Lent 2010
Every year during the season of Lent I reacquaint myself with two resources I hold dear:  the movie Chocolat and the book, The River Why.  Chocolat reminds me of how silly we can be when we pay more attention to other’s supposed sins than we do our own real ones.  The River Why reminds me that all of us are on a journey through life, and the answers to our questions usually come only after great wrestling.  Both lessons have always meant a great deal to me during Lent.
 
We begin the season with the words of Mark’s gospel (1:15):  “Repent, and believe in the good news.”  In The Last Week Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan offer reflections on what happened during the first Holy Week.  They say, “The word ‘repent’ has two meanings here, both quite different from the later Christian meaning of contrition for sin.  From the Hebrew Bible, it has the meaning of ‘to return,’ especially ‘to return from exile,’ an image also associated with ‘way,’ ‘path,’ and ‘journey.’  the roots of the Greek word for ‘repent’ mean ‘to go beyond the mind that you have.’  To repent is to embark upon a way that goes beyond the mind that you have.  So also the word ‘believe’ has a meaning quite different from the common Christian understanding.  For Christians, to ‘believe’ often means thinking that a set of statements, a set of doctrines, is true. But the ancient meaning of the word ‘beleive’ has much more to do with trust and commitment.  ‘To believe in the good news,’ as Mark puts it, means to trust in the news that the kingdom of God is near and to commit to that kingdom.”  As we experience Lenten worship together it’s my prayer that the deeper, older meaning of the words “repent” and “believe” might take on a new meaning for us.  If you have felt yourself in spiritual exile, perhaps now is a time to come home.  If you have been content to believe in a set of statements but could use some support learning more about trusting and committing to the kingdom way, perhaps now is the time to come in from the wilderness.

In what can only be described as a God-thing, I had to take my laptop to the hospital the evening before we got 6 inches of snow, sleet, ice, and freezing rain that kept us inside for 5 days.  Anticipating the snow, I had gotten groceries, library books, and movies, figured out how to use the gas log fireplace (don’t ask), and charged up my cell phone.  I did not anticipate being without my laptop for the confinement, and all of a sudden I worried that I would go crazy without it!  Mostly I worried that my daughter and I might go crazy with each other without the computer as a distraction for either of us.  That is not what happened.  We never lost power, but the roads were not inviting and despite what people say about drivers in the south when it snows, I was not tempted to try my hand at negotiating black ice.  We stayed put, warm, dry, inside, except for walks in the snow to look at our garden.  I found myself pleasantly anticipating cooking our main meal of the day; we read, endlessly, slept, and found a quiet routine that was much more life-giving than staying tied to the 24-hour news/entertainment onslaught available to us through the web.  We cleaned out closets, I reorganized the pantry, and we taught our cat to play fetch with a rolled-up ball of paper!  We made winter foods – chicken noodle soup, beef stew, spaghetti.  We were kind to each other.  We did NOT go crazy. 

In her new book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor describes some spiritual practices that have helped her become more attentive to the More that is God.  She writes of hanging laundry on the line, keeping animals and people fed and watered during an ice storm, benedictions (my favorite), and of embracing the domestic arts as ways that keep us open to the holy – ways available to us all all the time, as opposed to operating as though God shows up when and where we dictate or make space (Sundays at 11?)  During the snow days, I sought to pay attention to the ways my daily and regular routines (coffee, gym, news, work, meals, laundry, etc) could be avenues for God’s presence, or perhaps a better way to say that is avenues to my awareness of God’s presence.  I’m happy to say that peace and contentment reigned. 

My computer is well again; I’m back to the normal pace of life again; I pray that the lessons learned will stick around longer than the snow.

11 years ago I lived in a community that suffered a lot of damage from Hurricane Floyd.  1999.  The flood of the century.  Half our state was underwater.  I remember the people whose houses we cleaned, the angels who appeared from all over to help pull out mildewed and ruined insulation and drywall. I remember the faces of those we fed whose home was now the elementary school.  I remember going to get water from the Army Reserve.  I remember going to pick up health kits to distribute at my child’s school.  I remember when there was no “us and them” – when there was just “us.”  Health kits were what did it for me – I’m a United Methodist Pastor whose churches have put together hundreds and thousands of health kits to send to “them” over there in those other places where bad and sad things happen.  When I went to a meeting to pick up the health kits that had been put together by other United Methodists and that were going to be distributed to my congregation members and to children in the school where I volunteered, I had to give up the notion that there is an “us” and a “them.” 

