding community is apparently difficult to come by. That reality is attested by the people gathering in the first and last hours of daylight, and even as I write. Maybe even some of our biggest cultural struggles are wrapped up in a need for connection that is not being met.

So when you gather this Sunday, the motley crew that most churches are, that alone is reason to rejoice. That gathering is surely one of the ways Jesus saves us. We need to remember that more often.

Partnerships and Partings

by John Indermark

Acts 15:36-41

Partnerships. First there had been Peter and John in Jerusalem. Now came Barnabas and Saul in Antioch and points beyond. Heat forges bonds of metal and relationship. Barnabas took the heat of standing by Saul in Jerusalem when no other would, no doubt deepening their ties to one another. When Jerusalem commissioned Barnabas to the church at Antioch, Barnabas soon after traveled to Tarsus to find Saul that he might assist in the work at Antioch (Acts 11:19-26). Later, the pair would undertake a missionary journey to Cyprus.

Two critical developments transform their partnership during this latter journey. What had heretofore been “Barnabas and Saul” (13:2) now became “Paul and his companions” (13:13). The text does not explain the reversal of billing, but the focus of Acts clearly shifts to Paul-no-longer-Saul. Secondly, almost as a footnote in the same verse introducing this new order, a minor companion named John Mark separated from the entourage in Pamphylia.

Partnerships work in delicate balances, whether among friends or in businesses. . . or within churches. Regarding Paul and Barnabas: should a reversal in the order of names signal a change in the relationship? Not necessarily. Should the departure of a “junior partner” influence the workings of the seniors? Not always. It is to be underscored that neither of these occurrences, in their initial unfolding, caused Acts to explicitly note the partnership had changed.

Yet within two chapters, the partnership ends. Acts traces the cause to the footnoted departure of John Mark. A new journey awaited, a journey determined by Paul’s unilateral declaration (15:36). Barnabas desired to take John Mark with them, a desire squashed by Paul’s unilateral veto (15:38). Paul, apparently, now came first in more than name order. Disagreement deepens. The partnership dissolves. Barnabas and Saul, Paul and Barnabas, were no more. Great things done by these two would never be done in tandem again. They parted.

Before we trot out funeral dirges and mourners for a tragic ending, consider the fresh beginnings unleashed – not by Paul, but Barnabas. Barnabas, once again, risked his own reputation for the sake of a maligned colleague. Just as he had with Saul/Paul before, Barnabas gives John Mark another chance. By the gracious act of Barnabas, failure in the church in one instance is not hopelessly relegated to a lifelong imposition of disgrace and disuse.

Truth be told, Barnabas surpassed Paul in this episode through re-enacting Jesus’ own tendency toward ministries of rehabilitation: a ministry that commissioned as apostles the very ones who had deserted him (Matthew 26:56); a ministry that founded a church upon the very one who denied knowing Jesus in a spate of curses. (Mark 14:71); a ministry of second chances.

Even the split that sends Barnabas and John Mark in one direction and Paul and Silas in another contributes positively to the church’s expansion. Where before one missionary partnership set out to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ, now two sets of partners fan out to do the same, potentially doubling the territory to be covered and the persons to be encountered.

So, to put this in a larger and contemporary frame: are denominational schisms to be sought? No. Are divisive church conflicts among its always-abundant cache of clashing personalities and vigorously-held theologies to be encouraged? No. But the parting of Barnabas with Paul for the sake of John Mark does reveal God’s ability to bring fresh beginnings out of seeming dead-ends. In the final analysis, it is not our successes or failures at church unity that manage God’s purposes. It is the other way around. Barnabas risked giving Saul a chance, then John Mark a second chance. And God used Barnabas’ risks. So it can be for us. May potential endings to what has been not preclude us from risking for the sake of what could be.

This Unholy Christmas

by Abigail Conley

This Christmas seems to be a Christmas of lasts. An aunt is dying and this will be her last Christmas by any reasonable account. My mom was diagnosed with dementia earlier this year, and while medication is staving off some symptoms, that won’t last forever. “Rapidly progressing” was added to the diagnosis. In less than six months, she went from working full-time to not making sense in phone conversations. Hindsight says there may have been earlier signs, but no matter what, I imagine she will be much less of the mom I cherish by this time next year. I’m walking with lay leaders snagging moments with loved ones, knowing this is the last Christmas together.

All of that is terrible, and brings some wonderful with it, and is exactly what we expect from life. Some years and seasons are better than others. But as I read the story of the Magi’s visit with a bible study a couple weeks ago, I was reminded of the strange and profound re-writing of history that Christians did. Matthew, the only Gospel writer to tell of the Magi’s visit, does all sorts of acrobatics to tie this experience of Jesus to the Old Testament. He cites verse after verse, assuring us, “This is what those people were talking about.”

