Praytell

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

It was a quarter century ago that the thought first hit home.  For whatever reason there had been a series of stories about premature children, whose months in pre-natal wards gave them a chance to live.  There was a price to all those machines, all those incubaters, all those doctors and nurses who gave extraordinary care to a child who, just 50 years ago certainly would have died.  It was not uncommon for the final bill to be more than half a million dollars.  Few quibbled with the price.  After all, what would be the price of a young life?

But then I heard the reaction of a missionary who had been working, as I remember it, in Bangladesh. “It makes me sick,” he evidently said.  “The price of one premature child in the United States could save thousands of lives in Bangladesh.”

I was taken aback.

On the one hand one could say that the essence of compassion means sharing it broadly, generously, and to as many recipients as possible.  On the other hand, the trade-0ff seemed stark.  The numbers told the story, not the mother, the father, the child of the thousands of mothers, fathers and children for whom a supply of rice would bless them just as much as an IV would save a premature child.

“We should do both,” I said to myself.  The resources to do both are available.  The unjust allocation of our resources is invariably the heart of the problem.  For a while the dilemma took a back seat.

But then it resurfaced.

I was at a camp for cancer patients and their families.  I may exaggerate, but not one had the resources necessary to pay for their treatments.  Each had to find a way to beat the system.  Each had to rely on his or her intrinsic self-worth.  Each had to find a way to not be swept away by the thought that their condition had made them “too expensive.”

Earlier that year, we had our own battles with insurance.  It had become clear that the insurance company was doing everything it possibly could to throw us out of the system.  “We need the forms in two days, or else.”  “But there are no forms?”  “One day.  Final Notice.”  “But . . . “  It did not take much to figure out that down deep the insurance company would have much preferred it if I had simply died after the first stroke.  And if that didn’t do it, I should have bought the farm after the second stroke as far as they were concerned.  I too had become too expensive.  They wanted to cut their losses.  “There are others,” an insurance company representative said to me, implying that the payments we were to receive would better be spent elsewhere.

Like many others, I then found a new level to the “costs.”  Pre-existing conditions made me too risky to hire.  The progress made since the strokes was admirable, but, all things considered, the numbers made me a bad bet.  I am, of course, writing short-hand here.  Perhaps the “cost” issue isn’t as black and white as I make it out to be.  But it sure feels that way.

And, of course, it is the exact dilemma that surfaced when the missionary criticized the cost of a premature child.  And it is a dilemma we struggle with as a country, as a church, as a state, as a community.  It turns out that there actually is a cost and there are those whose job it is not to fish but to cut bait.

I write knowing that I am not the only one.  There are millions of us.  Medical expenses constitute the largest single reason for bankruptcy in the United States.  Over and over again we strive to keep hope alive despite the cost.  Over and again we realize that life is more than a set of numbers.  It’s not that numbers don’t count . . . they do.  They require us to avoid a prescription because we cannot afford it, to sell the farm when the bills on the kitchen table tell us we have no choice but to sell it.  Yes, there is a place for numbers.  But there is also a place for life.

Which brings me to the church.

As I posted on an earlier Faith/Health blog, we love to assume that hospital systems and the church are cut of the same cloth.  History tells us that it is true, as many hospitals trace their origins to the mission and ministries of the church.  But turn the stone a bit, and we find they are two almost entirely separate worlds.

I would like to join a church.  “Sorry.  You will cost too much.”  Such a conversation is unimaginable.  “I am asking the church to hold my family in prayer as we face a set of surguries that may or may not make a difference.  Pastor, would you drop by?”  “Sorry, but that will cost you.  We charge by the elder, by the prayer, and by the visit.”

Whenever we do accounting “by the book” in the life of the church we have a sense that we’re missing something.  We do not live by the offering plate, important though it may be.  But if we try to increase offerings just to increase offerings, without speaking of life, without laughter, without play, without mystery, and without paradox . . . we will soon run aground.  That’s the paradox.  Numbers are predictable.  The work of the spirit is not.  As Jesus said, it goes where it wants to go.  And it has never once said, “You cost too much.”

