Category: Uncategorized

Be the change you wish to see.

by Sandra Chapin

How many of us feel that there are things in the world we’d like to see changed? I celebrate those who speak truth to power, those who hold up a mirror or focus a spotlight on actions that do harm, that limit opportunities for some of us to live full and dignified lives – who are routinely dismissed as having little, if anything, of value to contribute. Other harm to people on a global scale is ongoing as decisions are made, or avoided, in regard to climate. Our kinship with animals and plants is cast aside.

The scope of social justice issues is wide. I include the need for an attitude adjustment in our everyday interactions. I promote tenderness and gentleness. I’ll try not to be too icky sweet about it.

Let’s start with cute pet videos online. Recently Spence showed me a video on his phone of a cat reclining in a drowsy position and a human hand entering the scene holding a small teddy bear. The bear is nudged against the kitty who responds by reaching out its paws to grasp the bear in a hug that melts the heart. Awww. It’s just so sweet! Not icky. Even the stoic among us who disdain showing emotion would surely smile on the inside.

I am not a cat owner (is there such a thing as a cat owner?) but…

Most people would be moved by the simplicity of the act, the relationship of animal and human with a common ground of nurture and comfort. Cat and human (and teddy) are engaged in this tender and gentle moment. My take-away is to pose a question: Am I missing similar human-to-creature encounters? Not to be touching wild things, but to be aware of eye-contact as a gentle exchange of regard. To appreciate the lean and luminous lizard. For the lizard to appreciate not getting squashed by me – as if I could move that fast.

Sharing the earth with lizards and lions.

My next story is about a couple (humans) of mature years who I see often at Panera Bread. I go there to pretend I’m at a Parisian cafe composing some great work. They have a different agenda. They get coffee and sit at their favorite table and then proceed to work on a cross-word puzzle. I never see them speak, yet with heads together each takes a turn at the puzzle, even sharing the pencil. I can’t tell what the rules are. What pattern do they follow? Do they move in sequence – across, down – or scan for a category of expertise? Does he start a word and she complete it? Silently for more than an hour they sit in this back and forth manner. Seamlessly. Lovingly.

I am not in a coupled relationship but…

Watching them makes me calm. And curious. What is it like to be part of a pair that (I assume) has been evolving for years and years? I know couples who do not demonstrate such tenderness, at least not in front of others. Couples whose interaction hint at problems unresolved and a staying together more about habit than respect.

Over time I have struck up an acquaintance with this couple. They are as sweet as they appear. Not given to excessive conversation. That’s not why they come to Panera. Seeing their choreography with the puzzle I believe they have not had a cross word between them. That’s the lens I choose when I look at them. Real human to human contact can be prickly, and I remind myself that friendships need to be tended. Like my coffee at the cafe, better when sweetened and stirred. When we hold a person gently in our heart, it is easier to hold more and more. 

Speaking truth to power. The Bible is full of it. Consider the prophet Nathan confronting King David with a story of a poor man and his beloved pet lamb, and a rich man who wanted lamb for dinner but not one from his own flock. (2 Samuel 12:1-9) Nathan’s words brought David to his knees.

Actions communicate truth. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. They were confused and protested. Servants or slaves performed this lowly chore, not a person held in high esteem. (John 13:1-15) Was Jesus confronting the power of privilege which can erode relationships and unravel a community?

In speech. In action. In attitude. Be the change you wish to see.

Blessed by Science and a Capacity for Awareness and Awe

by Jim Cunningham

Through science I have come to realize that I have been blessed for 13.8 billion years… now that is a lot of blessings. If any one of multi-trillions of events did not happen just so… I would not be here today. All of it gift, miracle, and blessing!.

Through science, a research geneticist taught me that it is likely that 78% of human egg/sperm unions do not result in a live birth. Most fail in the first days to six weeks. So when I was conceived my chances of being born alive was 22%. I call that a miracle, a blessing, a gift!

Science has taught me that I began as one cell and after a multitude of cell divisions and specializations, I am born with 1-5 trillion cells and as an adult have some 25 to 100 trillion cells. Wow. Miracle! Blessing! Gift!

Each day also a gift and blessing. Each breath and heartbeat a gift and blessing! If I were to go to bed and count all my blessings… well, I would never get any sleep.

