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Mother’s Day Musings

I kinda hate Mother’s Day. There are reasons:

My family – and many many other families – feels pressure to spend money for things I don’t need to show their appreciation.
Progressive churches feel pulled in multiple ways: to recognize and appreciate mothers, to honor people who are nurturing others in various ways, to affirm persons who are not parents, to make some nod in the direction of gender equality and the feminist movement, to give at least passing attention to the neglected feminine images of the divine in our scripture and tradition. We end up doing none of these well.
I imagine that in a less patriarchal culture, Mother’s Day wouldn’t need to exist at all. In fact, I suspect that the more we wax nostalgic about motherhood, the less the actual, real life work of women is valued. More concretely, when we have an emotional attachment to the sacrifices parents (particularly women) make for their children’s benefit, we don’t push for public policies that makes families’ lives easier.
I’m encouraged to leave the dishes in the sink… “After all, it’s Mother’s Day!” which in some years just means that they are waiting for me on Monday morning.

Like many of us who think purposefully (and perhaps too often) about theology and gender, I’m conflicted about the whole idea.

Yet this year, almost by accident, I agreed to plan worship for Mother’s Day. There are several of us at Shadow Rock, a mix of clergy, staff, lay members, and members in discernment, that tackle certain liturgical seasons and apply our creativity and inspiration to the lectionary to plan our time together on Sunday mornings.

And, almost with a little wink at my inner conflict, several things began stirring…

First, May 8 roughly coincides with the end of our exhibition of the Shower of Stoles project. Planning around Annual Meeting, we arranged to receive about 80 stoles of LGBTQ pastors, deacons, church staffers, and other faith leaders. Each stole tells a story. For some it’s a story of terrible pain and a loss to the church of a potential leader as someone was denied their ministry because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. For others, it’s a journey of questioning and struggle ending in wonderful affirmation.

As I read the stories attached to the stoles, my heart was enlarged, swollen with tenderness for the lives the stoles represent.

What if this story were my child’s story?

Then I looked at the gospel reading for this Sunday, May 8. It’s John 17.20-26. I’ve heard John Dorhauer preach movingly on this same passage. “The prayer of our dying Savior,” he says. But this time I heard something different… a parent preparing to leave her children.

“I ask… that they may all be one.”

It’s good that I must leave you, Jesus says. You will go on to learn so much more, he promises. Are they really ready to live their faith independently, without the guidance of Jesus? Four times in this section of John’s Gospel, Jesus prays for unity. Do you feel his conflict? Anguish: at having to leave behind these dear friends, these precious beloved students and Confidence: with faith in their continued growth and guidance into all truth (16.13).

He sounds like Mom.

The final movement for me was a parenting meme I ran across online:

Next week, we celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit. This anticipation, too, tied in to the growing idea of Jesus the Mother. As a parent, I hope that my children have absorbed the best of my instruction and attitude as their inner voice. I pray that as adults, they hear my voice from the times when I was accepting and encouraging, peaceful and faith-filled… rather than the times when I failed to express my best intentions. And I wonder if, in the Garden in the midst of this prayer, Jesus wondered about the voice his friends and subsequent generations of Jesus People would hear as their inner voice, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

Now I don’t know if Sunday’s service will reflect in any way this series of ideas and stirrings that have happened for me as I wrote liturgy, prayed, and planned. Who knows what will happen in the hearts and minds of those gathered in the pews? I trust the Spirit will do what it will.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Joyous Pentecost.

May they be for us One Celebration… not of chocolates and Pajamagrams and brunch but love and fire and unity. Amen.

For the Love of Basic Needs and Dignity

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Sigh. North Carolina. What a painful month for our trans sisters and brothers that reside there. It is so disheartening and fear-inducing to witness.

In the midst of this prejudice, bias, and discrimination, I’d like to draw us back to the humanity and dignity of transgender folks everywhere and remind us that we are loved by a still speaking God.

