Lisa Lewton

Week 1 of 3: The World Needs You to Pray (First, what is prayer?)

Welcome to a three-week focus on prayer practice. I hope this mini-series meets you where you are and invites you to be gentle on yourself in your own unique practice of prayer. (For a deeper dive into prayer, perhaps a book by one of my favorite authors, Father James Martin, is for you.)

A few weeks ago in a Zoom conversation with my spiritual director, I found myself in tears. Pastor Brice has met with me nearly each month for the past 17 years, beginning at the infancy of my pastoral life. His work as a spiritual director is to direct people to recognize God’s presence. My time with him opens my imagination to the mercy of Jesus Christ in my everyday life.

I entered this particular conversation carrying a few heavy burdens. I was anticipating the long stretch of Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, working diligently to equip the leadership of our congregation to make no-win decisions related to the pandemic, responding to my own kids’ distinct needs, caring for my spouse in the annual high stress of beginning the last quarter of the school year. In a nutshell, I was tired. If you look around, you might notice pastors or deacons who are tired. We carry the weight of people’s displeasure for decisions related to the pandemic, while at the same time are experiencing personal fatigue that has accumulated for the past 15 months. I write this not to lure you into sympathy for clergy, but to give you an unusually honest glimpse into the lives of the people who care for your souls.

With Pastor Brice, I spend roughly 20 minutes in contemplative prayer. I light a candle and stare at it for much of our time. What is it about contained, dancing flames that slows down my breathing and loosens my shoulders? Brice will express a few winding thoughts to move my own thoughts out of the chaotic parts of my brain. I open my eyes just enough to scribble some of his Spirit-filled wisdom onto paper, to capture the moments when I recognize God’s presence. That day, I scribbled around tears that fell on my paper; tears that interrupted the hustle to the empty tomb.

In a podcast with Kate Bowler, Father James Martin describes prayer as intentional, conscious conversation with God. He said, “It’s a back and forth. It’s you sharing yourself with God, and it’s also God sharing God’s self with you in different ways.”

In that moment with my spiritual director, I had finally let God get a word in. When I did, I heard God tell me to quit talking about Jesus long enough to let Jesus do the talking in me and to me. I heard the Spirit in the tears that relinquished me of my responsibility to make a community content. I heard Jesus’ promise to care for all the people, including me.

Prayer practice might look like this for you, if even once in a while. Like any conversation, it does require your attention. Maybe on a walk, in the shower, or while you’re sautéing onions. You might wear some type of air pods to deter people from talking to you while you are in conversation with God.

As you do that, make sure to listen. After all, God, your most faithful conversation partner, has already been listening to you.

A preview of next week: Prayer changes the way you look at your own life, your family, your marriage, and your work. It is the quiet path toward being more gentle on yourself, and more aware of God’s presence.

P.S. Spiritual Direction is not only for pastors. I would recommend it for anyone who would like to deepen your relationship with God. Pastor Brice is obviously my favorite. I did spend time at a monastery several years back and found that to be renewing as well.

P.P.S. I try to publish a weekly post on Mondays, but if you don’t want to miss it, you can subscribe to my blog on the right. Subscribing will also give you a sneak peak at a few extras, including excerpts from a book I expect to self-publish this summer, called “Spiritual Longings in a Woman’s World.”

P.P.S. I find you awesome because you read all the way to the bottom of this post.

The Great 3 Days: Hope is Freaking Hard

It is Easter Eve and all through the world pastors are hoping.

Pastors are hoping to wake up tomorrow feeling healthy and joyful and refreshed and ready for a long stretch of a morning. (Woe to pastors’ kids or spouses who keep them up too late tonight.)

Pastors are hoping to be overwhelmed today by imaginative ideas to preach a familiar story. (Or, if they are a J on the Myers Briggs like me, their sermons are finished and printed and quietly waiting on their desks for a final round of editing tomorrow morning.)

Pastors are hoping for safe gatherings in church buildings, or where such gatherings are not possible, they hope the disappointment felt in the congregation can somehow be lifted by this familiar story.

Pastors carry an abundance of hopes today in the middle of The Great Three days. Yesterday we remembered Jesus’ death on the cross. Tomorrow we remember the stone was rolled away. But today, if we live into this story there is nothing to see here but a regular cave tomb that a wealthy person let the Jesus followers borrow. There was so much worry among the powers of the day that a Jesus follower would steal his body and claim he had been resurrected, that they somehow set an unfathomably large rock in front of the entrance to the tomb.