I remember hearing a story where a student asks his Rabbi, “What is the key to a spiritually healthy life?” It happened to be the Rabbi’s day of silence but not wanting to disappoint the student, the Rabbi wrote on a piece of paper one word… “Awareness.” The student looked puzzled and asked, “What do you mean by ‘awareness.?’” The Rabbi again wrote one word on a paper, “Awareness!” The student said, “I do not understand? Please, I really need to know what you mean by ‘awareness.’ !” Finally, the frustrated Rabbi breaks silence, “When I say ‘awareness’ I mean awareness, awareness, awareness!!!”

I pray that I may never lose my awareness of 13.8 billion years of gift and blessing and miracles!… that I may never lose my awareness of the gift and blessing and miracle I am… that I may be keenly aware of the vast number of gifts and blessings and miracles I am privileged to enjoy every day of my life. I awake, aware that just waking to another day is a gift and blessing and miracle followed by millions more before I lie down to sleep… each breath, every heartbeat, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, speaking, ability to use my hands, to walk, to think, to learn, to read, to eat, clothes, food, water, a roof over my head, heat, air conditioning, medicine, a bed, pets, rocks, trees, gardens, air, diverse humans who share the journey… even pain and suffering, and oh so much more!

Awareness. Awareness. Awareness.

Thank you to the source of it all… a source I experience and call GOD.

Five Reasons I Believe Hate Will Not Win the 2018 Midterm Election

by Teresa Blythe

In the last few days the pre-midterm-election rhetoric and divisiveness have ramped up. I found it pretty depressing until I took some time to check in with what I truly believe. I hope this blog post will inspire you to do the same.

Here are five reasons I believe hate will not win on November 6.

  1. There are more kind people than hateful ones in our nation.

The hatemongers seem to get a lot of airtime, but overall, most Americans are kind, compassionate and desirous of a more civil political culture. From all the polls I’ve seen, more people are turned off than energized by hateful speech. That looks good for the midterm ahead.

  1. The kind people are tired of being lied to. They are fired up and motivated to vote.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Our president tells so many lies it has become what we now expect of him. People who care about truth and integrity are motivated to vote for a balance of power on November 6. Even many Republicans are horrified at the casual way Donald Trump tells lies and how he cares only about one thing: gaining power.

  1. Our nation was founded on resistance to authoritarianism.

We have a long history of bucking anyone or any political power that tries to bully us or our neighbors into submission. We threw off British authority and then fought a civil war to dismantle the evil practice of slavery. We don’t like bullies and are prepared to resist them at every turn.

  1. Kind and compassionate people will never give in or give up.

Love has staying power. Collectively we will keep up resistance to oppression. Even if it takes the next generation to win hearts over, we will keep up the good fight. And we will continue to believe that love will win over hate — in the long run.

  1. There is no place for hate to hide anymore.

It is so important that those of us who value kindness, mercy and compassion not lose hope. One way I am fighting discouragement is to remember these five truths when I get down. It may feel like our country is headed toward a nightmare of authoritarianism, but in reality we can stop the worst of it in its tracks.

That is, if we vote in the midterm for people who share our values on November 6.

Thoughts and Prayers

by Tony Minear

“The hands, that help, are holier than the lips that pray.”  – Robert Ingersoll

“You’re in my thoughts and prayers.”

These words are frequently my go to in a variety of settings: End of a hospital visit, “Thoughts and prayers;” As I say goodbye to someone I’ve visited with, “Thoughts and prayers;” After hearing of a recent tragedy, “Thoughts and prayers.” These words express my care and concern for the individual and their situation. I admit, they are not always descriptive of my future behavior. I, like you, forget.

The shooting in Parkland, Florida, like similar moments the past three months, brought these words to the lips of politicians, churches, and individuals. From the lips of others, came the words, “Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. They never have been.”

Emily Reid has read the headline, “Among the deadliest shootings in history …” thirteen times already in her twenty years of life. She is not optimistic this will be the last time. Unless? Unless we do something. Unless we act. Otherwise, thoughts and prayers will never be enough.

This reality is expressed in the holiest of Jewish days, Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement, the sins which Israel committed before or against God were cleansed. The people stood before God clean. There was one exception. A wrong against a fellow human being remained if you had not sought out their forgiveness. That one would not be cleansed.

Neal Urwitz states, “At least in the Jewish Tradition, if you have not made things right with your fellow man, G-d will not answer your prayers. And if you have made the same prayers over and over and over again, and the same horrors keep happening, that’s not on G-d. That’s on you.”

