Tag: stories

Lingering Stories

by Rev. Jim Briney

A member of a congregation I once served no longer was able to attend services.  From time to time I sat with her and visited with her in her 1 room accommodation in a long term continuing care facility.  I had seen her though the aftermath woes of her early married life, and learned of her peculiarities.  She encouraged me to tell her stories of my life, one of which follows this introduction.  She told me I should make a list of such stories, which I did several years ago.  There are some 230 of them.  She is gone now.  The stories linger.

Over the last two years of his life, Duke Ellington and I met up at various venues he was playing.  Among them, the Meadow Brook Amphitheatre, a private club in Michigan, and the Shamrock Hilton in Texas. Few people knew how ill Duke was, or how close he was to the end of his life.  I marveled at his ability to perform while keeping his commitments, honoring his contracts, respecting his audiences, and employing his orchestra. 

Duke summoned me to sit near him during the Meadow Brook intermission.  As Duke rested on the small bed backstage—belt undone and shirt untucked, to ease his pain—I wondered if he would be able to get up.  On cue, he rose to the occasion, re-took the stage, and gave the audience full measure.  I was surprised when Tony Watkins sang In The Beginning God, and dedicated it to me.  I think that was Duke’s way of saying I was ok with him. 

On another occasion Duke spotted me in the audience at a private club.  Duke motioned for me to come down and sit with him on the bench at his piano.  Duke knew my maternal grandfather had been a concert pianist and composer.  I whispered to him that I barely knew two pieces: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I was not competent to play Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, so I played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with one hand.  Duke turned it into something—as if we had rehearsed it.

There was a beverage in a glass on the piano, within reach of Duke’s left hand.  Before returning to my seat, I asked Duke if he drank alcohol.  Without missing a beat, Duke said, “No, I retired undefeated.”  Another time I asked Duke how he sustained such a pace.  He was doing 200 dates a year. He told me he stayed in good hotels, slept in, and ordered the best steak and a bowl of chili that he poured over the steak. Duke said it was his main meal and it could be his last, so he ate what he liked.  He drank hot water, not coffee.  

Duke told me about his early days and promotions that had elevated the careers of The Duke and The Count.  I count myself lucky to have had a late dinner with Count Basie and his band several years before I knew Duke.  Duke wrote most days, knowing that his audiences wanted to hear what had become his old standards.  Duke figured it would be 30 years before anyone would listen to the music that occupied his prolific mind. He was writing every day. 

A fond memory of Duke Ellington has to do with his kindness to my eldest sister.  Upon my arrival in Texas, I asked her what she wanted to do to celebrate her wedding anniversary. She told me she had tried to get tickets for the Ellington concert and dinner at the Shamrock Hilton.  They had been sold out for months.  When I said let’s go, she did not know that I knew Duke and his son Mercer.  Mercer saw me in the hotel lobby while I was talking with the general manager, who stood at attention as Mercer approached us.

The general manager explained to Mercer that he could not accommodate the birthday wish of my sister, then asked, “Do you understand?” to which Mercer replied, “What are you doing for entertainment tonight?  Do you understand?”  Without another word, a table was prepared for us in front of the others.  As dessert was served a spotlight was focused on my sister.  Duke beckoned her to the dance floor with her husband while Paul Gonsalvas played an extended solo of Satin Doll.
That evening was a joy for everyone, with the exception of Paul Gonsalvas.  Paul had some sobering up to do and Duke was going to teach him a lesson. Each time Paul’s tenor sax was winding down, Duke spurred Paul on with shouts of praise for “The great Paul Gonsalvas.”  My affection and respect for Duke Ellington is for the man as much as his music.  Duke was not a disciplinarian, but he had his ways.

My memories include Mercer and I sharing a bottle of Cognac in a paper bag.  I preferred Courvoisier VSOP.  Mercer had a taste for Hennessy.  One time we sat on the ground while Money Johnson, Cootie Williams, Paul Gonsalvas, and others passed a reefer behind a stage door. They had been with Duke Ellington since his Cotton Club days, and when Mercer was young.

Mercer and I met for lunch in a Chicago steak house a week after the funeral for his father.  When Mercer greeted me he said, “Pop left me 12 million dollars. I didn’t know he even liked me.”  I have learned that my friends are where I find them.  I connected with Duke and Mercer at Meadow Brook when they performed for 30,000 fans, at a private club for a few hundred, and at an elegant affair for high paying guests, thankful that Mercer treated.  

