Dogged and Wooed by God

Posted on August 7, 2014 by admin

lake george from the little dock_w.sherman.8.14

Sitting on a porch by a lake in New York last week, my brother-in-law offered me a section from The New York Times. I declined and kept watching the boats go by, listening to the water lap the rocky shoreline. He joked, “You don’t want to know what’s happening in the rest of the world?” Nope.

Not that day anyway. During my time away I didn’t spend time online or listening to the radio or reading papers or watching any TV except baseball. It wasn’t hard. It was satisfying, restful and rejuvenating.

Coming back to the world of 24-hour noise after a tech Sabbath can be disorienting. Some news stories and have come and gone. Others are into level three of their coverage and I have to go back and piece together how we got there. Others, like the coverage of the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa and the Americans being treated at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, are simply puzzling.

I heard a snippet on NPR one morning this week during media re-entry. Ebola in Africa, Americans transported. I thought, I hope they’re OK. By the time I got around to listening to a lengthier report or reading anything about this online, Ann Coulter and others had already chimed in and yet others had retorted. Having been out of the media cycle and as relaxed as I’ve been in a year, it was hard to imagine what sort of left-right divide could have happened around this issue.

Silly me. In the world some folks live in, everything is a left-right issue, if they want it to be.

I’m not going to thoroughly research this “debate” or try to catch up on each twist the “conversation” has taken. I’m not even going to dwell on the hatefulness evident in Coulter’s article, though it will reach out and slap you in the face if you read it. (You can find her 8/6/14 article “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiotic’” on her website but I don’t even want to offer the hyperlink here.) I’m simply going to point out one thing, in response to two questions she poses.

Talking about Americans who would be protected from this virus if we stayed put instead of traveling to Africa, she asks, “But why do we have to deal with this at all?”

(We deal with things – unpleasant, seemingly remote things – because we are all living on the same planet and because the far away people suffering a plague are our brothers and sisters. We deal with it because to care for other humans – especially when we don’t “have to” by law or familial obligation – makes us more deeply human.)

Later she laments people going to Africa on mission trips and asks, “Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore?”

(Of course we can, and do. But this question suggests we either serve Christ here or in other world locations. It’s a false choice.)

Both questions reveal a lack of understanding about how and why Christians express their faith as action in the world.

Christians deal with the things we would not choose for ourselves and we go to unusual places far from home (literally, emotionally, spiritually) because we are called. Pushed, nudged, prodded, dogged, and wooed by God. Beckoned to a task or a place beyond what we would have chosen for ourselves, sometimes an illogical one by other standards.

We worship and follow the One who came in the vulnerable form of a human body, a body just like ours and just like our brothers’ and sisters’ bodies in Africa, susceptible to disease and hunger. Jesus put his hands all over the scabbed contagious bodies of his neighbors and he sends us to offer healing, too (Matthew 8: 1-3, Matthew 9: 18-38, Acts 3: 1-10). When we go, we are called to look for Christ in the “distressing disguise of the poor” he wears so often (Mother Teresa).

Medical missionary work in Africa is not how God calls everyone. It’s OK if it’s not your calling or Coulter’s. Don’t worry, there is plenty to do here in the States and right there on your street. But don’t make her mistake. Don’t assume that hiding out behind vitriol, fear, and an insulating we-take-care-of-our-own mentality will save you. It might protect you from a virus, at least for a while, but none of that will protect you when God comes calling with another idea.

Though I don’t want to isolate myself in a protective bubble, I enjoyed the bubble of time I preserved for vacation and time out from this fray. I appreciated the smaller circle of care and concern and I reveled in saying “no” to the newspaper. I felt called to step back and out of the normal loop of work and responsibility, called into God-given Sabbath time (which is another way God operates that doesn’t make sense to the way the world operates).

The point is not whether you step forward or step back, whether God calls you to this or that at any given moment. The point is that God is calling. Always. And each time we are called out of loops of our own making, into deeper relationship – with ourselves, one another, and God. Are you listening?

Gone Fishin’ (and great news)

Posted on July 23, 2014 by admin

There comes a time in every woman’s summer when she has to step away. Out of the routine, off the treadmill, away from work, offline. That time is now for me.