I searched for a photo for this post of a tomb sealed by a rock, but I could only find pictures of a tomb where the rock had been rolled away. We move so quickly to Easter Sunday that we cannot even picture the tomb with the rock still in place. It is not hard to hope in what we know will happen at the tomb. It is freaking hard to hope in the everyday.

Do we dare hope to find the perfect marriage partner? Or hope the marriage partner we chose will be the one we can stick with? Do we dare hope our kids will not get into mounds of trouble? Can we hope the career we chose will work out? Or to retire while we are healthy enough to travel? Or that we will have enough money to retire? Do we dare hope the world isn’t falling apart? (This is a question asked every day there has ever been a world.)

What is a hope you have that you find freaking hard to hope?

A pastor’s job is to be preposterously hopeful. We have this great big hope that in the end, after marriages break or don’t, after kids disappoint and don’t, after jobs disappoint or don’t, after retirement or not, after the world actually doesn’t fall apart, it will all work out. The story that matters has been written. The enclosed tomb we look at today rolls open tomorrow. Allelu…. oops. Too soon.

Everyday hope is indeed hard. That I do know. I also know tomorrow morning we will proclaim with hope together in Christian churches around the earth and who knows where else the one hope we know. The stone moved. There is new life for you now and in the end, as long as you don’t try to move the stone all on your own. Then you can only hope for a backache.

Holy Week: The unDead End

The human experience is often habitual. From our morning routine, to the route we take through the grocery store, to the way we choose to relax. If you were to zoom out on your life, you would notice other examples of habit. How you set goals (or don’t) and whether you expect to achieve them. How you respond to your self-criticism. How you dream (or don’t dream) about your future.

When we move comfortably in rhythm with our habits, we might wonder whether this is all there is. Is this the only way? Does your familiar habitual experience lead irreversibly in one direction? Do all roads close in on the one dead end at the very end?

I am wondering because some habits are not particularly life-giving. Whenever you feel stuck in a job or a relationship, it feels very much like moving toward a dead end; as if this truly is all there is and there is absolutely no other way.

If you want a ridiculous example, I can supply many from my own life. To offer you just one. I have been wearing disagreeable sunglasses for almost a year. They never quite fit properly and they have left a small scratch on the bridge of my nose that will not go away for the obvious reason that I keep wearing them. In the very center of one lens, there is a damning scratch that occurred when my kids were fighting like zoo animals in the car one day and I threw my glasses because…because…well, that was just a dumb thing I did.

For the past year, I have answered “yes” to the question, “Is this the only way I might protect my eyes from the sun? Is this scratched and scratching set of sunglasses my only option?”

Here is another example, this one from the Bible and not so petty. I give you, the story we call Palm Sunday.

When Jesus sat on a donkey and strode into Jerusalem, he was mimicking a Roman victory parade. If we were first century residents of Jerusalem, we would have known that after your country (always Rome in the first century) wins a war, a prominent military figure would sit on a fancy-pants horse and enter a city through a parade of worshippers. It was “the only way” to assure a city the victors would forever be the victors. There was no reason to doubt the men in charge because, can’t you see, military men like this one will forever rule the world and therefore be worthy of your praise.

But…Jesus was on a donkey, not a horse. His victory would be by death, not by inflicting death on others. Which means this “ruler” of ours would not promise to live, but be killed. Eek.

Jesus’ life-long sermon was, “Nope, this is not all there is.” Victors who rule by might alone? Not all there is. People who are weak, poor, lost, addicted, not religious, lonely, left in the gutters? Not all there is. Women whose proper place is wherever the men decide? Not all there is. Kids who are subjected to sexual abuse because their voices don’t matter? Not all there is. The rich buying their way through life? Nope.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus preached this sermon without words. His parade into the city was a colossal joke, a prank meant to light a fire under the church and city rulers. It worked.

On Easter Sunday (and every single day) God preaches that sermon again and again. “This is not all there is.” Christians are brazen enough to look for the living among the dead because all roads, no matter how deep the ruts of our habits, do not lead to a singular dead end. The tomb was a most profound hoax of a dead end, revealing itself three days later to be an un-dead end.

I did order new sunglasses yesterday. Just in time for Easter.

