Who are we saving it for?

Once upon a time, I know this because my mother told me, women used to take showers and after they had washed their hair, they would put curlers in. Then they would put on their clothing and go out to buy the groceries, pick up the laundry, go to the library, and generally run their errands. All the while the curlers stayed in the hair. My mom used to say about this situation, "I wonder who they are saving it for?".

I didn't really understand her point. I was a kid after all, and my deal was hoping she would buy a barrel of monkeys, or color forms or some other inexpensive form of entertainment and leave my brother and I in the car while she bought groceries. I am fairly sure this was way before either of us was in school. These days one would be arrested for this. Anyway, I thought all adults were somewhat odd looking and whether there was stuff in their hair didn't seem to matter much one way or another.

My mother felt differently. Going out so all of the town could see you in your curlers didn't make up for having nice hair at dinner for a few guests. I will have to admit that now that I am a grown up, I will have to say I concur. It doesn't really seem sensible. In fact the only way for this economy to make sense is to only value the opinions of the small group who you are having for dinner. That means the the vast majority of the people you encounter you have no value for at all. Kind of frightening when you say it that way.

That same kind of frightening vision has overtaken the church. Have you ever stopped to wonder who exactly we are saving it for? Who is it we are cleaning up to entertain? Our neighbors, the people in the grocery store, the library? I don't think so. Some of the people in the neighborhood don't even know we exist. Pastors seem to have no burning desire to share the good news, many who don't even see this as their job. We have churches full of nice people who do nice things but don't wish to be too religious and don't think it's any ones business how they live. We like to keep the walls high and the crowd select. We want the right kind of people to come to worship, we need to keep the building in good shape, you know.

Recently I attended a training event for small churches where we discussed how we could do small church better. The workshop leader invited people to say the things in worship they found distracting. I suspect he meant music done poorly, responses that were meaningless, sermons that weren't well researched and delivered painfully. Instead people said they didn't like kids in worship because they got up to go to the bathroom, or were noisy. They didn't like people who coughed or sneezed or made it hard for them to hear. I finally said, apparently the biggest obstacle we have in worship is that we let other people come. I think that while there were some chuckles, there were people who thought I was being serious and agreed. We all agree we are in decline but our answer is we need to keep out those annoying outsiders. People, who are we saving it for?

Our base is declining, it is elderly and it no longer can reproduce to sustain itself. The youth are moving on. They have no loyalty to support an institution that finds them an inconvenience at best. The financial support is also declining and monies that used to find their way to the collection are finding homes elsewhere. There is much anger and frustration over budgets being underfunded and people's dream of coasting into retirement dashed, but they are still wearing their curlers in public and valuing only the small group of people they will have dinner with later. I guess if we are saving it for ourselves I have to wonder why we aren't enjoying it more.

Who are we saving it for? Its time for us, all of us, to decide if we are in the disciple making business, or in the self preservation business. We have been in care taking mode for much too long. It's time to throw open the doors and invited the community in again. This is a party for everyone. Lets get the curlers out of of hair and be about the business of inviting a few more guests to our Fathers banquet table. Let's make the church be about being the church, let's be salt, and light. Let's pick up our crosses and follow, let's be faithful and let's mean it when we say, here I am, send me. Let's stop farming out our people to other places to get deeper spirituality. Let's find ways to meet the needs and allow God to use us as a means of grace to the world around us.

Wouldn't it be cool if we went around in curlers at home, with the family that already loves us, so we would be ready to look good for the company? Just a thought.

Thicker than water

There is something about the family of faith that makes it challenging to live in. I think I know what it is, it's the family part. I have been to enough family gatherings; reunions, weddings, funerals and so on, that I believe I can say without hesitation, the only reason some of those people get in is because they are related. You do too know what I mean. The family forces a smile and everyone talks politely and the entire trip home in every vehicle is about weird Uncle Buck or Aunt Phyllis.

My own family is no exception. I had a great uncle named Logan who was the source of all kinds of discussion through out all the generations. We kiddos found him very funny and would practice walking like he did, debating whether he was still breathing, betting on the exact time he would move. My parents generation and older took offense at his laziness and expectation of being served. Rumor has it my grandfather threw a folk at him once for expecting my grandmother to get up and get him something for the billionth time. I don't know whether this is true but it is told even today and still brings chuckles. Logan's history was equally delightful for my cousins and me. He married once and wouldn't leave home. At some point his wife did and he decided not to repeat that mistake. I wonder if she did too.

