From Your Minister
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Three things about transformation:
1) I can still see her face. She looks up at me, head bent over, hair partially covering her face. “I don’t know if Jesus turned water into wine,” she says, tentatively, as if I might not be interested. “But I do know that he turned crack cocaine into a couch and chairs, because that furniture is in my living room now.”
REsources for Living
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Are you a fan of the “Transformers” action figures or movies? I’m not really into either action figures or action movies myself, but I have to admit there’s something kind of appealing about anything that can turn itself into a whole different thing. Read more →
Spring
How deep our sleep last night in the mountain’s heart, beneath the trees and stars, hushed by solemn-sounding waterfalls and many small soothing voices in sweet accord whispering peace!Growing Our Hearts Wings
In a disposable world, brokenness is often terrible and terrifying. Who repairs, recycles, reuses, mends, and darns any more? We exile the attributes that shame us, wall away the hurting places, and shove the frightened and shattered behind a pretty curtain.
Brokenness just is, neither good nor bad. It is just as much part of being as birth and death, failure and success, crying and laughing, and all the emotions and deeds and aspirations and losses that make us who we are. What we do with that brokenness is what matters.
The story is told that the great violinist Yitzhak Perlman once was playing a concerto when one of his violin strings broke. Usually when this happens, everything stops, the string is replaced, and the musicians begin again. But Perlman finished the concerto with only three strings. Afterwards, he reportedly said, “Our task is to make music with what remains.”
Mom Did the Best She Could in Her Brokenness
I grew up in a bungalow on a tree lined street. My dad went to work every day. My little brother and I went to Lutheran school on a school bus. I went to the public library and carried home stacks of books. I played dolls with the neighborhood girls. We skated up and down the sidewalks. My mom sewed all my clothes, with doll clothes to match. She made tuna casserole and donuts. Sometimes my family would go to the country to visit our grandparents on their farm. On Sundays my family went to church. It was an idyllic childhood in the 1950s.
Except inside, my childhood was broken. My mom had trouble with what was called then “nerves,” and she had colitis. Sometimes she never got out of bed. Sometimes she was very sick. Sometimes she was very mean, and sometimes she was violent.
A Lump in My Throat
I woke up this morning at 4:45am. I was simply done with the sleeping of the night—it was a restless night anyway. I kept waking up. I kept waking up because of a little annoying pain in my throat and the slightly discomforting feeling of my breathing being affected by some mysterious thing that literally seems stuck in my throat.
A few weeks ago I began to feel this little thing. I got it checked out and I am being sent to have a scope put down my throat and possibly a MRI or CAT scan. Since the thyroid test came back normal, and the strep test negative—that leaves the options of a possible tumor. As the non-news news sinks in further, the realization that I currently have no health insurance is just a little disconcerting.
Hope and Assurance
Hope is a virtue, which means it aids, abets, and bears goodness in the world. Yet hopefulness, like so many of the other virtues, is easily derided and denied. Hopefulness can be put down as unrealistic, or even as wish fulfillment. But hopefulness is not based in our hopes for shiny things or good parking spaces.
Hopefulness is a generous way of living. There’s a lot of allowance in hopefulness, one that accepts and works with imperfection, that encourages learning, innovating, and faithfully risking. When we’re living in the spiritual habit of hopefulness, we can fail and not be failures, make mistakes and not be mistakes. Why?
Reflections on Job Loss
You are never more yourself than when you are between things be it between one job and another, one home and another, education and working life, work and retirement, and so on. Cherish, nurture, and be kind to yourself in these times of revelation through transition.
—Paraphrased and amended from my friend Susan Dimaline’s words to me years ago.
Whether we suspected it was coming or were taken completely by surprise, we have lost a job and we are likely stunned. In most cases it is not because we did something wrong and are being punished. Remember that each of us has worth and deserves dignified treatment. Losing a job does not actually change who we are, although it can feel that way, at times. Thankfully, we are still ourselves. Each of us is a blessing. Remember that everything changes and that this stage of life will give way to a new one.
Alcoholism
Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
People say this step is a great tool in pain management—asking a person to turn her or his will and life over to the care of God, as we understood Him. In my alcoholic bottom I cringed when I first heard this approach. I said, “This is not what Dr. King taught. Dr. King taught people to sacrifice in order to help make the world a better place.”
For me AA’s, “Let Go and Let God,” conjured what Catholic Bishops working on the side of the landed elite told the peasants of Latin America.
Realities of a New Baby
“A new baby is an amazing miracle, radiating promise, evoking some of the most intense feelings of love. And at the same time…completely exhausting.”
We welcome new babies into our communities with rituals and ceremonies. We dedicate ourselves, as parents, family, and church members, to helping to raise this child to feel valued, loved, and able to fulfill their potential. Rather than seeing them as tainted by original sin, we see them as whole and beautiful, just as they are.
They are human, though, and just at the beginning of their becoming. They are, as the behaviorists say, “developmentally appropriate.” Which means incredibly needy, unable to adequately communicate, and completely dependent on their parents. Especially at 3 am.
