The Comma

The thing I want to tell you is how it felt.  More than anything else it was this feeling I took away from my breakfast with Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama last Tuesday.  This feeling.  These two old men up there together - so tender, so loving with each other.  Two funny old men poking each other, acting like little boys. 

“Thank you for being you.”  “You are an incarnation of goodness”, they say to each other.  What are these tears about as I sit listening to them?  What are these tears about as I write now about the experience?  Was it goodness I felt?  Or true humanity?   Two old men loving each other?   Whatever it was and is, I want to spend the rest of my life pursuing it, being it. 

The Dalai Lama turns to Tutu,  “It looks like you put on some weight.”  And Tutu laughs his wonderful high pitched, full of soul and life laugh. 

“You’ve got to understand”, Tutu says, “his extraordinary discipline.  It doesn’t just happen by accident – what we see in him.  It is the hiddenness of the spiritual life.  His extraordinary life of prayer.  The discipline of this man – every morning up at 4 a.m. in silent meditation until 6 a.m.”

The Dalai Lama leans over to Tutu, “3:30 a.m.” 

And Tutu laughs and laughs.   “What an example for us who have a rough prayer life.  We wonder if it is worth a candle.  Those of us who try to be quiet, how hard it is!  Why do these thoughts come up just when we want to be thinking holy thoughts!  Why when we are quiet do we get the image of one we can’t stand!  This man has this disciple all of his adult life.”

The Dalai Lama tells a story about an old monk who was captured by the Chinese in 1959 and put in a gulag for 18 years.  When he was released he talked about the danger he faced – the danger of losing his compassion for the Chinese.  “It is so important to keep your compassion.  There is nothing unique about me.  I am weaker than him.  I consider this monk my elder spiritual leader and my boss.  Whenever I meet him it brings me inner joy.  How do you maintain a generous heart?  You need an honest, sincere heart and a compassionate mind.  Maintaining a positive attitude towards our enemies is difficult and yet essential.  To practice compassion you need an enemy – not just your imagination.”

“We are moved by a baby – so fragile, so full of life”, Tutu reminds us.  “You want to hold it, dangle it, cuddle it all the time.  We want to see this one continue in being.  We are given the privilege of ‘being’ by God.  A God who is omnipotent but a God who is also impotent.  God is the weak one. The One who weeps and feels with us.  In the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, God does not give helpful advice from a safe distance but enters the pit.  Who is the fourth one in the pit with the three men?  It is Compassion.  The One who stands side by side with us.” 

Tutu goes on, “Are we gentle with ourselves?  We are so mad at ourselves often.  Compassion means that we need to be gentle with ourselves so that we can be gentle with others like a mother.  One of the most powerful images of God in the Bible is in Isaiah where Isaiah speaks of God as being like a mother (Isaiah 49:15, 66:13, 42:5, 43:4)  ‘Who can forget the child she bore?  I will never forget you.  I am like a mother to you.  I want to hold you in being.  And breathe my breath into you.’  (Here Tutu cups his hands and blows deep breaths onto his hands.)  You are one that breathes God’s breath.  You are so precious.  You, the fragile, vulnerable one are the one, the only one I have, the only one I have to pass on my compassion, my ‘feeling with’.  Please help me – my world is broken, fragile and it needs gentleness, it needs you who has the breath of life from me.  Please pass it on – my caring, my gentleness.  Help me heal my wounded world.  I have no one but you to help me.” 

The Dalai Lama reminds us, “We have the same message and practices – forgiveness, tolerance, commitment.  All the same.  But different philosophies.  Different ways to approach the same message. The message is the same.  You need to know and understand the value of other traditions and you should gain inner expression through your own practice.  Be serious and sincere in your practice.” 

“Yes”, Tutu agrees, “I know of no faith worth the name that promotes violence, hatred.  Each faith has good people and bad people in it.  For goodness sake we Christians are the last people to be hoity-toity.  Christians supported slavery and justified the Biblical basis for apartheid, are responsible for the Holocaust.  I don’t imagine God looks down on the Dalai Lama and says, “What a wonderful guy.  Too bad he’s not a Christian!” 