I thought about loading up the Kindle for ease of packing and lightweight luxuriousness during my travels and time out. Then I thought again.

I want to feel the heft of a book in my hands and hear the crinkly plastic covering of a library book. I want to smell the pages and feel them turn between my fingers. Most of all, I simply want to be attentive to my physical surroundings rather than being distracted by pings and messages and stories from other far away places while I’m trying to read. I anticipate the pleasures of lingering over a page wondering where that town is without the incessant invitation to open a browser window and look it up on a map.

Far away stories will have to come through the portal of my imagination, mingling with a writer’s words, put down in black and white on paper. No hypertext (or email or Facebook) for this vacation.

So I made a trip to the library, like we did every week when I was growing up. Since I don’t do this much any more, maybe part of this book-in-the-hand longing is nostalgia. So be it. In the week leading into our vacation, we’ve buried a family member and will toast a longtime family friend at her wedding. If a stack of library books and a little nostalgia is the result of this swirl of events and emotions, I’m good with that.

As I make room in the car for the giant stack of books, I am making room in my spirit for the people and stories right in front of me. Here’s my gone fishin’ sign. I’ll see you again back here in a few weeks.

And now for the news…

I’m so pleased to announce Snow Day has been accepted into the CCblogs network. You’ll see the bright and shiny new logo on the home page and you can click on it to head over to the CCblogs site at The Christian Century, where you can peruse other network sites and see selected posts highlighted by The Christian Century editors.

When the Words Sink In

Posted on June 29, 2014 by admin

Today we closed the church building where my dad attended growing up and where I visited throughout my childhood on summer Sundays at my grandparents’. They are buried in the cemetery out back now, along with two sets of my great-grandparents. It was bittersweet to worship at Rocky Run UMC one last time with second cousins and longtime country neighbors, helping celebrate Communion in one of the places that helped form me as a person and a pastor.

For years now, whenever I serve small children during Communion, I offer them the elements by saying, “This means God loves you very much.” I can’t claim credit for this idea since I copied it from my colleague Alex. But I love its simple restating of the point of the Eucharist and what all those other words mean. Boiled down and essential good news: God loves you very much.

Today, during the last Communion we’ll share in that place, a small blond boy of about 5 came up. I offered him the bread and the simple words. He took them and took a step towards the other minister, who was holding the cup. Then he did a double-take. He looked back at me as if the words had sunk in and he realized after a beat what they meant. He was radiant, with a smile of surprise and delight on his open face.

Yes! That is good news. Yes! It is for you, little one. Yes! Even on a day when the doors will close and lock behind us, this is still God’s Word for you. Yes, yes, yes!

Overheard at the Pool

Posted on June 18, 2014 by admin

3800316785_c5b76cfed8_z

I love to people watch. Sometimes I’ll plunk myself down with a coffee and a good view and just observe the comings and goings on a particular day in a particular spot. Often I’m watching from afar, my own silent movie, guessing about that fight across the street or the rush of that family whizzing by outside.

Sometimes I hear entire conversations I’m not trying to hear. On those days I’m simply trying to get some work done or read a few chapters yet I find myself next to a table of talkers. If I can tune it out I usually do, but in a tightly packed coffee shop sometimes we are stuck with each other and the stories floating past their proper tables.

Then there is the public bathroom stall, wherein some folks feel the need to keep talking no matter what. Bodily noises, doors slamming, flushes galore, and yet these folks keep up their end of the conversation which is, of course, loud enough for the rest of us to hear. Most of the time I can’t listen to those conversations because I’m too busy plotting my move to yell loudly, “You know she’s on the toilet, right?” (No, I haven’t done that yet.)

Our pool opened up a few weeks ago and I’m swimming my laps outside. I try to go early enough to avoid the throngs of kids but there are usually a few parents in the shallow end with toddlers. They are often there together at the same time each day, parents chatting while kids intermittently shout, “Look at me!”