I’m grieving the death of one I knew and counted as friend, Rev. Sam Dixon, executive Director of UMCOR and a colleague in our conference.  I’m also grieving the deaths of many sisters and brothers whom I do not know but who are known to God.  I’m grieving the words of Pat Robertson, suggesting that this disaster is a result of a pact with evil.  I have many questions and few answers. 

These thoughts sustain me in such a time:

1) beware the arrogance of believing that you are blessed simply because you were spared this tragedy.  Beware the arrogance of believing you have some special protection or that being in a place where earthquakes rarely happen is evidence of divine favor.  Beware the arrogance of suggesting that people who live on the edge of life and living are somehow cursed. 

2) we can be the answer to the prayers of those in anguish.  We cannot bring back loved ones, no.  But we can be the hands and feet that bring aid and recovery assistance.  We can provide a means for those in anguish to keep on living. 

3)  Disasters occur because we live on a living planet.  I take some comfort in the experience of the prophet in 1 Kings 19:  The Lord was not in the earthquake.  I believe God got inside human suffering on the cross, and lived inside human suffering there, and I believe that resurrection is our assurance that death and suffering are not the final words.  The Lord is in the suffering and knows suffering.   God is also in the response as we understand that there is no us and them, there is only us. 

We’ll be responding in many ways in the coming months to this disaster.  The need is great, as it always is.  The opportunities are also great for each one of us to be the answer to another’s prayer.

Yes, yes, Santa is busy tonight, but here’s an idea – why not choose to be a “soul Santa” to someone this Christmastide?  A Soul Santa is someone who makes a point of giving from the heart to another person.  Perhaps you can be a Soul Santa with kindness, with a specific act of kindness and love toward someone – perhaps especially to someone who would least expect it.  Perhaps you can be a Soul Santa with the gift of listening, especially to someone who needs someone to hear, really hear, what they are saying from the heart.  Perhaps you can be a Soul Santa with the gift of compassion – Christmas can bring out the best and the worst in people as stress takes hold – your patience just might make the difference between a bad day and a great day for someone!  You can be a Soul Santa to someone who will not get any other gift this year!

Advent is a season of holy waiting.  Most of us spend a lot of time waiting, don’t we – waiting in a doctor’s office, waiting at a traffic light, waiting in line at the grocery store.  I can remember being so fascinated with the newness of the internet that watching the page build or load in front of my eyes was mesmerizing; now I marvel at how quickly I get irritated when the pages don’t load instantly.  We get so used to immediacy that we forget that most good things in life are valued precisely because of the time it takes to prepare them.  A memorable meal, a slow-burning fire, a child raised and launched – the personal investment is part and parcel of the meaning. 

Advent is a time to practice the art of waiting.  The most helpful image for me in understanding Advent waiting is remembering that we are waiting for a birth.  As with most babies, nothing we do will hasten his coming, not really.  The most and best we can do is simply be present and ready.   Advent is the announcement of God’s personal investment in us – for with the Incarnation, God has chosen to dwell with us as one of us.  God has entered time and invites us to take time to encounter the Sacred, to be met by the Holy One, to wrap a newborn baby not just with swaddling cloths but with our hearts’ true love.