Mass shootings are on us despite our prayers if we have not acted to make things right with past and future victims. We make things right by confessing our wrong of idleness and start to act in ways that will change our relationship to guns. Prayer can no longer be our pacifier.

What can we do? Below are some steps we can take now.

  1. Reconsider our stance on guns by becoming aware of the various opinions surrounding this subject. What solutions are being proposed? Are they taking it to far or not far enough? Listen and read widely.
  2. Host a small group of friends and family to look at gun control from a religious and spiritual perspective. A great resource is “Faith vs. Fear.” 
  3. Participate in a March for Our Lives this March 24.
  4. Contact your senators and express your view on guns and ask them to find a solution that makes a real difference.

Let us offer only thoughts and prayers if we are willing to act.

Why did you go? An experience of Standing Rock as a white queer person.

by Rae Strozzo

sky at Standing RockA dear friend in Berkeley sent me Facebook message one evening saying that she felt called to go stand with the water protectors at Standing Rock and did I want to go with her.  “No” was never really going to be the answer, but I definitely had to think about what I was agreeing to do. After several meetings and a week of prep – including research, prayer, meditation, meetings, and just trying to discern my role and reason for showing up there, I left on election night with a group of six friends to go to the Ocheti Sakowin Camp on the bank of the Cannonball River just outside of the Lakota Sioux Reservation at Standing Rock.

I have a deck of cards on my altar that a friend  in Georgia gave me thirteen or fourteen years ago. It has images of the Buddha from all over the world and from many lineages. I pulled a card from that deck for our trip. I pulled the only card that has no image. It has this word, sammasati, which means remember. This is a portion of the dharma that goes with this word:  “The last words of Gautam Buddha were sammasati-“remember.” In a single word, everything significant is contained. Sammasati. Remember what is your inner space. Just remember. . . Just for a few seconds sit down with closed eyes to remember, to make a note of where you have been, to what depth you have been able to reach:  what is the taste of silence, peace?  What is the taste of disappearing into the ultimate?  Look in. And whenever you have time, you know the path.  Just go again and again to the inner space so that your fear of disappearing is dropped, and you start remembering the forgotten language.  Sammasati. . .

There is an exercise in Buddhist meditation practice where two people sit together. One person simply asks the same question over and over and the other answers it each time it is asked.  The dyad is designed to pull the questioner into deep listening and compassion. The person answering is exploring more deeply the complexity of feeling and experiences of what is being asked. Standing Rock felt to me like the call of this questioner, and I was the one trying to answer.  I was asked over and over during the prep to go and during my time in Standing Rock – why are you going?  Why are you going? Why are you here? What is your intention? Why are you here? What are you doing here? The answers are an ever-evolving response.

Why are you going?
A friend asked me to go.Standing Rock NoDAPL
To help.  NOPE! To be in solidarity. To see my settler language and to try and decolonize my responses.
To lament.
To be with other queer people.
To show up.
Why are you going?
To learn.
To pray.
To meditate.
To ride in a van for sixty plus hours with people I love.
To NOT get arrested.
To make phone calls, send texts, to check Facebook.

Why are you here?
To hear the wind.
To follow the water.
To sit on the ground.
To smell like campfire smoke.
To pound in tent stakes.
To hold my breath.
To wait.
Why are you here?
To chop onions.
To paint banners.Standing Rock art tent
To connect to bosses, partners, friends, chosen family, moms
To meditate.
To be in ceremony.
Why are you here?
To talk to a Buddhist monk at the sacred fire.
To stand for the first half of the pipe ceremony with the women and for the second half with the men.
To hear the elders call for Two Spirit Nation to take their place at the water ceremony.
To smell sage.
To cry.
To have no words.
To watch the supermoon outshine the floodlights over the pipeline
Why are you here?
To not know.
To not understand.
To hold stories and songs in my heart that were a gift to hear and to know that they are NOT my gift to give.
Why are you here?
To learn that Two Spirit is not just a beautiful way of saying LBGTQ.
To NOT see burned out cars, barricades, or militarized police.
To see community.
To see peace  – not to bring it.
To join prayers – not to create them.
To live into story – not narrate it.
To learn from elders and follow their lead.