I don’t try to listen to these conversations but water is a great sound carrier and some parents are used to having adult talk while kids play nearby. I usually dry off and catch my breath and log my miles in my phone. Just a few minutes in the fresh air sitting near the pool. And then phrases come my way, bouncing across the water’s surface…”Then I switched to Prozac”… Just enough so I’ll look up, wondering who said that and how the rest of the story unfolds.

Even in coffee shops and bathroom stalls a lot of people are talking to other people in other places. I’ve gotten so used to the louder-than-normal cell phone speech that when a quiet little person-to-person sentence blows across the water to my ears it seems strange now. Strange that folks are actually talking to one another in person, sometimes about things they might want to keep more private. But still.

Today I said a little prayer for the talker who’s been trying out medications. And I thought how old-fashioned it is to overhear two sides of a conversation. I thanked God for the 90 degree heat, forcing us to quit our houses and our phones and jump into the pool together for a while.

Ode to Aspens

Posted on June 13, 2014 by admin

loren kerns c 2013_aspens and sky pic

John Denver was on the radio when I was growing up. Living in Virginia as a non-skier who’d never been west of Texas, I can’t think of any other reason I would have known Colorado names like Golden, Aspen, or Boulder. With his silky bowl-cut, round wire glasses, and guitar, he ushered into my life the idea of “coming home to a place you’ve never been before” and gliding on a “Rocky Mountain high.”

I don’t know when I figured out aspens were trees and not just an exotic-sounding ski town, but I first saw them on my way to the Telluride Music Festival in my 20s…

[Click here for the rest of the story at catapult magazine.]

Unexpected

Posted on May 19, 2014 by admin

A sermon preached on Mark 10: 17-22, delivered during Wesley’s baccalaureate worship the evening before UVA graduation.

There are certain things we think we know. Like what success after graduation looks like and the right path to achieving it. Or how Jesus is supposed to act.

So sometimes, when we come across a story like this one from Mark, we aren’t sure what to do with it. Isn’t Jesus supposed to run after this man and make it easier for him? Convince him he’s really the Way? Give him one more chance? Force him to follow? It can make us uncomfortable when things don’t go like we think they will or should.

Maybe this is why so many graduation speakers sound alike and why those books you can buy for graduates also sound alike. As a culture, we want to send you all out there with marching orders and a firm, believable, reliable path for getting exactly where we think you’re supposed to go.

The problem with this is we often don’t know where we are going. Or why.

While many of you were at the beach last week, light-writing and beach-combing, I was reading a book called Dirt Work by Christine Byl, a writer I was introduced to at the Festival of Faith & Writing I attended last month in Michigan. Byl graduated from college with a plan to get a PhD so she could teach and write. Her whole life had pointed her in the direction of academic life and indoor pursuits – the life of the mind, as it’s sometimes called. There wasn’t a question in her mind about the goal. But she wanted to spend a year or so taking a break in a beautiful place with her boyfriend before she dove back into the next degree.

So they moved to Montana. And the plan started to unravel. Or take shape. Depending upon who you ask.

On a lark, Byl signed up late in the summer season to work on a trail crew in Glacier National Park. These are the folks who repair trails, build walls, remove downed trees, and generally make hiking enjoyable for the rest of us. There is little that had prepared her for this work. She describes herself as 125 pounds soaking wet and she’d spent more time in libraries and in front of computers than she had using chainsaws or hauling heavy things. Before the trail job, she hadn’t done much outdoors other than hike.

But like all good teachers, trail work showed her what she was missing. Rather than seeing academics as higher and more desirable and manual labor as lower and less prestigious, she realized they had different things to teach and that she was in need of learning what the woods could teach, too. The seemingly offhanded decision to join a trail crew late in the season ended up becoming the start of an entirely new education. From the beginning, she knew she was on a journey but she didn’t know where she was headed. Eighteen years later she’s still doing trail work. The place, the people, and the work transformed her and showed her a new path. Something completely unknown, unseen, and unexpected when she set out for Montana.