Mercer had a mind for math and music.  He beat the odds, winning at Keno in Las Vegas.  Mercer scored his own compositions, including Reflections Indeed.  Throughout the course of my life and ministry—along the arc of seemingly random disjointed encounters—all sorts of memories occupy my mind.  Duke, Mercer, and Julie—the woman who asked to hear my stories—are long since gone.  Remembering them has led to a time of my own reflections. Indeed.

Why I Became a Spiritual Director

by Teresa Blythe

The practice of spiritual direction rescued me. I never felt I fit into the conservative church I grew up in, so I set out as a young adult to find a spiritual path that focused on God’s unconditional love of creation.

The journey took considerable time. My new path had little to do with the institutional church. I didn’t discover it in worship, bible studies, social justice activism or through the adoption of a new theology. I found it by way of a Presbyterian minister who was in training to be a spiritual director. From the very moment I entered spiritual direction, I knew I wanted to be exploring my experience, values, and beliefs the rest of my life.

A Safe Place

The spiritual direction relationship was a safe port in the storm of my connection with Christianity. It also gave me the tools and the space for discernment—especially around vocation.

When I entered spiritual direction in the late 1980’s I had no thoughts of pursuing ministry. I was busy developing a career as a radio news journalist. My need for spiritual direction was solely about healing my image of God. And it was working—I was healing.

As I moved from market to market trying to make a living in what was turning out to be a shrinking field, I was fortunate to find many able and experienced spiritual directors along the way. The work I did in spiritual direction gradually changed me, showing me a greater depth of purpose in life.

The Call

By the mid-90’s, I was broadcasting 100-second news updates for a Baltimore rock station with a “Morning Zoo” format, fondly referred to in the business as a trio of “the d–k, the dork and the (news) girl.” My epiphany—my “call narrative,” so to speak, came when the two DJs brought in a female stripper to entertain them at work. While I’m not a prude, inviting a stripper to a radio show seemed useless, even counterproductive to me. Still, I played it cool, reading the news on air as she danced for the guys. Walking out of that studio, heading back to my closet (literally—they had me work out of a closet) I heard a tiny voice say “I want more than this for you.”

For me that meant attending the Ecumenical Institute of St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore at nights while continuing to be part of the Morning Zoo. From there I headed to San Francisco Theological Seminary because it had a training program for spiritual directors.

Giving Back

Wanting to give to others what I had received was a driving force for me vocationally. I thought I would work mostly with people—like me—who were refugees from fundamentalism. What I’ve come to appreciate is the variety of experience, concerns, and spiritual needs in the world. We’re all refugees from something. Everyone who enters spiritual direction has wounds, desires and beliefs worth paying attention to. We all need sacred space filled with compassion, deep listening, and reverence.

That’s why I became a spiritual director.

Sharing Our Stories

guest post by Andy Zawadski, First Congregational UCC, Albuquerque

It was a Sunday in April 1998. I was not looking for a church. I was quite content belonging to the second-largest Christian denomination in the world, former Roman Catholic (non-practicing) for almost 30 years. My wife Lisa and mother-in-law Marcia had started bringing our children Eva, then 7 and David, then 5 to First Congregational a few weeks before. Marcia had been an active member of this church in the early 1950s. In fact, my wife Lisa was baptized here in 1953.

I was sitting at the dining room table having breakfast and reading the newspaper as Lisa and kids stopped to say goodbye before heading off to church. Then, one of the kids, and I can’t remember who it was asked, “Hey, why doesn’t Dad have to go to church?” What’s that saying? Out of the mouth of babes…

And I thought, “O.K., I’m not going to be a hypocrite and make my kids do something I wouldn’t do myself.” So I came to church.

I was somewhat familiar with First Congregational as my kids had attended Preschool here. But I had only set foot as far as the classrooms and the parlor for parent-teacher meetings. Every time I entered the building I felt like I was stepping back into the 1950s. “Interesting,” I thought. “This place could use some sprucing up.”

As I entered the sanctuary for the first time, I immediately looked for hassocks or “kneelers”. There were none. Good sign. I had enough of that growing up in the Catholic church for 18 years. First Congregational had two services on Sundays in those days. One at 8:30 for the youth and one at 11:00. Reverend Frances Rath was in the pulpit that day. During the sermon, he proceeded to do a few magic tricks for the kids. “Interesting,” I thought. “Never saw that in the Catholic church.”

I don’t remember much else about the service but do remember being greeted warmly by Daisy Jewell and Meth Norris — and several others I can’t recall. “Interesting”, I thought. “Who are these people? Why are they being so nice to me?” (In hindsight, my first encounter with an extravagant welcome.)

