Resting and Roosters

 My brain was close to collapsing so Kauai was a balm much needed. I love my family, snorkeling, feral chickens (except for roosters at 3:30 am), warmth, terrifying trails, and afternoon naps. I'm enjoying days without agendas or tasks, which is much harder to do at home. I've started journaling again and so far all entries have been questions. 

In July, I'm taking a class on-line with Miroslav Volf through Vancouver School of Theology and spending a week at Mount Angel Abbey. Other than that, I plan on kayaking, hammocking, reading, and playing cribbage. I'll take a break from social media in July, but wanted to share some highlights from Kauai because it is beautiful!

Sophie asleep on the plane

Jeep got us down some pretty scary roads

Wonderfully Uncomfortable

 The little yoga guy on my app said something that sounded like a mini sermon - 

    "Stretch until it's wonderfully uncomfortable."

I've been holding that as a mantra for my life right now. It's easy to embrace comfort and, as strange as it sounds, it's also kind of easy to slide into agony.

But to find a stretch that is wonderfully uncomfortable, where we grow but don't injure ourselves, is a little more tricky. 

I failed today. I thought it would be fun to climb the meadows because they would be frozen still, but I was wrong. For some reason that I don't want anyone to explain to me, the higher I went the warmer it was and the mushier the snow got. What the heck? 

I could have turned around after the first post-hole face plant (this is where you step on snow, your foot breaks through so you are in snow up to your thigh, but your body keeps moving forward not realizing your leg is embedded in snow). This is fun for the first six times, but then it loses its charm and I was just wet and jostled. 

I couldn't bring myself to turn around. 

I'd moved way past wonderfully uncomfortable and was just uncomfortable, but there was something in my being that said if I kept pushing forward it would get better.  Luckily, I have a small bladder so my body forced me to stop and then I conceded to turn around. Yes, there was a pretty view, and I don't mean this to sound like a spoiled Alaskan, but it was not a spectacular view for the amount of effort it took me.

Stretch until it's wonderfully uncomfortable, but there are no awards for suffering the most and there's no growth in comfort. 

Swearing Chickens

I'm pretty sure one of the chickens dropped the F-bomb when I opened their door this morning. Chances are it was Chipmunk, she is the most boisterous, but the rest joined in swearing nearly instantaneously when they saw the snow. 

It sounded like a coop full of sailors. 

They aren't huge fans of the snow during normal times, but there was no need for their potty mouths just because it's still snowing. I tried to cheer them up with all the positives of another winter storm in mid-April, but their vitriol turned toward me so I left them alone. Their resemblance to dinosaurs can be slightly terrifying.

I'm kind of tired of looking at the bright side and I'm wondering if I should join the chickens in their cursing. This weekend will be beautiful and we'll all forget. Living here is a lot like giving birth- sometimes it's a pain, but then you forget, until you need to remind the child who is too inconvenienced to pick up the half eaten food in their room what it was like to fit their head through a passage that's normally a centimeter. 

I still went for a hike because that's my Monday discipline to keep me sane. It quit snowing and switched to snain so that is something. 

And there were Trumpeter Swans and gross little creatures everywhere. That was kind of cool. And now I can justify curling up in front of the fire with a book.

There's no great moral lesson or inspiration other than sometimes swearing is helpful but rituals are probably more helpful for days when you don't feel like doing jack other than whining.

Naked Guy

It's snowing hard so obviously my mind wandered to the naked guy I ran into cross country skiing a couple of years ago and then it immediately went to Mark's Gospel. 

Welcome to my brain.

I love Mark's Gospel, not only because it is short, but he is an amazing story teller and he has my favorite quirky detail.

These stories about the young man are unique to Mark:

All of them deserted (Jesus) and fled.  A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.  Mark 14:50-52 (NRSV)

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.  Mark 15:5-6 (NRSV)

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t have a birth story, but it has one of my favorite redemption stories.

 

A naked young man runs off in fear and shame. Our lives might not be quite that graphic, but there are moments. There are moments when we are revealed for our courage or fear, our faithfulness or betrayal. Vulnerable moments. That is one of the many things I love about being a pastor. It is our honor to catch glimpses of those moments in your lives, which always force me to be honest about my own vulnerabilities. Moments of sickness, new life, fears, longings, failures, hopes, addictions, divorces, marriages. All those times when our lives are stripped to their core.