Unexpected, like Jesus giving the man what he really wanted and needed, though not what he asked for. Mark tells us the man is getting ready for a journey and wants to nail down the unexpected – Here’s the list of all the commandments I keep now what else should I be doing? I want to have my bases covered. Jesus gives him something else, an invitation. Come, follow, untangle yourself from the possessions that tie you down, live courageously and with transforming risk… This is, of course, not what the man wants to hear. He wants a list. He wants tried and true. He wants to have his expectations met, not overturned. If he were walking the Lawn with you tomorrow he’d have one of those graduate books and a five-year plan up his sleeve.

Whenever I read this story I wonder what happened next. All we’re told is the man went away sad and that Jesus let him go. Did he sleep well that night? Did he catch up with Jesus later? Did he ask another rabbi the same question? Did he write off Jesus as crazy and live the way he intended all along?

Maybe that unexpected encounter with Jesus bore fruit in the man’s life eventually. Maybe not.

For the man in the story as we have it, he misses his opportunity. For Christine Byl, she seized her opportunity and was seized by it. She let it lead her on a path she had never considered – one that revealed her calling and her most authentic self. She writes, “…I believe that the surprising turns our lives take can bring us to our unexpected selves” (Dirt Work, pp. xxi-xxii).

I hope your time at UVA has been unexpected and I hope at least part of that has been because of your involvement in the Wesley community. Maybe being part of Wesley overturned Sunday school assumptions and easy answers, helped you form deeper community than you thought possible, rerouted your major and your direction from here… Maybe it’s been as simple as the realization that the most important part of college wasn’t the college itself but what you did, who you did it with, and who you’ve become while you were here.

I have seen you take steps in the direction of your unexpected selves. Keep going.

Count on the blessings of the unexpected. Know that whatever paths you take – loopy roundabout paths or five-year-plan paths – God has surprises in store for you. God will bless you with the unexpected over and over again. God is not done with you yet. And though you may come with only the patience for the answer you want to receive, God will give you what you need. Every time. In every place. On every path. The ones that lead into the woods and those that lead back out again.

The God who met you here and transformed your college years in an unexpected place like Wesley will meet you on any path you chose from here – including the paths that seem to choose you. You can count on that.

Thanks be to God!

Custody of the Eyes

Posted on April 24, 2014 by admin

When you swim freestyle, if you have your head in the right position, your neck is long and un-crooked and your eyes are looking straight down at the black line of tile on the bottom of the pool. Your head is in line with the rest of your body, with just the back of it at the surface of the water. The temptation is to bend your neck back so the crown of your head erupts from the water and your eyes are looking forward, finding the wall or the swimmer in front of you or whatever’s next. There’s no need for this, since it creates unwanted drag in the water, changing your form from one long line to a shorter line with a lump at the end of it. Also, that’s what the black line is for.

swimming pool with lane ropes and lines

The black line tells you everything you need to know about what’s coming up ahead. It changes into a T just before the wall, giving you plenty of time to prepare for your turn without running head first into the wall. After the turn, there it is again, leading the way.

I swim several miles a week so I spend a lot of time staring down at the black line, reminding myself it is, indeed, the correct position. When I find my head pulling back and looking forward I remind myself again and resume my black line gaze. When my competitive nature kicks in and I want to look sideways at the next lane to see how I compare to that other swimmer, I move my head back to the correct position. In line, eyes on the line.

My other temptation is getting ahead of myself in the count. If I am at 16 laps and my plan is to switch strokes when I get to 20 laps, my mind starts to calculate and plan about that next set of 20 laps. A lap or two goes by while I’m busy in my head and I realize I’ve lost count. Was that 16 or 18? Or, I’m at 16 laps and I start scheduling my day, calculating meeting times and how long it will take to accomplish certain tasks, and whether I have time to call so-and-so, and if I’ll feel like vacuuming when I get home, and if not, will I care or fret…Was that 16 or 18? How long was I lost in my head just then? My body’s floating in chlorinated water but for that lapse of time I was really someplace else.

As in swimming, so in life. Staying right where I am, eyes and attention focused on exactly what I’m doing now, is one of the hardest spiritual disciplines. I constantly want to consider the next 20 laps while I’m trying to make it through this 20. It’s too easy to lose track that way, to do a poor job on the laps at hand, to develop the bad habit of never inhabiting the present moment while always planning for the future moments.