Over the next few weeks, I learned that First Congregational had merged with other protestant denominations in 1957 to become the United Church of Christ. Never heard of it. So I did some more research on Congregationalist and the UCC.

I learned that 13 of the 56 signers of the constitution were Congregationalists. That within the UCC’s DNA were the first mainline church to take a stand against slavery (1700), the first to ordain an African American person (1785), the first to ordain a woman (1853), the first in foreign missions (1810), and the first to ordain openly [LGBTQ] persons (1985). I learned that this denomination values education for all people and it’s an important part of their tradition. Congregationalists founded Harvard and Yale, as well as several historically black colleges. “Interesting,” I thought. “This isn’t some fly by night denomination. These accomplishments are impressive and certainly things to be proud of.”

That first Sunday I attended church in 1998 was one of the last in Reverend Frances Rath’s 27 years with First Congregational Church. So, I asked who his replacement would be? I thought maybe the equivalent of a bishop further up in the UCC church hierarchy would send down a new pastor to the church. “Oh no,” someone told me, “the local congregation hires its own pastor — and fires them too if need be.” “Interesting,” I thought. “Never saw that in the Catholic Church.” 

I learned that the congregation would hire an interim minister to help with the transition to a new minister. The interim minister would stay about 18 months and couldn’t be hired as the permanent pastor no matter how much the congregation liked the person. It was to be a time of reflection and discernment. How did the congregation see itself right now? What were its strengths and weaknesses? What did it want to be in the future? 

I could see how much the congregation loved their pastor of 27 years and literally grieved his retirement. Some people decided to leave. Others dug in for the journey ahead. Observing this from the sidelines, I wasn’t quite sure the congregation would survive the transition. “An interesting exercise of one’s faith,” I thought. “I think I’ll stick around to see how the whole thing plays out.”

That was over 21 years ago. The whole thing is still playing out.

So, that’s the story of how I got here. And why do I stay?

  1. Well, I’m hopelessly addicted to mid-20th-century church buildings in need of constant repair and maintenance.
  2. I’m fascinated by the rich history of the Congregational Church, the United Church of Christ and the 139-year history of this local church – and proud to be associated with it.
  3. Although my personal theology may be different from others, I know it will be accepted here. In fact, it is celebrated.
  4. I stay because our church welcomes and accepts everyone into the life of the church.
  5. And I stay because of the sense of community and purpose I experience being here with all of you. It’s the place I come to give my spirit a workout.

I guess you can sum it my shared story about First Congregational United Church of Christ this way: “He came for the magic tricks. He stayed for the still speaking God.

Thanks for listening…

Cocoon

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I was hurt really badly some time ago. It was the kind of hurt that you carry in every cell. It was the kind of hurt that wakes you up and refuses to let you sleep. The pain was excruciating at times and settled into an intense ache the times in between. The ache was physical. The ache was emotional. The ache was spiritual. It felt unending. It redefined the word “harm” for me and those closest to me. I didn’t know I could hurt so much day after day after day after day and still not die. I know that now, though.

When I was harmed I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what had happened to me because there was no way I could have anticipated it. My life was solid. I had an amazing family, a job I adored, and friendships that were brilliant and full of life. I had dreams that I was pursuing. I had love at the ready. I had lost a lot of weight. I was exercising. I felt great. I was fully alive to myself and my world more than I had ever been in my 37 years of life up to that point. And then everything changed to such a degree that the life I knew before seemed like it was someone else’s. My lived experience of harm negated all the previous lived experiences of safety. That’s what trauma does to you, locks you in.

Even though I had been safe in this world more often than not, this one event of harm was rewriting me, it seemed. Like a virus that takes over your electronics, it just invaded the depths of my soul and started laying down new patterns of thinking that were the worst, fear-based stuff I had ever known. I thrashed and railed against this reality. I was crawling my way forward and collapsed more than I moved.

I would have stayed there. Laid there. Died there. I would have.

But I didn’t.

And that wasn’t because of me.
It was because of them.
Those people.
Over there.
Coming here.
Holding me.
Loving me.
Reminding me. This isn’t forever. This will change. This will pass. It always does. We are here.

Broken and beaten things need time to heal. A battered soul is the same. We need rest. We need nourishment.

What happens then if the thing you need to have to get better is the very thing you cannot access? I needed to sleep so my body and brain could heal. I couldn’t sleep though because my body and my brain were broken.

