75 pictures are worth 75,000 words

Same-sex marriage became legal in two more states yesterday: Rhode Island and Minnesota. As a Minnesotan, this is a Big Deal in my world, and in that of many of my friends.

Yes, Ro and I will make it legal (likely in October).
Yes, I'm so full of joy about this step that my heart could burst from my chest.
But I can't write about it. Not yet. My heart is too full.

So I'll offer this instead. The joy fairly leaps off the screen and into your own heart, no?

What I read on my summer vacation

I am rediscovering the pleasures of the essay.

It's nothing like the grievous drudgery students often feel at an English teacher's request for three pages on the use of symbolism in "Jude the Obscure" (which request, I confess, never seemed to bring me down as it did my classmates). Nor is it about Ralphie's sly ambition, hoping that a school writing assignment will fortify his case when asking for a particular Christmas present.

I'm talking about the simple joy of listening deeply to another person speak fully about something/one that matters to them, or about an event or place they've astutely observed, or about a question pressed hard against their heart/mind/spirit. (Listening as you are now, Gentle Reader. Thank you for your generosity.)

Anyway, as you know, there's joy to be found in making that quiet connection, in reflecting on what binds us, on our common experience, our shared pain, our human aspiration. I've laughed and cried with Anne Lamott often, and chuckled at the mordant Bill Bryson; however, I've always thought of myself as a fiction reader. One of those limiting labels, I guess.

I've serendipitously been nudged toward three particular literary features in the last couple of weeks, and each of them has moved me deeply. They're not just non-fiction; they're about what's true.

First, NPR correspondent Scott Simon's Twitter feed this last week, which comprised the last days of his mother's life. Simultaneously aching, gorgeous and tender, they're like grief haikus. For all its strengths and influence, I never thought of Twitter as a vehicle for beauty, until now. Read them; you'll see what I mean.

Secondly, my fiction-junkie side has been aware of Chris Bohjalian for years; I've enjoyed many of his novels, including (last month) The Sandcastle Girls, which takes place during the Armenian genocide in Syria in the early part of the 20th century. It was a great read, and it led me to look for more Bohjalian books...so I found Idyll Banter. It's a compendium of his columns for the Burlington Free Press between 1992 and 2004--observations of life in small-town Vermont. Part history, part social commentary, all of it his lens on his life and the lives of those nearest him. One of these pieces, "Losing the Library," was particularly touching to me. His small-town library was drowned by the overflowing New Haven River during a storm. In eight short pages, he packs town history, literary history, meteorology, and reporting...all tinged with grief at the loss of a beloved town resource and the hope that underlies its rebuilding:

By their very nature, libraries are generationally democratic. They cater to everyone. School and work or classes and clubs may separate us, segregating us by interest and age. But libraries remain one of the few places in this world that still bring us together...on the morning after the waters had drenched much of the library and the town gathered to try to save what remained, I saw dazed adults crying softly as they worked...not for the roads or the bridges that had been lost...but they did cry for their books...

Stories like this are generously augmented with lighter pieces such as "Dead Cluster Flies Serve As Window Insulation for the Inept" and "Surly Cow Displays No Remorse," in which he and his wife, driving on a country road near their house, are pinned down by a herd of cows. They try to chase them back toward their corral, and

a number of times I even explained that I was a vegetarian, but obviously these cows were female, and they knew they were in no danger of becoming Quarter Pounders.

His columns are condensed generosity, humor and honesty, fortified with interesting reporting and observation. Well worth a look!

Finally, and most auspiciously for me as I plan for a new choir season, I found Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others." Author Stacy Horn is a 20-year veteran soprano in the Choral Society of Grace Church, NYC. For the most part, each chapter is grounded in a major choral work; within that frame, she explores her life, the history of choral singing, the foibles of a community choir and its directors, her soprano psyche...

Jesus Christ. How am I supposed to count this? It's in seven. Is that even rhythmically allowed? 

...and the magic of finding such beauty and shared humanity in the simple act of opening your mouth and making a sound.