“They are on to us”, Tutu says, “we have to try to behave like holy men!”  And of course they can’t – not fill any of our stereotypes of what “holy” men are like.  All they can be is who they are – unapologetically themselves, truly human, two old mischievous old men who have seen so much, grieved and lost so much and who have found through the suffering and depths a wellspring of joy. 

And the two bent old men link arms and help each other down the steps. 

This also comes under the heading, “what am I thinking?”  Actually, my brain and heart are filled with gratitude–gratitude to you for your loving care of me, not just during my illness but during the entire 13 years I have been here.  And, gratitude to God for leading me to such a rich and fulfilling vocation.  And, gratitude to my family for supporting me, putting up with me and loving me too.  As Arlo Guthrie would say, “some trip!’

Yesterday I was driving south on I-5 toward the center of the city and was reminded of feelings that I had 13 years ago.  I began my work here on March 1, 1995, so the season helps to recall those days and I can’t honestly say where the time has gone.  I know that is a cliche but I feel it today at a very deep level.  Perhaps the feeling is deep because I am otherwise unsteady. I’m not sure what to expect but have some ideas about that and I know it will be a mixture of joy and sadness.  I find myself needing to connect to thoughts and feelings from other parts of my life–connect to find more stability.  This morning as I was driving to church I heard the theme song from “A Man and a Woman.”  The film was released in 1966 and Judy and I saw it in Beirut.  Suddenly I was driving (n my mind) down the main street of Sidon, Lebanon where we lived and it was amazing to feel myself reaching back to a time even before I went to seminary.  That’s how it is today.

Many have asked about my health.  It is actually quite good. I needed that surgery and feel much better today than I have for some time.  Again, I have been blessed.

What a time of painful and difficult conversations – over the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and the firestorm the youtube excerpts of a couple of his sermons. 

And I find myself in an interesting position. As a lay person, I was troubled by some of the words of Rev. Wright.  And I’ve also glimpsed a perspective from pastors, as the colleague of pastors and the partner of a pastor, all of whom take seriously their call to pastoral and also prophetic preaching.

I can sense the pain of seeing a clergy colleague’s lifetime of ministry and service reduced to a couple of minutes of soundbites, taken out of context and without perspective.  I have seen way they each struggle with building a sermon that has depth and moves through a progression of thought, context, biblical interpretation and focus on the human condition.  I know the way they work at crafting the right phrase or example in order to make the complete sermon more whole, and the way they work on a sermon series that builds and is informed through the progression.  And I think I get how painful it can be to have one particular part of a sermon dissected and critiqued, without the context, without a sense of how it ties into the whole and moves us through.  And they see that happening to their clergy colleague and how easy it is to critique and condemn a lifetime of work for a small portion of one sermon. 

I know me how frustrating it would be to not be able to have that context in my work.  Maybe for example, if I were criticized for a large balance in the church’s checking account on the 28th of the month, that I should do better at investing the church’s funds and increasing the rate of return.  It’s easy look at the 28th in a snapshot and critique, not knowing that payroll comes out on the 29th. 

I also know how easy and natural it is for all of us to look at something though only one lens. And worship outside of our own context can easily be outside our comfort zone.  When I was on the national UCC Executive Council, we had a full worship service at the beginning and end of our 5-day meetings.  We also had morning prayers and evening vespers each day during the meeting period.  And that worship reflected wonderfully the diversity of the United Church of Christ. 

I remember one meeting where opening worship was led by the director of the UCC Coalition for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.  Worship had some wonderful gay and gay-affirming imagery, named some of the struggles of GLBT people, and included the hymn from our New Century Hymnal “In the Midst of New Dimensions:”  “We are man and we are woman, all persuasions, old and young, each a gift in your creation, each a love song to be sung” Worship was quite moving and powerful. 

Four days later the closing worship led by the representative of the Calvin Synod.  The Calvin Synod is a very conservative branch from the Hungarian Reformed Church tradition.  It was very different from the opening worship in some ways, with very traditional, even orthodox, imagery and language, named some of the struggles in their story, including those of the Hungarian galley slaves and sung of in the hymn, “Lift Your Head, O Martyrs, Weeping,” also found in our New Century Hymnal.   That worship was also quite moving and powerful. 