I needed to eat so my body and my brain could rebuild. I was unable to eat. I couldn’t swallow water without intense revolting nausea, let alone any food. I couldn’t take anything in as I was desperate to keep all the bad stuff out.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t heal.
Yet I was healing.
Slowly.
Ever so slowly.

You see, I was eating. I was sleeping. It just didn’t look like what it did before. I wanted my life back. I wanted to be able to live and move in this world in the same way I had moments before the harm. I wanted to feel hunger. I wanted to feel rested. I wanted to feel ease. When I thought about eating and sleeping during the worst times of post-traumatic stress, I was comparing it to what I used to be able to do. I was longing for a time that was so different than my own. Of course I was. How could I not?

The bit by bit bites and the minute by minute sleep that I was able to have access to slowly changed the healing process in my body, mind, and spirit. It was slow going, but it was going.

I was not alone. That was what changed it for me. That’s why I didn’t die on the floor of grief and unimaginable sorrow.

When you are that broken and that beaten in some way, you can’t begin to think the next thought of what you should do, let alone act on the next thought. Action was not possible for me. I was needing to be in an idle state, tucked away with comfort, medicine, kindness, compassion, and grace. Where does someone go to get that on Amazon? There is no kit to be purchased. Trust me. I looked.

What I described for you is something that happens from people just being. Those people over there that came over here to hold me, comfort me and love me just sat with me, listened to me and reminded me of who I am. They encouraged me to eat. They encouraged me to sleep. They encouraged me to keep trying. Sometimes I was helped by them mightily, other times I was too far within to hear them. Yet they remained.

You know how you never know what to say when someone tells you bad news? It’s because you don’t need to say anything.
You don’t.
There’s nothing that will fix it.
Nothing.

We hate that feeling, don’t we? We want to have some type of control over the world around us and it is so very strong when we see someone we love hurting. We want to alleviate pain when we see it. We want to skip to the end or hit rewind even though that doesn’t exist. It’s our first reaction, though.

We can’t remove pain. It has a function. It is there for a reason. The focus then is not on removing the pain, but in tending to the harm until the pain subsides as it does with healing.

Your presence is a balm, especially when it is a steady, dependable presence.
Your words, when found from places of love will be far more meaningful than when they come from a place of fear that just wants the pain to stop.

Gradually, there were words shared with me that helped me. That could only have come after being together for awhile. They only were fitting because of the tending that had come before.

Some of the things said to me in the tending that I was able to make use of were really vital because of the love that existed. I believed the sender of the message more because of the care they held for me.

I said, “I feel so much hatred. I don’t want to be a hateful person”
They said, “You are an inhospitable environment for hate. It won’t stick. It can’t. There’s too much love there.”

I said, “I don’t want to relapse because of this. I am so scared to relapse.”
They said, “We’ll sit with you until that passes. We are here to help you not use again. This trauma will not take your recovery.”

I said, “I can’t eat anything, I can’t even swallow water, I can’t do this.”
They said, “How about for today, you eat just a tiny bit more and I will eat a tiny bit less because it hurts me too.”

I was not alone. That was what changed it for me. That’s why I didn’t die on the floor of grief and unimaginable sorrow.

Your love, when expressed through presence or communication, is a magical thing.

Those people over there that came over here to hold me, comfort me and love me wanted my pain to stop. They tried things too. We all did. It just wasn’t effective so we stopped trying to stop pain and redirected our efforts toward living in the moment we were in, with the people we were with, and with the capacity we had. That was enough. That was more than enough.

We created space for healing even though it was so inconvenient and not at all what we wished we would be doing.

We created it still.

I read a joke on some social media platform at some point in the last year at some random time of night and it stuck with me, as random things so often do.

The joke was, “Do you think a caterpillar knows what it’s doing when it’s building its cocoon or is it like, ‘What am I doing’ the entire time?”

It stuck with me because it’s clever and I enjoy humor that wonders about the world around us rather than judges the world around us. I think of that joke on occasion, especially when I see a butterfly (pssttt… spoiler alert, that’s what comes out of the cocoon).

Today, I thought of this joke while brushing my teeth, no butterflies in sight. Something clicked.

I didn’t know I was building a cocoon.
Then the next thought.
I wasn’t.
They were.
I let them.
I had to.

I was a broken and beaten being and they wrapped me up. They waited. They stayed.