Thanks be to God.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Catholic school in somewhat southern Minneapolis needed some work.  The clocks made no pretense of showing the time.  Panels in the gym needed repair.  It had been a long time since the school, its doors, its windows, its stairs, its signs felt new and were a source of pride. The pride now, I thought, isn’t in the building . . . it must be in the teaching.  And so it was.

There were perhaps 30 of us.  Spanish would be the language of the day, but everything said would be translated.  We were there to hear the stories of immigrants, both the abuses they endure and the hopes they nurture.  We knew which way the political winds are blowing.  Immigration reform has been replaced by a virtual Berlin wall along the Mexican border, the Minite Men Militia is up in arms.  ICE raids have virtually cleaned out Iowa towns.  These are not safe or generous times for immigrants who strive to call America “home.”

In the gymnasium we listen to each other’s stories, wondering if they can bring about a change of heart.  If the governor were here, what would he say?  I wonder.  If the legislators were here, what would they say?  Do these stories have the power to bring about change?  I don’t know.  But I do remember what was shared.

Snippits:

“I was the oldest.  We had no money.  In our village people were almost killing each other just to find something to eat.  My father told me I had to leave, I had to cross the border and find work.  It was up to me.  The story drifts a bit.  “I rode my bicycle one night past my school.  A gang attacked me.  They almost left me for dead.  People walked past me, but nobody stopped.”  He holds out his arms, accentuating the message.  It was unbelievable.  Nobody stopped.  Nobody.”  Another shrug of the shoulders.  “It took me an hour to get home.”  And then he left. Somehow he found his way to Minneapolis.  The story is told with tears, with appreciation of family and astonishment at how cruel life can be.

“In our town,” says another, “we have given up hope.  “Nobody believes in anything.”  She and her husband have formed a small community, maybe 30 or 40 people, who meet to find hope, to care for each other, to pray, to pin the dragon of despair.  In the workplace one dares not complain.  Fear and despair set the tone.  And so they drove 60 miles for an all-day meeting to ask the age old questions, “What good can be done?  And by what means?”

Throughout the day we hear the story of LA.  The story of Guatemala.  The story of a civil war in El Salvador.  The story of being stopped by police because one’s skin is brown.  The story of living in fear.  The story of dignity denied too many times.

“We call them trailor parks,” said a young woman whose voice of compassion was infused with indignation.  “Listen to those words.  “Trailor.”  It comes at the end of things.  It is not called “home.”  And “Park.”  Nobody lives in parks.  Parks are not a place for neighbors.  People visit parks.  They do not live there.  But we live in “trailor parks.”

We are called “illegal aliens.  We  have no home.  Could there be two words as filled with fear as those two words?

“What we are up against has great power,” another said.  “They are organized.  They know what they want.  And they are getting it.”

“We talk about things like justice and dignity, but they talk about things that are concrete like jobs, laws, services, enforcement, walls, and the Minitemen.  We need a new language.”
“We are losing,” said another.  The despair in his voice was palpable.

When I was in high school, we had to memorize the words of both Portia and Shylock.  It was as though civilization itself depended on their words.

“I am a Jew,” said Shylock.  “Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?  And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

And Portia, “The quality of mercy is not strained.  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.  It is twice blessed.  It blesseth him that gives, and him that takest.  Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes the throned monarch better than his crosn.  It is an attribute to God himself, and earthly power doth them show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.”

All day, in Spanish and English the words of Shakespeare and the stories that began across the border run through me.  When it is time to leave, I look back at the school.  Over the doorway are these words:  “He grew to find favor with God and with men.”

I wonder . . . will we do the same?

Friday, May 29, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The thoughtful work of Roger Shinn, a professor of ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, continues to flow through my imagination.  The questions he posed in just a few words continue to surface, always prompting a new set of perceptions and counter-perceptions.

In life, he asked, do we perceive something and then believe it?  Or do we believe it and then perceive it?  Searching the boundary between perception and belief is a lifelong pursuit.  After just a moment or two of reflection, we think we have the answer.  “This is what you say,” that would be belief.  “But this is what I see and it’s not the same.”  That would be perception.  Ideology wants us to believe despite the “truth.”  Each of us has plenty of times that we know perception eroded the truth.  Students perceived to be “slow” invariably progress “slowly,” whether or not they are actually slow learners.  The adage, “Thoughts become things,” has more than a little truth.

