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