I actually read most of a chapter aloud to my wife, who grinned at Horn's horror-turned-to-wonder as her conductor switched her from soprano 1 (melody) to soprano 2 (harmony): after some disorientation and paddling around in the music,

I was feeling harmony. Not just singing it, but physically feeling it. It was a rush. You don't experience this when you're singing the melody. I was completely in the power of the sound we were making together and I just stood there, afraid to move, thinking, Don't end, don't end, don't end. And it took nothing. A couple of notes. A D against a B flat. That's it. Two notes and I went from a state of complete misery and lonesomeness to such an astonishing sense of communion it was like I'd never sung with the choir before.

If you've ever sung in a choir, read this book. You'll grin in lots of places, learn some things and generally enjoy the ride.  If you haven't, read this book. You'll be auditioning for choir by the weekend...and I have some openings! :-)

Ever wonder what all that arm-waving is about?

If so, this post from the New York Times and Alan Gilbert might be illuminating.

For me, the experience of conducting is simultaneously one of suspended animation, dance and deeply analytical, multi-layered thinking. At any given moment, I'm immersed in rhythm, pitch, motion, melody, harmony, textual interpretation, phrasing, articulation, vocal technique, conducting technique, classroom management, collaboration with singers and accompanist, learning styles, teaching styles, how to ask a question, how to phrase a directive, how to paint with my arms and hands, facial expression as teaching tool, where to inject a bit of humor and where to push harder.

It's deep engagement with people, a task, an experience, art.

It's about interpreting a composer's road map, fostering my singers' abilities and inspiring something fresh. It's about inviting and leading; offering and receiving; pointing and looking; diagnosing and demonstrating; understanding and explaining; wondering and deciding.

It's choreography, storytelling, question-asking and getting people to use their heads, hearts, instruments and pencils.

It's play, prayer, proclamation, lament, exultation...in short, a deeply internal yet total out-of-body experience. Sound mysterious? It's shared alchemy that can turn black dots on a page into an experience of the sublime.

I'll let Robin Williams close, with a line from Dead Poets Society:

“We didn’t just read poetry, we let it drip from our tongues like honey. Spirits soared, women swooned, and gods were created, gentlemen. Not a bad way to spend an evening, eh?”

Strengthening your core

I was fooling around with a friend's Wii Fit a couple of weeks ago, having a great time. At one point, as the machine was evaluating my relative strengths and weaknesses, it sort of hinted at the fact that I could use some work on my core strength; limbs are pretty good, but balance...not quite so much.

Hmmm...I feel a metaphor coming on.

My home church, this Lent, is working with the theme "Come Home" in all things worship-related. We're using the story of the Prodigal Son as a meta-narrative for the season. If you don't know it, here's a version of it--a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson which begins like this:

Then (Jesus) said,

"There once was a man who had two sons.

The younger son said to his father,

'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'

So the father divided his property

between (the younger and older sons).

It wasn't long

before the younger son packed his bags

and left for a distant country.

There, undisciplined and dissipated,

he wasted everything he had..."

I heard this particular version of the story tonight for the first time. And this stuck with me: undisciplined and dissipated. Dissipated--as if the source of the young man's unhappiness was the fact that he lost track of his core, his essential being, his connection. Dissipated--as if his very self had scattered to the winds.

Huh. Ever felt that way? Ever been distracted by something shiny or something "worthy" or just too many somethings, and lost track of yourself? Of your place in the world? Of those things which keep you tethered to deepest reality? I certainly have.

Lots of times, I've heard this story told as if the young man's main problem was active debauchery. And it's easy to hear it or to read it from a place of righteousness: "WE certainly wouldn't be so overtly selfish and sinful. What a bad boy he was." As if we were the elder brother in the story.

This translation, though, suggests to me that the young man's problem was more subtle, more passive--that he just surrendered, little bit by little bit, his essential humanity. He settled for a lesser version of himself until his hunger and desperation brought him back to his senses. He could then go back home, having lost so much and yet regained that which was truly essential. His homecoming was met with gracious abundance on his father's part.

There's a wonderful hymn by Kevin Nichols in Evangelical Lutheran Worship called "Our Father, We Have Wandered." We sang it last Sunday, and the second verse goes like this:

And now at length discerning

the evil that we do,

behold us, Lord, returning

with hope and trust to you.

In haste you come to meet us

and home rejoicing bring,

in gladness there to greet us

with calf and robe and ring.