That’s who he is in this story. He is all of us. All of us who seek to be faithful, to follow, but so often fail and fall away, stripped of excuses, protections, lies. That is us in our moments of humiliation when we thought this story would be different, we would be the hero, the one who succeeded, the one who stood up to the Roman empire to do the right thing, but instead high tail it in the other direction. It’s an embarrassing story.

Then on Easter we hear of a young man dressed in white linen and the tomb is empty. Hopefully you can hear the good news and joy of Jesus’ resurrection - death is defeated, the love of God is the future for all creation, you do not need to fear suffering or death, you may stand against the powers of evil because the life and love of God is eternal.

But I also want you to hear the good news of the naked young man who ran off and now is sitting clothed in the tomb - the first messenger of hope and new life. It's not an angel in Mark's gospel; it's a young man dressed in a white robe. 

That's why I love naked man stories. 

Socks

I've given up on matching socks. I still do the obvious ones, but I've come to a point where I have so many single socks that I just look for two that are the same thickness and call it good. This has led to Chewbacca on one foot and chickens on the other, but I'm not sure anyone cares. 

Except my husband. Don't tell him.

I'm starting to feel much the same way about the Church. There was recently an article in our Lutheran magazine about the Future Church. It sounds like a great plan to make the church relevant and sustainable and I'm thankful someone is working on it. 

But there is a part of me that cringes at the idea of the Future Church much like I do when people say "children are the future of the church." 

They aren't. 

They are the present. 

We can only live in the present with a vision of God's future that may or may not include the Lutheran Church. 

There was a lot of talk about innovation. And I suddenly felt tired. 

I've got nothing new up my sleeve that will make the church relevant and sustainable. No music, technology, sermon, or program will do it. 

I am called to act out and tell the story of God's saving love. If I don't trust in the power of love to save, then I'm screwed regardless of how innovative I am. 

I'm less about innovation and more about improvisation. We have lots of mismatched socks and now we need to figure out how to use them as socks for the Gospel of peace.

I look at what we have right now in front of us and then ask the question how can we use what we have to tell the story of a people gathered, loved, and sent into the world as witnesses to abundant love. It's not always relevant, sustainable or innovative, but sometimes it reaches those who need some loving and sometimes it flops.  

We're not in charge of saving the world; we share the news that it has been saved so you don't have to be a self-absorbed jerk. 

I've become kind of attached to mismatched socks. I get a little more life out of some of my favorite ones long after their partner was eaten by the washing machine or Mr. Bumpy. The combinations surprise me  and make me giggle. And sometimes I do have to throw the socks away because they have served me well and now my toe sticks out.

Air Fryer

I could do an infomercial for my new air fryer; I love it enough to tell you about it for a good 45 minutes. 

Even more, I love it enough to demonstrate all the cool things you can put in it and create crispy goodness. 

I now divide the world into things that can go into the air fryer and everything else that isn't quite as wonderful. Crispy cumin potatoes could be the most amazing things ever. 

We all need to have systems to categorize objects so now you know mine.

We also have systems for categorizing people and they can be as distorted as my current obsession with the air fryer. Skin color, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, clothing, hair, tattoos, weight, political party and age all go into our initial assessments and judgments. 

There's something in our DNA that makes us do that, but I would argue that the core of faith is to step out of that categorizing and approach people as adventures. How can we replace judgment and categorizing with curiosity and serendipity?  

People continue to surprise me when I let them and I've found folks are easier to love when they are adventures. It takes at least a good five minutes for people to move beyond sound bites, but then there are stories and I find myself delighted and drawn in even if my first impression was negative. 

I'm reading Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition by Wendell Berry and there is a lovely quote where Berry talks about King Lear's transformation where, "He has given up his life as an understood possession, and has taken it back as miracle and mystery." 

People aren't possessions or objects that fall neatly into control and categories; we are miracles and mysteries. Let us approach ourselves and others as such.  

This was on our kitchen table and I have no idea where it came from, but it makes me laugh.