A question for littles

Sometime when you are driving home and everyone is in a delightful mood and you are not in a hurry, take a different route. You could ask you kiddo to tell you where and when to turn. Ask them what they notice? What’s it like to take a different route?

A question for former littles

Do you feel stuck in any particular habit? (First, the grown-up must share an answer from her or his own life.)

A spiritual practice

When you have 5 extra minutes (or maybe during your shower) think of words you use to describe yourself. Be honest and let the words come to you. Notice whether the words are positive or negative. Are some of the words untrue? Do they lead you to dead ends in your life? How might the un-dead end of the empty tomb renew your sense of yourself?

Lent Week 5: Waiting

(Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash)

Last year in April I had a cough that wouldn’t quit. Like most people who coughed in 2020, I wondered whether I had COVID-19, so I called my primary doctor and she suggested I come in to get tested. This was early in the days of testing before our community became proficient at drive-through testing. I drove up to the clinic door where I was met by a kind nurse who explained which door I would walk into. I parked my car and took with me only my mask and car fob to avoid the potential of contaminating my phone or purse. This might sound silly now, but April was a time of great unknown and we interpreted what we did not know about COVID-19 with heightened suspicion.

After following the kind nurse in the door and down an empty hallway, she deposited me in an exam room where I waited. After a brief wait, one of my favorite LPN’s checked me out and I waited alone in that room for the results of the strep test before going home to wait a few days for the results of the COVID-19 test. In the exam room, I waited about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes alone in a room in a wing of the clinic that was hauntingly empty with no phone therefore no Kindle book. It was me in a shroud of silence. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting is art, perhaps, in that it becomes what you make of it. It can be perturbing or relaxing. You are given time to stew or to notice. I chose to notice. I noticed what it was like to be utterly alone in a time when we were exceptionally careful of each other. So worried about ourselves and one another. I noticed the courage of the medical professionals doing their own waiting between tests. Each test moving them further into a global pandemic, something they had prepped but never experienced. We were all new to this waiting.

No, I did not have COVID-19. My cough stuck with me another couple of months, and nearly a year later, so has my experience waiting.

Much of the time we are waiting. Waiting for someone to come home. Waiting for water to boil. Waiting for kids to go to bed. Waiting for husbands to surprise us with coffee. Waiting for tulips to push out of the soil. Waiting for the bus. Waiting for the internet to speed up. The next time you find yourself waiting, you might embrace it as a time of noticing.

Lent is six weeks of waiting for Easter Sunday. We notice in the waiting how human and fragile we are and Jesus was. We are absolutely vulnerable to everything in these bodies God blew out of the dust and then climbed into in Bethlehem. We are vulnerable to broken bones and a broken heart. To insidious coughs and scary diagnoses. Notice in this last stretch of waiting during Lent that you are fragile and so is this life. Look around, notice and take inventory of what matters. Moments matter, relationships matter, Christ’s forgiveness matters, each season of your life matters, you matter.

Thank you, Jesus, for periods of waiting, and for showing up so we never wait alone.

A question for littles

Do you think Jesus ever has to wait for anything?

A question for former littles

What is the next big thing you are waiting for?

A spiritual practice

The next time you are waiting in line, resist the urge to go to your phone. Notice what is around you. Can you pray silently for someone you see? Or for the person who will later clean the floor you are standing on? What do you notice as you wait?

Lent Week 4: Your Kiddo Really Prefers Store-Bought Granola Bars, So You Can Stop Making Them

If there is one thing I now know in the thick of the marathon that is parenting, it’s that I really don’t know much. And the things I do know have been learned only when I unlearned other things.

For example, my child will eat homemade baby food, and then homemade granola bars and mac and cheese, and then homemade everything because this is what I learned in parenting magazines (back when impressionable parents gleaned information from paper pages instead of web pages.) I unlearned much of what I had learned when my kids realized the world is much larger and in it exists a magical kind of Kraft Mac and Cheese and granola bars found in wrappers, like candy bars.

I learned from experienced parents the dream of being the parent who hosts the teenage gatherings in order to know kids’ friends. These wise parents taught me the importance of creating a welcoming, junk-food friendly home to attract teenagers like vape shops with their variety of cereal-flavored options. I unlearned such learning when I began to understand teenagers don’t always gather in the same room. I cannot offer said junk food to a teenager through an Xbox, even though I consider virtual gatherings valuable.

