Snowflakes

 We've been watching quite a few movies recently that have to do with time travel: Back to the Future, Endgame, and Harry Potter.

Here is what I realize - don't mess with time. 

Unless snowflakes are involved. 

I don't believe in or ever hope for time travel to solve our problems and regrets, but spending an afternoon with children in the snow may be the most amazing time travel one needs. 

I got to walk with three boys this past Sunday as part of our church's walk and talks. We were gifted with big flaky snow that was perfect for catching on your tongue. We managed not to run into each other or fall down while attempting to do this and every sweet memory of childhood came rushing back as those flakes landed on my eyelids and giggles erupted around me. I then told them how I loved to imagine I was a space cowboy and would pretend I was traveling through space shooting at the stars when I looked up at snow. Then we started making zing zing zing sounds together shooting snowflakes/stars because I'm not alone in imagining that. 

When Jesus says, "Truly I tell you unless you become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven," I do not think he was talking about how holy and perfect little kids are. I'm around them enough to know they can be little turds, but children offer us the gift of vulnerability and shamelessness. They offer the gift of imagination and story. 

Interrupting or preventing childhood trauma is huge for me so they may get to live in that gifted state for as long as possible. It is also vital for my own health to make space to be present with children where I get to travel in time to dwell in imagination, vulnerability and boldness. I know many hate to see the snow, but for me it was a time machine. 

Fan

Naturally a squirrel was to blame. Last Thursday a squirrel entered the Loop Substation and knocked out the electricity in Juneau and crashed the church computer. 

It was not pretty - for the church or the squirrel.

Speaking of rodents, I kind of believed before this weekend that a computer ran by magic hamsters inside the little box. Or elves.  I now know there are no magical creatures inside the box.

Like many things in Juneau, computer repair can take a while and we needed this computer so I connected with a tech by phone. He talked me through making sure the old computer was truly dead and then brain surgery. 

At least that's what it felt like to me. I'd never looked inside a computer and now I was disconnecting sacred wires and then reconnecting them so we could salvage something off the old hard drive.

My new best friend and computer tech Roy talked me through almost four hours of computer repair. It was a little slow going trying to connect at the beginning, but once I looked inside the old machine trying to figure out what wasn't working I said the most obvious thing, "Can I stick my hand in the fan?" 

Like any good computer tech, Roy asked, "Why would you do that?" 

And my brilliant response was, "Because I want to see what happens." 

He started laughing so I sang him the Fan Song:

Put your hand in the fan and you will lose a finger
Put your foot in the fan and you will lose a toe
Put your face in the fan and you will look at others differently
Put your body in the fan and rearrange your anatomy.

Everything changes in a relationship once you laugh together. Humor has taken such a mean streak recently that I want to reclaim the power of silliness. One of my favorite quotes out of Raising a Rare Girl was about her husband:

"who preached a sermon about the power of humor not just to 'lighten the mood' but to help a person transcend what Christian contemplatives call their 'small self.' For an instant a laughing person could let themselves go like a helium balloon, find themselves in the unfathomably spacious blue sky."

I won't lie, the thought of spending hours with a computer tech and dealing with technology seemed like a circle of hell. It wasn't a highlight of my life, but giggling makes everything a little more bearable and freer, especially when Roy asked every fifteen minutes if I still had all my digits. 

St. Francis

Several leaders from different congregations gathered on Sunday to join in the prayer of St. Francis. Sunday was the festival of St. Francis, which normally involves the blessing of animals since he is famous for taming a wolf and being a human bird feeder (I might be mixing up his stories with his statues).

Thanks Mary Ann Hornbuckle for photo

Francis was a privileged youth and my favorite story is when he denounces his way of life and dedicates himself to communion with God and the poor. 

His father is enraged that Francis keeps giving their wealth away to the poor so he chases him to the town center and confronts him. In front of the people gathered, Francis strips down naked, hands over his clothes and denounces his birthright. 

There are no garden statues of that. 

And a little family counseling might have been helpful.

But I love the bold defiance and vulnerability. 

We weren't naked, but standing in the freezing rain in an enraged nation and praying for peace felt like bold defiance and vulnerability. 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive, 
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

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.