Two weeks ago you didn’t know who Falcon Heene was. He was just a six year old kid in Colorado who played with video games and puppies just like every other six year old kid. Of course you know who he is now, don’t you – he’s the balloon boy. I missed this drama as I don’t watch much television but I was on a pastoral phone call that day and the person I was talking to had her television turned way up even though we were talking so I could hear the announcer in the background giving us a play by play – there is the balloon, you can see the door hanging open, it doesn’t seem possible that the little boy could be in there, so we watched – this is better than America’s next top model reruns because there’s danger – he might not make it! It sounds callous, I know, but you have to admit that not knowing if the boy was even in there made it more interesting. Then the balloon landed, he was indeed not in there, then hours later he was found safe at home, where he had fallen asleep, his parents grateful that Falcon is still with us. Two days later it was announced that the balloon boy escapade was a hoax, that the balloon could not have lifted off the ground had he ever at any time been inside it, and that Falcon’s parents had dreamed up this scheme to attract attention for the reality series they want to pitch to the cable networks – this seems to be the dad’s job, dreaming up possible stunts and reality shows. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me this scenario is a perfect example of what is wrong with our culture. Television crews put all their resources into tracking a homemade weather balloon across a sky because they knew anxious Americans would stay tuned to the story. Anxious Americans watched the story because this is what we were told to watch by so-called journalists who wouldn’t know a news story if it arrived in their inbox with the word SCOOP as the title. Networks carried it because they didn’t want to miss a percentage share of their audience – God forbid we stop watching CNN because they do not have constant coverage of a balloon floating in the air. The boy’s parents agonized perfectly on tv and we agonized with them because who wouldn’t agonize if your kid might be up in the air, like Dorothy on her way to Oz. And he wasn’t even in the thing. We watched something that was nothing. We were paralyzed as a nation for half a day over something that wasn’t even anything. As they sang in CATS, we had the experience but missed the meaning. How can a people prosper when their gaze is so easily averted from the important to the fascinating? As a people we suffer from spiritual ADD – our attention is constantly diverted from what is important and real to that which is staged and artificial. Shame on the parents for using their children in this way; shame on the media for suggesting that our national attention needed to be focused in this way, and shame on us for neglecting the children who are really at risk every day in our nation by poverty, neglect, lack of access to health care or education. What we see often depends on where we look, and we looked long and hard at nothing. What do you want me to do for you? Help us to see, Jesus. Help us to see.

I took my daughter to her first rock concert Saturday night – my first in 23 years.  We saw U2 at Carter-Finley Stadium.  I have been at Carter-Finley several times over the years; while I am not an NC State graduate, NCSU is my hometown school and I’ve been to a few games and the odd graduation event.  Waiting for U2 to come onstage, taking in the other-worldly stage, a huge rocket ship ready to take us to the heavens, I remembered the first time I was at Carter Stadium  – it was in the 1970’s and the Billy Graham Crusade was in town.  Billy Graham’s way of taking us to the heavens was a bit more sedate; I remember a mass church choir, a pulpit with many microphones, and families sitting politely on the cold stadium cement slabs.  Our family went to hear him; I remember walking down onto the field and receiving a packet of conversion information.   (Having been to church every Sunday since I was six weeks old, I’ve never really understood what I was supposed to be being converted to or from, but I got my packet and paperback Bible and rejoined my family for the ride home.)  In the nearly forty years since the Billy Graham event, I have finished seminary and spent 23 years as a United Methodist Clergy.  John Wesley asked me (by way of my bishop) if I would be determined to employ all my time in the work of God; and I believe I can answer that with a “yes.”  Whether my family thinks that’s a good answer, by the way, is still being determined.  

We waited for U2 the way grandparents wait for their grandchild to be born, the way a child waits to catch his or her first fish or frog.  We waited till we thought we’d burst, and then they walked out to the roar of an expectant crowd, and we were on our feet and off we went.  I was converted again – by rock songs and singers that dare to blur lines of sacred and secular, to advocate for justice for Aung San Suu Kyi as well as inviting us to be spiritually connected to God.  What other band gets a shout out from Bishop Desmond Tutu?  Bono invited us to church – and this pastor was preached to.  Gladly. 

Mainline churches can continue to bewail our droopy statistics, invent program after program, challenge after challenge, or we can follow an unconventional lead – a rock band that uses its world prominence to advocate for justice – and once again be unafraid to live the good news we believe.  It doesn’t take a space ship to get us to God – God has already come to us in Jesus Christ.  Just open your eyes.  And ears.  Thanks, U2.  My soul was tended to with your call for justice.