Crushes

I really wanted a cheeseburger while hiking today. I'm sure my body started this obsession because I gave up heavy meats for Lent and I was in the middle of the wilderness.

But then my mind wandered to shoving an entire McDonald's cheeseburger in my mouth in the second grade to impress Aaron Ramroth. I had a crush on him and surely this feat would woo him. 

That didn't work. Gagging and spewing food everywhere has never convinced a crush to like you.

I rewatched Pretty in Pink recently, with some horror, but the part that wasn't rapey was Molly Ringwald's dad telling her they are called crushes for a reason. 

There is something about that obsession with what we don't have that is crushing for the heart. This strange last year has made FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) even more intense and I've found hearts around me aching for otherness. 

How crushing it is to long for what one doesn't have, or what I often see in my office, a refusal to make decisions because it means you have to say no to some things. 

Martin Luther talks about a god as wherever we hang our heart. I like that. It feels open and freeing instead of crushing and confining. 

The question is where will we hang our hearts. On my better days, I let it hang in the eternal love I witness in Jesus. It's an opening and freeing space where I can make choices without being bound up with fear of regret or failure. The gift of love is that it sustains us through either. 

On my not so amazing days, I obsess over cheeseburgers.

Tracksuit

I came home from Ash Wednesday worship and put on my new velour tracksuit. Someone bought it for me as a joke on my latest birthday and it looked really comfy so I put it on and then pretended to speed walk around the house.

I've never been on the cutting edge of fashion, except maybe when I had everything seersucker, but I do think tracksuits might be for those who have quit trying. 

Yes, velour + tracksuit is amazingly comfortable, but then I caught a look at myself in the mirror.

There I was with the ashes smudged on my head looking like Maxine on a Hallmark card. 

Mortality smacked me in the face and I started to laugh. 

You are dust and to dust you shall return. 

Awesome.

I'm embracing tracksuits for this last sprint to the finish line. 

Yes, I will still make some attempt at attending to my appearance; I was able to withstand the temptation to get the pants at Costco advertised as "Ladies Comfort Fit". 

But I'm also going to enjoy some tracksuit time. 

I don't really have anything profound for this Ash Wednesday, other than how relieving it was to giggle at finitude. Yes, time will stop my breath and decay my body, but God's love and a tracksuit can sustain me until it does. 

My daughter makes it look way cuter

Helmet

I don't want to die doing something stupid. I'm not willing to bet on those chances because I make lots of ridiculous decisions, but I don't want one to identify me posthumously. 

I also don't want to die from ALS, but I feel less in control of that. 

So I wore my helmet today when we skied out to the glacier. Being on the lake and in the caves is a risk since all this stuff is moving and conditions can change in the blink of an eye. But that risk feels comparable to eating potato chips. Yes, it may kill me, but it brings me enough joy that I'm willing to take the risk.

I'm not a huge fan of helmets. I don't like to have my head covered and I look like a dork, but I appreciated the little extra protection today. 

The wind was blowing on the lake. 

I should say howling, and it was also cracking. 

The thin layer of ice on top of the snow and on the cliffs was breaking apart and whipping across the lake like sideways buzz saws. 

It was slightly terrifying to have thin sheets of ice rocketing through the air towards my head. There was a moment I stopped and savored the horrific Indiana Jones' experience of sharp objects trying to decapitate me. 

I'm not sure a helmet would help in that situation, but at least I made an attempt to be safe. 

Maybe that's how I feel through all this pandemic stuff too. I want to attempt to be safe. I know there are tons of hypocrisies in what many of us are doing. I try to be faithful about wearing my mask, but also not digging the mask I wear from beneath my car seat or out of the trash. I fail and I forget, but I don't lie to myself about risks or belittle and chastise others. I figure out my comfort and willingness to risk, I try not to do anything that would endanger others, and I wear my helmet when sharp ice sheets are hurtling towards my head.

Cards

 I'm so thankful I was raised in a house where we played cards and that my family continues to enjoy playing cards. Cribbage, euchre, and hearts are my favorites and carrying a deck of cards to restaurants, ferry trips, or church meetings has entertained us for many an hour. 