We can remember times we bent perception to fit our beliefs.  And we can remember times that beliefs bent our perceptions.  Some years ago I was talking with a man from Holland who grew up during WWII.  “I hated the Germans,” he said.  He had seen the horrors of that war, the cruelty of the Nazis towards Jews and people with disabilities.  He disdained everything German.

But then something happened.  By chance, (perhaps by grace?) he went to Germany to try and heal people with disabilities.  There were many, of course, both those who had been abandoned by the Nazis in their unrelenting search for a perfect race, and those who had been injured in the war either as German soldiers or by the Allied bombs whose firestorms killed and maimed so very many.  For these people my friend had compassion.  Perhaps his compassion could undo just a bit of the war’s cruelty.

To his surprise, he settled in Germany.  To his surprise, he built a life in the land of the aggressor.  My lunch with him was 40 years after the war.  He was the executive director of the largest disability program in Germany.  Our lunch was in Vilnius, Lithuania, where we were attending a conference focused on disabled children in the newly-freed Baltic republics (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania).  He was shocked at the way disabled children were virtually abandoned in so many ways during the Communist regime, how parents often “hid” their children out of shame.  But his dismay led him, once again, to see what he could do.

His belief was that something could be done.

His perception was that something needed to be done.

There is no perception that is not guided, wittingly or unwittingly, by some belief.  And there is no belief that is not guided, wittingly, or unwittingly, by some set of perceptions.  Over time both change.  And, over time, we find ourselves in the balance.

In today’s meetings.

In today’s phone calls.

Are we sharing perceptions or are we affirming beliefs?  Are we sharing beliefs, or are we sharing perceptions that just might have to create a new set of beliefs?

The class was entitled, “Perception and Belief.”

It has yet to be dismissed.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We live in a sharp-edged time that scarcely has time for conversation.  We are quick to make a point, and find evidence that we are right.  Like you it takes me but a moment to read the paper and find myself saying, “See?”

In Pakistan a bomb went off in the Storyteller’s Lane in Peshwar.  Once upon a time travelers walked up and down the lane asking, “Where have you been?”  and sharing where they had been whether asked or not.  Some were strangers, some were friends, but everyone had a story and there were so many that someone decided the name of that street should be, “Storyteller’s Lane.”  Today the story is the bomb that tried to put an end to this free exchange of stories.

In Las Vegas, the newspaper reported on a woman who had worked 28 years for a casino.  She went to work.  She was summoned to the office.  She was fired.  Bad economy.  Too bad.  No point in talking about it much.  No purpose in dwelling on all those feelings.  Thank you ever so much, sorry.  Good bye until the casinos once again become a good buy.

It would be a mistake to say these sudden decisions that don’t have time enough to care about their consequences, are not an intrinsic part of life.  Storms break in a hurry.  The flash flood cares nothing for the saplings caught in its path.  The owl cares not for the rabbit but is thankful dinner has been caught in its talons.  All the bleeding-heart romanticism in the world cannot change reality.

One is tempted to say, “Toughen up.”  In Montana the expression is, “Cowboy up.”  The idea is romantic in its own right, but is devoid of mystery.

Is there then a middle way?  As General Motors lay off thousands, as the balance sheets of corporations force their hands, as forced options become the only options, is there a middle way?  As usual, it is by accident a string of words come to my attention.  It turns out that Martin Luther had this idea that there weren’t two sacraments, but maybe three.  Baptism, for sure.  Got that.  Communion.  Got that too.  And then the maybe third:  Mutual conversation and consolation.

I like that.  Mutual conversation, a conversation between equals, a conversation lodged in respect, a conversation guided by awareness of consequence, a conversation that goes both ways.  When our twins were but four years old, and we had just moved to New York City, we sailed on the Clearwater from Battery Park up the Hudson, learning it was known as the “River That Flowed Both Ways.”  I loved that then, and I love it now.  As it is with the river, so it is with conversation if we but take the time.

