Tick, Tock...

I’m getting old.

Perhaps it’s this countdown to my mid-century mark this year that has me suddenly aware of every creak and ping of my body, but the fact remains the same. I am getting old.

After 15 minutes on the elliptical, my knees pop and scream. When I stretch out in bed at night, there’s some strange cracking in my back and hips I’d never noticed before. I seem to be “touching up the roots” way more often than I used to. And Lord, when I look at myself in the mirror, there’s some saggy, soft version of myself staring back at me. It’s not quite my mom (she’s in way better shape than me), but damn, she looks close.

People around me seem to be younger as well, which in turn makes me older. In a couple of months my eldest daughter will be the age I was when I gave birth to her. At my youngest daughter’s age, I had been married for almost a year. I could swear the cop that gave me a friendly warning and called me m’am can’t be a day over 17. And watching parents chasing after their preschoolers at the mall exhausts me. Just watching and I’m wiped.

I’m getting old, that’s true. But I think I may be getting a bit wiser as well.

I don’t seem to care much what people think of me and my life choices. And when I don’t feel like doing something, I just say, “I don’t feel like doing that” and don’t.
I spend time doing the things that really mean something to me, and surround myself with people I really care about.
I love more deeply and perhaps more passionately and unconditionally because I’ve realized I’m probably half-way through my allotted time to love on earth.
I learn for the sake of knowing and have no compulsion to prove myself or my knowledge to anyone. Love me or leave me. It’s all good.

I peer into the mirror and indeed, time is marching on.
Creases and lines make their way across my face and suddenly I see a wayward, misplaced pimple. A reminder that youth with all its frailties and temporariness hasn’t quite waved the white flag. Not yet anyway.

Gifts

In my line of work I come across all sorts of philosophies and theologies. Some are nicely packaged like a Nordstrom gift; perfect silvery box with color coordinated bow. Some are messy and unfinished, bits and pieces tossed into a nondescript paper bag. Some are quite bountiful and generous, others the first attempts at assembling a thought, a belief.
All of them, in their various states of completion, elaboration and decoration are housed under the umbrella of Reformed Christian. Presbyterian, to be more precise. And I find myself reveling in the diversity of it all. As a wise man once said, it’s easy to be of one mind when you’re with your own kind. I like contemplating others’ positions on issues. I like considering other interpretations of scripture. I like hearing the evolution of someone else’ thought process.

But in my line of work I also come across the misleading gift.
That’s the one that is beautifully wrapped with expensive heavy wrapping paper and a real satin ribbon. It’s the one that feels heavy when you hold it and makes mysteriously enticing sounds when you gently shake it. It’s the one you cannot take your eyes off for fear of losing one single magically lovely moment.
And you open it.
And you are suddenly hit with the stink of rotting flesh. You spy one lone item in this decorative masterpiece and it’s slimy, cheap and minuscule.
The misleading gift. It’s not just available in my line of work, in theology or philosophy. I see it in relationships, policies, manners. I see it all around, these misleading gifts.

That’s the one where someone tells you you’d be a better wife, husband, mother, father, child, friend if only you would…
That’s the one where someone smiles in your direction but it’s just their lips curling up while their eyes glare coldly at you.
That’s the one where society tells you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you’re barefoot.
The misleading gift is the one you receive with an open heart, excitedly run home with it tucked under your arm and then spend hours weeping in your pillow.

I was the recipient of such a gift today. But I won’t weep.
And I won’t rewrap and regift.
I’ll hold on to it for a bit, just so I can try to make sense of life, of humanity. And then I will let it go, like an unwanted balloon growing tinier and tinier in the vast sky.

Shaping A New "We"

Recent articles in the mainstream media have reported Britain’s recent proclamation that “multiculturalism has failed”. Political leaders in the UK go on to delineate their supporting arguments for this statement and several others across Europe nod their head in agreement.

The church’s commitment to multiculturalism has fared better, though we cannot yet claim victory. The church has one great advantage over economic, political and sociological frameworks. She can call upon our common source of unity – spirituality – and from there build upon diversity in the hopes of fulfilling the vision of a beloved community.

This begins with our ability to recognize and respect our different forms of worship, an obvious difference we can observe. Many of our fellowships within the Seattle Presbytery do not limit their services to an hour, but to however long the Spirit leads. Dancing is a form of sacred expression, and spontaneous testimonials are not uncommon. In turn, the quiet reserved worship of many our established Presbyterian churches reflect the reverence and engagement with the holy centered on the church’s historical identity.
If we were to solely look at these outward expressions of worship, we would indeed be “us” and “them”. Thank God, we are more complex than that. We are capable and we are meant to be “we”.