Monastic communities engage in a practice called “custody of the eyes” and lately I’ve been thinking about that phrase as I remind myself to keep staring at the black line in the pool. The idea is to keep your eyes to yourself, both to preserve your spiritual equilibrium and to give privacy and respect to others. It’s often evoked when talking about ogling people in a sexual way, but Catholics also speak of practicing custody of the eyes during Communion, keeping one’s gaze down, away, and internally focused. In monastic communities, custody of the eyes enables people to live, work, and pray in intimate quarters while preserving privacy. Where our eyes land, so does our attention. Keeping custody of the eyes is about working on your own stuff, whether you’re in a crowd at church or walking down the street alone, and it’s about being present to what’s before you right now.

Out of the pool I wear glasses. In the pool I wear non-prescription goggles. I can’t see the expression on the lifeguard’s face but the goggles cut the water’s fuzziness just enough that I can see the black line. This would not be good enough in land life but it’s more than sufficient in the water. Maybe it’s even better, helping keep me focused on the only thing I can really see, the black line orienting me to the right position and the next stroke, and the next.

Come on over. My house is a mess.

Posted on April 18, 2014 by admin

My mom and my aunt giggle remembering the Ritter family in their 1950’s neighborhood. Apparently, whenever my family would pass by their house the curtains were unflatteringly askew. It came to be a thing they looked for and snickered about and, eventually, named “rittered curtains.” As in, “Fix those curtains. Look at how they’re rittered.”

My mom also remembers her mother ironing handkerchiefs.

stylized maid serving tea

My parents tell another story about the house I grew up in. At one point my mom took down the curtains in their bedroom to wash them. Many weeks later when my dad noticed them missing he asked about it. They were in a washed but wrinkled pile in the laundry room, waiting for my mom to iron them so she could put them back up on the windows. Once she’d filled him in on the proceedings, my dad said, matter-of-factly, with no judgment, “I guess we’d better buy new curtains.”

My mom hates ironing.

I love the satisfaction of an ordered, clutter-free, no-rings-around-the-tub house. I feel like I can relax and enjoy being in it when it’s clean and tidy. I am definitely the kind of person who cleans for company – I even clean when I invite students over for dinner. Company is company. But we haven’t had anyone over in a long, long time. Until this week – because my parents are coming – I’m pretty sure we hadn’t cleaned the entire house since New Year’s Eve.

I know where my iron is but can’t say the last time I used it.

I fantasize about hiring someone to clean our house twice a month. I have it all worked out, how the cleaners would arrive on Monday mornings after my lovely but magically-crumb-producing stepson leaves from the weekend. I hesitate for many reasons: I come from a family who invented “rittered curtains” as a category; I come from a family who’s always done our own cleaning; and, it’s not in the budget right now.

I also hesitate because there’s a part of me that thinks If you’re too busy to clean your house, you’re too busy. It’s a strange life when the things that sustain us –preparing food, cleaning our homes, sleeping, moving our bodies about outside, relaxing – are considered things for which we are “too busy.” I don’t need enough time on my hands to take up ironing sheets (and undershirts and handkerchiefs, if men still wore these) but I would love to feel like we have enough time to keep up with the basics. I would like to be on a cleaning schedule that’s more frequent than quarterly.

You can see from this tale how each generation of my family has relaxed the standard of the previous generation. But I still want to invite someone over to a comfortable and clean house. I can’t completely give that one up. So we’ve had very little company or dinner guests lately. Here we are at Easter weekend with our first company since New Year’s Eve.

It’s Holy Week and I have been sick with the crud since Sunday night: these two facts alone should be enough to cut myself some slack. Nope. I knocked myself out (and my husband, too) to get the house clean by Good Friday.

This isn’t simply about busy-ness or family lineage. It’s about perfectionism.

Brené Brown tells a story about friends stopping by her house unexpectedly when the place was a mess. Brown’s daughter came to find her with a worried expression on her face – worried in advance about the stress the surprise visit would generate in her mom. But Brown, who was at that very moment working on her book (The Gifts of Imperfection), simply changed her clothes and said to her daughter, “I’m so glad they’re here. What a nice surprise! Who cares about the house!” She walked bravely to the door with a smile on her face and welcomed her friends in for a visit in her completely imperfect house. She says she did so while putting herself “in a Serenity Prayer trance” (The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 58).