And then, mutual consolation.  A Presbyterian pastor once started every Bible study with two questions.  “Okay,” he’d say.  “Where’s the joy and where’s the pain?”  Because we care, our hearts are often broken.  Because there are problems we cannot solve, because we will not hide from the anguish of so very many, and because we have floods in our own lives, we await, and are in need of mutual consolation.  It is not a conversation between the abled and the disabled, but a recognition that in life we are all disabled in one way or another, at one time or another, and so we have a healing word to both give and receive.

The church.  Maybe a building, but more likely in our hearts.  Wherever it may be, it is always moving . . . into our offices, onto our desks, finding a way into our lives in the practice of mutual conversation and mutual consolation.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I had heard the word “Pentecost.”  But that’s about it.  The Spirit’s fiery arrival in a room of frightened disciples two thousand and some odd years ago had little place in my imagination.  Maybe I had heard that it was the “birthday of the church,” but the words meant nothing.  They were somehow trite, bordering on cute, and they led nowhere.  Besides, Pentecost was only a one-day observation, noted more on calendars than in the heart and soul of believers.

Yes, Pentecost is one of the major church celebrations, but it is such an orphan.  We prepared for Christmas.  Each Sunday of Advent had a different theme.  I could never quite remember the order, but the themes were as clear as the banners that appeared one after another four Sundays in a row–Hope, Joy, Love, and Peace.  Advent calendars had us open a new window every day, each one filled with a small verse of scripture.  A Christmas tree appeared in the sanctuary, another downstairs in the fellowship room.  Ornaments came out of their boxes, lights and evergreens were everywhere, all a festive prelude to Christmas.  I gave extra thought to the Christmas Eve sermon, although it wasn’t necessary.  Everyone knew what Christmas was about.  I could have said nothing and it would have been just fine.  It was the sermons in mid August that required time and attention.  But no matter.  Christmas was all about preparation.

So was Easter.  Lent had not one but 40 days to help us trim our sails.  Forty days to give one thing up and find something else, something truer, something more authentic, something genuine, something less prideful, less confusing, less profane.  Just in case we missed the message, Palm Sunday set us straight.  So did Maundy Thursday.  So did Good Friday.  So did the Easter Vigil.  And so did Easter Sunday when hymns once again found the word “Al-le-lu-ia,” and youth groups served breakfasts on tables bedecked with lilies.  We were fully prepared for Easter when it finally arrived.

But not Pentecost.  It arrived because it was on the calendar.  It came with no gifts, no jelly beans, no commercial purpose.  Celebrate the birthday, and then “get on with it.”  Pastors might study it, and churches would hear the story on Sunday, but it was interesting–not necessary.

Or so I thought.

And then.

It was in Moscow, that I saw, and felt how much I had missed.

The streets, in the days of June’s white nights were full of “pouk,” the white seeds of poplar trees that filled the air almost like snow, and gathered in the curbsides in long piles four or five inches deep.  It was everywhere, floating through the air.  The streets were also full of people, each carrying a small poplar branch, sometimes waving them in the wind.  Everyone had a branch with its still light green leaves.  And they were going somewhere.  They walked with the unmistakable gait of people who know precisely where they are going and can hardly wait to get there.

The doors to the cathedral were open, as doors to churches should be.  (How many times have I apologized to trustees for leaving the doors unlocked when secretely I rejoiced in my defiance of locked church doors!)  Into the church the street walkers came, each carrying a branch.  And there was a smell . . . the unmistakable smell of freshly cut hay.  There are no pews in Orthodox churches.  It was a simple matter to strew hay all over the cathedral’s floor.  The entire floor was covered with hay.

Up front were the icons that guarded the altar.  The pillars also had their life-sized icons.  But whereas last week the saints simply peered out at the congregation, now they were in a forest of saplings.  St. Paul was surrounded by saplings on both sides, so was Thomas, so was Peter, so was Andrew, so was Stephen, so was James.  The entire church had become a forest, the saints and the congregants its denizens.

At Christmas, in Big Timber, Montana, we turned our church into a forest to proclaim new life.  So do most churches.  Here, in Moscow, on Pentecost, the Orthodox churches turned into forests of saplings and freshly cut hay that signaled spring.

I refrain from trying to describe the singing.  Suffice it to say the joy was palpable, and that the service which went–was it three hours?  Four?  All day?–was not a moment too long.