Zubian, a two spirit elder, said to me:  “ I have been transformed before. Others are here for that transformation.”  He was speaking of a young woman who had pulled him out of the way of a speeding truck meant to hit him and stop him from praying at a direct action. But it was clear he meant more than just her.

Why did you go?
To follow the water.
To sleep on the ground, listening to the calls of prayer, and drums, and drones, and helicopters, and wind, and flags.
Why did you go?
To shout Mni Wiconi and mean it.
Why did you go?
To protect.
To have hope.
To be surprised.
To remember.

Image credits: Rae Strozzo.

Helpful or Not?

by Karen Richter

I’ve been mulling over the words sacred and secular lately. Just yesterday a member of my congregation described themselves as “a pretty secular person.” I’m sure I blinked, eyes wide because I have zero poker face skills. How could this person – no matter what theology or philosophy – who I have experienced as chock-full of passion and integrity, be secular? And now that I think about it, how could a person whose faith compels them to act in ways contrary to justice, compassion, and peace be sacred?

What do these words even mean? Is the distinction helpful any longer, if it ever was?

In high school choir, we sang sacred music.  Just a side note, because surely you were wondering, my favorite piece was John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth.

We also sang secular music. Here’s one I remember that you probably recall as well.

Why is a song about connection and longing and common humanity labeled secular just because God isn’t mentioned? And surely, if we thought about it, we could think of religious songs that are so soaked in nationalism, exclusivism, and fear that the word God sours in our mouths as we sing.

I’m always suspicious about either/or choices, and the sacred or secular choice is no different. Questions worth asking always have more than two potential answers!

In this holiday season, we so often get pulled into irrelevant discussions about what is appropriate as part of our Christmas celebration and what isn’t. Mistletoe and holly, yule logs, decorated trees, candles… these treasured traditions all originated in pagan winter celebrations. Contemporary questions abound as well… Santa during church events? Starbucks cups? Church on Christmas day?  How do we choose what to affirm and what to discard? What goes and what stays?

It all stays. It all belongs. If incarnation means anything at all, it means that the false dichotomy of sacred and secular is revealed as illusion, forever broken down, shattered completely, and re-formed as part of a blessed whole.

You belong too! Merry Christmas and peace in 2017!

Okay, but why?

by Davin Franklin-Hicks 

I remember my 13-year-old self sitting on the altar of a small Southern Baptist church. The altar was brown, carpeted steps. A woman who had shown me incredible kindness sat with me. She was holding my hand. I was wracked with sadness and sobs. She listened to me as I told her about the divorces, the turmoil in my family, the fear that I was not normal (that meant queer, but I didn’t yet have the words for that). She listened. She leaned in. She cared.

After I shared, she opened her Bible and I remember her taking me through “The Roman Road”. I spent most of the time listening for Roman to show up in the story line. The Roman character never made an appearance.

The Roman Road is a fundamentalist evangelical tool often used in explaining the “Plan of Salvation”. I would come to know that well later, but for that moment, I didn’t understand any of it.

This is pretty much how the many conversations would go:

Nice lady (NL): When Eve took that apple and decided to eat from the tree, sin entered the world. We needed a path back to God and we get that through Jesus.

Perplexed 13 y/o Davin (PD): Well, why did God make that tree then?

NL: God wanted us to choose Him. When we don’t we invite sin into our lives and we need salvation.

PD: I don’t get it. If I poisoned candy and put it in a kid’s room, wouldn’t that mean I poisoned the kid if the kid ate it?

NL: blinking with a minorly irritated look.

Our session ended for that day. Two weeks later the nice lady tried again. Same place, ready to dig in, Bible between us.

NL: Okay so please remember that we chose sin.

PD: Yeah, but God kinda made that happen, right? Why did he put that tree there?

NL: Because God wanted us to choose Him.

PD: What? Why?

NL: Because he loves us and wants us to love him.

PD: Then why didn’t he leave out the tree that would ruin everything?

Our session ended again.

We met more and I had many questions:
Why did God make Lucifer if He knew that he would turn into Satan?
Who was Cain afraid of? Wasn’t it just him, Abel, Eve and Adam in the world? Who was Cain afraid would harm him when he was cast out of the garden?
If God made us and the tree of good and evil, isn’t that kinda passive aggressive?
She sighed a lot in those visits.