I lived in this world for 30 years being perceived as a girl and then a woman. I am transgender. My body was that of a female and my mind that of a male. Hard stuff when there isn’t room for such things in your understanding of the world. The flip side of that, though, is amazing gifts when there IS room for such things.

Transition is a radical act of love. My transition is a radical act of love for me, but it is also a radical act of love for you. I am saying, “Hey! I want to be all in with the care and connection we have, but I need something to be made visible in order for me to be authentic with you.” To share honestly is loving.

North Carolina is going through some stuff like a sullen teenager. It’s dressing in black and playing death metal through its headphones. It’s so over you, America, what with your equality and loving kindness in allowing queer folk to marry. It’s pretty insolent and sulky, but that turns quickly to being mean and a bully. It’s akin to a thirteen-year old that is sent to her room and she trashes it, not realizing that she just hurt herself more than anyone else since she now has to clean that up and lost some valuables while throwing a fit. Teenagers, am I right?

North Carolina is hurting itself by bullying and harming its own who are vulnerable and beautiful and, often, alone. I keep getting this image of the school bully hanging out in the bathroom between classes to grab the first person it sees and give that person a swirly. Poor unsuspecting kid trying to take care of his most basic needs, going to the bathroom, and the bully makes him wet his pants instead.

Do you see the indignity? Can you feel the undercurrent? “You are not human in the way we understand humans so you cannot exist. Your pee-pee and doo-doo are no good here. Move along.” Imagine going to work and trying to find the nearest non-gender specific bathroom so you can void your toxins while avoiding arrest. Or worse, attending school that legally locks you inside its walls during school hours and refuses you access to the bathroom. This is insane.

I have fantasies of asking Paul McCartney to remake “Let it Be” to “Let Us Pee”. Anyone know him? Let me know. Could be a hit. Another one of my fantasies is Kit Kat doing a commercial and changing up that jingle, “Give me a break. Give me a break. No, really, I could totally use a bathroom break. Seriously. Please. I really gotta pee.”

Did you know that I, along with many others, see being transgender as a gift? We are quite literally living Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”. I know what it is like to walk this world being perceived as a girl and a woman. I know what it is like to try and be what the world demands of a woman. I know what it’s like to suffer rejection after rejection as girls and women harm each other so they can feel better about the ridiculous demands placed on femininity. I had this lived experience for thirty years.

My transition wasn’t because I didn’t like being a woman. I transitioned because I wasn’t a woman. My transition into manhood is affirming and gives me a sense of congruence where I had none before.

I want you to work on something for me if you can. It will help, I promise you that:

If someone you previously thought to be a woman tells you that he is actually a man and requests you use male pronouns (he/him/his), rather than thinking this is a woman who wants to be a man, think this is a man who is revealing more about himself to me. He is already a man.
If someone you previously thought to be a man tells you she is actually a woman and requests you use female pronouns (she/her/hers) rather than thinking this is a man who wants to be a woman, think this is a woman who is revealing more about herself to me. She is already a woman.
If someone you know is fluid in gender expression and identity, think this is a person who is revealing more about themselves to me. Ask which pronoun would be best and prepare to learn other pronouns that may be unfamiliar. It’ll be clunky at times, but it will also be okay.

The reason this will assist us all in transition or expanding our awareness of gender is because we are saying to the person who is revealing their gender identity, “You know more about yourself than I know about you. I believe you. I see you.”

The work of our reconciling church is very much in the midst of all of this. That radical act of love I do believe is what was meant when we were invited to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the work. That’s the call. Oh, and, by the way… This call for us to love extends to the bully lurking in the bathroom. If there is one thing I know about bullies, they are the ones that often have the most need for love and the smallest amount of capacity to create that in their own lives.

To the bullying powers that be in North Carolina: this Trans guy sees your fear, your uncertainty, and your anger. I see it. This is hard stuff for you, all this change and uncertainty. Gender is so foundational in your thoughts about life and God and country. This is upending a lot for you. You have fear. I have amazing news for you, though. Ready? Love drives out fear. Give it a go, this choosing of love over fear. I think you might really like it. It may even allow for you to emerge from that dark, dingy bathroom and into the sun.