None of them knew how to do it and neither did I. We were clueless.
The thread was in the visits, in the expressions of love, in the sharing about their own lives as it reminded me that the world is still happening and that helped me reconnect to it. I cried. They cried. That was some strong, vibrant thread that we had at the ready and didn’t even know.

Our capacity to love is endless and boundless when it meets with others’ capacity to love.

A five-minute phone call is enough if that is what you have to give.
A meal together is enough if that is what you have to give.
A text message is enough if that is what you have to give.
It is not the amount of time of the offering, its the offerer.
It’s you.
That’s the balm.

The hurdle to all of this is our own doubt and fear. We think if we get too close to pain it will hurt too much when it is the exact opposite. Pain hurts less when tended. My goodness, though, isn’t it hard to know that when you are thrashing and railing and afraid? Isn’t it hard to know that when someone you love is the one thrashing and railing and afraid?

I am still cocooned in a lot of ways, but that is changing as I have been emerging more and more.
I laugh far more than I cry these days.
I listen to others far more than I need to be listened to.
I see the transformation more and more. It’s reminiscent of my life before. It’s not the same. It never can be the same because the past doesn’t exist in the present. It is a beautiful, full, vibrant life, though.

I have cocooned others recently, without even knowing it. Just from being and responding I have been able to hold others well too.

That innate thing that prompts a caterpillar to begin the next step for life to be nurtured and continued is the very thing within each of us that prompts us in our living.

We want to emerge. We want to be better, stronger, alive. We think we don’t know how to do that, but we do. It’s within you. It’s within me.

It starts with a prompt, that feeling inside, that nudge to reach out and connect. That is the thread of life, the thread of love reminding you of its presence. It is at the ready, waiting to be woven into sanctuary for one another. It will amaze you as you weave it and will dazzle you when it’s done.

Empire Stories

by Abigail Conley

Here is a story of the Empire I trust in, hope for, pray with:

We’re renting a bouncy castle. It’s a princess 5-in-1 combo sure to delight the five-year-old for whom it is intended. She’s getting adopted, officially a forever family. Rumor is there will be TWO cakes for this Very Big Party.

And so more than seventy people got together and funded a bouncy castle, along with plenty more to buy all sorts of books for that same five-year-old. I recommended We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, a very reign of God sort of book that doesn’t look like it all.

It’s this beautiful celebration across many miles for a little girl and her mom. Those of us who won’t be able to go to the Very Big Party still join in this way. We are anxious to see pictures of this little girl who we’ve come to love from a distance, still in foster care for a few more days.

The whole thing is a beautiful, joyful experience of being able to do something to make a little kid’s Very Big Party on her Very Big Day that much more full of love.

It is one of the few times I can remember where it was so easy to give a kid something that would bring a great deal of joy. The other that comes to mind was when I had a youth group on an outing around Christmas and paid for a carriage ride around the outside mall. The driver gave me a good deal because she could see the excitement in the kids’ eyes. The kids couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks. Beautiful abundance in simple things always strikes me as more fully the Reign of God than most anything else.

Here is a story of the Empire I trust God and those working toward God’s Reign are overthrowing:

We’re buying teddy bears and shoelaces. Some of those same people who got together and funded a bouncy castle Venmoed me money or sent a check in the mail because I was able to fulfill requests locally for people being released from detention. I bought up all the shoelaces in store because stores don’t seem to stock many of those. I found teddy bears that would fit small hands and arms. That one day, those kids and their families had more of what they needed. I don’t know if they had a single thing they wanted. I don’t know what to do with the reality of shoelaces being the thing that brought a smile that day. I keep telling that story over and over, but with kids still in detention, it seems that I probably should keep telling it.

And I wish I had a single story.

But I remember sitting with a church leader, planning out gifts for the family we were sponsoring for Christmas. “Can I just buy them socks and underwear?” she asked. “If they’re asking for socks and underwear, they should get socks and underwear.” So we agreed on behalf of the church that we would exceed the number limit placed on gifts so that kids would get socks and underwear for Christmas, along with things they wanted.

Those some people funding the bounce house also explained children’s clothing sizes to me one day. There was no clear conversion for chubby children’s sizes to underwear. I needed to buy clothes for a child in my church whose mom could not manage it. Finances were part of the problem, but so was mental illness. Those things that parents of children seem to magically know eluded her, and so I was filling in the gaps as best I could, despite having no children of my own.

Those are the children’s stories that come to mind. But most days, I see a crowdfunding page for a funeral or medical needs or housing. I am reminded of the jars by cash registers so common in the small town where I grew up. They were the precursor to crowdfunding pages, a town working to pay the medical expenses of someone with no insurance. Flyers dotted the bulletin boards of those same places, asking people to attend a benefit auction or concert.

