Back Door Christian

A year ago, I completed a season of ministry with a beloved congregation.  It was hard to say goodbye and I have missed being with them. But they are strong and healthy and have been joined by new pastors, and I celebrate that!

I have been worshipping at a nearby church where some of my friends are members.  In those early days of last summer, it was strange to arrive for worship along with everyone else, to search for a parking place, to go in the front door, receive a bulletin that I had not prepared, and find a place in the pew.  People were warm and welcoming, though, and the place soon began to feel familiar.  I quickly came to appreciate the care and the call present in the preaching.  The music was strong and beautiful.  And the commitment of the church to justice and peace was important to me.  

For several months, I continued to come and go through the front door.  Then I joined the choir.  The first time I came to choir practice at the church, I went as usual to the front door, only to find it locked.  Choir members entered instead by the door around in back, and so did I.  

I’ve continued entering by that back door, not just for choir, but also on Sunday mornings.  I see people in the parking lot that I am starting to know and we exchange morning pleasantries.  I enjoy the happy commotion of those who are setting up for coffee hour.  I see what new art is displayed.  I share conversation with others in the pew as we wait for the prelude.  It has started to feel like home.  And it was the back door that made the difference.  After all, it is the back door where family enters. 

Church growth experts rightly point out the importance of a welcoming presence at the front door when a visitor arrives. But the real welcome is not just a smile and a greeting.  It is the promise that the back door, as well as the front, is also open. 

Prostrate with grief?

I welcomed the unseasonable warm days, shedding heavy winter coat and gloves, sitting on the sun porch, and putting away the snow shovel.  It was too soon, too good to last.  We were all betrayed, especially the tulips.   And now they lie in the dirt, sad and broken, mourning a spring interrupted.   

Kneeling Before a Child

Our most recent communion was by intinction.  One by one, the congregation came forward to take a piece of bread and dip it into the cup.  A very tall deacon was one of the servers.  When a woman came with a little girl, he was almost too tall just to lean over; instead he got down on his knees so the child could reach the bread.  And although we are deep into Lent, I thought about Christmas, when we kneel before another Child.  And I realized that kneeling and serving that Child is not just something for December, not just something for the manger, but for any time, every time, including Lent.

The Impeded Stream

One of my favorite poets is Wendell Berry.  I recently came across some words from him that have stayed with me:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

What he means, I suppose, is that without hardship we are never find the fullness of our life’s calling, our true voice.  Without bumps in the road, washouts, and detours, we never get where we are truly meant to be.  “The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

The choir at the church I have been attending recently sang an old song that I love, one that was sung at my ordination.  And it seemed to me at first that the song contradicts the poet.  But here are the first two verses and refrain:

My life flows on in endless song;

above earth’s lamentation,

I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn

that hails a new creation.

Refrain:

No storm can shake my inmost calm

while to that Rock I’m clinging.

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

Through all the tumult and the strife,

I hear that music ringing.

It finds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

My life, I suppose, has been like an impeded stream over these past 18 months.  And still it flows on, spilling over surgery and chemo, rippling around radiation, dancing through doctor visits, persevering – a song of thanksgiving, a song of being reminded yet again of the preciousness of life.  And that is truly something to sing about!

Beauty, Bravery, Loyalty

Last weekend, I got a pedicure – an hour of soaking my feet in warm water, getting them massaged and moisturized, and having my toenails painted.  I left with lovely feet.  The woman who did the work was from Viet Nam.  She came to the United States about twenty years ago, at age 19, speaking no English, leaving behind a war-torn nation, most of her family, and all of her way of life.  She was almost too old for school but she went to a high school for a year or two.  She told me that there was one boy in her school also from Viet Nam, the only person she could talk to, and he sat with her in the cafeteria.  One day, he explained to her how to pull the handle on the red box on the wall, telling her that it was a good thing to do.   She did what he said and triggered an alarm, complete with fire trucks and an evacuation.  It seemed to me a kind of cruel trick to play on her, but she was still laughing about her innocence and trust all these years later.

One of the scriptures at church the next morning included Isaiah 52:7:   “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

I listened to the reading and I thought about my beautiful feet, not made that way by any peace-making of my own, but rather the hands of a woman with the courage to leave everything for the promise, only a promise, of a better life, of a place, perhaps, of peace. 

Around the corner from my house, our neighbor has erected his annual Halloween display.  He is a history professor, and each year, he does a scene more elaborate than the one before.  This year he has commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Viet Nam War.  He has staged a still life of ghostly soldiers fighting in the jungle, complete with a wrecked helicopter, grass-thatched huts, and a replica of the Wall with an invitation to passers-by to write the names of veterans they want to remember.   All this against the backdrop of neat suburban homes….He has no commentary, except a small sign that reads:  “What have we learned of war beyond the need to support our troops?"