Let us pee…

To Life!

by Karen MacDonald

(revised from a sermon preached 9/13/15)

Fr. Richard Rohr has said: “Your life is not about you. You are about life.”

Natalie Angiers, in her book The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, gives an amazing, expansive view of this truth. She describes the puzzle pieces of life, RNA and DNA, that arose in the first cells to emerge on Earth, the same puzzle pieces that have infused, and still infuse, every living creature since, up until this moment and in every ensuing moment. “Life so loved being alive that it has never, since its sputtering start, for a moment ceased to live.” (p. 181)

And Deuteronomy declares in God’s voice, “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you nor is it too far away….No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe….Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors….” (Deuteronomy 30: 11-20, passim)

The vermilion flycatcher and the mesquite tree in which it flits, the humpback chub fish and California condor trying to regain their footing in the Grand Canyon, Mexican gray wolves and the trees of the Gila National Forest, the western diamondback that calls our deserts home, you, me—we’re all enmeshed in and vibrating with the essence of life! Life is imprinted in us. So let us choose life, with the divine view. Choose love, for all our relations, human and otherwise, in creation. Then we’ll live long in the land given us, this beautiful Earth.

The choice isn’t too hard for us; the word isn’t outside us, far away in heaven or beyond the sea. Rather, the word is in our mouth and in our heart. The spark if life is in us from the first cell. The Spirit of the Holy is in us from in the beginning.

While the divine way of life and love isn’t too hard for us, it can be difficult nonetheless, as Jesus knew. It’s out of step with the dominant world’s way, and sometimes with our own wants, and so can be painful and sorrowful and risky. This may be the Lenten and the Holy Week experience in a world, and sometimes our own hearts, that are self-centered and fearful. And this divine way may enrich our Easter living in every season. For it’s an expanded and expansive way of living. For example:

If I do this or say this, how might it affect the other person?
If I stay silent or on the sidelines, how will it affect others, human and otherwise?
What animal and Earth resources and human labor went into this item I want?
How can I help save the life of others, human and otherwise?
Am I living as if I’m part of life that so loves being alive? As if I’m part of God’s love?

This spirit-centered, holy way of living expands our way of being, expands our very being.

To paraphrase Richard Rohr, our life is not about us. You and I are about nothing less magnificent than life! That amazing truth moves us through pain and sorrow and risk to a resurrection, once again and always, of life that loves being alive, of love undeterred for all creation. Hallelujah!

The Art of Eldering

by Amos Smith

The entire Christian tradition can be seen in terms of eldering. The witnesses in the Bible are our ancient elders, whose words mentor disciples through the ages. The early Christian community deferred to its elders, preserved their writings, learned and grew from their example.

When I attended Quaker Meetings for Worship during college days, the community clearly identified its elders. Quaker elders were also known as “Seasoned Friends.” The elders, who had been in the community a long time, had gathered around many crackling beach fires. They knew the life-giving stories. They’d been pummeled by life and survived to speak carefully chosen words of truth, sometimes as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. Elders were sought for council. The most wizened engaged in the delicate and humble art of puncturing peoples’ inflated egos in order to restore their souls.

A tragedy of America that is echoed throughout Hollywood and mass media is the supremacy of the teenager and young adult. Our culture reveres teens. We celebrate their vitality, enthusiasm, and beauty. There are many praiseworthy qualities of young adulthood, yet for a society to revere teens is backward. Teen role models would never go over in traditional societies found in Asia, South America, and elsewhere. In these societies the wizened elders are appropriately revered.

The sage, not the teen heartthrob, deserves the highest honor.

The fitting response.

by Kelly Kahlstrom

2006 was a year I’ll never forget.