Professor Tariq Ramadan, Islamic scholar and recent keynote speaker at Seattle University Searching for Meaning book festival, said, “As created beings of a great God, we must acknowledge each other’s complexities. I am as multidimensional as you are. Do not limit yourself to know me by my periphery, but come to the center of who I am. Know my essence.”

We are challenged by our differences as well as our call to unity and inclusion, but this is indeed who we are called to be as the body of Christ. There is a healthy tension when we embark on the adventure of being the whole people of God and together fulfill God’s dream for humanity. We do it with the confident knowledge that at each of our core is the divine spark of our Creator.

Open wide the church doors, there are many who seek your spiritual partnership!
Open wide the church doors, there are many who await you in their community!

25 years ago I was 7 months pregnant with my first child. I was determined to not allow a simple thing like a pregnancy change my life whatsoever. What can I say, I was young. Very young.

I worked in a newsroom. High paced, frenetic, male dominated and incredibly competitive. Any little whiff of an event was possibly the next Big Story.
And it was an early morning 25 years ago to this day that I sat in the newsroom bullpen with other producers anxiously scanning wire services and newspapers for a lead. Yet another shuttle was being launched that morning and it already been determined by our boss who would cover the landing out in the California desert when it returned. Another formulaic, predictable coverage of a formulaic, predictable event. The joke was you could write the script on the drive out to the desert. Or better yet, someone else chimed in, use the same script from the last landing.

So it was with mild interest that many of us gazed up as the shuttle launched. Challenger. There was a school teacher aboard, and an African American astronaut. And then some seconds after the take off, someone in the room uttered words I cannot forget. “It doesn’t look right.”

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t predictable or formulaic.
It was a disaster occurring in front of our eyes.

In a room where there was a constant and almost deafening noise all at hours, there was suddenly stillness and silence. In horror, we were all riveted to the large screen. In what seemed like an eternity, but in reality were few minutes, the shuttle Challenger erupted into fire and disappeared. With the teacher. With the African American astronaut. And with any delusion I may have had that anything in life is routine.

Over the years I have gained a deeper understanding of the temporality of life, but more importantly, the role I play in it. What seems like just another day of packing lunches for the kids and quickly gulping a cup of coffee might be the morning you could have noticed one of your children hesitant to go to school. But you send her off. It’s just another day. But is it?
Or you drive unthinkingly down a familiar road and once again see the same vagrant on the street corner with his cardboard sign. He’s just another street person looking for a handout. But is he?

What if I open my eyes and take in the day for what it is in that very instant and I treat it as if I had never lived a day before? What if I could revel in the ordinariness of life? What if I replaced complacency with wonder?

25 years ago I thought most of life was routine and I could jump in when things got interesting, when it became A Story. 25 years later I realize I live THE story in each moment and there is no routine. Just life.

Blueberries

Although I grew up in a loving, nurturing home, as it want to happen, there were outside negative forces that created challenges and tension. Finances were always tight – both my parents worked full time outside the home, with my father usually also working a second job. And nostalgia ran rampant in our home. Immigrants tend to live longing for a place and a time that no longer exists.

I spent most of my time with my nose buried in a book and there was a particular season when my obsession rested on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of books. I imagined myself facing the brutal mid-western winters in our Southern California backyard and with the help of my little sister, built a lean-to for us to escape.

And escape we did. We would sit back there for hours, weaving stories of hardships completely unknown to us except for Laura’s input. Sometimes I would be stricken blind with some outdated malady, other times my sister would be lost in a blizzard. But we always made it home safely to our lean-to.

Somewhere along this journey of play, I began to save up my weekly .25 allowance, realizing that if I saved 4 of those shining quarters, I could purchase a pint of truly American blueberries. For .99, I could eat the fruit of the prairie. My mother didn’t quite understand why I insisted on forking over a month’s worth of allowance for a precious pint of these blue orbs, especially when she always made sure we had our fill of bananas, oranges and the inevitable papaya.

But blueberries were something special.