I’m taking my daughter to her first rock concert this weekend – U2!  I don’t know who is more excited.  I do rock concerts the way Eliza Doolittle might have done champagne – not at all often, but with long gulps when enjoyed at all.  The last rock concert I went to was Bruce Springsteen at the Dean Smith Center –  in 1986, I believe.  So I’m going to drink with long gulps and wait to sing along with the songs from The Joshua Tree, which I know by heart.  I’m going to believe, for one night, that music, politics, God, justice, and love can all hold hands -and that mine will be one of the hands held in that universal embrace.

Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT columnist, writing in today’s News and Observer, states, “I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture.  It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all.  More fundamentally, it has no soul.”  I was struck by that comment, and by his description of his own family’s farm, with its escaping cattle and dizzy sheepdog.  While Ido not know enough about industrial farming to pass judgment on whether it truly produces unhealthy food, the idea that the soul of farming has been replaced by mega-efficiency is one that resonates with me.  I live in an area where small farms are making a huge comeback, and our community is richer for it.  I shop at my local farmers’ market every week, and the availability of diverse, organic produce, and the opportunity to shake the hand that planted, tended, and harvested that produce, is something I no longer take for granted.    Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, notes that two-thirds of our calories come from just four foods – rice, soy, wheat, and corn.  Recovering the soul of farming is of great importance to us all.  It could  increase our health, and might even be as important to health care reform in recovering and rediscovering our collective soul. 

I see many parallels of soul-farming and the soul-tending work that is the mission of the church.  Perhaps one of the opportunities of the emerging church movement is the possibility of rediscovering that kingdom work is soul-work done on a small scale, where each story of kingdom life has dignity and purpose.  Rather than focusing on attracting more and more people to the conveyor belt of contemporary Christianity, we learn to focus on offering a wide range of opportunities for people to connect with others in small groups.  As Rick Warren has often said of the explosive growth of Saddleback Church, “we got bigger by getting smaller.” 

Soul-tending is our mission here at Carrboro UMC.   Whether you are wandering or wondering; whether you are fully committed to or newly curious about following Jesus; whether you are coming for the first time or coming back after a long time or even coming because you have always come to worship; there is a place for you here to tend your soul.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Claire

Blogging is a bit like gardening, I’ve decided – all summer I’ve had the best of intentions to discipline myself to write a new post each week for this new blog.  Each new week I carry over that task to my new list , promising myself that I will get to it, get to it, get to it.  I’ve been like that with the garden as well – my daily promise is to get over there and savor, weed, water, harvest, marvel.  Some days the tasks of ministry consume more time than expected, and I don’t get there.   So maybe blogging is not like gardening – the blog does not write itself, but the garden is producing from the automatic earth.  This morning we enjoyed the freshest cantaloupe – with each bite I recalled tilling the soil, planting the seeds, mounding up the earth, watering, and watching and waiting for the growth process to unfold.  I counted it as joy and blessing to eat something I had grown myself! 

Each week I bring the harvest from our community garden to church and set it out in a colorful African basket for people to take some home.  Each week I take home an empty basket!  While it could be as simple as the realization that, truly, “there’s only two things that money can’t buy – and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes” – it could also be that we are living out a kingdom truth as the community harvest is shared with the community.  Certainly not all who enjoy are physically able to plant, weed, and water, at least not now – but I know that these same folks whose days of bending over a hoe are behind or even before them nevertheless have a place at the harvest board. 

Recently I saw a teaching video by one of the pastors at Willow Creek Community Church.  He was describing the tedious necessity of keeping the vision in front of the gathered community so that we know what it looks like when we’re reaching that goal.  “Bull’s eye,” I thought – how do I build time and space into the life of our gathered community to recognize when we’re hitting the BULL’S EYE – when we are living in God’s kingdom in recognizable ways?  I’m thinking of this right now and welcome your suggestions for ways to celebrate the glimpses of the kingdom that we see all around us. 

The cantaloupe that yielded its goodness for our breakfast this morning may have been a kingdom moment or just a delicious meal.  I’m quite sure that the harvest basket is a kingdom activity, as will be the baptism of Ava this Sunday.  What BULL’S EYE moments have you been part of lately?  Let’s celebrate them together.