If you go back and read the original texts, what Matthew says is about Jesus is never about Jesus. Read Isaiah all the way through at face value if you don’t believe me. Yet, here he is, re-writing, re-telling, certain of God’s faithfulness in the quoted texts and in the experience of Jesus. Facts are being rewritten in favor of Truth.

One of my rabbi friends was appalled the day I told him that many Christians’ understanding of redemption is that a ransom was paid by Christ or a purchase made. Redeemed ends up wrapped up in the cross. With all the horror still on his face, he said, “You mean it’s not that God can take something terrible and make something good out of it? Like the holocaust?” I liked his definition better for sure, but I readily admitted that was a definition that would have to be supplied and agreed upon. It was not the assumed definition.

I say that because Christians do not have a corner on God’s ongoing work in the world. Sometimes we think we do for sure, but we are not alone among the people who believe God still intervenes in this place. Nor are we alone in our understanding that we participate in God’s work.

We are a bit alone in the Trinity, though. Even those of us who reject the notion of the Trinity are still wrestling with it. I can go most ways on the Trinity, but I do like that one of the claims of the Trinity is that the prophetic Spirit that was with Isaiah made its home with the church. We are always Spirit-led, Spirit-breathed people. I wonder about what it means so many years later for our Jewish family, but I am still amazed by the permission given by the Spirit for Matthew to rewrite history.

And I said all the Spirit stuff to come back to this: lasts are still holy. We have permission to figure out the new thing. We do not sit back waiting for God to do God’s thing. We make choices, and we do so with prayer and discernment trust the Spirit remains with us through that. Some of God’s best work even seems to come in impossible interruptions that are made holy.

So as we sit in these days with the prophets roused by the Spirits, and the Magi called by a star, and the Shepherds beckoned by angels, and a holy family that definitely wasn’t feeling so holy to start with, keep deep hope even through the lasts. For God still calls and leads, even you.

God is Bigger!

guest post by Deborah Church Worley from her sermon on October 13, 2019 at White Rock Presbyterian Church

“Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’” (Acts 10:34-35)

When I was at Cornell last weekend with my soon-to-be-graduating daughter Sarah, I was filled with both memories of my time there as a student, some 30 years ago, give or take, as well as perspectives as the mom of a prospective student, seeing some things in a fresh way, as Sarah was seeing them for the first time. I did feel a somewhat surprising feeling of pride toward Cornell…a feeling of wanting to share all that was good about it with Sarah…a growing hope that she might be able to experience Cornell as a student herself….

One of the memories that came most quickly to mind, I’m a little embarrassed to say, was actually one that I had shared with my kids previously, because each time I think about it, it makes me laugh. Or at least chuckle. And that is of a T-shirt that some entrepreneurial students created and sold door-to-door in my freshman dorm. It had the Harvard seal on the front… and on the back it said, “Harvard…because not everyone can get into Cornell.” 🙂 🙂 🙂

Now that’s not biggest nor the most famous rivalry in the world, but it does exist. 🙂

Some of these [rivalries] are likely more familiar to more people:

Coke/Pepsi
McDonald’s/Burger King
Fox/CNN
DC/Marvel
Taylor Swift/Kanye West
Apple/Microsoft
Celtics/Lakers
Tom Brady/Peyton Manning
Red Sox/Yankees

And of course, for us here in New Mexico, there’s this one….

Red or green chile??

Some of these rivalries are all in good fun. Some, people take more seriously. Sometimes, just to say, for example, that you’re a fan of a particular team can get you in hot water and earn you some seriously nasty looks and comments, at a minimum. I have a good friend who grew up in Maine and is a lifelong, committed fan of the New England Patriots. When they are in the Super Bowl (which seems to happen pretty regularly these days!), she doesn’t like to tell anyone she’ll be rooting for them…as that is not a particularly welcome comment around here.

And that’s just football! What about things that are inherently more serious? Like politics? There are some serious, and significant, divisions in our country around politics, and it seems like it’s only getting worse…

There are places where a person might very well be afraid to admit that she, or he, voted for Hilary in the last Presidential election; just like there are also places where a person might not feel safe admitting to having voted for Trump. It’s more than a personal preference; it seems to be taken as a reflection of your intelligence or character or goodness or patriotism.

It seems there’s a growing attitude of “If you’re different from me in some way that’s significant to me, I don’t need–or even want–to really get to know you, or know why you think what you think; I know all I need to know about you simply because you’re a [fill-in-the-blank].”

Patriots fan. Broncos fan.

Republican. Democrat.

Labbie. High school dropout.

“I know all I need to know about you because you have tattoos, and body piercings.

Because you curse like a sailor, smoke like a chimney, and drink like a fish.

Because you went to an Ivy League school.

Because you went to Cornell… 🙂

Because you went to Harvard…. :/

Because you served your country in the Armed Services.

Because you didn’t serve your country in the Armed Services….

I know all I need to know about you because you live in the [Espanola] Valley.

