Hansel and Gretel
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“Read it again!” she says,
and again we do. The same
disaster predictably reenacted
night to night. “Don’t go in!” Read more →
Kindness
What Are We Missing?
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The year my son turned six we held his birthday party at a neighborhood park. We found a great site right next to the slides, swing, and assorted climbing structures. Read more →
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.”
Broken Expectations
When I was a kid, my family called me the count. Whenever I was bored, I would count things. I counted all the lights in the sanctuary of my church, all the cars going the other way on the road, and all the birds eating stale bread off our deck. I would occasionally announce to my family, “there are 11 birds out there.” They would smile, look knowingly at each other, and tell me that was nice.
I wonder if my announcements changed them at all. I wonder if it influenced how they saw the single sparrow, when I announced there were 10 just like it fluttering nearby. At the time, I was so excited at my ability to gather this data that I felt compelled to announce it to anyone who happened to be nearby. I never thought about the effect I could have on the people around me by announcing the results of my count.
I am having a spiritual crisis. I am losing my grip on my expectations. At first, I thought my life had become too segregated; I was simply surrounded by too many people like me. But I think the problem is deeper.
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.
The Gift in the Brokenness
So it turns out after all those scary doctor visits, all I have is mono. At least my gut was right that it wasn’t anything malignant! That whole weeks’ long medical ordeal, in addition to my solo living and a five week sabbatical from Facebook, created space for me to ruminate about two things. The first thing is how do I make sure I always have health insurance? The second thing is thinking about life as a gift.
I have had always had a little trouble seeing life as a gift. It is perhaps my historical propensity to dwell on the negative aspects of my life that has prevented me from seeing life in all its brokenness and imperfection as a “gift.”