My mammogram came back abnormal. I needed a biopsy. I was a single mother raising a teenager. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know how much to say. Or to whom. I eventually shared this news with a friend who responded “Ah don’t worry about it. That happened to me and it was nothing…statistics are on your side.” Somehow, I was not reassured nor was I comforted. Another friend held me, let me cry, and give voice to the terror of facing cancer. No reassurances. No statistics. Just the validation that they had heard my pain. I have never forgotten that life giving moment; it was a fitting response.

2006 was also the year that my daughter got married. In the certainty of her newly found religion and in the certainty of her youth, it was decided that her family of origin would be excluded from most of the wedding plans and certainly the ceremony itself. No bridal shower. No shopping for a wedding dress. No negotiating. We were however requested to wait outside the Mormon Temple in Mesa to greet the happy couple (and the groom’s parents) as they emerged from the ceremony. The pain of these decisions was unbearable at the time, both personally and theologically. Feeling justifiably hurt and angry, my initial reaction was to boycott the event.

Grace, however, comes in surprising packages. Shortly after the wedding announcement but before the ceremony I attend a Walter Brueggemann lecture. Embedded in the countercultural read of the Exodus story and Yahweh’s response to the voiced pain of the Hebrew slaves, I found my fitting response. “Hospitality,” Bruegemann said, “will always trump vengeance.” As unhappy as I was with the circumstances, a relationship with my daughter was still more important to me than my certainty in the theological position of inclusiveness and while the day of the wedding was difficult, I have never regretted the decision to show up and greet my daughter after the ceremony. “Hospitality will always trump vengeance.” A pearl of wisdom that is just what is needed in the moment; again a fitting response.

But what exactly is a fitting response? Calvin Schrag suggests that it is an ethical analysis of the questions “What is going on?” and “How should we respond?” It is an openness to create what is needed at the moment to affirm life. It cannot be scripted in advance for as moments and experiences change, so will the fitting response. And, it is not to be undertaken lightly. A fitting response requires three things from us:

A willingness to listen to someone’s voiced pain, analyze what is needed to affirm life, and to take action.
A willingness to be changed by the experience – an agreement to enter into the mutuality of a relationship.
A realization that it is not a one-time deal; there is a constant call to respond with openness and awareness while we negotiate and renegotiate our being together.

Similarly, Martin Copenhaver, in exploring an alternative narrative for the decline in the life of the church and of theological education writes, “To tell the story of our time as one of decline is to walk away from our inheritance as Easter people. God is not dead and neither are God’s promises.” Copenhaver’s questions are “What is God up to in our time?” and “What are we to do in response?” Both speak to the work of “breathing life into dead spaces” and highlight the need to formulate a fitting response to the pain we are privileged to see and hear.

Fast forward to 2016…I have found being on the board of Rebel & Divine challenging as well as exhausting as we arrange and rearrange the structure of the organization in the hopes of soon becoming a covenant church in the Southwest Conference. Longing for order in the midst of chaos, and knowing that reacting usually falls short of the desired result, I set out to look for guidance in how to best respond. I spent the better part of Easter weekend looking for the UCC version of the Presbyterian Book of Order only to find that it doesn’t exist [smile]. As one who engages the world first through my head I seem to forget (fairly often sadly) that I cannot think my way out of all of life’s challenges especially challenges that present in the vertical dimension.

And so it seems that the United Church of Christ is asking me to take the fitting response seriously. It is far harder than just thinking, or remembering the order of Robert’s Rules. It is to recognize and respond to the beckoning of creation; an invitation to create a place from which listening with a new ear or a different way of seeing can bubble up from the depths of my being and make its way through the crowded thoughts of my mind to make itself known to me. And whilst I cannot create a fitting response (for only the hearer/receiver gets to decide if my utterance or action is fitting), I can signifying my willingness to participate by issuing an invitation to language to play.

I will be the first to admit I do not always dwell in this place. And I need help occasionally finding it again for it is so easily covered over by a culture that values the head more than the heart. A wise friend framed it this way…in the heat of the moment, take a step back and ask yourself if your response is grounded in love or fear. If fear, what would it look like to participate from love? Choose love. The good news here is that flip-flopping is welcomed!

