Donuts

Sometimes I suck as a parent.

And sometimes I should get a high five for being a rockstar.

I suck because there was one old-fashioned donut left in the box the other morning. I suppose I knew somewhere in my soul that my beloved eldest daughter was saving the donut, but I was just going to have one bite. Then it looked uneven, so I ate the outside ring.

Hannah was saving the donut because she knew it was going to be a hard day and she wanted something to look forward to. 

I felt bad. And was reminded of how much I suck on a regular basis. 

So I made it right. 

I was in Anchorage for a conference and bought two of what were supposed to be the best old-fashioned donuts in all of Alaska. They sat in a bag safely tucked away in my carry-on while a little voice kept saying Hannah would never know if I ate one and only brought one donut back. There are days I want to smack that voice, but I ate airplane biscuits instead and thought how two donuts were needed to set things right.

Yay me! And they did. No more guilt trips. At least about the donut.

It got me thinking about forgiveness and reconciliation. Hearing again the horrendous murder of James Byrd Jr. as they executed one of his killers in Texas this past week and listening to folks trying to make sense of so much pain has made me think again about forgiveness and setting things right.

I've been sitting with an excerpt from a recent interview on NPR with author Philip Gourevitch about Rwanda 25 years after the genocide.

GOUREVITCH: But what's interesting to me, too, is - what does forgiveness mean? I mean, to some extent, when I went and I heard the word forgiveness, I thought it sort of meant you'd restore whatever the relationship was before.

MARTIN: Yeah.

GOUREVITCH: And they would say, no, that involves trust. That's a whole different thing. Forgiveness doesn't require trust. Forgiveness simply means letting go of the idea of getting even, forgoing the idea of revenge. Right? Now, even that's a big ask. But it means accepting coexistence.

This is all obviously way bigger than my donut issue, but what does it mean to live in our relationships, community and world letting go of the idea of getting even? 

Justice is different than revenge. 

Justice creates safe spaces where relationships can be restored or at least coexistence is made possible. 

Revenge is inflicting more hurt thinking that will somehow create less hurt. I'm thinking at least part of the message of the cross is the end to the cycle of revenge. 

I'm also thinking I had lots of time to think sitting on the plane trying not to think about how yummy the donut would be with my coffee.

Expectations

There are so many wonderful surprises that come with age - like where hair starts to grow. 

It makes me laugh and I keep reminding my beloved that I have a secret crush on Chewbacca so any extra hair he grows doesn't matter. Then our conversation devolves into Chewbacca not wearing pants, his hygiene and sooner or later dingleberries. This keeps us from ever talking about my hair.

We're in for the long haul together and it has lovely times, challenging times, and times when I talk to my chickens. Part of what keeps it lovely is being open to surprises. I'm not going to mention that I'm ahead in the ping pong game count, even though that's a huge surprise.

I'll share instead my surprise over Ip Man. I do like martial art movies, not the gory ones, but I enjoy a well choreographed fight. It was Kirt's night to choose the movie and he chose what looked like a pathetic martial arts movie and I might have whined and talked about how much it was going to suck. I'm not always charming and kind.

But, I was wrong. If you haven't watched Ip Man, even though it's not a real promising beginning, it is amazing. It's based on a true person Yip Man who was a martial arts master and teacher of Wing Chun (one of his students was later Bruce Lee). Ip Man stood up to the Japanese army when they invaded China and he had to rebuild a life after persecution and poverty. 

So I had to apologize for whining and admit that I was surprised and thankful that my beloved didn't listen to me. It wasn't what I expected. 

Expectations are not always helpful, especially when we are so set on them that we'll ruin an experience just to prove we were right (or it can go the other way and you post a million smiling pictures even though the experience stunk). 

We're entering Holy Week in the church when we relive and remember all the surprises and upended expectations of Jesus. He washes feet, he weeps in prayer, he is betrayed by a dear friend, he dies a scandalous death, and he leaves the tomb empty. 

I try not to overthink and analyze this week. It's not the week for cynicism, but a week of showing up willing to be surprised because life is rarely what we expect.

Kids

I should stop saying that I don't like kids. 

It's partly true in the same way saying I don't like chickens is true. 

I'm not particularly fond of children or chickens en masse. They are often loud, kind of smelly and slightly terrifying in a group, but I often find chickens and children wonderful mysteries to love and encounter as individuals. 

I say I don't like kids for several other reasons, besides some truth in the statement.

1. I like to push back in our culture that worships youth and tries to hang on to childhood for as long as possible. We tend to romanticize and idolize childhood and it leaves us with folks without boundaries who need to grow up. I don't do things for children that they can do for themselves, especially if they are demanding about it. I don't coddle or sweet talk children, but I try to respect who they are and where they are in their development.