I also remember worship led by African American pastors.  Black liberation theology was named affirmed, and celebrated. The God of all creation and Saviour of all was worshipped.  And in ways that were intense powerful, core-of-my-body-and-being moving.  We sang of the need for God’s presence and for release from bondage, and we heard powerful preaching and the call to repentance and a new day and a new way of being.

All those worship services were powerful, faithful, and authentic.  And they were not wrong just because they weren’t all a part of my tradition, childhood Presbyterian.  Indeed that was the gift and grace of those settings: the Holy Spirit was alive and at work in all those settings, and authenticity and honesty were appreciated.  And affirmed.

I believe God calls us to community.  And that implies a commitment to listen, to try to understand, and to be vulnerable and open.  So who am I to transfer my discomfort with a few minutes of youtube of a worship service into an expectation of how it “should be?”  I think such snapshots and soundbites defeat the possibility of dialogue rather than invite it.

In a culture that values one-upmanship, I believe we are called to be counter-cultural. Sermons, the church’s ministry, and our relationships as people of faith – are about the journey.  About staying in touch, listening and discerning, talking and hearing.  I believe God calls us to listen through the pain and agony of each other’s stories, not to turn away. And I believe God understands when that pain is expressed in words and tones hard to hear.  I believe God wants us to bring our whole complete true selves to worship and life, not a sanitized and sterile façade.

That is the church at its most faithful and fullest.  And I am grateful for the ways the United Church of Christ honors, acknowledges and affirms that hope and vision.  Easy? No.  Perfect?  No. Faithful?  Please God, may that be so.  To God be the glory.

Last Friday my sheep were sheared by a fellow from Wales. Several years ago he married a woman from Langley and now every spring he comes over to Whidbey with her from his own island home in Great Britain. He pays for the trip by bringing his clippers with him, and he has been my shearer for the last three years (how he first became my shearer is a long, fun story for another time.) Anyway, as he and his helper and I were standing in the barn with my helpers (Don, Helen and Anna MacGilvra), we started talking about church. From previous encounters he knows I am a motorcycle-riding “lady preacher” (the only motorcycle-riding lady preacher he knows, in fact), but this time what he asked me surprised me. “Are you from the same church as Barack Obama?” Wow- how does a sheep shearer from Wales know about the United Church of Christ?

Well, the answer of course is that the United Church of Christ, and more specifically one congregation (Trinity UCC in Chicago where Senator Obama and his family are members), and even more specifically one pastor (the now-retired Reverend Jeremiah Wright) have been in news a lot recently. The nature of that news has raised a great many questions. Here are just a few:

• How much freedom does a preacher have in the pulpit?

• How can one be a prophet in a “news-bite” world?

• What is the relationship between what a preacher says in a sermon and what a parishioner might agree or disagree with?

• How does our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or position of privilege (or lack thereof) relate to how we confront the false gods of society, how we worship God, who is a God of extravagant welcome and reconciling love, how we live our lives, or even how we hear our news bites?

I do not have all the answers, but here are a few thoughts (and notice how cleverly each thought corresponds to the above listed questions):

• Most UCC congregations include the following words as a part of their call to a pastor (under the heading, by the way, of “Freedom and Responsibility of the Pulpit”): “Not withstanding any of the other responsibilities outlined for our pastor and teacher, . .. in accepting pastoral leadership we also accept our pastor’s freedom of expression in the pulpit as it pertains to matters of faith and faithfulness according to the dictates of the Word of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, the traditions of the United Church of Christ, and the context in which we live our lives.” What that means is that congregations expect their pastors to speak out, even to say things that are hard to hear. And UCC congregations expect their pastors will say things with which they disagree. And although I do not always do it gracefully, and I might not do it enough, I take seriously the responsibility to be prophetic as well as pastoral in my sermons.

• Our news-bite world generally has time for only a few words. But to quote a few words, or even a few lines of a sermon, without hearing the whole sermon, is to have no real basis for evaluation or reflection on what has been said. It is similar to the sort-sighted vision of one who evaluates a congregation by simply “driving by the church.” (See my earlier post of that title.)