But I digress. The point isn't that families have characters like Logan, the point is that we tolerate and even find some affection for the Logan's in life because after all we are related. They are a part of us because we are connected through blood. It gives us identity, it gives us a history and a sense of belonging. Even if you look at your family in horror, and what adolescent hasn't done that and prayed that they were either switched at birth or stolen by gypsies, it says something about who your people are. While this isn't always a good connection, in fact if all of us look far enough back we are bound to find a ancestor or two or ten that make us shake our heads, it's a mark we carry and learn to deal with in life.

This is no different for the Church universal. We are also connected by blood, Jesus' blood shed for all. This makes us all one enormous family, belonging because we are related. We like to exclude various branches of the family - they are too liberal, too conservative, too fundamental, too flaky, too serious, too high church, too low church, too touchy feeling, too traditional and on and on and on. I don't know that we have open feuding on going, unless its denomination verses nondenomination, but we do have our own little family branches we tend to honor more than the whole. Like a huge family reunion where each family can see each other and will perhaps wave but they all sit separately and tell their youngest members," Stay away from the Bertie Jones family. They aren't really family, they aren't our kind of people."

I just went to see Michael W Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman in concert. I don't have a clue how many people were there but lots. Like as far as the eye could see lots. I had great seats. I never have great seats but I had a friend who took care of me and I had great seats. The concert was amazing and at some point we were standing and worshipping. Michael W Smith was playing something everyone knew and everyone was singing and I turned around and saw the auditorium filled, the first balcony filled, the second balcony filled. Everyone on their feet, everyone singing, many with their hands raised, their eyes closed. The music was incredible but the connection with my brothers and sisters in the family of faith was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. I haven't got a clue what members of the family were there. I don't know what family branch they sprang from. I don't know theologically that we agree at all on the issues we debate with such enthusiasm. I just know this, for a moment in time the focus was the connection, that we are related by the blood. We were all made heirs the same we, and all of us belong.

I know we can't live here. In fact, before I got home I got a funny text message from a young man I worship with regularly who said, "hey do you mind sitting down? We are in peanut heaven and you are blocking the stage!" We have other contacts that aren't so funny and God's grace is essential in keeping us from killing each other. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we could spend just a little more time worshipping together in the presence of God, focusing on the things that unite us instead of the issues that divide us? It's the blood you know, and it's thicker than water.

Comfort

As a child,I can remember laying in the sunshine that came in the big picture windows in the living room. I would lay there on my tummy reading Sunday morning comics when I had successfully pried them away from a sibling. My brother liked to read the whole paper intact, I just wanted the comics and the Parade Magazine. Several of us enjoyed that same spot, twice as warm there as any place in the room. By the time I was in high school my brother bought his own paper and Sunday mornings I was in church, but I remember the spot and the struggle with great fondness.

My sister and I shared a small room growing up. There were no private places in my small home, and finding a place of your own required creativity. There was an old dresser sitting at a right angle, across from the heat vent in the corner of the room. If you sat with your back to the dresser and your feet on the heat vent you were almost invisible from the door way. This is where I would read. For hours and hours I sat in my own little world with Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Little Women, Donna Parker and Anne of Green Gables. Later, my companions changed to Tolkien, DE Stevenson, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and more. Still, for as long as I lived at home, long after my sister had grown up, married and moved on, I sat in that corner, imagining I was all alone in the world.

I was haunted as a child by demons in the dark. Many nights I would wake terrified, at first needing to be comforted, later learning some comfort techniques of my own. Many nights as I would lay in bed with my heart pounding, sure that at any moment one of the many terrors that would dominate my thoughts was about to overtake me, I would imagine the drive up the driveway to my grandparents home. Their driveways was dirt, filled with many ruts and holes, half a mile long. After eight hours in a station wagon with my family, when my dad made the turn, my heart leaped. Even today I can describe the drive, the mailbox, the pond and the trees and the barns. That drive took me away from fear and brought me to a different place, filled with adventure and belonging.

I am confident that the need for comfort is the essence of the God given need for relationship. I believe God is aware of our need to feel that sense of security and safety and wants us to do so. I think we find comfort in habits and behaviors and even in relationships in ways that may have started from a genuine need and the best we could do at the time, and stayed to become subconscious responses that keep us from making wiser choices now. For example, a have a child who processes stress or boredom or even deep thought by twirling his hair. I would ask where on earth this habit comes from, but I have noticed that when I am stressed or agitated or trying hard to think of a solution to a problem, I am constantly rearranging my hair! I know where he got it, I just really didn't notice that I do it, until I noticed that he did.

I am confident that God is not in the heavenly realms grieving over my hair therapy, or my son's either for that matter. Unfortunately, this isn't the only behavior I have developed over the years to cope. Some of them are more destructive to me personally, and interfere with my relationship with God. I am reminded of the story of Jacob leaving Laban's home and Rachel's removal of her father's household gods. She must have known the God of Israel, but she depended on the comfort she had from those life long sources. It seems like a silly story until I reflect on the damage some of my own household gods have done.