2. I also like to rebel against some of the assumptions made about female pastors. Churches often put women in children or youth ministry and I don't want to be pigeonholed into those specialties. Luckily I've served small churches so I get to do a little bit of everything, including fixing toilets and boilers as well as hanging out with kids.

3. It sometimes gets me out of volunteering for things, like chaperoning the middle school dance, which it didn't get me out of doing this last weekend. 

It was actually a lovely gift to get to hang out and observe middle schoolers for a couple of hours at their first dance. There is so much awkwardness, drama, meanness, gentleness, joy and hormones. It was a bundle of raw humanity that I got to watch and occasionally intervene in their dramas. There were little beachballs all over and shockingly they started throwing them at each other instead of dancing. Nothing shows you care like whipping a beach ball at someone's head. 

One of my favorite kids from summer lunch was there and I had to remind him of who he was and how we behave a couple of times, especially as he had other kids in chokeholds. 

When he was getting really wound up I had him come sit by me and tell me some stories about the school year and life. It's easy to be perpetually angry with this kiddo and I've found giving him space to tell some stories helps us both get reoriented and be a little more human. And I think it's in that space we figure out how to love, not an idealized love or affection for who you want a person to be, but a moment of shared humanity. 

I don't love kids as an idea, but I do like to create safe spaces where they can reveal what is lovely or painful in their lives. Like all humanity, kids are not objects to adore, but complex mysteries we get to encounter and figure out how to be in relationship with.

Hell

I had several sticks in my bra so it must have been a good day in the woods. Cassie and I had to bushwhack to get a better view, just in case you thought I was doing something inappropriate.

It was a stunningly beautiful day and that got me thinking about hell.

Before I broach this subject, please know there is no universally accepted Christian understanding of hell. I can break down some of the history of our concepts of hell, or here's a helpful link and you can do your own research http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/hell.html.

I'm content to join the leagues of folks like C.S. Lewis and Dostoevsky who approach hell with some poetic license so it doesn't turn into the place we send people we despise or who drive slowly in the left lane.

One point of theology, if we define God as the trinity, the mutual outpouring of love, then hell is the space where one is given the freedom to live outside that love. Let's say that's my basic premise to ground this imagining.

What if we thought of hell, that space for those who insist on living outside love, as stunningly beautiful?

Stay with me. Thinking of hell as a place of torture and punishment isn't overly helpful for many reasons, but imagining it as beauty allows vileness, hate, and evil to be revealed for the repulsive things they are. There is something about beauty that not only knocks the breath out of me, but it makes me feel alive, real, and in many ways exposed and vulnerable.

I hike on Mondays and bask in the beautiful because I carry so much brokenness and sorrow with me. People suffer and carry horrible burdens and on Mondays I offer them up to beauty; I let beauty wrap her arms around all that is grotesque in this world and even though it can't make everything right, it does put it back into perspective. Beauty is part of how I see God being revealed, but it's not beautiful in the sense of pretty, but as a wholeness that encompasses the love and suffering it takes to get to that place.

I'm not sure I can explain it well, but there is something about beauty that exposes and redeems, which is why I think it could be hell for some. One can disguise evil and hatefulness so much easier when one is surrounded with mediocrity and numbness. It is the extravagance and splendor of the beautiful that reveals anti-love for what it is.

I think it is hard for us to take salvation or hell seriously when we live in so much comfort and gray. Concrete and convenience make it hard to experience beauty or hell.

I don't know what I'm getting at other than I appreciate getting sticks in my bra and scratches on my face so I can find the ridge where the mountains stretch brilliantly before me. Somehow it lets the sinfulness of the world and the redemption of love meet and I can trust and hope that all will be well.

Growling

Sometimes my ideas are brilliant. 

Sleeping in a hammock in below freezing temperatures was not one of them.

I took a gaggle of girls out to a cabin and thought I would get more sleep in my cool camping hammock instead of a cabin filled with giggling. 

I was wrong.

It was almost warm and the moon streaming through the mesh top was amazing, but I ended up freezing my aspirations off. I drifted in and out of sleep curled up in a tiny ball until around 3:30 am when I awoke to this terrible growling right near me. 

There is a moment, if you ever happen to be freezing and terrified, when you appreciate the warmth adrenaline pumping through your body provides. I could stay completely still and warm while imagining that I must appear a bit like a floating burrito to whatever creature was emitting such an ominous sound.

Options are slim when you're hanging in the air and something is growling. I could picture the wolf underneath me wishing he had a side of guacamole and some cheese. I played through all the scenarios and none of them turned out well until my stomach growled again.