Maybe someday Brené Brown will be the matron saint of vulnerability and glorious imperfection. Maybe I’ll have a little statue I can shoot a glance at when the doorbell rings or a text chimes with the opportunity to entertain a guest. I need the encouragement because I am not there yet on my own. Clearly.

How about you? How do you save your sanity while not living in swill? How do you cut yourself some slack? What family traditions have you let go of in order to make more room for life? How’s your life becoming more gracious these days?

photo credit: Public domain. Originally produced for the Works Progress Administration, circa 1939.

Snow, Spring, Haiku

Posted on March 21, 2014 by admin

I realize almost everyone in the US is ready for spring that acts like spring. I know most folks have had more than enough snow this year. But I won’t complain next week if we get more, as they are beginning to predict. It will eventually stop and, God help me, it will be Virginia-humid and 90 degrees. Count on it.

snow piled in front of cars ready to shovel

I have loved the snow this winter, even with this driveway and all the shoveling. (And, no, we do not have helpful neighborhood kids who come over and offer to shovel with us – it’s all us.) For someone with a blog called Snow Day I didn’t pause often or long enough this winter. Ready-made excuses drifted up to my door but I barreled through most of the called snow days sitting at the computer, as usual.

There was one early morning storm that caught my attention for about 40 minutes as I drank coffee and wrote haiku by hand on the legal pad. I stopped long enough to simply watch what was happening.

At the edge of spring I’m pausing to remember that morning and breathe it in one last time. Whether we’ve seen the last of the snow or not, I give thanks for the beauty of what’s been and for the traces it leaves behind.

Gentle rain of snow

Awakens me before dawn

Stills my attention

* *

Grey sky, bluish light

White fuzz muffle flaking down

Quiet streets outside

* *

Sound of heat blowing

Feel of fleece robe on my skin

Sight of world in white

* *

Snow, awaken me

Show me a new world outside

Absorb our noise now

* *

Thank you, God, for this

Day of snowflakes and stillness

Gift of present time

Where I Stand

Posted on March 1, 2014 by admin

A friend asked me recently, commenting on the news of United Methodist clergy celebrating weddings for same-sex couples, “Where do you stand?” Specifically, she wanted to know what I would do if a same-sex couple came to me to celebrate their wedding.

It’s not a short answer.

Our church’s fights over sexuality are part of why it took me so long to be ordained. If I’m honest, I was hearing God at least as far back as college but was still resisting the call even during seminary. Besides a Jonah-like stubborn streak, the sexuality wars were part of my resistance. Some of the people who inspired me most in ministry, who gave me a vision for what it could be like to serve in the church, are gay. I watched as they switched gears into other careers and callings. I went to seminary with some who would be much stronger clergy then I am, but who don’t have that option available, based on their God-given sexuality.

logo for the Reconciling Ministries Network

For too long I thought accepting God’s call to ordained ministry meant accepting everything the United Methodist Church currently states in its Book of Discipline. (Here’s the section called The Social Principles, where our positions on most cultural issues are found. We currently do not ordain “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” nor are clergy permitted to officiate or churches permitted to host same-sex ceremonies.) I knew I couldn’t do that with integrity and it held me back. I didn’t exactly have to spend time in the belly of a whale, but through years of wrestling and running I came to understand it differently. I realized I need to be able to articulate the church’s current positions but complete agreement on non-doctrinal matters was not part of the call.

During the Jonah years, during the long-awaited ordination process, and during my ministry I have not been quiet about my disagreement. In my preaching, teaching, conversation, writing, witness and pastoral care, I have not been quiet. But let me be crystal clear: love is love; I fully support LGBTQ people, marriage equality, and ordination regardless of sexuality. I think our church is wrong on this and I’m inspired by the rumblings and protests and what feels like more and more energy in the right direction. I am rooting for change and I am trying to help enact it.