As you listen to the voiced pain in your communities, both individually and corporately…what is God calling you to do to “breathe life into dead spaces” and respond in love?

Does our Extravagant Welcome Speak to the Soul?

by Kenneth McIntosh

Last Sunday a visitor at our church mentioned her frustration in another congregation, her feeling that “I’m not growing deeper with God.” I wonder how many people in our churches share that sense of need? There’s much talk about the missing millennial generation (18-29 year olds) in our churches. Indeed, a 2013 Barna survey titled “Three Spiritual Journeys of Millennials” confirms that more than 50% of persons in that demographic have dropped out of church. But the study goes deeper than that, placing these leavers into three categories, and the biggest category of church dropouts is what the Barna survey calls “Nomads.” “This group is comprised of 18- to 29-year-olds with a Christian background who walk away from church engagement but still consider themselves Christians. “ So they consider themselves Christ-followers but aren’t finding what they desire in church.

I wonder if the problem for these “Nomads,” at least to some extent, might be our failure to advertise or facilitate ways to genuinely experience and grow deeper in God? When the Apostle Paul wrote to Christians in Ephesus in the first century, his greatest desire for them was “that the God of our savior Jesus Christ, the God of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation, to bring you to a rich knowledge of the Creator” (Ephesians 1:17, The Inclusive Bible). The same need may be truer today. Amos Smith, pastor of Church of the Painted Hills UCC in Tucson says “People in our time think scientifically, we need practical verification that something is true or not. If I don’t experience something in my nervous system, there’s a lack of verification.” Smith then refers to the positive example of psychologist Karl Jung who was asked by an interviewer if he believed in God? Jung replied, in a modest voice, “I don’t believe, I know.” Such faith, grounded not in rote propositions but in experiential reality, may be the deepest need for Christians in a Post-modern age.

Could it be that the political polarization of society has pushed both Conservative and Progressive faith communities to emphasize things other than experiencing God? I expect this is true more in terms of public perception than of actual congregational life—but what the public perceives has significant impact on churches. Conservative churches, associated with the political right, can be characterized as rule-focused. They offer the do’s and don’ts of morality, based on hyper-literal Bible interpretations, as the focus of spiritual life. But by the same measure, Progressive churches may so emphasize justice and peace that they can also reduce the Christian life to saying and doing the right things.

I sometimes wonder, as we offer extravagant welcome, what are welcoming people to? One person seeking a church—a lesbian who is politically involved in liberal causes—told me “I visited several UCC churches in my area, but they only offered confirmation of my social and political beliefs. I need a church where they’ll help me deepen my relationship with God.”

A decade ago Richard Peace and David Schoen, two of the most prominent UCC thinkers on spiritual formation and evangelism respectively, wrote an article titled “Listening for the Still Speaking God: Contemplative Evangelism” (you can Google it and read the pdf online). In that article they emphasize the importance of “classic spiritual formation … birthed in silence, shaped by the spiritual disciplines, and guided by a knowledgeable spiritual director.”

I am glad to say that we have all of that in the Southwest Conference. There are SWC churches where the pastors and lay people are pursuing contemplative prayer and integrating spirituality into their everyday lives. We also have Teresa Blythe with the Heysechia school and Amanda Peterson with Pathways of Grace both offering venues for seekers in the Southwest to grow deeper in contemplative and experiential faith.

But do we emphasize such opportunities for spiritual experience when we invite people to our faith communities? Schoen and Peace, in the aforementioned article, draw a picture of “Contemplative Evangelism.” They write, “What if prayer were the central component of evangelism? By this I mean, what if the very desire to reach out to others was born in the fire of contemplative prayer where the presence of God was so palpable that one could not help but want to share this reality with others?” Imagine a faith community where the message “Whoever you are, you are welcome” is followed with, “We will explore spiritual practices together with you, experiencing the healing presence of God.” Peace and Schoen further explain, “This would be evangelism out of the silence rather than via the loud proclamation. It would be evangelism of companionship—as both evangelist and seeker reach out to God. It would be evangelism of the retreat and the small group conversation, rather than evangelism of the large meeting and forceful challenge. It would be evangelism of spiritual direction (in which the voice of God is sought) rather than evangelism of the witnessing monologue.”