I still enjoy the paper in the sunshine, I still prefer to read all curled up away from others and I still sometimes lay in bed in the still quiet hours and the darkness and remember my grandparents driveway. I guess I will go on messing with my hair from time to time, but I am praying that God will gently pry the household gods from my hands and remind me that He is my comfort and strength, a very present help and trouble and more than enough.

Dust in the wind

Whew. Boys and Girls, my life has been a whirlwind of activity but very little creativity. This is not so good. In fact, I believe it is negatively impacting my brains ability to keep track of one billion miscellaneous bits of trivial information, as I once did so well. I find myself sitting still when someone says to me, "I will see you later" thinking where is it I am going that they expect to see me. I have had mornings when in a cold panic I have searched my calendar, you know that tiny print on your cell phone, and wondered if the nagging thought at the back of my mind is correct and I am supposed to be somewhere. I can't imagine myself in a position where my presence is of importance to anyone but I am aware that when some of have been denied it, they get a little squirrelly. Some even a might testy. I have had to look into the witness protection program a time or two.

You know, we have had an ice storm. I don't want to hear all of the places in the world where an ice storm has occurred because I know there are many. I don't want to hear how others have gone without power for six weeks when I was only out two week. In fact, I don't to be reasonable or rational about this at all. In fact, I think I can now safely report that I have failed disaster response 101. I am praying I do not have to repeat the course. You know how God does that at times, allows you a "do over" to get it right. I don't want to get it right. I don't want to play 'find the matches in the dark', 'how many lamps can the generator light' or 'cooking pizza on the grill' any more.

So, I was crabby over the power thing, then we got into disaster relief. Yes, there was a disaster to relieve actually. I have never in all of my life seen as many trees down for as long a distance as we have had. Trees opened like blooming onions, limbs hanging, root balls fully exposed. It really does look like a war zone, but I am tired of that example. So we set about getting that fixed up. This means volunteers, tractors, chain saws, trailers, four wheelers, food, front running, evaluation and some kind of sense of direction. Guess how many of these skill sets I have? Even the food one is marginal.

Now I am even more irritable and I am supposed to be doing ministry. Just for your information and for purposes of clarity, this is where my definition of ministry comes in handy. I think ministry is loving God's sheep, whether they deserve it or not because God has loved me in abundance. Even when I am crabby. Especially then, I should think. I have been trying hard, I truly have, only I suspect I have failed mightily. So why is this true, I wonder.

I don't know for sure mind you, but I think it has a lot to do with the lack of play time in my life. I have worked hard, and I like to work hard, but without a little nonsense, fun with creativity, play time with buddies, I think I am losing my passion. In fact, I think I have taken my heart right out of the picture and been using solely my head and some of my muscles. I am trying to do things well, when I am not sure what I am doing and the only affirmation I can count on is that there will be more to practice on tomorrow. I am trying, through the sheer force of my personality and determination, to make what I do not know how to do be done well. I think it's getting done but it's really leaving some scorched earth in it's wake. I am quite confident that my Eternal Father, who loves me so much that He is content to let me get all spun up in a whirling dervish, or whatever that whirling thing might be, until I am angry and empty and devoid of feeling and say to me, "Come here, child. We have talked about this! You are supposed to take time to watch the water, dance to something peppy, write something ridiculous. Why do you trust Me so little?" I dunno. I am so silly at times.

I am reminded today that we truly are only dust in the wind. The Creator of the Universe can handle things if I were to take an hour or day or even a whole week off. And while I believe we are expected to use our gifts to serve, the Sabbath rest was given to restore our souls.

I am going to play some this week. I am going to find joy in the sunshine, I am going to watch the water a little and I am going to write something goofy. Oh wait, I just did. Check.

Milestones

We have company at church. A youth group has arrived to help us clean up some of the mess left by the ice storm. They are a good group, their leadership is organized and easy to work with. They are working hard and really require very little care. Food three times a day, a place to shower, a place to sleep. Not very demanding.

They happened to arrive in my birth week. This time of the year always makes me so reflective about life in general, my life in particular. Not really so much about what it has been about, or even what I have accomplished, but how I see it each year when the anniversay of my birth arrives. I would be much more about accomplishments but once I am done with them, I am truly done. I dont think I could point to many accomplishments outside of my children because most I don't remember, and my children never let me forget.