I was a teenager who just discovered faith community.
I liked the church a lot.
I liked the people.
I liked the adults who worked in the youth group.
I kept coming back and the nice lady kept trying to help me understand why I needed salvation in the form of repentance.

After many sessions with her, I was willing to admit I was a sinner, admit Jesus died for my sins, profess my belief in Christ, invite Jesus into my heart and promise to walk a path of faith, sharing the Good News. This is called a few things in literal, evangelical Christianity: being born again, getting saved, turning my life over to Jesus. Once I was in, I was in. The questions went away and I was determined to be the next Billy Graham.

Much of my theology in those days was slathered with fear and shame. I passed that on to those who took time to listen to my conversion messages. I was going to make sure Heaven was full and Hell was empty.

I was zealous and I was persistent. I was also very scared, brokenhearted, shame-filled and sad. The church kept me busy so my heart didn’t feel so very alone.

I was always angry back then. If you had to find me in a crowd, you could simply look for the kid with arms crossed over their chest, glowering, glaring, guarded and grrrrrr…

All the while I pushed people away, I was super offended when they did not talk to me. Hurt people often long for what they desperately try to convince others they don’t need.

I was creating an emotional wall; I was a teenage emotional construction worker with endless mortar and bricks: Sob the Builder.

There’s reasons for that wall. There’s reasons for everything we think, feel and do. Behavior is to meet a need, or at least a perception of a need. We spend so much time judging actions we rarely think about what is behind those actions. We rarely are compassionate with ourselves.

Everyone’s behavior makes sense to them at the time or else they wouldn’t do it. My fortress was built for a reason. It kept the bad out, but then it started keeping EVERYTHING out.

If I ever write a memoir I will call it “Well, that didn’t work.” And we still try again.

It’s comfortable to think in black and white because there is certainty there. It’s super hard when you let in the colorful world of all sorts of living and needing. It changes everything.

The option of truly being present with someone and learning who they are without an agenda to change them is the only way we get to have honest relationship. I didn’t get that concept for much of my life. I wanted the world to bend, not for me to bend. That’s how brokenness happens, in the not bending and the demanding it be different.

2016 has been awful for me and many I love. It has been the worst year of my life for sure. It also has been a very rich year. I have felt loved more often than not. I have given love more freely than I have in any other year. And 2016 was still the worst ever for me.

I am not someone who believes life’s trials are there to make you a better person. I don’t believe it is orchestrated in that way. I do believe, though, in every situation that sorrow exists, we can see aspects of living we never would have noticed without the sorrow. I don’t believe sorrow exists as a life lesson. I think it’s just part of life and what we choose to do with it determines a lot.

It’s been almost a year since I was harmed through sexual assault and there have been oh so many layers of pain my family and I have walked through. It has been horrendous and it has been illuminating. It has been heartbreaking and it has been healing. For me, what makes it or breaks it is my willingness to engage life in hard times vs run, run, run!

Engaging in life requires some courage when everything within wants to retreat. When that’s my reality I take the absolute smallest inching forward I can muster to just stay in the world, stay in my life. I have to get open, drop the mortar and brick, and choose to live in the elements, responding to life and love as it comes and as I co-create it. Dear ones, we are creating our inner world as we participate in life. I want my inner world to be a sanctuary and refuge.

The idea of refuge reminds me of my younger brother who tells a story that when he was about 19 years old or so, his AC busted and he had to have more windows and doors open at night to keep cool. He did this regularly in the apartment he lived in so he had adjusted and slept well most of the time.

One morning he gradually woke from sleep with the cat on his belly. He petted her, she purred and nuzzles. Then the slow dawning: “I don’t have a cat.” Yup. A random cat decided to sleep on my brother’s belly.

I love picturing this story playing out. It’s awesome, funny, and it highlights my gentle brother who awakes with welcome.

What I really love most, though, is the cat. The cat went all rogue and decided this house was as good as any and my brother’s warm belly was just the stuff this felonious cat needed to get a good rest.

What’s hurting within you? What’s preventing you from welcoming warmth and companionship into the core of who you are? What is this fortress you are building? What is keeping you from the wander and the wonder that may lead to new relationship?  What is the smallest inching forward you can muster today to answer the pain with hopeful forward momentum?

Whatever it is, I promise you this: the pain you feel in that place is made worse with isolation and vigilance. Peace to your precious, scared heart and peace to your amazing, enduring spirit.