Church of the Painted Hills offers a practical example of such “Contemplative Evangelism” with their Friday Centering Prayer gatherings. They advertise via flyers at local Yoga studios, and half the people who attend their gatherings are unaffiliated with the church. They come driven by a desire to experience God.

Theologian Karl Rahner said “The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or will not exist at all.” In a time of declining church attendance, perhaps we should more openly advertise that our faith communities offer ancient and effective spiritual practices, trails inviting those who wish to walk on such mystical paths.

The One Who Gives Us Room

by Talitha Arnold

“You gave me room when I was in distress.” – Psalm 4

“When my mother was diagnosed with cancer,” a friend shared recently, “one of the greatest gifts was the nurse in the oncologist’s office.”

“She had a great sense of humor, and she could make a cold, sterile examining room a place of warmth and even laughter,” my friend said. But even more than that, he continued, “she knew how to hold my mother’s anxiety.”

As the cancer progressed, he explained, “My mother got more and more scared—understandably. She kept asking the same questions over and over again. I knew it was the fear talking, but I was worn out. I’d reached the end of my own rope. I loved my mother deeply, but I couldn’t deal with one more question.”

But that nurse, he continued, “could listen to my mother ask the same thing a million times.” It was like she had a big bowl, he said as he stretched out his arms to demonstrate, “in which she could hold my mother’s fear—and my impatience.”

If I experienced God in that hard time, my friend concluded, “it was that nurse’s deep well of patience and grace. I thanked God every day for her. I still do.”

“You gave me room when I was in distress,” the ancient Psalmist writes. “You have put gladness in my heart . . . . I will lie down and sleep in peace.”

Maybe the Psalmist knew someone like that oncology nurse. Perhaps we do, too.

Prayer

God of infinite patience and bottomless love, thank you for the people who have made room for us in our distress. They have put your gladness in our hearts, even in hard times. Amen.

A Different Kind of Easter

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I spent Easter with some dear friends this year. We did the whole usual Easter things like sharing a meal together, going to a chapel for ceremony, gave one another reminders that this life is all about love, and, of course, jousting. Wait… What?

The meal we shared together was with about 25 people. We knew six of them. The ceremony we attended was to see two amazing people get married. The reminders of love came through the voiced vows, tears and generosity of heart.

As far as the jousting, the wedding was held at the Renaissance festival so no one was harmed in the making of this article.

The wedding was kinda spur of the moment to learn it was happening. The invite came just a few days before the ceremony. Being invited to someone’s wedding is an incredible honor. I am of the mind that if someone invites you to a sacred moment like a wedding, it’s a great idea to say yes. So we did and our hearts were made full as a result.

The only pause in attending was that it was on Easter.

Easter is not one of my fave holidays. It hasn’t been for years. It generally reminds me of a more literal version of Christianity that I was shunned from. Easter was always a huge deal in the churches I was a part of from the age of 13 until the age of 21. I had a head and heart connection to Easter and the mood was vibrant and celebratory. When the welcome ended for me in these places, I locked down quite a bit. I was so angry, sad, bitter, and rather destroyed. The churches I knew, in my mind, owned God and if they said I was out, that was as good as from the mouth of God. Ministers have such power. When the rejection comes from their lips, oh how deep it cuts. My heart is still healing from this loss in a lot of ways. It just adds a difficulty to Easter.

Sit with this next part a bit if you can tolerate it. What was a moment for you that you did not see coming? What was a moment for you that felt out of your control? What was a moment for you when you found out what loss feels like?