I appreciate cards not only for their entertainment value, but their amazing life lessons:

1. Pay attention to body language. Playing cards is not only about the cards in your hands, but also having a sense of what other people have in their hands (without mirrors or getting up to get a drink so you can look).

2. You don't have to talk. I'm happy to chat when playing cards (unless it makes you delay your turn), but there is no pressure to fill every moment with conversation. I used to take Sophie to the long term care with me when she was little to play Crazy 8s with a fellow there who had a stroke and could only swear or sing. That was fun. I'd have to help Sophie out every now and she'd start yelling "card looker" and the fellow would start swearing and there would be a ruckus. I truly loved those moments because it was hard to visit and know what to say, but we had fun playing cards.

3. Learn how to wait your turn and how to lose/win gracefully. You should watch me when we play cribbage because I will steal the deal if I can get away with it. A lot of the card games I like have big advantages for the dealer and you have to learn to wait until your time comes, unless the other person isn't paying attention. This may not be the winning hand, but there is always next time. Winning or losing one round doesn't define you for life so don't take it too personally. 

4. There is a symbiotic relationship between luck and skill. Unless you're playing war (a card game I hate) or you're a genius at statistics, then you live in the tension between skill and chance.  Cards help me figure out how much risk I am willing to accept. I've learned how to assess the hand I'm dealt, the chances of it winning, and when I need to cut my losses. These are helpful skills, especially when decision making is paralyzing because of the fear of missing out on something, failing, or looking like a fool. Assess, risk, and adjust. 

5. Play more. Cards engage something in our brains and relationships that watching a movie doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I love watching movies, but playing cards actually makes us grow in our relationships with each other.

Freedom

I thought Bernie Sanders came to Juneau. 

I saw it. 

Except he was sitting on top of the welcome sign with his legs crossed and had the cutest mittens on so I probably should have known. 

I called the kids in to look at this picture and asked why he would visit Juneau in the middle of winter.

They proceeded to laugh at me. 

Hard. 

"It's a meme, mom." 

"I'll meme you." 

Just like that, the image of Bernie Sanders at the inauguration has shown up everywhere and I realized again how hard it is to tell what is real. Granted, I should have been able to pick up that the tiny Bernie on top of a sign was not real. 

But my brain wanted to believe what it saw. Just like my ears want to believe what they hear.

Recently, I've been hearing lots about the First Amendment. Just like Bernie showing up everywhere, I'm finding mention of "freedom of speech" bubbling up in random conversations.

I decided to read it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That's a thoughtful piece of legislation. I got a little distracted reading the different Supreme Court decisions regarding the breadth of this freedom. It's enough to say that our freedom to say whatever we want wherever we want is not actually protected. 

One of my favorite examples of this weird twisting of the freedom of speech was when someone texted me a heated tirade and called me a b*&%$. The person defended it with freedom of speech and then I gave them more freedom by relieving them of employment. I suppose you are free to say what you want, but you aren't protected from the consequences nor are you guaranteed a forum for your freedom. 

I'm incredibly thankful to live in a country where First Amendment rights are protected and I'm thankful to live in a country where we can argue in the courts regarding the boundaries for that freedom. I don't want child pornography protected and I'm less than thrilled with protecting the burning of crosses or flags. I'm not a lawyer, but these are some of the things the courts wrestle with. 

Now is a fantastic time for a civics lesson for all of us. Do some research and stop posting Bernie memes or arguing the freedom of speech means you are protected to say whatever wherever. 

Pony

When I was a kid and would whine, my parents told a predictable story as a response. 

There were two kids and one was put in a room with a bunch of toys and the other in a room full of manure. When the researcher returned, the kid in the toy room was whining about being bored and how there was nothing to do. When the researcher came to the door of the room full of manure, he could hear giggling and hurrahs. As he opened the door, the kid was covered in poop digging away happily. The fellow asked her why she was so happy and the child said, "With all this shit, there has to be a pony in here somewhere." 

This was supposed to illustrate the difference between a pessimist and an optimist, not good childcare skills or appropriate language. I'm not sure it really demonstrates the difference between them or if that difference is all that interesting; I do think it is a story that set me up to keep digging and looking for adventure. 