Our guests are a timely reminder to me that my life has changed significantly since the days when I was a member of a youth group. I was a deeply dissatisfied youth, always digging for the bottom line, always doubtful, always skeptical yet never abandoning the search for something more. I had many friends and I was involved in lots of activities including my church, but I was so hungry for more. More of everything, more love, more time, more stuff, more talent. Like the Greedy in Raggedy Ann, I could never get enough. There is a very pretty young lady with the group who seems, based on the very surface and superficial interaction I have had with her, to be the exact opposite. She seems to be fairly content. Content to work, to content to play, content to talk, content to be quiet. Her younger brother seems to be very much the same. It is no longer a grief to me that I did not have this experience, and every year that I look back I am more filled with gratitude that God is satisfying my soul in new ways all the time. Instead I wonder, where will these two go, when they start so much farther along the journey than I did.

I think I have changed very little on the inside. I am still the same little girl who used to make deals all the time with her siblings to get what she wanted. I am still the "it could never happen to me" teenager who thought I was invincible and nothing major could ever go wrong. I am still the new mother who marveled at the wonder of birth and was stunned that the world didn't stop the day I had a son. I am still the hustling bustling twenty something who cannot understand why everyone who wants something has to get in line in front of me.

The change in me is more about vision. It's more about a shift in the center. I am not far from center, let me be quick to confess. But I am not dead center as I once was. I have begun enoying life a little more because I require from it a little less. My job is just my job, not who I am. My friends are my friends but not my self worth. My children, God bless them, are their own people, not a refection of my hopes and dreams. I see life I hope a little more how God sees life, it is what it is, but not all there is.

I am glad for our visiting clean up crew. They helped me this year celebrate the touch of God in my life, a definte mark that evidences the fruit of the Spirit, alive in me. Thanks be to God.

Lessons from the Dark

My Steelers had just won the AFC and were heading to the Superbowl. My mother was wrapping up her visit to Kentucky. I had a great time painting pottery at Girls Night Out and I was standing in my kitchen with a cookie in one hand and a glass of milk in another when the power went out. I mean, blink and it was gone. I stood still for a long time. I mean a long time. I mean I didn't even eat the cookie.

I do not like the dark. I have never liked the dark and I have never overcome the panic I feel when I am left in the darkness. I fill it with every monster I can recall from childhood. I kept waiting for my eyes to adjust and in the meantime tried not to move so the monsters couldn't find me. After a lifetime, finally enough moonlight filled the room so I could find my way down the hall way to my room where I could wake up someone and have them be scared with me.

Nearly two weeks later, Superbowl Trophy in hand, I am finally out of the dark. I have had moments of light of course, but for the most part it has been dark and it has been chaotic. Schedules have been non existent, work has been off the charts and though I have run fast and hard, I have stayed behind. I have stayed weary and I have dreamt the most vivid things. In fact, I have been typical of many who endure a disaster. I just hate being typical. I had complained for several days about the room spinning and the floor feeling like it was moving under my feet. I cannot tell you how irritated I was to discover this too is a typical response to stress. More typical. How very humbling.

The world has changed. The trees are sad, they are broken and twisted. Many of them are dead, there has been much too much damage to save them. Many more look naked and deformed with tops missing, limbs gone. There are utility people everywhere. There are new poles going in all over the places, wires that for weeks have been resting on the ground are being reconnected or replaces. The sound of generators has been replaced with the sound of chainsaws. Yards filled with fallen trees are being cleared and the debris is lining the roadsides. We aren't recovered, but we are recovering and there is a sense of survival when people talk these days. We will be limping for sometime to come. There is much yet to glean from such moments in life, but for now here are a few things I have learned:

Such times truly to bring out the best in people, and also the worst. I have seen grown men cry as they shared opportunities to help others and I have seen people who were so self absorbed that I wanted to scream. I wanted to slap them silly but one is not allowed to confess such things. Why some people radiate good stuff and others do not is more than I can answer. I just know it is true.

Our minds are incredible filters that help us to process enormous amounts of stress and frustrations, fears and failings. God has wired us with His thumbprint and it evidences itself in so many ways. We dream away stuff we cannot deal with in our waking hours and we find wholeness in rest. That's amazing.

God wastes nothing. In the midst of devastation, He uses clean up crews to awaken the interest of people who have left the church years ago. Even in injury, God brings healing. This is grace. How good is that?! Even in death, I saw the gift of new life in a family who lost a mother but found that their needs would be supplied.

Even in hopelessness, a small ray remains. God nurtures the seeds of hope inside of us, so even when we feel that no hope remains, somehow we find that is has. Even in complete darkness, if you stand still long enough some tiny bit of light will find it's way in. I know this for a fact. And if you will wait for it, trusting in the darkness you will find light, you can eat the cookie. It's all about light, and a little about cookies.