Last spring I signed An Altar for All. I really wanted to sign the first option, that I would officiate at same-sex weddings. After thought, prayer, and a long conversation with my husband, I signed the second option, which is “clergyperson supportive of others officiating same-sex ceremonies.”

Of course I wanted to sign option one. Of course I want to be able to say yes when students, alumni, and friends come to me asking to be married. I want all of them to know they can come and I can say yes.

We’re not there yet.

The problem with taking a long time to answer God’s call to ordained ministry is I had plenty of time to get really clear on what I was answering. The call is from God and my deepest allegiance is there, which is why I understand and support clergy who feel called to act in defiance of our current Book of Discipline (a document that is by its nature changeable, edited every four years at General Conference). But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, God called me to ministry in the United Methodist Church and I believe God is still calling me to ministry in this church.

When my husband and I discussed this and the dynamics of institutional change, he said, “Not everyone can be the point of the spear.” Some are called to this. Some are called to work more incrementally, from within the system as it currently exists. I would love to be the point of the spear. My ego wants that. But being a Christian means God’s call takes precedence over the way I would write the story.

I still hear God calling me to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. And I believe God is working in the church and transforming individuals and the institution. I hope the work goes quickly and I am trying to be part of that work – because I believe the church is better with me in it. That’s not always a comfortable or ego-pleasing place to be, but it’s the place I feel called to be.

I don’t know what will happen in our church. We seem to be gaining momentum, at least in the United States. I don’t know if we’ll be tempted to split or if we’ll give in to that temptation. Maybe, if we do, it won’t be temptation but yet another call. I can’t tell from here.

All I can tell you is that, for now, I would have to say no to officiating at a same-sex ceremony. Even as my heart would want to scream yes and even as I continue to work for change in the institution. Even as it breaks my heart that we’re still here and still stuck. Even as I would be unable to serve as a juror in a clergy trial because I’d never find someone “guilty” of officiating a same-sex wedding. Even as it would be both a huge victory and a huge embarrassment to have the Commonwealth of Virginia “beat us to it.”

But the end of the story is never where we think it is with God. We worship a wily and confounding God who is surely stirring hearts and minds as She blows through this institution, messing with our ideas, allegiances, sacred cows, and callings. So I keep attentive, keep listening, keep hopeful. And I keep working for change, for justice.

Photo credit: Reconciling Ministries Network

The Scarlet V

Posted on February 14, 2014 by admin

For the record, I have never wanted a Whitman’s sampler or something from Jared. But I have wanted something different out of Valentine’s Day for most of my life.

Wesley love_cookies collage_marylacygrecco_c2014

In high school you could buy single flowers for people (mums at homecoming, roses at Valentine’s). It was both fundraiser and humiliation device. By lunchtime, the popular kids were piling stacks of long-stemmed roses on top of their books as they struggled to make it to class under all that love. Throughout the long morning, flowers were delivered to individuals in their classrooms. So it wasn’t enough to watch someone’s tally grow as a pile they carried around all day – you had to have class interrupted multiple times, all eyes on the delivery personnel, as the well-loved were brought yet another rose.

I got flowers from my best friends and my brother. I was thankful they loved me, sure, but more so that I could carry around at least 2 or 3 flowers rather than none. I really wanted one of my unrequited loves to come to his senses, though none ever did.

Throughout my childhood and most of my adulthood my mom has given me a Valentine’s card. For a long time I felt like I did about the flowers in high school: thankful not to be entirely left out but a little embarrassed that they weren’t “real” Valentines.

By the time I was in seminary I openly fantasized about throwing a Hester Prynne party on February 14^th. I wanted to make gingerbread cookies and decorate them with scarlet icing on each little chest.

When Woody and I met and he discovered I had never had a boyfriend when Valentine’s Day rolled around, he made sure not to overlook my first time. It was sweet, attentive, silly, and full of chocolate, rose petals, and love notes. It was lovely.

But, as my friend Jan has said about life with her husband, at that point it was redundant. That Valentine’s Day with Woody wasn’t any better than every day I spend with him. He makes it a point to show and tell me he loves me all year long. (I only hope I’m half as good at showing and telling him.)