We don't often manage that kind of gracious welcome with one another. It's sort of ironic that we so regularly (especially when in groups) react as the elder brother in the story did, lost in our own righteousness--wanting judgment to be meted out to those who have "done it wrong" in many and various ways:

• by daring to be both gay and Christian,
• by daring to be both divorced and Christian,
• by daring to be both mentally or physically ill and Christian,
• by daring to be both homeless and Christian,
• by daring to be both broken and Christian,
• by daring to be both doubtful and faithful,
• by daring to admit that sometimes the only way to God is through a pig sty, or, in short,
• by daring to admit our brokenness and to reclaim our core selves in the company of the body of Christ.

It ain't easy. We make it awfully hard on one another. Vulnerable honesty just makes everyone uncomfortable; it seems a living thing unto itself--and a threatening one, at that. It's unpredictable. It doesn't follow the "rules." Those things which make us authentically ourselves sometimes scare our brothers and sisters out of their (right) minds.

But did you notice that, in the parable, the older son is also called to remember who he is, in the context of this new turn of events? To recall his own identity as a son, a brother, a loving being in the world? He lost track of himself, too--was dissipated as surely as his brother had been--but by his own righteousness, anger and jealousy. His father invited him to remember the joy at his own core...to join in the celebration instead of sitting in judgment and resentment of his brother.

And so, whatever your own vantage point in the story in this particular Lenten season, I ask you these questions:

What is the "home" to which you return?

What strengthens your core?

And I end this post with a prayer of awestruck gratitude for a God that continues to welcome me back, despite my brokenness, despite my righteousness--who collects my scattered pieces and restores me to wholeness over and over again, and who runs out to greet me every time "with calf and robe and ring."

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Andrew Sullivan--whose coverage of the Iran crisis has been terrific, BTW, posted this lovely morsel this morning. Check it out.

Repentance from the sin of heterosexism

My friend Mary has a wonderful post today, with compelling links, that suggests a fresh angle of approach to the conversation around GLBT lovin'. Terrific stuff.

Need to add a shout-out to Sarcastic Lutheran for a stellar sermon on Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch: similar song, different melody. Wow!

Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust

First, some definitions.

Me: child of God, member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), seminary-educated professional church musician eligible for rostered leadership in all ways but one: I'm a lesbian who has been with my partner since 1997, who had a big church wedding in 2007. My best friend B is also a partnered lesbian, which is the one giant stumbling block in her journey toward ordination.

ELCA: Publicly proclaims this. Structured like this. Governed like this, with the next Churchwide Assembly taking place in my hometown next August.

At that Assembly, voting members will decide whether or not to adopt as ELCA policy a social statement entitled "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust," which has been crafted over the last two years by a task force which was convened to study and articulate a proposed ELCA position on matters of human sexuality. The catalyst for this discussion is the disagreement on issues pertaining to homosexuality:

• tolerance/recognition/blessing of committed same-gender relationships
  
• ordination of homosexual persons in committed same-gender relationships
  

I suspect that service on that task force may be the most excruciating, thankless job in history. I honor and thank its members for their careful, respectful work.

Along with the draft of the Social Statement, they have proposed recommendations for action by the Churchwide Assembly which take place in four steps, each succeeding step considered only if the one before it has passed:

Step one asks the Churchwide Assembly whether, in principle, it is committed to finding ways to allow congregations and synods that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.

Step two asks the Churchwide Assembly whether, in principle, this church is committed to finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.

Step three asks this Church whether, in the future implementation of these commitments, it will make decisions so that all in this church bear the burdens of the other, and respect the bound consciences of all. This means that any solution that serves only the conscience-bound positions of one or another part of this church will not be acceptable.

Step four proposes how this Church can move toward change in a way that respects the bound consciences of all. It recognizes that such respect will lead to diversity of practice. However, the majority of the task force believes that the conscience-bound lack of consensus will be respected most faithfully by providing some structured flexibility in decision-making so that congregations and synods may choose whether or not to approve or call people in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve on ELCA rosters.

My bishop notes that

In this way, the assembly will decide whether to create "space" for congregations and synods to publicly recognize and hold accountable the relationship of same-gendered couples (step one), and (step two) whether our Church ought to find ways to allow the rostered ministry of such persons.

