Top Ten Coping Skills

 I am not a particularly anxious person. Worry just seems to waste the joy of the day and I gave up any illusion of control a long time ago. I can't keep people from dying or getting hurt, but I feel the twinges of worry as people I love are struggling with big stuff. The looming election, the pandemic, and nearly everything else right now seems to set people off with some good reason and I find myself sucked in more than I want to be. 

Here are my coping skills so I can try to be creative instead of reactive:

1. Swear more. That's actually a lie. I enjoy some good crude language but it's become so common and coated in meanness in our culture that I've taken a break. I'm singing more - John Denver especially. 

2. More wine. Also a lie - alcohol is taking a toll in way too many households. I'm not a teetotaler, but I try to stick to the guideline of two glasses of water for every glass of wine or cider. 

3. Baking. I hate baking and I'm not a huge fan of baked goods. I bake granola because I don't have to measure anything and that does truly make the world feel a little calmer.

4. Yelling. I'm trying to watch more scary movies so I can scream at terror instead of adolescents who can't quite seem to figure out on-line school. My beloved adolescent and I curled up and watched The Lost Boys together the other night. I screamed with him so that was nice and I explained to him why everyone had a crush on Michael. 

5. Praying. I'm surrounded with prayer books right now because I've run out of words for all that's going on in people's lives. There's so much and I do find it calming to read through ancient prayers that have seen people through turmoil before.

6. Backgammon. I was going to put sex, but then realized that would still upset our weird American purity instinct. Backgammon is fun too. 

7. Walking and talking with people. I do most pastoral visits walking and this might be a regular thing even after the social distancing stuff. 

8. Rainbows, sunsets, and windstorms

9. Letting go of the expectation that things have to be perfect or even completed right now. Not everything gets done and that has to be okay because there are mysteries to be read. 

I'm not sure mindless mysteries are a coping mechanism, but I'm about to find out. 

Idols

This has the potential to piss everyone off, but I sense that our country is about to get embroiled in the pro-life and pro-choice screaming match as Supreme Court nominees are introduced. I refuse to call it a debate because those on the extremes are unable to hear and speak in a way that is coherent to the other side. 

I actually do not think there are sides when it comes to abortion. In my conversations with people, I have come to realize that folks are all over the place in their own experiences with abortion. The church should be the place where people are freed to move beyond slogans and talk with each other about the messiness of life. The church could be a place where we discuss what is legal, what is moral, and where should they overlap. The church should not be a place where idols are made and worshiped.

As we engage this emotionally fraught issue of abortion, I invite you to step back and do what Stanley Hauerwas, one of my favorite Christian ethicists, invites us to do - pick out the idols. 

Christians have a word to describe the worship of that which is not God: idolatry. Idolatry, of course, can be a quite impressive form of devotion. The only difficulty is idolaters usually end up killing someone for calling into question their “god.”

Hauerwas warns that both life and choice can become idols. They can become gods in themselves against which humanity is measured and judged. People may not literally be killed who question their god, but battle lines are definitely drawn. 

As we engage the discussion of abortion as a nation, I would ask us all to attempt the following disciplines:

1. Be gentle - many people have been impacted by abortions in a variety of ways. People don't need more shame and silencing.

2. Look for the idols. What are you trying to concretize and what are you willing to sacrifice to that idol?

3. Invest in male birth control. Seriously. Why isn't there a pill? I'm kind of joking, but not really. One man can get lots of women pregnant. There are some experimental pills, but the research money is not there to pursue this effectively.

Tiptoes

I wanted to be taller in the sixth grade so I started walking on my tiptoes. It took a long time for my parents to convince me that this was a bad idea, and my calves are still a little funky because of it.

I picture myself being much taller than I am. It's just recently that I've given up on jumping to try and touch the signs that hang down or anything that's hanging down for that matter. I have horrible depth perception and a grandiose idea of size so I've been shamed more than once. Now I tend to pee if I jump too much so that was also the motivation for stopping the shame.