“Tell me about this,” I said to a priest.

“Pentecost,” he said.

“But tell me about this.”

“For us Pentecost is more important than Easter.”

“What?”

“Yes.  Easter was a private matter between Jesus and God.  Nobody knows how it happened.  We know there was life, but that is all.  But today this life is given not to Jesus, but to us.”

We all have spiritual pieces of the puzzle that are perhaps missing, but we don’t know it.  And then, one day, a reversal.  I never thought I would write these words:  Easter is good, but Pentecost is better.  I understand it is not a competition, and I understand the thought has its troubling edges.  And yet . . . this celebration of life . . . those branches, the smell of that hay, those thousands of people heading to church with a branch in their hand,  it all became sacred in ways I would never have expected.

Reversals.

They have their place.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

These columns are about grace.

Unless they are actually about life.

Of course, they could be either.  And, then again, I could be wrong.

Perhaps I should be asking myself, “Why aren’t they better focused?”  Or perhaps, a searching question would ask, “With the world in the state it is, with so many needs and so many perfectly obvious failings on all sides, why haven’t you tackled something real and something important?”  And now you’ve chosen a title that if even so much as whispered in the presence of a boss, “Let’s praise our errors,” would lead to an immediate dismissal.  We need to try and not be wrong.  We need to be right!  The stakes are so incredibly high that even a slight error could bring the whole house down.  Get a grip!

Over the next month or two an entire culture will try and prove just how wrong our new Supreme Court nominee has been, and if anything sticks they will hope she withdraws from nomination.  The other side will say, “She made no errors.”  Get a grip!  The main idea is to avoid errors, not praise them.  How many batters does a pitcher have to walk before he is pulled from the game!  In praise of errors . . . you must be kidding.

I know.

But doesn’t grace require an awareness of error?  If I can do all things, if I never error, is there any need for grace?  Is there any need for the Spirit’s wind to blow through me?  Is there any need for God?  Would I need to be grateful that Jesus said he would be with us until the end of the ages?  Wouldn’t perfection be my goal?

And . . .

Would there be anything for me to learn?  Wouldn’t life become predictable?  And wouldn’t something be missing?

William Blake’s watercolor paintings of the Book of Job are both incredibly beautiful and full of symbol.  At first the symbols don’t jump off the page.  But then they do.  Before he looses his health, his wealth, and his family, Blake shows a picture of Job sitting beneath a tree with his family and a flock of sheep.  The text on the page reads, “There was a man in Uz who was perfect and upright and one who feared God and eschewed evil and there was born unto him seven sons and three daughters.”  We all know the story of this man who did no wrong.

But suddenly we turn our eye to the tree.  We notice a harp hanging in its branches.  And a lute.  And a horn.  No hand touches any of the instruments.  Music is important enough to have its place in the picture, but it is not part of Job’s life.  He who was perfect had squeezed music, harmony, and even imagination out of his life.  He was “right” but he was dry.  He had done no wrong, but he had not lived.  In his painting Blake is saying that when we are perfect in the law, we must find our way back to grace.

So deeply ensconced was he that it takes 38 chapters for him to relinquish his grip on the reality he knew.  In the end, God knew the only way to cut through was to pose the poetry of paradox, and a spirit of grace that surrounded Job with both family and grace.

There are, of course, ways we do this.

With each other we say, I’m sorry.

With each other we find ways to say, “I was wrong.”

And then, “I forgive you.”

“Peace be with you,” we say.  “And also with you,” we respond in a liturgy as ancient as time itself.

I do not know how many mosques, temples and churches there are in the world.  But of this I am assured:  in each of them, there is a moment provided to bring our lives to God not in search of praise, but in search of healing. We have words for this.  We call it forgiveness.  And we call it grace.  And this morning, I call it life.

Let us then bring the harp down from the branches and into our arms.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Our windows face east.

Around five the horizon over the other side of the river begins to glow.  It is still too early for color.  Instead the sky itself slowly becomes luminous.  It is as though the light of day descends not from the sun, but from the stars, from the heavens, from the essence of night’s cool air and the silence of early morning.