One of the greatest gifts I was given growing up was the lack of expectation that anyone would entertain me. There was never a sense that life would come to me for my pleasure, but I had hours of wandering my grandparent's fields or barns looking for adventure or trouble. I rode my bike hundreds of miles and dug in the dirt looking for arrowheads or bones. 

It would be easy to jump into a critique of the newest generation and all their gadgets, but I find them as creative as any other generation. We've all tended to get a little lazy when it comes to entertainment recently, but I'm trying to keep myself awake on another gray day when the wind, rain, and dark feel like a room full of shit. 

So I've decided to clean out all my files. 

Wow. It doesn't get much more fun than that. 

That was sarcasm, except it has been an experience full ponies. I found old birthday cards, memories of our first dog, and our visas for studying in Tanzania. Cleaning is never my favorite thing and I took double Vitamin D today, but what a delightful surprise to find treasures where I only expected tedium. 

Keep digging even when it feels like a room full of shit - that's the lesson of my childhood. I'd add permission to take a nap and come back to it, but please keep getting out of bed and showing up to life. 

Salad

 Juneau sold out of salad on Saturday. 

Half of the stores in town had empty shelves where the lettuce should be and then I gave up; it's hard to get that motivated to keep looking for leafy greens. 

There are many things I love about my town, and now I can add the joy it brings me to think about a sudden run on salad. Did we all realize at the same time that we had to serve something besides more comfort food? My guess is that the shipment actually froze, but I like the idea of everyone in Juneau rushing to Fred's to stock up on arugula. 

I love my city. I love not only her extreme beauty, but her moodiness and melancholy as well. I love that I know sex slaves and drug dealers as well as millionaires. I love that I refrain from yelling at incompetent drivers because they might be the one giving me my next gynecological exam. 

Juneau lives out the sense of community in a way that might be helpful for our nation. We know we are dependent on each other so when you have a flat tire, you don't talk politics, you are just thankful someone is willing to help. You can choose to be a jerk, but at some point  you burn all your bridges and life becomes nearly impossible and leaving is too expensive so you have to learn humility and apologizing. 

Maybe that's what I've learned the most from living here and would offer to others - humility. Know when you are wrong and know when not to gloat. I love that the word humility is derived from the Latin humus for dirt. 

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." Those words are spoken every Ash Wednesday as we remember our mortality and the perspective it gives us for life.

Humility - you are not god and we all are grounded in the dirt. We share this ground beneath us, and if nothing else, that is enough. 

Piano

It's the pandemic purge at our house. We started getting rid of some of the furniture in our living room and now it feels like everything has to go. I'm sure we're not the only household doing this (Juneau Buy, Sell, Trade is hopping), but we've lived here over a decade and it was time to go through some stuff.

Like CDs. 

I know we probably should get rid of them, but I love holding music in a way that streaming doesn't allow. I like the jackets with pictures and the songs listed. Yes, I haven't listened to a CD in five years, but I made up for that last week. I forgot how hard I laugh when I hear The Temptations sing, "Beauty is Only Skin Deep". Seriously, who wants a guy singing to her, "A pretty face you may not possess, but what I like about you is your tenderness. A pretty face maybe some guys taste, but I'll take lovin' in it's place?"

But there were things we released. I just took apart the puzzle we spent all break working on. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into those 500 pieces.

And we passed the piano on to a home where it would be played and loved again. I got a little teary, because there's a lot of memories wrapped up in that instrument. Yes, there was fighting over practicing for lessons, but there was some beautiful music and singalongs that erupted along the way too.

I struggle with the impermanence of life. I'm inclined to hold on to things, especially books, but I've learned the gift of saying blessings so I can learn to let go. I take a moment and give thanks for the gift that object has been in my life, for the experiences, and maybe even a moment for tears. 

There are lots of blessings in our Lutheran prayerbook, but basically a blessing shows appreciation for the gift given, an acknowledgement of how it has built up the community or your own self, and a promise that it will be tended well. 

Thank you for this object or what has been, for the person it has helped me become, may I be a good steward of it now as I keep or release it. 

It's not magic, but blessings help us find our way through all our stuff so we don't fall into mindless consuming or sentimental hoarding. 

And if you want a couch and loveseat, we're getting rid of ours.