I still think a Hester Prynne party would be fantastic. But over 39 years of unsatisfying Valentine’s Days, I dreaded the day because I wanted proof I was lovable, demonstrated in some publicly understood manner, so there were no more questions on the matter. It’s painful to admit that because, if you had asked me on any one of those days, I would probably have given you a superlative feminist cultural critique about why it didn’t matter, while inside feeling heartbroken yet again.

What’s even more painful to admit is how blind and stupidly proud I was. I don’t know how lovable I am, but I have been loved well by many people my whole life. The Valentines my mom gave me were also redundant. Among many other examples I could give: Mom came from two hours away to do my laundry every week for the four months I was on crutches with a broken ankle.

As with God’s grace, I have done nothing to deserve or warrant any of these good and loving people. But I am so thankful for them. I spent too many years hoping for something that hadn’t come along yet and not fully recognizing what was right there the whole time. Don’t make my mistake.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

5 Things that are Definitely Not Resolutions

Posted on February 4, 2014 by admin

I am not into resolutions. You can probably tell by the fact that I’m writing this in February.

Increasingly New Year’s resolutions seem like one more thing. Already, I don’t know a single person who does everything on the list: checks her credit score every week, exercises precisely the number of times per week and minutes per session for optimal health, spends quality time with the children and spouse and herself, reads for fun, takes a class to push herself, optimizes job performance, relaxes fully, sleeps well, eats just enough, visits with neighbors, visits family on a regular basis, powerwashes the house before it starts to look green…Do I have to keep going here?

Instead of resolutions, some folks receive star words to live with for the year. These are meant to help you set an intention that’s a little more wide open than a list of resolutions and they are meant to unfold and illustrate and absorb meaning over the course of your year. I like this idea better than naming a list of resolutions, but I’m just not looking for more to attend to – even a word.

Stepping out of my usual routine into vacation time over the Christmas break helped remind me of a world where people have each other over for dinner or show up for a visit and some coffee mid-afternoon. I miss that world. Of course I know it can’t be like that all the time, but neither can it all be saved up for a once-a-year-family-and-friends-fest – and then back to a starvation diet the other eleven months.

So this is not a list. It’s not complete or authoritative. If you are doing fine with your resolutions or your word for the year and you don’t need this, fantastic. Come back when you feel hurried, crammed, or lonesome.

For the rest of us, 5 ideas for changing your pace and connecting to people and life at a deeper level…

Learn to cook something (new). You can go big with something like fondue or simply make a homemade soup. This one’s about delight, nurture, sustenance, and feeding your creative spirit as well as your stomach.

Take a walk without having to get anywhere and see where it takes you. You can do this in a mall or a nature trail or a state park. Don’t set a goal. Don’t rush. Saunter or, as the French say, be a flâneur. This one’s about being present and open to adventure. Experience unfurling.

Sit down and compose correspondence. You can do it by email or letter, but it should include thought and time. (If you are unable to stay with the one draft you’re working on, rather than checking and responding to other email messages in one big multi-tasking mess, then compose offline.) Say what you’ve been meaning to say to the other person or simply catch him up on your life. This is qualitatively different than posting a bunch of Instagram pictures for him to cull through. This one’s about going slowly enough to consider, gather thoughts, revise.

Give yourself regular time (daily or even weekly) to be unplugged, unscheduled, and unproductive. Start with 10 minutes. Turn off ringers and other intrusive notifications and set a timer so you don’t have to monitor the time. You can sit on the porch, watch the clouds and squirrels, and be still. You can use the time for mindfulness practice or prayer – but if that feels “productive” (One of my New Year’s resolutions is to spend time in prayer each day) then don’t. Be. Rest. Catch up your body and soul with one another. See where this leads.

Ask someone to show you what they love. Why does your daughter love that song? What does your grandfather get out of whittling? How is running integral to your friend’s life? Listen and pay attention. You don’t have to love it, too, but love them. Make space in your day and your heart to listen and receive (a gift in itself). Let the other person take you by the hand and let yourself follow.

photo credit: public domain image

Snow Day

Space to play, rest, create, feast.

Category Archives: Paying Attention