And then, bands of color begin their stretch.  Sometimes mauve, sometimes rose, sometimes a mixture of light red and warm yellow.  The colors are not sharp, the way they were in Montana.  Here there are no winds to scour the air.  There the dust is swept away.  Here it takes all night to settle.  There the thin air holds little heat.  Here the air itself becomes heat.  Here the air has substance.  Here the colors fuse, reflect, rise and almost refuse their erasure as the sun rises and turns the other side of the river into white light of day.  As that happens the trees on the street below are suddenly wrapped in not one color, but two.  One side faces east.  The other side faces west.  One side is shadow, one side light.

On all sides, change.

The Greeks noted that “Everything is flux.”

The perceptions of this flux have the power to bring us together or divide us.  There was a time, not long ago, when the future seemed bright.  I write that with a caution alarm going off in my heart.  It was not bright for those denied access, or those whose chronic conditions continued to worsen.  But the change in hope from five years ago to our present time is palpable.  We see it in the closed stores.  We see it in the decisions we make.  We would like to support that store, to give them business that they could prosper, but we are unable to do so.

We suddenly find that our experience of trimmed expectations are shared millions of times over.  To have difficulty in these days is not the exception . . . it is the rule.

“You too?” we ask.

“Yes, me too,” the strangers answer.

“What happened?”

“No jobs,” comes the answer.

“How are you doing,” I ask the man who distributes towells at the YWCA.  (The “Y” in Minneapolis is the YWCA which serves both men and women.)  We chat a bit.

“I give plasma twice a month,” he says.  “Twenty-five dollars a time.”

“Oh my,” I say.  “Take care of yourself.”

The kid at a Radio Shack offers to help me look at a camera I will not buy.

“How’s business?” I ask.

“Slow,” he answers.

“I saw the Camera Company is going out of business,” I said.

“At least I’ve got a job.”

“Good for you.  You’re fortunate.”

“I worked here part time during college, but now it’s full time.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Hamline.”

“Good school.  What did you major in?”

“Communications.  I looked everywhere for a job, but nothing.”

“You’ll need all the communication skill in the world these days.”  I laugh a bit at the tease, and then so does he.

“Good luck,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says.

In these days random conversations easily lead to a sharing of predicament.  They easily lead to a sense of compassion.

At the “Y” a Somali father brings in his three children, two boys and a daughter maybe five years old wearing a long dress and a scarf over her head.  The kids are going to run a lap, and are clearly elated.

“Are you Somali?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers.

“Do you have family there?”  I know the answer.  Of course he has family there.

“Yes.”

“Are they in Mogadishu?”

“Yes.”

“Are they okay?”

“I think so.”  Over the past few days there have been new reports of fighting between the “government” and a Somali equivalent of the Taliban.

“All we can do is pray,” he says.

“I’m sorry all that is happening,” I said.

“I don’t know what they want,” he said, speaking of the militia.

“They want everything and end up with nothing,” I said.

“That’s exactly it,” he said.  “That’s exactly it.”

The kids come in finishing their lap.

Here too a random conversation is not about success, but concern.  Here too events have conspired to hem in hope.  But here too, for a moment, there is the lift that perhaps only civility can provide.

Here too we await the dawn.

Here too the shady side of the trees will soon find their light.

And here, too, it is the light of resurrection.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

It isn’t the size of the cross that catches my eye.

It’s the colors.  The scene is vibrant.  From the clothes the farmers are wearing, they are Mexican, perhaps Salvadoran or Guatemalan.  Over there is the church with its bell tower.  Over here there is a row of well-tended vegetables, several gardeners bent over either harvesting or pulling weeds.  There are a few rabbits watching their progress and perhaps waiting for evening to fall.  Back there a field of corn is ready for harvest, and a few farmers are heading towards it.  There are a few goats, some cows, chickens, and a few more gardens.  The sky is brightly colored, surrounded by a rim of gold that ensconces the entire scene in light.

The scenes are virtually seamless, one garden gently finding its neighbor.  There are no sharp edges, no dividing walls.  The pathways that interconnect are as much a part of the landscape as the gardens, and the livestock, birds and rabbits are as much a part of scene as the people.  Had there been more people in Eden, this is what it would have looked like.