Because you live in Los Alamos.

Because you live in a million-dollar home.

Because you live in a mobile home.

I know all I need to know about you, thank you very much,

because of the color of your skin…the shape of your nose…

the accent in your voice…the sound of your last name…

the person you love…the church you attend–or don’t…

the height of your car’s suspension…the height of your heels….

I know all I need to know about you, because I know that one thing about you.

Sometimes it feels like this kind of thinking is becoming more prevalent rather than less…

But maybe not. Maybe it’s just always been around. It certainly existed in first-century Israel. It’s present in the background of today’s passage. Jews and Gentiles really didn’t associate with each other much. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have that big a deal for Peter to visit Cornelius. The story might not have even been worth recording. But it did get recorded, because it was a big deal.

According to one website I looked at, in first-century Israel, “[According to William Barclay,] it was common for a Jewish man to begin the day with a prayer thanking God that he was not a slave, a Gentile, or a woman.” It went on to say that “a basic part of the Jewish religion in the days of the New Testament was an oath that promised that one would never help a Gentile under any circumstances, such as giving directions if they were asked. But it went even as far as [promising to refuse] to help a Gentile woman at the time of her greatest need – when she was giving birth – because the result would only be to bring another Gentile into the world.” Another extreme example of the importance of remaining separate that I stumbled upon in my research is that “if a Jew married a Gentile, the Jewish community would have a funeral for the Jew and consider them dead.” Less extreme but perhaps more important as it was a more common possibility, was the thought that “to even enter the house of a Gentile made a Jew unclean before God.” Jews and Gentiles just did not associate. They knew everything they needed to know about one another simply by knowing to which group they belonged.

That would have been Peter’s training, and point of reference. As a devout Jew, he would have prayed those prayers, made those promises, taken those oaths. He would not have eaten with Gentiles, or invited them into his house, or entered the house of a Gentile himself. Those were simply things he had learned since his birth to not do, things that were ingrained in him by his religious teachings, traditions among his people that were acceptable and accepted, going back thousands of years. To live by those practices didn’t make him a bad person; on the contrary, they made him a good Jew. He was doing what he needed to do, what was expected, what was right.

Until now.

Until God broke in.

Until the Holy Spirit of God told Peter, showed Peter, taught Peter, otherwise.

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Or more simply put, as it says in “The Message”: “If God says it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Peter’s religion had kind of put God, and the blessings of God, in a box. A box meant only for the people of that religion. And only for the people of that religion that did it right!

Religion seems to have a tendency to do that. Or perhaps, it’s not religion per se, but the people of those religions, who want to make sure they get it right, so that God will love them and bless them….and part of what helps them make sure they’re getting it right, it seems, it be clear about who’s getting it wrong…

Certainly the Christian church, and a good number of us Christians (or more accurately, a horrifying number of us Christians…), seem to think and behave in that way…..

Our practices and traditions, some of which have been passed down for hundreds and even thousands of year, can be harmfully divisive, can seem to seek to exclude rather than include, can serve to move us toward that attitude of “I know all I need to know about you, because I know that one thing about you…,” and it seems we, as Christians, sometimes take that even further, going on to think that “because I know that one thing about you, I also know God doesn’t love you. Or at least not as much as God loves me. Not until you change that one thing so that you’re more like me…” No wonder there are people who would “rather chew glass than come to church.”!! (That was a quote in the article in the Daily Post from someone from the Freedom Church in Los Alamos! Did anyone else see that?? 🙂 )

I am bigger than that! I am bigger than your practices and customs! I am bigger than the way you have always done things! I am bigger, and my blessings are meant for so many more than just your people! I am bigger than your customs have allowed me to be, and I am breaking out! Watch, and watch out! Even better–come with me! Go where I lead you, do what I tell you, say the words I give you, and you and so many more will be blessed!

And Peter listened, and he went, and he did, and he said…all that the Holy Spirit of God told him to do. And the world was changed!

It’s true that there are rivalries and divisions and misunderstandings and prejudices in our world. Just like there were in first-century Israel. And before. Just like, I suspect, there always will be, this side of heaven. And while some are good-natured and harmless, some are very hurtful and hateful.

But our God, the God of Peter and the God of Cornelius, the God who took on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and who empowered the apostles in the form of the Holy Spirit, the God whom we gather each Sunday to worship and depart each Sunday to serve, our God is bigger than all of that!!

Our God is bigger…and stronger…and greater…and truly beyond our comprehension and capacity to know…but that God knows us, and loves us, and loves the world! And wants to bless the world. Our God wants to bless the world–the whole world, and all the people of the world, not just those whom we choose or approve of or deem to be worthy or like, but all persons… And God can use us to do that, to bless people and change the world…if we, like Peter, will listen and go and do and say, led by the Holy Spirit of God.

May God break our hearts…so that God might first break in, and then break out!

Amen.