We all have the “why” questions. Keep that up! The questions are beautiful and welcomed. The altar is within you as you seek your heart out.

Knowing this and living this is my road to salvation.

What Pastors Need to Know about Spiritual Directors

by Teresa Blythe

There was a time when ordained ministers served mostly as local church pastors. That is no longer the case. As churches shrink, specialized ministry becomes the first choice for many of us.

Although specialized ministry encompasses a wide range of “outside the church” professions such as chaplaincy and non-profit work, I am writing today about spiritual direction. At a recent convocation of specialized ministers of the Southwest Conference UCC we talked at length about how local pastors and specialized ministers could better understand one another.

I am aware that many local pastors are familiar with spiritual direction from either having a director of their own or feeling guilty because they haven’t gotten around to finding one! But pastors may not know all you need to know about the care and education of the spiritual director. Here are five things I think you should know:

  1. We are educated for this ministry.  Anyone who does spiritual direction for a living or as a “side hustle” should have graduated from a training program. (I say should have because the profession is not regulated nor does it have any standard certification process that all spiritual directors must complete.) If we are ordained to the ministry of spiritual direction, as I am, we have the requisite M.Div. plus the extra training it takes to learn how to do the most highly regarded form of spiritual direction—the evocative method (you share, we mostly listen and draw your attention to where the Spirit may be at work in you). If we are ordained you can be sure we have gone through our denomination’s sometimes rigorous process of becoming ordained to specialized ministry with all the accountability and standard of ethics that goes along with that. One does not have to be ordained to be an excellent spiritual director, but training is essential. I will go out on a limb and say that unless you are a quite elderly religious professional who became a director before there were training programs, you must go through a training program to be any good at the ministry. These programs vary greatly, and frankly that is a problem for the profession, but a certificate of completion usually guarantees that the person has learned the basics. By the way, lots of local pastors attend these training programs and become spiritual directors. They find it gives them a new and helpful lens in which to work pastorally with their congregation.

  1. We are usually contemplatives by nature. While pastors vary widely in temperament—from the jolly extrovert to the pensive thinker-types—most spiritual directors are gentle, quiet and contemplative. The practice of spiritual direction demands patience and stillness of heart in the director. We spend a considerable amount of time listening to our directees share their sacred stories. Good spiritual directors always listen more than they talk. Because of our contemplative nature, we are good at helping activist pastors and churches calm down and savor the slow work of God. If you have a spiritual director in your midst, I hope you are calling on their special gifts for pastoral care, education and showing up as the “non-anxious presence” in times of conflict.

  1. We want to have a collegial relationship with you. Spiritual directors suffer when we live and work in isolation. We need contact with you for fellowship and camaraderie. We can offer you a listening ear when you need to share about a confidential matter (even if you are not one of our directees—we usually don’t mind informally putting on the director hat for you now and then). We are especially aware of issues of boundaries in ministry. Because the spiritual direction relationship is unique and highly confidential, we are usually pretty strict about boundaries. Many pastors have appreciated bouncing ideas concerning the personal limits they set with parishioners off me. And I’m glad to help.

  1. We sometimes need your help. Since many of us are introverts and contemplatives, we are (as a group) not great at marketing ourselves and our work. Any marketing we do is of the “soft sell” variety. If you respect our work, then please talk about it with your clergy friends, parishioners and staff. Encourage us to contribute to your church newsletters, offer classes or show up at some business meetings to observe and reflect what we notice. I know I have benefitted greatly from the support I get from the local church where I now am on staff part-time. In fact, if you need help with pastoral care and visitation you might consider hiring a spiritual director. It’s not exactly the same work we do in direction sessions but it translates well.

Another way you can help us is by understanding the nature of the work we do. Spiritual directors are responsible for staying deeply in touch with the Spirit so that we can be of service in our one-hour sessions.  So if we don’t take you up on all those great suggestions I just mentioned, it’s because spiritual direction work can be emotionally taxing. And we are taught to know our limits and not become overwhelmed with busywork, so we guard our work time carefully. It’s nothing personal. Pastors could learn some things from us about taking charge of one’s work schedule.

The best way you can help a spiritual director that you know and like is by finding out if we are taking on new directees and if we want referrals from you. Most of the clients we receive are from word-of-mouth. Let us drop off a set of brochures or business cards with our contact information so that when you encounter someone who wants or needs spiritual direction, you can offer them a name.