The cross had been fashioned in a Cuernavaca co-op by refugees as part of a mission endeavor that provided both income and dignity to the workers.  At first I thought it portrayed Mexican life in the countryside.  At home there were similar bucholic portrayals of Minnesota farms or Montana ranches where everything was just about perfect, everything worked and everyone knew their place.  The difference was that back home such scenes were on calendars given away by funeral homes or drug stores or sold at book stores.  But here the scenes were on a cross.

Here they were not a portrayal but a blessing.

Here they were not the stuff of illusion, but the substance of hope.

Here they were a vision not of the past, but of the future.

Here the bells in the church tower weren’t cute, they rang with clarity calling us to worship, calling us from the fields and then letting us know when it was time to return to our labors.  Here rabbits would eat the carrots, but that’s okay, that’s what rabbits do and somehow we’ll find a way to sustain the garden and live with those pesky rabbits.

Here is the hope of the cross.

Here is the hope of a congregation whose members live with each other, in which there is plenty of work to go around, and so labors are lovingly divided.

Here there is no “mayor.”

Instead, life itself is the organizing principle, and the love of Christ the principal.

On this Saturday morning, when plans have yet to take shape, the Cuernavaca cross reminds me that nostalgia, while understandable, isn’t particularly useful in the living of life.  I’m often sad about that.  There are so many luminous moments that  I would do anything to capture again.

But the brightly colored cross, its buildings, people, animals and bells prompts me to not bask in those moments.  There is work to be done.  Hope to be harnessed.  Visions to trust.  Blessings to heed.  And a future that calls.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

When I hear, see, or say the word “useful,” it takes but an instant to take wing.

I remember a parent at the school we worked at quietly decided one day that all the meetings, with their millions of words were perhaps not all that useful in shaping the future of his child, much less the future of education,  and so he slipped away and found an oil can.  Without asking permission, he went up and down the hallways listening to the hinges, feeling their friction and then applying drops of oil.   The sight has stayed with me all these years, often leading me to wonder, “What might be useful here?” If it is a word, say it in the right place, and say it in the right time, and say it just once or twice.  Anymore will make a mess.

The first decade of my first church, founded in the 1870s, were anything but assured.  In a box of archives I found a note recording those times.  It said:  “No pastor, no Sunday School, no regular services.  But with assurance that one day this church will be useful.”  The note ensconced “useful” in my heart.  “Useful” is to serve, “useful” is to care, “useful” is to gather, “useful” is to bring life to hope.

Useful.

I would like to live a useful life.

But, having said that, I need to be careful.  It is but a short distance from “useful” to “productive,” from “utility” to “productivity.”  Productivity, however, seems to be something else entirely.  Productivity judges those who are not productive.  Productivity marks disability with shame. Productivity insists on a job, productivity insists on measuring the results of one’s actions.  Productivity doesn’t just want to oil the hinge, it wants to make sure the door now closes faster than ever and that no door is missed.  Productivity has no room for “good enough.”

When Europeans came to this continent, they were determined to make the Indians productive.  They had to give up self-sufficiency, they had to give up living off the land–they had to make it productive.  They needed products to sell, fields to fence, clothes that allowed them to “fit in” and become productive members of society.  Their “backward” ways had to be given up and more “productive” ways found. Like slavery, it was all about productivity.

In this day of mega churches, church growth is a hot topic.  In the eyes of growth experts, a church that is not growing is neither useful nor productive.  Instead, it is a problem.  When I read over the literature, I am almost embarrassed to be a pastor. Many of the books on church growth strike me as an effort of cheerleaders hoping the home team will finally win if they would only do “this” or “that.”    Or an attitude that seems to say, “Since I am here, things are going to be different.”  Productivity insists on such a stance.  It is undeniably true that leadership makes all the difference in the world.  A good principal makes for a good school.

Isn’t it odd.  We know how to market productivity.

Meanwhile, utility makes its quiet presence known.