The task force acknowledges that conscience-bound faithful Christians find themselves on different sides of this issue. The task force also acknowledges that we are bound not only in our own consciences but in love to the conscience of the other. Because of the lack of consensus in our Church, the task force believes that we need to respect our differences and accept the different places in which the baptized find themselves. The recommendation affirms that our distinctive positions on this issue should not be church dividing. No congregation will be pressured to call any pastor they do not wish to call.

Now...all that having been said, what do I think? Mostly, I think they've done a good job. Their recommendation includes a reference to Luther's declaration, while speaking in his own defense at the Diet of Worms, that he was bound in conscience by the Word of God and that "It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience." The report continues,

The emphasis of "conscience-bound" is not on declaring oneself to be conscience-bound. Rather, we are bound in love by the conscience of the other--that is, we recognize the conscience-bound nature of the convictions of others in the community of Christ. For Lutherans, the reality that people hold convictions from deep faith that may be in conflict with the deep faith convictions of others is not merely a procedural or political difficulty. As sisters and brothers in Christ we bear one another's burdens. For one member to suffer because her or his conscience has been offended is for all of us to suffer...the task force asks members of this church to join them in a commitment to honor conscience-bound decisions. However, the recognize that such honoring may lead to some diversity of practice within this church. ...nevertheless, the task force invites this church to continue and even deepen its ability to concentrate on finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of our disagreements.

In other words, as conscience-bound Christians, each of us is entitled, after prayerfully sweating out our own theological position, to say with Luther, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me." But we need to recognize that it may cost us everything. And this task force wants very much for us to remember that, while we're all living in our own deepest truths, we must try to trust that others are also doing so...and to take their commitment as seriously as our own, that we might not break the Body.

I have to say, that's a large thing to ask of anyone...especially a member of an oppressed minority or (I must admit) someone who's staked their life's work and their soul on a particular position, whatever that may be. Ay, there's the rub. But that is part of what I love about being a Lutheran--these conversations are serious, and we're all asked to do the hard stuff.

Finally, toward the end:

Most, but not all, members of the task force believe that it is undesirable and unrealistic to continue with existing policy in its present form. They feel this approach would fail to honor the conscience-bound lack of consensus in this church. They also believe that continuing current policy does not serve the mission and ministry of this church in instances where a member in a publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship is the person determined to be best suited for a particular call...though no policy can be fully in accord with this church's diversity of convictions, the majority of the task force believes that the conscience-bound lack of consensus will be respected most faithfully by providing for some level of structured flexibility of decision-making.

In other words, they're:

• recommending a "local option" scenario, while
• asking us to remember that we're all members of one Body of Christ and
• recognizing that this will be painful for most people, to varying degrees. No one gets everything they want.

Seems pretty positive to me...which is an evolution from my initial "justice is justice, dammit" standpoint. Viva la revolucion, and all that.

It's funny--though I want to, I still can't quite trust that that bigotry and lack of understanding aren't at the root of the "anti-change" position; however, I can recognize that it isn't necessarily productive to demand that people change their hearts and minds, This Instant.

Kahlil Gibran once described pain as the "cracking of the shell that encompasses your present understanding." I think that this document acknowledges that everyone, on every side, needs to be willing to experience that cracking open...to bear the pain for the sake of their sisters and brothers, for the Body of Christ. That's vigorously Christian. I like it.

I also like "gift and trust," and think it can only be positive for all relationships to be lived out in the light of day...as long as the "public accountability" is offered in the same spirit of public support that is offered to hetero relationships. Their careful definition of "conscience bound" is helpful, as well, I think--it demands that we take seriously the conscience of the Other, as much as our own.

This is an evolutionary, but not a revolutionary position. Pragmatically speaking, I think this has a chance of appealing to everyone enough to move the church forward. I'd like that. I want my friend B to be ordained; she has a clearer call to it than almost anyone I know.

Also noted--from what I've read thus far of the Statement, it seems a bit grimmer than it might be; not so much emphasis on the "sexuality as created gift" part as on the "we're sinners saved by grace" part. Bit of a buzz-kill. :-)

And, admittedly, though my rational mind sees this effort as positive (assuming, of course, that it's passed by the Assembly next August) part of me still screams "Now! Now! Full inclusion and recognition NOW! Justice!" Because it's true that "separate but equal" is usually neither.