  1. We want to be your spiritual director. Provided we are not working for you or are close friends with you (or your family), we’d like to work with you in direction. Religious professionals make up a lot of our clientele and they tell us it’s the best $60 – $80 dollars a month they spend. We know your special needs and have heard a lot of stories about life as an employee for a volunteer organization! We hold a great deal of compassion for pastors and the peaks and valleys you encounter. If you are not in spiritual direction, I highly recommend you check it out. The history of spiritual direction dates back over 1500 years when it began in Catholic religious orders. For hundreds of years it was a practice that priests enjoyed. It’s now a practice for all, but especially for clergy!

These are just a few thoughts about how the specialized ministry of spiritual direction can work hand-in-hand with traditional parish ministry. You may have questions or some creative ideas of your own to share. I’d love to hear from you. Contact me at teresa@teresablythe.net and let’s talk.

 

Values Voting

by Abigail Conley

Election season is in more than full swing. Occasionally one of my friends with a poorly curated list of Facebook friends will post something about who to vote for. At that point, I’m just there for the comments.

My own political affiliations are complicated, to say the least, but I won’t go into all of those. Suffice it to say I don’t talk about politics with my family for the most part. Every once in a while we’ll go down that road of values voting. It’s at least more civil than the Facebook explosions I occasionally get to watch. There are always two things that come up immediately: same-sex marriage and abortion.

I could hash out the ins and outs of those with no problem. However, I’m far more worried that those are the two values that are compelling your vote.

Let’s be clear: I think gay people should be allowed to marry, divorce, adopt, and everything else right along with the straight people. Ditto for trans folks. And if you want to talk about the biblical model of marriage, let’s go for it. There’s nothing quite so thrilling as prooftexting for this former fundamentalist, even if I know it only goes so far and is unconvincing in the end for most people. We can do the same with abortion. At the end of the day, we’ll probably still disagree.

Also, there are other deeply Christian values that demand your vote if you want to be called by the name of Christ.

Let’s talk about those. Actually, let’s talk about one.

As a Christian, the love of Christ compels you to care for the vulnerable among you.

Full stop.

And worth saying again: as a Christian, the love of Christ compels you to care for the vulnerable among you.

You. In everything you do, you are compelled to care for the vulnerable if you call yourself a Christian. That includes all your resources: your time, your money, and your vote. (If you are among those who thinks that it is the church’s job, not the government’s job, to take care of people, great. Let’s have your five billion dollars and make a game plan! You’ve got friends who can throw in a few billion more, right? Each?)

Because I’m a former fundamentalist who still likes a good prooftext now and then, here are a few things to consider:

  • “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27)
  • “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” (Luke 14:13)
  • “For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish…” (Mark 14:7a)
  • “You shall not  deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.” (Deuteronomy 24:17)
  • “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 3:5)
  • “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'” (Matthew 25:35-36)
  • “‘Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen!'” (Deuteronomy 27:19)

Time and again, scripture reminds us to care for the vulnerable among us. In fact, read through the prophets if you want to hear lots of curses rained down on those who don’t care for the vulnerable among them. If that is not part of your faith, then your faith is not Christian. Then, we’re left with the question: in our time, who is most vulnerable?

  • Children, of course: the poorer they are, they more likely they are to go to underfunded, crowded schools. They don’t get enough to eat or healthy things to eat. They are, by merit of being children, vulnerable. Let’s face it, you could drop kick a two-year-old with no problem. (You shouldn’t, but you could.) By merit of being children, they’re dependent on someone else for, well, most everything.
  • Women: yes, the elderly women named as widows are vulnerable, but keep in mind that women still earn far less than men. Women whose male partners aren’t present are penalized further. Women are more likely to raise children on their own. Women are more likely than men to be victims of intimate partner violence.
  • Immigrants and refugees: move to a new place because your home is no longer safe. Surround yourself with people whose language you barely understand. See if you feel vulnerable. Never mind that many people are fleeing things those of us in the United States couldn’t imagine.
  • Elderly people: I mean, don’t you go check on your grandma?
  • People of color: you’ve heard about the crime that is driving while black, right?
  • The poor: here’s a lot of overlap with the other categories of vulnerability, but fewer financial resources mean more vulnerability. Choosing between food and toilet paper is no one’s idea of fun. Getting evicted because you had to pay for a car repair might be worse. Being sick and unable to take off work to go to the doctor or buy a $5 box of over the counter something doesn’t sound great either.
  • LGBT folks: I said I wasn’t going to talk about same-sex marriage, but yeah, you can’t talk about vulnerability without talking about LGBT folks. Homeless youth are disproportionally LGBT. Trans folks are murdered at an alarming rate.
Of course, I’m speaking broadly about groups here. For every case, there are a few people who break the rule, but many more who prove it. We have a culture with plenty of vulnerable people in it, often made more vulnerable by the systems we perpetuate.