Sitting in our makeshift lean-to, slowly popping one berry in my mouth after another, I savored what it meant to provide for myself. My imaginary crop failures, blizzards and assorted 19th century ailments were so much easier to handle than my mother weeping at night for her family back home, my father exhausted and frustrated at not making ends meet and the inevitable negative people and forces life sometimes thrusts upon a 9 year old. But here I stood. Hunched over our little “house in the yard”, the taste of survival, self-reliance and yes, belonging, lingering on my lips.

Dare I say it? Blueberries taste of victory.

Preacher Lady

Another Thursday comes around, and I find myself once again with my trusty and worn Bible in front of me. It’s time to begin the journey of preparing a sermon for Sunday.

I’ve developed a sort of routine or maybe it’s a ritual of how I come about this sacred and humbling exercise.

Today I will read the pertinent Scripture. The text. The lesson. The Good News. I will write it out in long hand in my trusty moleskin notebook. And I’ll pray.

I’ll think about who will be hearing the message. The faithful who sit in the same seat in the same pew Sunday after Sunday. The ones who might wander in purely by chance that particular Sabbath. I will pray for them all. “Lord, help me to make sense. Help me to be relevant and grounded. Bless each person who will come to worship; let it be YOU they hear, no me. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for not letting me throw up during the sermon.”

And then my favorite prayer, the one I utter every day dozens and dozens of times a day. “Use me, Lord.”

Tomorrow I will re-read the passage. Pray a little more. And then dive in head-first in research. Do my seminary professors proud – I will exegete. Word studies, historical criticisms, and of course, selected commentaries. And then set it all aside so I can sleep on it.

Saturday I will re-re-read the passage. Read it slowly. Savor the words. And then begin to write. And write and write. No, there is no outline. No three-point structure. I just write.

I’ll finagle with the manuscript several more times, reading it over and over until I ultimately think it’s at a place where I can read it to my number one critic – my husband.

Most of the time he’ll just nod his head and say “slow down”. Other times he’ll point out a section I need to elaborate more. But always he gives me a smile and assures me God will be with me.

When I climb into the pulpit with manuscript in hand, I must confess I am no longer really present. Something extraordinary comes over me and there is a mixture of my not really being there with a sense of aliveness I’ve never felt in any other situation. I find myself using my manuscript sparingly and elaborating extemporaneously. God, indeed, has been faithful and once again shown up.

I love to preach. I love it because I get a front seat to witness the remarkable grace of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit on all who desire to hear the Word and my most fervent prayer answered. “Use me, Lord.” And indeed I am.

From A Mom

You think your words don't have much power, but they drive into my child's heart like a red hot dagger.

It starts off pretty innocently - you noticed back in the 2nd or 3rd grade (or maybe you caught on even earlier) that my kid was ...different. She looked like all the other girls in class, but there was something about the way she carried herself, the way she talked. It was different. And so you picked out a label and slapped it on her, little knowing how it would stick, how it would burn.

And so this once outgoing child, eager to make friends with everyone, begins to draw away, unsure if the next kid coming up to them on the playground will have learned the label as well. This little girl, who knows all too well she is different, becomes distrustful. She learns to be afraid.

Perhaps middle school will be better for my different child. More kids, more diversity. But her different-ness is more marked now and you have more power. Your words evolve as well, become more sophisticated. You learn the art of wounding and segregating. You pick up on other kids who are different and lump them all together. Losers. Weirdos. Homos.

My child comes home from school exhausted. Classwork is nothing. The labor of keeping it all together, surviving another day being an outsider... it's debilitating.

High school begins and now your vocabulary includes ideology, most of it picked up from your home, your parents, your friends. Kids are no longer just weird or gay, they ruin everything. They ultimately want to turn you into them, God is disgusted with them, their parents are oblivious losers and our country is going to hell because of them. You don't even understand what you're saying, but your parroting is slick and practiced.

My child's situation has a golden ring. She knows you're a puppet; an empty, insecure, misinformed child. She knows love - unconditional and extravagant. From her parents, her family and most importantly of all - God. She knows she's exceptional, not because of who God made her to be, but because God made her. Period.

But I know somewhere there weeps another different child. One whose parents are unwilling to understand, whose faith community condemns them and who feel completely isolated.

To that child, I want to gather you up in my arms and give you rest, assure you that life will get better and you will find many many people who will love you just as you are.
To YOU, the one who began in grade school with simple teasing words and today escalates to more; you who cyberbully, who taunt, who ostracize, who ridicule.... you diminish your humanity with your actions. Break the cycle, do not be your parents, your circle of friends. Be the one who breaks away free from hatred.

Dare to be that radical.