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring peace.  How brave are the lives of those whose set out for a promised land.  How loyal are those who sacrifice in the pursuit of freedom, even when that pursuit is complicated and flawed. 

Growing Garlic

I have harvested and dried the garlic from my garden, and it is ready to add flavor to soups and stews well into the winter.

As I dug it up in the late summer warmth, that work felt like a parable – a parable of resurrection and of my life these past 18 months.

I planted the garlic last fall, and after the first frost, I will plant next year’s crop.  The garlic I harvested was buried in the earth and soon covered with deep now.  All through the long cold snowy winter (and it was very long and very cold and very snowy…) the tiny bulbs were hidden and silent, but still with growth in them. 

That time of stress is essential to the later growth.  In the spring, the garlic comes up and puts out scapes, curly stems with garlic flowers on them.  The scapes need to be cut back, because if all the energy of the bulb goes into the flower, the roots do not grow as large and strong.

I have not written here for a long time.  It has been my own time of silence and maybe, too, of growth. And it has been a time of cutting back – literally and figuratively.  I’ve had some surgery, some months of chemo and radiation, the kind of stress that brings healing and new growth. 

Like the garlic ready for the stew, like the one hoping to continue contributing some flavor to the stew of daily life, it is all about practicing resurrection, which is preceded by being willing to die a little, be hidden and silent, endure some stress.

One of my very favorite poems has these lines:

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

…..

Practice resurrection.

(from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front from The Country of Marriage, 

copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.)

And that is what I am doing:  practicing resurrection.  Me and the garlic!

The News….

The news is awful:  planes shot out of the air, children filling refugee camps...in the U.S., hundreds of girls kidnapped, boys killed by bombs on a beach.  Maybe it has always been so, but this summer seems especially horrible.  The poet Mary Oliver speaks to my feelings:


The Morning Paper

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition 
     is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
     have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
     yet approved decisions,
soak in.

I don't need to name the countries,
     ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces
     to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?


From A Thousand Mornings, published by Penguin Books, 2012.

Holy Saturday

A fragment from a poem:

So it is not hard to understand
   where God's body is, it is
everywhere and everything; shore and the vast
   fields of water, the accidental and the intended
over here, over there. And I bow down
   participate and attentive

it is so dense and apparent.  And all the same I am still
   unsatisfied.  Standing
here, now, I am thinking
   not of His thick wrists and His blue
shoulders, but, still, of Him.  Where, do you suppose, is His
   pale and wonderful mind?

   from "On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)"
   by Mary Oliver, in Thirst, published by Beacon Press, Boston, 2006.

Where do you suppose His mind is?  If we were paying attention last Sunday, then we know:  "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…" (Philippians 2:5).  On this day of waiting, as we prepare for resurrection, let that holy and transcendent mind be somehow resurrected in us.

Two Parades

There were two parades in Hartford today around our church.  One was attended by tens of thousands, cheering and partying.  The streets were closed to traffic; parking lots were jammed; souvenirs were on sale everywhere.  The heroes being celebrated were basketball players, young men and women who had accomplished the seemingly impossible. They were winners, champions.  And it seemed the whole state was united in saluting them. 

The other parade was a small group waving pieces of palm, singing and walking down the sidewalk.  No need to stop traffic for that parade!  No marching bands, no dignitaries, no crowds lined up to cheer.  No one really paying attention or even noticing.  No spectators. Except one… one Holy One, watching our little efforts to recreate what history calls the “Triumphal Entry.”  Maybe it was triumphal.  Maybe it was like the afternoon parade with the cheering masses.  But maybe it was just a small group, not quite sure where they were going or why, just saluting that man on the donkey.

One writer who calls Palm Sunday “the strangest holiday of the year,” says it is “a celebration of misunderstanding”  (John Leax).  We are looking for heroes, the ones who have defied the odds and ended up as champions.  We are excited to have an excuse for a party.  We think our problems will all be solved and the trophies are ours.  We have been faithful fans and now we are being rewarded.  But it isn’t like that at all. 

This is not a parade where we are spectators and he is putting on a show.  This is the real thing.  We cannot stand along the parade route as he passes by on his journey to the cross, and then gather up our things and go back to our old way of life.  We have to follow him, if we are to consider ourselves Christians, if we are to be Christ-like. We have to have the same mind that was in him. We have to go with him into faithfulness, into surrender to God, even into suffering.  This is not a mere and momentary disruption in the rush-hour traffic of our lives.  Instead it is a complete change of destination. 

Thanksgiving

And so much to be thankful for!