If I had to describe what that was like for me I would use words
like this:

Unfair
Brokenness
Grief
Lost sense of safety
Self blame
Shame
Deep sadness
Fear-filled
Violation
Desperation
Struggle
Unreal

I know I am not alone with that list. You and I could probably throw in tons of other words that reflect rejection and pain in one form or another. Suffering is part of the relational human condition. We don’t simply desire to be loved and to give love, it actually is a necessity. What that means is, I hurt when you hurt and you hurt when I hurt. It’s risky. It’s vulnerable. Love can feel burdening. It can also feel like the greatest gift ever.

Some realities: Life is to be celebrated and enjoyed. Life will one day end. Life will go on in new forms. The winter to spring change whispers the cycle of life and death to us while Easter Day often proclaims it.

One of the kids I was with today is getting ready to turn 9 in a few days. This kid is amazing for tons of reasons. His brain and capacity for understanding is surreal and he delights in questions. Today he said, “Poor Jesus. He keeps getting killed.” Oh how I loved that sentiment.

This soon-to-be nine-year-old has empathy, he has care, and he has compassion. There’s a real sweetness to him making sense of the world around him.

Here’s the thing, though: when we are young and still attempting to understand the world through shared story and tradition, we often don’t realize that the story serves as the vehicle for our own development and understanding. When it hurts, it’s so hard to shake. It is as though whatever the painful moment(s) were, they are still happening to us now. That means Jesus keeps on getting killed. Poor guy. When’s he going to catch a break?

That list we went through together a bit ago is like the literal “it keeps happening over and over” experience we have in brokenness. We relive it in our minds. It’s not that Jesus was killed, it’s that Jesus keeps getting killed. It’s not that your marriage is over, it’s that your marriage keeps on ending. It’s not that your loved one died, it’s that your loved one keeps dying over and over. How painful. How halting. How human.

Easter is about newness of life and I can definitely use some renewal and life affirming experiences these days. It’s not that Easter is impossible for me to enjoy and feel celebratory in. It is that my heart keeps wanting what was and it simply doesn’t exist anymore. I changed which means I can interact with Easter in a new way. And what a lovely thing that is…

My Easter Day was spent with friends who love me. My communion was at the wedding reception where I broke bread with people I love. The message of love didn’t come from a pulpit. It came from authenticity and vulnerability being offered to those willing to make room to witness it. I saw Jesus today in all sorts of faces and I heard Jesus today in all different tones of voices.

The turning to God where I stand vs the running to find God where I once did is something I have to relearn almost daily. When I remember to do this, though, I receive bountiful gifts in connection with the God of my understanding and the great big world all around me. And instead of Jesus getting killed all the time, I get to delight in a sense of resurrection and new life, if I do desire to turn to it.

And today I did.

A Whole Lens on Life

by Beth Johnson

I walked around for months with my head down and my chubby little seven-year-old hands clasped . . . around a 1950’s Eastman Kodak Brownie Camera, a Christmas gift from my parents, intended to distract me from the death of my older brother, Billy, whose four-year battle with childhood leukemia had been lost several days before his tenth birthday. Little did they know how symbolic this new lens on life would become for me.

Our family was numb. Our lives had revolved around Billy’s care, keeping him encouraged, doctored and medicated (at the Cleveland Clinic), and rested. We siblings brought his school work home weekly from the Edwin Markham Elementary School, and sat on his bed to play board games, willingly giving up our friendship time to support his health. Our family had purchased one of the first black-and-white T.V.’s for his bedroom so that we could enjoy “The Lone Ranger” and “Howdy Doody” and hope to cheer him up. We had gone to church every Sunday and prayed and done everything right. Of course Billy couldn’t go because of germs. He had died despite our heroic efforts.

Our minister advised that we kids not attend the funeral. Too sad an event, as if we weren’t already devastated and knew exactly what had happened, as if we might live blissfully onward without a care. Billy’s leukemia had been, after all, four years of all of our lives. We stayed home with our grandmother and cried. Our clergy preached that we should all feel happy that Billy was in Heaven with God, no more pain or suffering. They seemed to have no concept of the kind of support we could have used to help us work through the deep hollowness that the death brings.