But, in our human framework, justice almost never rolls like God's waters in a mighty stream, matter how cathartic and satisfying the idea of it is. Usually it arrives an inch at a time, and that because some folks really put their backs into it.

I think that the Task Force did. I hope that the voting Assembly will think so, too, and will be brave enough to allow the shell around our Church's present understanding to crack.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Relationship

It's all about relationship.

Seriously, why is this a surprise? People can do what chemistry cannot (in fact, that chemistry is messing with us in lots of ways).

Alchemy

I enjoy the radio show This American Life. It's like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get. Yesterday, I was listening to the program entitled "Music Lessons," (which I wholeheartedly commend to you; stream it here) with segments by David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and the wonderful Anne Lamott. Anne--I'm gonna call her Anne, because there's a frank and intimate quality to her writing that makes it seem like we went for coffee last Wednesday--was talking about the power of music to heal us, describing a holy moment at her church that bridged a gulf between two people:

I can't imagine anything else but music that could have brought about this alchemy. How is it that you can have a chord here...and then another chord there, and then your heart breaks open? I don't know the answer. Maybe it's that music is about as physical as it gets. Your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add the human heart to this mix, it somehow lets us meet on a bridge we couldn't get to any other way.

YES. What a miracle to get to participate in it--to create it, to lead groups of people who are doing something so natural, so stuffed with goodwill, and so mysterious. I'm grateful. :-)

The Loving decision

Thank you,
Anna Quindlen,
for this.

Written in the book of love

Found grace, part deux

Yesterday, between my day job at Universitas Majoris and a worship planning meeting at church, I took some time out to prepare for the meeting. I love this part of the job--sitting with my colleagues and peering into the readings, figuring out how to exegete them musically in our particular context. So I try to get my head in the game ahead of time, in order to participate fully in the discussion.

There's a route from the U to church that follows the river, with a parking lot at a particularly lovely spot. I pulled in there to appreciate the view and to do my "pre-game" thinking. It was an absolutely beautiful fall day, with the late-afternoon sun hitting the colorful trees along the riverbank--the perfect setting for thinking about transcendent things. I rolled down my car window and got to work, Bible and hymnal in hand.

After a few minutes, a truck pulled into the spot next to mine. Two high school-age kids got out, sat on the hood and began to talk and laugh as they took in the view of the river. My first response was to be sort of annoyed--it was a big, unoccupied parking lot, and they had to be making noise right next to me? (You can see the "transcendent" thing doing its work, right? Ha ha ha.)

Cranky me. And I was about to get reframed in a BIG way by this "annoyance."

I got back to work, and noticed a few minutes later that they'd moved to the edge of the bluff, about ten yards in front of my car. Further, I noticed that these two kids are in love--nestled together, laughing, occasionally sharing a kiss, gazing into each others' eyes as if they were the only two people in the world...just being totally in the moment on a gorgeous, sunny day.

Now, add in the factors I haven't mentioned yet: this unself-consciously smitten couple was both mixed-race and all-female. And, in that moment, their joy became my joy. They were beautiful.

Love generally is; especially when the sun is allowed to shine on it.

Maybe things are getting better for gay kids. Maybe this next generation will finally get past the racial and sexual barriers that have been so divisive for mine and those that have come before.

I hope.

Late-breaking news: Fantastic. :-)

Thanks, Fran.

I saw this at Fran's place. I think it's rather wonderful.

Bread, circuses and Emmanuel

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,

the People have abdicated our duties;

for the People who once upon a time

handed out military command,

high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself

and anxiously hopes for just two things:

bread and circuses.

-- Juvenal

Do you remember where you were when the planes hit the World Trade Center?

I do. It's sort of the New Defining Question for people of my age, replacing the moon landing and the Kennedy/King assassinations as the Moment When Everything Changed.

Except that it didn't, really. WE did. We comfortable Americans looked fear full in the face, and it changed us.

Like so many others, I was standing in my living room, toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, jaw agape as the horror and magnitude of the moment settled over me. I remember watching the flames and the shocked look on Matt Lauer's face, thinking to myself, "The world has just shifted. Nothing will ever be the same again. This will be a new Dark Age."

That was the shock and horror talking. But there are a lot of ways in which that has been true: War. Fear. Suspicion of our neighbors. A quest for personal and national security at all costs. A wish to not know what we know now: that life is dangerous, and our first-world sense of security and entitlement is an idol.