These are the stories of our empire. And these are not the stories I want to tell. I want to tell stories of a community choosing to give a little extra money to fund things that feed the soul, like bouncy castles and books. I don’t think it takes much Spirit to realize that this is the better thing, to get to offer joy and delight rather than fulfilling the most basic of needs.

Hear the words of the Good Shepherd, whose Empire has no end: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

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

To respond confidentially to this article, you may reach Beth using the contact information on her contributor page.

 

The Gift of Listening

by Karen Richter

We’re all about listening when it’s children doing the listening and we wise grownups are doing all the yappin’.

We tell them they have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

“Listen” and “pay attention” are just behind the word no in their frequency in young humans’ lives.

It seems we teach our children all about listening because

  1. We teach the things we need most to learn ourselves.
  2. We are so desperate to be heard that we ask children to play the role of listener in our families and communities.
  3. We don’t think that we need to be listening to children.

I came home from my first two weeks at Hesychia School of Spiritual Direction with the overwhelming insight that, in every setting of my life, I talk too much. With friends, over coffee. At work, in the staff meeting. In the car, with my kids. Over dinner, with my spouse. At church, teaching and leading.  Too. Much. Talking.

So Hesychia was something of a remedial crash course in the art of listening to another human (of course it’s more than that too, but that’s where I needed to start). It’s a gift when we focus our attention on another’s story, not to fix or respond or correct but just to be present. We know this… I’ve read some variation on this theme on this very blog before. But it’s hard work and little valued in our culture.

I’m taking little baby steps. The other week in our Lenten study, one of our small groups asked if I had anything to add to their discussion. “No, I’m just listening,” I replied. They were a tiny bit surprised, but continued their exploration.

Another baby step is watching and expecting surprising examples. I was at Wal-Mart the other day and the customer in front of me was telling her life story to the cashier. I don’t know what prompted her sharing, but she spoke very vulnerably about the end of her marriage, her struggles to find her equilibrium on her own, and her sadness that her life was different from how she always imagined it would be.

I smiled, nodded, listened; the cashier did much the same – adding a small ‘hmmm’ at appropriate times. After the customer finished her transaction and left, I asked the cashier about this experience.

“I guess you’re a little like a bartender… People tell you their stories,” I asked.

“Happens all the time,” she said with a smile.

“Maybe people need someone to listen,” I prompted.

“I guess. Folks need to know that they’re going to be okay, that what’s going on with them is normal… I just try to listen, not jump in with advice or get them more upset. I just listen.”

I started to tell her that she was a spiritual director, or perhaps a retail chaplain, but I didn’t want to add to her stress. But what a gift she gave that morning – a compassionate voice, a nonjudgmental presence. It was certainly a gift to me, just observing and now sharing with you.

On Transfiguration Sunday a few weeks ago, the children at Shadow Rock talked about the command from the voice of God: Listen! We discussed how often adults in their lives are like Peter in that story, bumbling about, making ridiculous plans, and missing the point of what’s happening right in front of him. I asked them how often they wanted adults to stop and listen. Their answers were sad and unsurprising.

So in the spirit of teaching/blogging about what you most need to practice, I suggest a Holy Week discipline:

More listening, less pontificating.
More presence, less judgment.
More gentle nodding, less interrupting.
More compassionate silence, less thinking about your own response.

There are holy stories all around us.

I Love to Tell the Story: A Lenten Journey

by Amanda Peterson

One of the powerful aspects of the Lenten journey is it invites us into the story of our faith.  We are invited into the story of Jesus and how that impacts us in this moment.  We get to revisit and re-examine what that story means to us this year and how it has impacted us in the past.

Something wonderful happens when we gather to tell stories.  We are often encouraged to stay in this moment, which is a wonderful practice. Yet, this has left me wondering what does this do to my relationship with the future and the past.  How do I find balance in looking at the past and the future in order to bring me back to the Now?

This is where storytelling is very helpful.  It is a lost art in our culture.  The ability to sit around with friends and imagine the future you know is inside you. Say it out loud with feeling, vulnerability and support, even being wild and imaginative in the process.  By looking ahead and asking, “what do I want to experience in the gift of life I have been given?”,  it brings us back to the moment with new knowledge.  How do I start living now that will make that future show up in me?  What small steps can I take Now?