After my second grade class let out one day, I walked directly to our church and asked to meet with the Head Minister. I was ushered into the office of the Minister for Christian Education, a woman with a strong intellect and little warmth. I sat dwarfed in her huge brown leather wing-back chair and asked if she could help my family with our sadness. She told me to give my life to Jesus Christ and everything would be O.K. She gave me theology when I needed God’s Love and Sustenance. She gave me precepts when I needed the warmth of a faith community.

Within a year, my mother had Stage IV breast cancer and a radical mastectomy. I can still picture my eight-year-old-self standing in shock by her bedside as she showed me her railroad track scar and explained what the doctors had needed to do. From that point our family life struggled. I listened while my mother cried herself to sleep many nights out of a sense of guilt and for fear of losing another child. We were living with the sudden rise of polio and no one knew the causes. My father traveled increasingly for his work. We kids buried ourselves in our school work and tried to be the best daughters and sons possible in order to alleviate our parents’ suffering.

One day, as I shuffled my little feet home from school, one of my brother’s classmates asked me where Billy was. I hesitantly pointed toward the sky. “No!” he exclaimed. “That can’t be true!”

At that moment I realized that there were probably many people in my life who had no idea that my brother had died. A second “aha” came close on the heels of that one – that there were very likely lots of people in the world walking around with smiles on their faces while hiding deep pain. Because that was exactly what my parents and siblings and I were doing. At age seven, radical empathy was born.

This life-changing experience was the jump-start of my spiritual and moral development. It became a lens through which I filtered every life experience. It heightened my sensitivity to people around me, driving me forward with an untamable desire to ease human suffering, especially through the church and God’s Love. This life lens led me to understand that children, adolescents and young adults within and outside of our churches have deep needs for spiritual and moral support and guidance. They may not show that to us, but it is there and they need us to love them. People of all ages and walks of life are doing the best they can and need us to be God’s Love for them.

My experience of my brother’s leukemia and death is something that I rarely discuss but I am very conscious that it was a pivotal experience that has catapulted me into the ministry and the helping professions. There is no greater pastoral care tool for a clergy person than understanding pain, from the inside.

You, too, have stories of pain and struggle that have immeasurably changed who you became, as a person and a professional. That job that you lost, the parent who left, the wayward child, an addiction, a run-in with the law, you know. Are you embracing your “pain stories” ? At least to yourself? Are you recognizing how they have shaped and strengthened you, even though they were extremely difficult? Even though you’d like to bury many of them in your unconscious mind.

We bring “our whole stories” (OWS) to life and to church. It is through the lenses of the “OWS” that we respond to every situation, secular and sacred. Our assumptions, perceptions, conclusions, fears, and actions are ALL filtered through the lens of the “OWS.” Furthermore, every other person in your faith community is having the same individualized experience. We are all looking for healing and acceptance, understanding and deepening, growth and a sense of spiritual peace and goodness, friendship and Love. We are all looking to become better, more whole people.

Jesus made it very clear that God treasures each of our “whole stories.” Warts and all. The woman at the well. The woman who was hemorrhaging. The dishonest tax collector. The mad man inhabited by demons. Our whole stories develop us into God’s people, if we will let them. Our OWS have Power! Together with God, we can turn them into “POWS” !

Jesus lived authentically and embraced the unbelievably difficult aspects of his life and calling. He could have backed down during the last week of his life, but he did not. His “whole story” is what we carry forward as Christianity. If he had not lived “whole-ly,” there would be no Christianity. Jesus gave us a lens through which to perceive and experience life and a role model to follow. The lens is his whole life story.

How have the lenses of your “whole story” informed your development? How has the lens that Jesus provided helped you? Far better lenses than my 1950’s Brownie Camera !

“Be ye perfect (whole) as your Father in Heaven is perfect (whole).” Mt. 5:48

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