Really--no price seems to be too high in order to go back to a time when we average Americans didn't have to think of ourselves as vulnerable, of our archetype as anything less than heroic. We can no longer maintain our happy illusion that we're the cavalry, or at least the cowboy, in that Great Global Motion Picture. Because the danger and anger and insecurity of the world has landed on our own doorstep, and our hands have blood on them, too.

There have always been people who have been willing to try to see the world realistically...to be true citizens of their communities, their countries, their world. And, well-fed as most of us in the States are, it's scarily easy to let others do that seeing for us, and to keep on driving to Wal-Mart in our gas guzzlers, one of the many versions of Clear Channel on the radio, seducing us into just one more level of disengagement.

If we can't have safety, we'll settle for the illusion of safety. We'd like our bread and circuses, thank you.

But what about those moments when life takes us by the hand and makes us see the burning building or the hungry child or the scary diagnosis? When our next-door neighbor loses her house to foreclosure, or when an angry, messed-up guy hoses a church sanctuary with gunfire? What do we do then? Turn up the radio? Buy a new toy?

Love to. But it doesn't really work, does it?

So then, the questions remain:

• What do we do when we realize again we are not specially favored, safe from the vagaries of life?
  
• How do we muster the courage to be more fully citizens of our world, our communities, and to really inhabit our own lives?
• Where do we turn our faces when, on one side, there is the seduction of bread and circuses, and on the other, the blackness of the abyss (in any of its many forms)? How do we keep these things from distracting us?

No simple answers, really...at least at the outset. But there's a way in which these questions lead us more deeply into our lives.

Did you ever wonder what was in Abram's mind when God said, "Pack up and go?" I mean, the guy just went. I feel more of a kinship with Moses and Jonah, who basically said, "Me? WHY? Ummm...I've got something in the oven. Let me just finish this project and I'll be right with you. No, really, ME? Do I have to?" Or listen to Jesus, praying in the garden of Gethsemane just before his betrayal, torture and crucifixion: "Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. And yet, not my will, but thine be done."

That last line is where the world turns. Because Jesus found a way out of that human "this is about me and I'm not enough" consciousness and a way into trust: "not my will, but thine." Jesus found a way to hear what God said to all those others in their moments of crisis: basically, "I will be faithful. I am in covenant with you, and I will be with you the whole time."

God is with us all the time. Now, it's easy...even reasonable to say, "So what?" when you're in your own Gethsemane moment. God's presence usually doesn't make the cancer go away or bring back the loved one or close that crack in the earth.

But God's presence gives us ground on which to stand. God's presence locates us in a deeper reality, where despair is not the final answer. God's presence locates us in a reality in which all roads lead not to Rome, but to love and grace.

This world is both beautiful and broken. Flowers bloom while steeples are falling. BUT the reign of God also underlays that world with something stronger and deeper. We can tap into God's reign when we co-create love and grace, when we see past our despair and fear and can truly pray, "Not my will, but thine be done." We tap into God's reign by acknowledging the mess we're in and by reaching out to one another anyway. By telling the truth. By putting one foot in front of the other, even when we're weeping or terrified. By trusting God's promise and sharing our bread.

We don't need to rely on bread and circuses; we have instead the reign of Emmanuel, God With Us. We have instead five simple loaves and two fish that create the abundance to feed, comfort and inspire not just us, but also our neighbor, through us.

So, friends, know that no matter where you are, God is with you. Share your bread. Love one another as God loves us. That's better than security; it's life itself.

Thanks be to God.

Preach the Gospel continually...

and, if necessary, use words.
— St. Francis of Assisi

I'm reading Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup. It's the story of a woman (mother of four, writer) whose husband was killed while on duty as a state trooper. He'd intended to go to seminary upon retiring from the force, in order to become a UU minister and law enforcement chaplain. She did so in his place, and found work she loves.

Holy cats, read this book. She's earthy and wise and funny; in the last half-hour with the book, I've wept and I've laughed out loud more than once.

Anyway, she tells a story of the day her husband died that perfectly illumines that quote at the beginning of the post, long a favorite of mine:

Perhaps forty minutes after I had heard the news of Drew's death, I was sitting in the living room with my friend Monica when the doorbell rang. The sergeant was on the telephone, so Monica sprang to answer it.