The challenge in future storytelling, and perhaps why people shy away from it, is that by speaking the future, one may enter into the  “I wish that were Now” syndrome.  The temptation to think life won’t start until that future is realized.  That temptation makes Now look like not enough.  And then the moment is gone. I notice as I work with people in life transitions that it’s easy to go to the hopeful future and want to dwell there.  In doing this, this moment is totally ignored, especially if the moment does not hold the sparkle of the future.

Another challenge in future stories comes when they are about waking up possibility. Waking up the “I wonder” inside.  That can be a scary thing to wake up because it can have a life of it’s own.  One can no longer hide.

These challenges happen because it’s easy to lose the meaning of what storytelling is truly all about.  Stories are told because they remind us that all of life is just one story after another.  The real power is in the story unfolding right now.

Storytelling one’s past is a bit easier.  In fact I tell a lot of past stories in my day, especially the horror stories.  “I’ll never do that again; let me tell you why.”  It is as though that past story is the end of the story. This happened – end of story. There is no moving on from here.  Yet if I were really practiced at storytelling, I would quickly come to the reality that this is but one story among many and there are more to tell. This story doesn’t define me.  It’s the story in this moment that matters. Looking back allows me to ask questions like, what was I doing five years ago?  Did I ever imagine that all this would be happening now, or is life exactly the same?   This brings me back to the Now with gratitude and trust that this moment truly is leading to the next.

I invite you to practice the art of storytelling in your Lenten walk.  In engaging Jesus’ story, once again let it also reflect on your story.  How did Jesus relate past, present, and future?  Ask questions and share stories about your walk with God with others.  Move beyond reading and discussing and ask, “how can these stories inform your Now moment?”

Stories That Happen

by Tyler Connolley

As a pastor, I always disliked Christmas. It wasn’t the exhaustion at having so many duties on top of family obligations (although that’s a thing, and we should all be kind to our pastors during the holidays, because they really are exhausted). The hard thing about Christmas for me was trying to find something to say about stories that I and many in my church didn’t believe happened. The date of Christmas, the annunciation, the census, the star, the Magi — the fact is that none of these stories has any historical corroboration. As a result, many of us feel like we’re playing a grownup game of Santa Claus at Christmas. We’re pretending to believe in something we learned was a lie a long time ago, because we don’t want to burst the bubble of our younger brother who still believes.

Here’s the thing though, there is practically no extra-biblical evidence for any of the Jesus story. One of my friends who is an atheist likes to tweak people by telling them he doesn’t believe Jesus existed. I do believe Jesus was a real person, and at first I tried to argue with my friend. “It seems preposterous that the earliest Christians would create Jesus out of whole cloth,” I said. “There must be some kernel of historical fact in his story, even if it’s embellished.”

He just grinned at me, and responded, “You can’t prove it. I don’t believe it.” He’s right, and I’ve come to realize it doesn’t matter.

The power of Jesus, his life and his teachings, is not in his historicity, but in the stories themselves. I don’t need to know who wrote the Magnificat for it to strike me to my core as a beautiful poem of hope for the oppressed of the world. The fact that the story says it was sung by a young pregnant girl whose life had just been turned upside down adds to the poignancy. I know of many young people who need the truth of that song, and it inspires me to work toward a day when the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the hungry are filled with good things.

When we stop worrying about the historicity of these stories, we begin to realize they are stories that happened, that happen, and that continue to happen. The stories mean even more when I let them step outside of their first-century trappings, and reimagine them in my own time, as Everett Patterson did in this amazing print. Then I find myself asking, “How I should live my life differently, knowing there are Josés and Marias in the world?”

Today is Epiphany, the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas, on which we celebrate the visit of the Magi to the baby in Bethlehem. For many of us who are bound by ideas of fact and Truth (always capitalized), this is one of the hardest stories to swallow. Today, however, I invite you to read the story and see what truths you can find in it.

Don’t worry about the historicity. Read it like a parable, because I think that’s how it was intended. What does it tell you about the nature of the world? How does it inspire you to imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist? How is it a story that happened, that happens, and that continues to happen? Let it happen to you. Read it for what it is, an encounter with Jesus that has the power to change you.

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Ancient Bible Reading and Today

by Kenneth McIntosh

Faithful to our ‘God is still speaking’ faith, we read with the Bible in one hand and our smartphone in the other. This week, news on the phone practically screams with agony; multiple shootings, a presidential candidate blaming an entire religion, and—a poignant twist—a Dutch video in which people read from the Bible, claiming it’s the Quran, and listeners hearing the violent verses are fooled. In the midst of such troubling times, I’ve been working hard to complete The Celtic Study Bible: Gospels. Curiously, that work does intersect with the headlines.  If believers in the modern and postmodern eras had followed ancient principles of Bible reading, we might be better off in 2015. The following is excerpt from the (unpublished) Celtic Study Bible.