The circle meets in a church basement.  The tables are set.  Elegance is the watch word, small bowls of jelly beans are at each place, along with flowers.  Notes are read.  Quiet conversations grace the room.  Somebody brought treats, somebody made the tea and coffee.  The folks who live over in the assisted living facility and can no longer drive, they were offered a ride.  Over to the side are the boxes of wash clothes, tubes of tooth paste, soap, nail files, and tooth brushes that will be assembled into kits for Church World Service and then sent to one refugee camp or another, somewhere in the world. The boundary between fellowship and mission activity is seamless.

It is an unproductive meeting.  It stops no wars.

But it is a useful meeting, as the circle members check in with each other, wonder if Dottie is going to be okay, sign a card to Joanne after the death of her husband, discuss the news, think about the church and its future, knowing that its place in their lives, in life of the town, and to some parent or child in Pakistan are blessings in an of themselves.

Growth would be nice.   And productivity is admirable.

But for me, that which is useful is better.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I write from Minneapolis, the City of Lakes.  But my words spring from other places.  They arise from the kitchen of the First Congregational Church in Big Timber, Montana.  A pleasing open space, with cupboards filled with glasses, plates and coffee cups.  Over the sink there is a shelf with a dozen or so Bibles.  On the counter there are several coffee pots.  It is seven in the morning.  Wednesday morning, to be exact.  The women, who have been in the church since six for a book study, have made some coffee, but in case they forget we’ll make our own as we gather around the pale yellow table for Bible study.  We’ll spend the next hour or so sharing our lives, wondering how a dozen or so words written several thousand years ago could have anything to do with us, and sorting through the contradictions:  God protects us, but bad things do happen to good people, we’ve seen both; the Spirit goes exactly where it wants to, and where it goes nobody knows, but we’d like to channel it, and can something that is everywhere be anywhere, can a God who is everything be a God who is anything?

My words spring from a booth at the hotel in Montevideo, Minnesota where at seven in the morning, on Tuesday mornings a dozen or so of us met twenty years ago to work through the sublime poetry of Job.  We ordered our breakfast, but actually we were waiting to see how Job would survive, whether or not God cared, if the book was about patience as everyone seemed to think it was or was it about indignation shouted by a man who had nothing left to lose and so he dared everything and offered to put God on trial.  Those mornings, those friends, I remember them.  Those meanings, I cherish them.

My words spring from a nursing home in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on Monday afternoons, when the schedule said “Bible study” and I volunteered.  When a dozen of us gathered around a table I impishly decided to add up our ages and just about fell over when I realized we were in the presence of more than a thousand years of life experience.  “Be careful what you say,” I said to myself.  “They will know what is true and what is not.”  I write from the office of that church where, on Wednesday mornings, at ten o’clock, to be exact, seven or eight of us met to “get going on the sermon” that would take wing four days later.

And I write from my seat in an airplane.  It was my second week of seminary, and I had to fly to Detroit for a television program on the book.  I had never been to a Bible study in all my years of going to church.  And I had some homework to do.  The woman beside me had some work to do, charts, business papers.  I pulled out my Revised Standard Edition of the Bible and opened it, realizing I was embarrassed as I did so.  To read the Bible in public seemed akin to wearing a sign that said, “One of those.”

In time that changed.  Good teaching revaled the world of beautiful and compelling paradox, a range of emotion that can only be called human, and that when all was said and done the Library of books known in the singular as Bible is about life.  And around the kitchen table, at the nursing home, at the hotel, it came to life as beautifully as a watercolor wash suddenly becomes a sky.

But still . . . there are times the airline seat holds sway.  When I say, “You should come to Bible study,” I can see eyes glaze over.  They too do not want to be “one of those.”  They too keep their eyes on the work at hand, and, like me, do not wish to be “used.”  Perhaps another Grace Notes will explore why this is true and the history that informs a world of misperception.  But for now just know I am thankful for these quiet gatherings in which words come to life in the midst of our lives.

Today, at ten, over at the Lutheran church, the group will meet once again.  I have to go to the dentist, and so I’ll miss it.  All things considered I’d much rather be with them.  But you see life has all kinds of toothaches.  This time I’ll look to science for an answer.  But although I’ll be in the dentist’s expensive chair, my heart will be at the table, and I’ll miss the laughter, the exchange of thought, the stories that grace us.

And you . . . which table is yours?  Is it worth finding?

Soft walking,