If we even stopped the list at the clearly biblically ascribed categories of vulnerable people, you still have plenty of people to be concerned about. So here are my questions for you:

What are your values? Who has informed your values? What has informed your values?

Does Jesus inform your values?

Do people who like to use Jesus’ name without paying attention to what he said inform your values?

The answer might have a lot to do with your vote in a few weeks.

The Good Stuff

guest post by Owen Chandler

[Editor’s note: Rev. Owen Chandler, the Senior Minister of Saguaro Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Tucson, was deployed earlier this year from the Army Reserve and serves as Battalion Chaplain of the 336th CCSB in Iraq. He writes  monthly letters to his home church, and is graciously open to sharing them here on the SWC Blog. This is his August letter.]

Beloved Saguaro,

As I sit to write these words, I am literally snacking on the goodness of your love and continued prayers. In fact, I can turn in my chair and see office after office sharing in your support. 

first care package at Camp Taji
This is from the first of your care packages that came in to us. As you can see, it was a hit. This is my Battallion Commando and XO.

We’ve never received a care package load so concentrated with “the good stuff”. A few of the soldiers have “lovingly” taken to calling me Taji Santa because of the items you sent. They thought they were pretty clever until they saw me writing in my notebook. “What are you writing?” they asked. I replied, “The names of soldiers who may be worthy of God’s love but who won’t be receiving any more Oreos.”

Please know that I am doing well. July was a very difficult month for a variety of reasons, some of which I expressed in my last letter. Luckily, the rest of the month passed without witnessing any battle-related incidents. The good news: ISIS continues to be pushed back and they find themselves having to reevaluate their strategies. This is a significant morale boost to the Iraqi people even as it adds new political wrinkles from the power void which ISIS’s departure creates. News like this dramatically helps with our morale, as well.

It may seem trite; I traveled all over Iraq in July and saw some pretty crazy things, but nothing rattled me more than not being there for Harper’s first day of kindergarten. Seeing mothers and children being able to pick up the pieces of their lives in places like Fallujah help me and others keep focused during months like July.

I have spent the month of August, thus far, grounded to Camp Taji. Back in early June, I pitched an idea to a General about creating a streamlined concept in soldier care. It involved a stalled chapel renovation project. The Chaplain corps had hoped to update the chapel, but the General wanted a more comprehensive concept that fit the Army’s focus on supporting the soldier if the Army was going to spend any money. I put together some ideas and he gave me the green light.

move to interim chapel
The move to the interim chapel begins. We had soldiers from around the world help us. The entire move took less than an hour.

Two weeks ago, we moved the chapel to an interim location and construction began on the ‘Camp Taji Resiliency Center: Spirit, Mind, and Body’. The concept is to relocate the Chaplain, Behavioral Health, and elements of JAG into one place to foster a spirit of cooperation and unity of effort. An idea like that might seem self-evident, but it does not exist anywhere else in the military. (Apparently military bureaucracies don’t naturally like to share, even when there is an overlap of mission.) Subsequently, this is a first-of-its-kind endeavor. I won’t do much traveling until the construction is complete. We are expecting to have a big grand opening ceremony with generals, ribbon-cuttings, cake, and the military news people sometime in late September or early October. I am excited.

Friends, we are halfway done with our time in Iraq. Our replacements sent a scout team this week. It seems a bit surreal to think about the return journey. I give God thanks for you and pray for you each day. I hold you in my heart, knowing that I am one day closer to being back with you. May God continue to bless and keep you. Keep doing great ministry. Keep being people who dance within the joy of God’s love.

Until we meet again,

Owen

PS: I have never seen adults fall in love with a snack like they did with those SuperSeedz. If you find it in your heart, I’ve been told you can send as many of those treats as you like.