Eucherius (380-449) of Gaul wrote a book titled Formula for a Spiritual Understanding which influenced Celtic Christianity. Eucherius invites readers “to see through the surface (historical) level of Scripture to its ‘higher’ spiritual meaning.” The Apostle Paul can be cited to support this view “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor.3:6). Such a metaphorical reading of Scripture is indeed pervasive in the Bible.

For some Early Christians there was a pressing reason to adopt this method of interpretation—they were trying to save the Old Testament. Marcion (85-160) a Christian living in what is today Turkey, noted that the Old Testament God did things which seem unworthy of the God revealed in Christ. Could God who demanded genocide of unbelievers (1 Samuel 15) be the same as God who loves the world (John 3:16) and is love (John 4:8)? Could the same Divine Spirit command “Do not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16) and then speak through Jesus’ lips saying “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44)? Marcion had a simple answer—do away with the Old Testament.

Origen (184-254) a Christian scholar living in Alexandria Egypt agreed with Marcion that some Old Testament portrayals of God are unworthy of God. But Origen defended the Old Testament by interpreting the genocide passages symbolically. Origen wrote: “If the horrible wars related in the Old Testament were not to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, the apostles would never have transmitted the Jewish books for reading in the church to followers of Christ.”  A century later, Augustine likewise used symbolic interpretation to deal with troubling Old Testament passages. How could God say to smash the heads of Babylonian infants (Psalm 137:9)? Augustine explains “the ‘infants’ of Babylon were not literal children but rather the vices of the Babylonians.”

In our time, Marcus Borg was an important recent scholar in the field of Jesus and the New Testament, and a defender of symbolic Bible interpretation. Borg called metaphor the more-than-literal meaning of language. John Dominic Crossan, another major figure in contemporary Jesus scholarship, likewise says, “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”1

The Bible is critiqued today for the same reason that it was questioned in the second century—the malingering shadow of its violent passages. At a time when the world is reeling from religious terrorism, it is tempting to dismiss all religious Scriptures that portray God as demanding the slaughter of innocents.

Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, questions whether the Quran endorses violence more than the Bible? He answers in the negative: “If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.” He goes on, however, to note, “Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.”2 As Jenkins points out, Abrahamic religions each have Scriptures that can be used to promote violence or peace, and if they are to result in peace then the teachers of religion must learn to talk about violent passages constructively.

Jenkins reminds us that in the accounts of Old Testament Genocide “we have a constructed narrative in which particular authors and editors have taken a story and framed it in ways that made sense to them. It is a story with a point or theme, and one that is aimed at a particular audience.”3

Investigating the conquest of Canaan, archaeologists find evidence that differs from the Bible tales. “Archaeologist William Dever concludes that … evidence ‘supports almost nothing of the biblical account of a large scale concerted Israelite military invasion of Canaan.’”4 So why would the Bible writers exaggerate tales of how they exterminated their enemies, down to the noncombatants? The Bible was mostly written after the Babylonian exile and Jews were wondering: how can we make sure history does not repeat for us? To ensure Israel’s future purity, the Bible writers portrayed a golden age of Israel, before they fell into God’s disfavor. This golden age was marked by absolute loyalty to God’s commandments. The wars in Canaan were portrayed as the utter extermination of everything that did not faithfully worship God, as an illustration of the way that faithful Israel should expunge everything ungodly from their midst.

The Bible stories of genocide were composed to point to a larger truth—the need to utterly eradicate idolatry—rather than a straightforward recounting of history. Thus, the best current scholarship supports the instincts of the ancient interpreters; the Bible stories of genocide were intended to be understood for their spiritual meaning rather than taken as literal history.

So there are compelling reasons—both the symbolic nature of many Bible passages, and the continuing need to properly interpret violent passages—that commend the ‘more-than-literal’ reading of Scripture. An ancient form of Bible reading could help us create a less-violent future.

 

1 James F. McGrath, John Dominic Crossan on Literalism, Patheos, June 14, 2014,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2014/06/john-dominic-crossan-on-literalism.html

2 Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (New York, Harper Collins, 2011), 13.

3 Jenkins.,210.

4 Jenkins.,57.

image credit: Ken McIntosh