I'm now the shortest person in my family and the slowest. It's finally time to give up any illusion of height and settle into my true being. There are some things I cannot wish or will my way into so I will stop imagining that I'm something I'm not.

It's hard to let go of the image we have of ourselves. Jim Harrison, a writer and poet from the U.P. once wrote:

The days are stacked against what we think we are.

Those are such poignant and powerful words to shatter our self deception. 

I remember when I was pregnant with Hannah and I imagined myself as the perfect L.L. Bean mom who had all the best accessories and would head out into the woods for great adventures. It was so hard to let go of the image I had of myself as a mom and live in the reality that we all were exhausted by the time we survived getting the snowsuit on, the diaper changed, getting the snowsuit on again, cleaning up spit up, missing nap meltdown, and finally forgetting my own coat. The grand adventures tended to be short and filled with some tears. I wasn't the model mom, but I kept plugging away at imperfection and now I am the slowest because my kids are good hikers. I want to tell couples with small children on the trail to keep at it. Yes, it is hell now and nothing like you imagined, but keep at it.

I am not the person I sometimes want to think I am, but I'm learning how to be the person I am created to be. 

Forgive

Jesus is going to hit on the forgiveness theme a whole bunch over these next couple of weeks, which is kind of annoying when I want to just be grumpy for a while.

We spent some time on Sunday brainstorming definitions for forgiveness. The congregation came up with:

• Understanding
• Handing it over to God
• Love 
• Acceptance
• To move on
• A Gift to yourself
• An emptying of holding onto the wrong
• Wanting the person to be free from suffering and wanting the best for them
• Comfort
• Freedom
• Strength to acknowledge your own faults and recognizing how your actions affects others
• Moving on with no grudges
• Letting go
• Hard to ask for and to give. Praise God we are forgiven
• Laying down your anger and freeing yourself
• Letting go of a grievance and not having that issue being the first or only thing you think of when you see or interact with them

There were more, but I got tired of typing. I've enjoyed having a chat question instead of sharing the peace during worship. That's one positive thing about Zoom.

I'm still thinking about what forgiveness means, especially right now when everyone seems so angry.

I would define forgiveness as not allowing a person or event to tyrannize your story and identity.

Forgiveness is the freedom from being defined by others and what they do to you. 

My prime identity is as a beloved child of God; everything else I may choose to bind to myself or let it go. Stewing in anger and bitterness steals so much life from us and gives so much power to those who hurt us; forgiveness restores power to ourselves and frees us to be defined by God's grace not another's wounding. 

There's more than that, but in the midst of so much anger I want to sit with that thought for a bit and share a prayer from the ELW Prayer Book for the Armed Services:

Lord God, when we are assaulted by the troubles of life, and the deep waters of anger threaten to overwhelm us, do not let us sink. In your great compassion, hear us and help us. Deliver us from anger's power over us. Lead us out of bitter silence and hurtful words so that we may speak the truth in love. Heal every heart set on vengeance, and show us the way to honesty and reconciliation; through the one who has shown us both impassioned zeal and forgiving love, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Amen.

Dadda

Paradise is sitting in the shade, reading a book, and listening to the bubbling joy of children.

Until one of those kids starts toddling over to my blanket yelling "Dadda!" 

I've been mistaken for a man before. I threw a bunch of priests off during a procession for the new Catholic bishop, but I was wearing a robe then. This time I was wearing a dress and even though I hadn't shaved my legs in a long time, I really don't think I looked like this kid's dad.

The mom was pretty embarrassed and took the kiddo all the way to the other side of the park and he still ran back yelling "Dadda!" It made me laugh hard and I realized it wasn't so much that I looked like this kid's dad, but the boy really wanted me to be his dad. He wanted to see his dad and I was close enough so he was convinced.

We often see what we want to see, or hear what we want to hear, or even fear what we want to fear. 