• Folks in my church seem perfectly able to disagree with my sermons.

• And where we stand in this world affects us in such a profound way that we all need to be better, more compassionate listeners.

Back at the barn, our conversation moved on, and soon sheep were being wrangled and wool was flying. But the brief comment and the insights to which it led stayed with me. I am pleased to be a part of a denomination that has a deep history of acting for social justice. It is refreshing to be a colleague of pastors who are serious about speaking the truth to power, even when that power lashes back. I am grateful for the ministry of Jeremiah Wright and of the Trinity Church. I am glad that a sheep shearer from Wales has heard of the UCC, and, from what he said, likes what he has heard.

To learn more about how the UCC is answering current questions about Rev. Wright, or for more information about the remarkable ministry happening at Trinity UCC, visit the following websites: www.ucc.org (the UCC website); www.tucc.org (Trinity Church’s website) or www.pncucc.org (the Pacific Northwest Conference website).

Forty years ago—my mind keeps shifting back to try to capture what life was like then.  And, once again, I am deeply impressed by memories of blessings during those forty years and the contrast between the magnitude of uncertainty about vocation then and the blessing that ministry has become to me—thanks in large part to the people I am with today – Perk, Judy, you all!

5:30 am – coffee and get ready for Sunday worship

8:00 am  arrive at church and meet with Peter to go over the worship bulletin one more time.

9:00 am rehearse with the child who will be reading our call to worship.

9:30 am rehearse with the Getting Serious Band and the choir for this morning’s anthem

10:00 am – worship.  I am preaching

11:00 am greet people following worship then go to the forum about our vision and staffing plans for our future.

12:45 – we take Perk out to lunch.

So I go to the grocery store yesterday and spend $54 for what seems like nothing and complain about the prices.  Go home to read in the paper, “High prices of food and oil have been swelling the ranks of the hungry…and the crisis might not end for several years.”  (Seattle Times, Friday March 7, p. A12).  If I find the cost of groceries is high – what about people who don’t make anything near what I do – what are they doing? 

Later that day I go to the McPherson’s fruit stand famous for cheap produce and spend $12 on two huge bags of vegetables and fruit.  And though I love the price and all my savings I wonder where in the world all this cheap food comes from, who is growing it and what are we doing eating bananas and broccoli in Seattle in March? 

 This morning I go hear Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread and hear her story of being raised an atheist, happening to walk into a church one day, take communion and “get it” – that this is how God comes to us.  “While I knew it was real bread (whole wheat and very good) and real wine (really bad and sour) I also knew that it was something else.  That Jesus was alive and in me.  It was overwhelming, frightening.  I burst into tears and ran out before any of the Christians could talk to me.  But I was hungry and I wanted to take it in again.”   Sara went back and opened a food pantry right there in the church centered around the communion table. 

What if I “got it”?   

What if you “got it”? 

What if we “got” that this is how God comes to us in Jesus – in real bread, real wine – the hungry being fed. 

What might happen? 

I am hungry to find out. 

Are you? 

The ride to Wenatchee is shared with Peter Ilgenfritz and Dave Shull and two members of the congregation where Dave is preaching currently in Sammamish. I don’t say much because my thoughts are scattered. This meeting we are going to is so important: greeting the candidate for conference minister and voting on his candidacy as well as the opportunity to greet member of other congregations in the conference. The week has been so dense that I fear I won’t be as sociable as I would like to be. And that was the way it was. I was eager to get back home because Don Purkey (Perk) would be there for dinner and I wanted to be really present for our evening together with Judy and Mary.

Today I will drive to Wenatchee for a special meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ to elect a new conference minister.  I plan to leave home by 10 and get back around 5:30.

(Friday is my day off)

5:30 – Up for coffee before I go to the gym

9:00 – 11:’’ meeting with Rabbi Ted Falcon and Jamal Rahman at Ted’s office in Lake City about the November programs of Interfaith Talk Radio.  Also to hear about the project I described in my Thursday log.

When this is over I take the rest of the day off.