A young man stood on the front steps, clad in a spiffy dark suit, his hair neatly combed, exuding a scent of soap and virtue. Holding out a pamphlet, he beamed at Monica. "Have you heard the Good News?"

For a long second, Monica glared at him, not sure whether to punch him or laugh hysterically. She compromised by slamming the door.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again. This time, I answered it. It was my neighbor, an elderly woman I had exchanged no more than a dozen words with in the ten years I'd lived in Thomaston. She had pot holders on her hands, which held a pan of brownies still hot from the oven, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. "I just heard," she said.

That pan of brownies was, it later turned out, the leading edge of a tsunami of food that came to my children and me, a wave that did not recede for many months after Drew's death. I didn't know that my family and I would be fed three meals a day for weeks and weeks. I did not anticipate that neighborhood men would come to drywall the playroom, build bookshelves, mow the lawn, get the oil changed in my car. I did not know that my house would be cleaned and the laundry done, that I would have embraces and listening ears, that I would not be abandoned to do the labor of mourning alone. All I knew was that my neighbor was standing on the front stoop with her brownies and her tears: she was the Good News.

We mainliners aren't usually doorknockers. I'm not. There's something about it that just doesn't quite sit right with me. But I am very verbal (stop laughing, Friends of Mine), and I do love to discuss that old, old story when the right moment presents itself. It's just that...well, it seems to me that Big Truth rests much more comfortably in the passenger seat of a vehicle that looks a lot like Love. And that Grace shows up in hands and eyes of God's children in a much more compelling way than any abstract discussion can manifest.

Don't misunderstand me; I'm a Lutheran, and a good sermon is right up there on my list of favorite (and, for me, most necessary) things. But the Church Basement Ladies in my life (of all ages, arenas and genders) live out some serious wisdom: preach continually, and lead with your hands.

The now and the not yet

There's a truly lovely offering at the Reflectionary: a mother's words to her son upon his college graduation. I encourage you to take a look--not to find a sweet love note (though you will) or a sermon (though you will find that, too). In her post, you will find the ingredients of both love and hope.

A while back, I blogged about the gift of being truly seen and valued as we are; Songbird's post is a stellar example of the fruits of that kind of love. The mother and the pastor truly come together in her words.

Because love is patient and kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And wants to keep right on being born, whatever age we are. Love is a living presence which animates both the now and the not yet.

May it be so, in and for each and all of us.

Ruth's song

Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return
from following after thee:
for whither thou goest,
I will go;
and where thou lodgest,
I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried:
the LORD do so to me,
and more also,
if ought but death part thee and me.

Ruth 1:16-17 (KJV)

We'll make our way in blithe, concerted grace
within the sun's refracted benediction
which warms the tender, tiny, arcing space
wherein resounds my heart's truest petition:
that we, though stumbling dazed through rayless reach
of night and loss, hold fast to covenant
which binds our hollowed hearts, defying each
reverberation of our keening chant
and as we glean the fields of gleaming gold
and taste their hard-won grains of honeyed wheat
that seeds of fresh joy bloom within our souls
and melodies invite our knowing feet
back to our allemande of blue-tinged leap,
until we rest on wings of cloudless sleep.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge

That's from Thomas Carlyle, and seems a lovely place to rest on Valentine's Day.

It's been a challenging couple of days; two of my "circles" are fairly-to-partly toxic, for a variety of reasons. I'm madly playing reveille in the dormitory where sleep the better angels of my nature. They seem not to want to report for duty today. Up, little angels, wake up...

On to better things: this is a day in which we celebrate love, and I am blessed beyond belief. I have a wife who loves and cares for me in many and various ways, always surprising me with some new way to look at things or to make our house (and lives) run more smoothly. This last couple of weeks, she very kindly gathered together and organized all our tax information--for each of us, our house, and the choir we helped to start. I had to do virtually nothing, and it's a task I really dislike. This is emblematic of the "feet on the street" kind of love she offers me every day. She is kind and patient, a great listener, and can make me laugh from the bottoms of my feet. I'm humbled and grateful...and just smitten with her. That is a great gift. Thanks, babe, for sharing your life with me.

Hmmm...I think I just heard the rustle of wings. Onward and upward...

Happy Valentine's Day! :-)