People ask me, especially now, if I fear for my husband as a police officer. He's had lots of dangerous jobs so even though I despise night shift, I'm not more afraid now than when he was flying or driving ambulance on country roads. I know he can get hurt and life is precarious, but I want to share with you the statistics from Officer Down Memorial Page for 2020:

Total Line of Duty Deaths: 177

• 9/11 related cancer3 
• Aircraft accident1 
• Automobile crash15 
• COVID1997 
• Drowned3 
• Duty related illness2 
• Gunfire30 
• Gunfire (Inadvertent)4 
• Heart attack5 
• Motorcycle crash2 
• Struck by vehicle6 
• Vehicle pursuit2 
• Vehicular assault7

COVID19 cases contracted in the line of duty is the highest killer of police officers in the last ten years. It is not as flashy of a news story as violence, but reminding him to wear his mask and wash his hands seems like a good strategy to keep my fears in perspective.

We're going to be overwhelmed with narratives telling us to see one way, hear one way, and fear one way. I'm thinking about shutting down my Facebook account until after the elections but I really like seeing pictures of people, dogs, chickens, and beautiful views. 

So here's my request - just because you want to see things one way, don't force reality into it. Observe, pay attention, ask questions, and entertain the possibility that you could be wrong. Fact check from as many different sites as you can; I like to see what BBC and CBC are saying as well as US sources. 

And, finally, when someone says, "the pretty lady is not your dad" listen to them. 

Cast Iron

 For reasons too dull to share, I had to strip my cast iron skillet and start over. I wasn't expecting tears, but  as the layers of seasoning washed away, nostalgia kicked in. Nearly twenty-five years of meals were peeled away.

The hand towel on my oven says, "Made with love and other shit" and that really does summarize my cooking. The cast iron skillet has been the cauldron for a multitude of leftovers resurrected with mushroom soup or curry sauce. The cast iron skillet has made close to one hundred batches of granola. That skillet held the most disgusting thing I've ever made when I thought vodka was a valid substitute for vermouth. It was the only thing Kirt refused to eat.

Here's the thing about cast iron, when you strip it down it is worthless. You can't cook jack until you season it again and build the layers back up. I made a lamb curry stew as the first layer after the stripping and seasoning to make sure we got off on the right foot.

I feel like we are living in a time of stripping away. The layers in our lives and society are being burned away and we are exposed. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the only way to salvage something is to start over, but destruction leaves us worthless unless we season correctly and build back up. 

And I'm thinking my hand towel might have some of the best guidance for how we build back up.

Bananas

 Bananas are no longer like phones. 

This was a stunning revelation to me on Sunday at kid's church when I was using a banana to call the preschoolers and they stared at me likeI was an idiot with a banana in my ear. I was even making the ringing sound and they still stared befuddled. 

One of the moms finally broke it to me that phones don't look like bananas anymore or ring like the sound I was making (I'm pretty sure they haven't rung like that since rotary phones). Kids hold a flat hand to their ear when imitating a phone nowadays.

I wanted to cry. 

Talking to bananas and making a teenager pick up their banana to talk back to me has long been one of my favorite activities on trips. I know there is so much to grieve right now and so much chaos, but this felt like the last straw. Why do bananas continue to exist if not to call someone across the room?

I probably also wanted to cry because it reminded me of an article I recently read by Lauren Collins called Missed Calls: Long-distance love, death and grief. It was a powerful article about accompanying her father long distance through death. A quote that struck me was:

I'd always thought of Face-Time as a weak substitute for first-order interaction,whether in person or in writing. Like Diet Coke, it was to be avoided except when there were no other decent options. Better to have the real thing, less frequently, than to settle for constant interruptions and glitches. Video calls are unsatisfying not just because of the lack of touch but because they require mutual active presence. Conversation is only a part of companionship. It's hard to just be when you're on a call, hard to see when you're constantly looking.

I know conversation, worship and learning through Zoom have been a huge gift, but I'm so tired when I "end call" I feel like a wimp. I can talk to a preschooler over a banana (at least when they still used bananas) until the cows came home, but thirty minutes on Zoom or the phone and I'm wiped out.

It's okay. Things change and I can adapt, but I needed to take a minute and grieve the banana. Maybe I'll start calling kids on graham crackers.