I felt slightly ridiculous, but also much more motivated to go curl up in the cabin with the girls. 

One growling experience a week would seem like enough, but then on Friday I worked too long and hiked accidentally in the dark. Our daylight is changing at 6 minutes a day right now so it's hard to track until you are well into the woods and realize you can't see anymore.

It wasn't a big deal. I figured I could get a little further and then make my way to the beach area where it was still a little light.

Then, the dog stops and there is growling again. I couldn't tell if it was coming from her or from near us, but she was scared and I might have piddled a little. 

I again started running scenarios and one of them involved me running, but unless the growling was a rabid sloth I wasn't going to win a foot race. I could probably fight off whatever it is with the poop bag in my hand, but I'm thinking this would not turn out well in the dark.

So, we bushwhack through the woods towards the beach hoping for the best. Nothing got us and we made good time back. 

There are several takeaways from these growling experiences:
1. Don't eat Indian when camping.
2. Wear a watch or at least be aware of when it gets dark.
3. Growling does not produce rational thought or responses. 

I think this last one might be helpful for all of us as we interact with each other. Growling does not make people their most rational. In fact, growling mixed with fear can make us quite absurd and as fun as that is, it doesn't make for good decisions. 

Budget

An open letter to our governor:

Dear Governor Dunleavy;

I want to honor you for being a man of faith and I know seeing all life as sacred is close to your heart. I’m not Catholic, but as a Lutheran pastor, my Catholic colleagues are some of my closest in appreciating the centrality of the eucharist and the community of faith.

There is a Bible verse that keeps popping in my head as I toss and turn thinking about the proposed budget cuts:

Romans 15:1-2   We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.

The image of building up the neighbor is central to living out my faith in Christ and central to creating a community where life can be affirmed and encouraged.

I spend large amounts of time with those of my neighbors who carry heavy burdens, some are Native Alaskans who fear getting cut off from their land and village, some are families who are homeless, some are those weighed down by addictions, health issues, and hunger. I also spend time with those who work in resource extraction, those who serve as police, and those who rely on PFDs. 

These relationships make me realize there aren’t easy answers to solve the fiscal challenges in Alaska, but there are destructive choices that do not build up our neighbor. 

Cuts to education, Medicare, senior services, criminal justice, Department of Law, access to transportation and energy for rural Alaska, public assistance, and veterans lead to greater burdens on those who are already weighed down heavily.

I realize you are probably getting all kinds of comments regarding the budget, but as a person of faith I have been thinking some about your statement in an interview where you said, "I’m a small-government guy and I’m an individual — I believe in the individual.” I too believe in the worth of every person and the uniqueness of our gifts, but the communion of God is the core of my faith. We are called to use our worth and our gifts for the building up of the neighbor. We are the body and blood of Christ alive in this world and this budget does not reflect that life.

Peace,

Rev. Tari Stage-Harvey

Army Crawl

This might be blasphemy, but the other day I quoted

a distortion of scripture.

As I was doing an army crawl though the chicken run to smash down the snow with my body, I kept quoting, "No greater love has a woman for her chickens than to lay down her life for them." It made me laugh and a little less resentful of what we do to get two fresh eggs a day.

I rarely quote the Bible for a couple of reasons.

1. I'm lazy about memorizing it.

2. Our Lutheran tradition teaches us to read large chunks in context. 

Memorizing proof texts to win an argument and validate an agenda is frowned upon as contrary to the good news of God's kingdom. One can use Biblical texts to promote a range of moral and social agendas; the entire political spectrum has used Christian scripture to justify their plans and that makes me nervous.

I do love Jesus. I love how no one knows quite what to do with him. He keeps loving the unlovable, scolding the successful, feeding the hungry, and touching the dehumanized until folks finally kill him. It's dangerous when people don't know what to do with you and you keep messing with expectations. 

That's when my misquote shows up. In John 15, Jesus says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you."

We are friends of Jesus when we love as we are loved. So the question those who wish to befriend Jesus need to ask is, "how did Jesus love?" 

I like to think he loved a bit like I love my chickens. 

• He tried to remove obstacles so people could live and offer the gifts they have to the community. 
• He fed and tended people.
• He sometimes shook his head when people got lost in the yard and tried to sleep in the cold rather than allowing themselves to be gathered and put back in the coop.
• He scolded them when they were stubborn and doing something not in their best interest (like jumping in the neighbor's yard or road).
• He carried them across the snow because they didn't like the cold on their feet.

All right. Maybe it breaks down. I'd say there is a lot more mutuality of relationship between Jesus and people, but my chickens do bring me great delight and they are amazing conversationalists. I wouldn't die for my chickens, but crawling through a tiny tunnel full of snow and some eau de chicken is close.