Parenting exists in a steady stream of learning, unlearning, and learning. It never ends. Ever. Which means there needs to be a space for the unlearning. We humans need space for the unlearning to lead to new learning. We learn to overschedule kids and shape our lives around their busyness. We learn to consume too much via cookies or Amazon or alcohol. We learn to work too much, complain too much, and accept the world for what it is too much.

I invite you to make space for the unlearning. In the unlearning, we make space to question what we think we know and let the Holy Spirit stir our imagination into new learning. What do you need to unlearn about the way you spend your time or your money? What might you unlearn about the way you understand your body or your neighbor or your nation or your religion or the world? What parenting practices might you unlearn to avoid making the marathon any freaking harder than it already is?

I have come to imagine Lent as a time when the church makes room for the unlearning to learn again the unlikely ending of the Jesus story. Based on all logic and reasoning and everything we have ever learned, the Jesus story should end on the cross with his last breath. The book should close with the power of death we learn all through life but of course it doesn’t. Instead, we learn an unlikely Easter awakening keeps the book from closing.

Unlearning death’s power means we live an entire life knowing the story doesn’t end as it should. So when I make a wrong parenting move, or realize what I’ve been doing was a sub-par idea, I can turn around (repent is the churchy word) and learn something new. New is the first and last word God speaks. New creation, new life, new wondering, new learning (after the unlearning).

A question for littles

What is one thing you know that grown-ups forget? (Kids can be great teachers of what to unlearn.)

A question for former littles

What is something you thought was true when you were little that doesn’t seem to be true after all?

A spiritual practice

Think back to a time in your life when you felt at peace, and comfortable with your self? Is there something you need to unlearn to return to that sense of peace?

Lent Week 3: What Silence Might Say?

“Let’s play Graveyard!” shouted the day campers. And no, this was not Vampire Camp, it was Bible Camp.

Growing up, day campers like me loved the game Graveyard. We spread out and lay down in any position we chose. Whoever could be silent and the absolute stillest (dare I say corpse-like) the longest was the winner. Counselors walked around and removed from the game anyone not acting like they belonged in a graveyard.

Only when I became a counselor years later did I recognize the genius of this game. Graveyard interrupted the cacophony of camper noise and bought the staff several minutes of complete and utter silence. In fact, I think as a camper we played this game after lunch and I wonder now if when the counselors were “inspecting the graveyard” they were actually napping.

For most moms of littles, silence only comes in the beloved moments of naptime, if it comes at all. In later decades of life, the silence can be unbearable. Perhaps life is lived in seasons of longing for and dreading silence. Last year I spent four days on a silent retreat at Pacem in Terris hermitage in Northern Minnesota, where silence felt like a cold cup of water on a steamy hot day. I left so refreshed after listening to silence day after day. Of course, the silence was not completely without sound. There were rustling leaves, singing birds, tiptoeing deer and raindrops. And silence itself has its own words for you. When you find yourself with silence, it will have so much to say whether you are together four days or four minutes or even four seconds.

Yet we hardly ever find ourselves alone with silence because we cover the mouth of silence with music, podcasts, tv shows, and video games. If we really want to hear what silence has to say, we can brush our teeth with the bathroom door closed and possibly ignore the wiggling fingers at the door. We can keep the radio off in the car, walk without headphones, or make dinner without turning on a device. What might the silence say to you?

We are halfway through Lent, only a few weeks from the day we are awaiting. These weeks of reflection require some silence to be ready for the silence that awaits us in the empty tomb. On Easter Sunday, the silence has everything to say you. It will say, “And you thought death was final.” Or, “Look what God does when all hope is lost.” Or maybe, “Silence is the secret promise that everything will be okay in the end if you can just hold on a bit longer.”

A question for littles

When and where are we expected to be quiet? (at the library, sometimes at church, during the National Anthem, sometimes at school, when we listen to someone else pray) Why are we expected to be quiet then?

A question for former littles

How do you decide what notifications on your phone to turn on or off? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by them? Do the notifications make it difficult to relax?

A spiritual practice

Take a walk and don’t invite your phone. Listen to what is going on around you and what you hear in your own head.

Lent Week 2: The Math of Lent

During Lent, we often practice subtraction. We subtract (give up) chocolate, social media, or alcohol. One person told me she subtracts one meal each week to recognize how many people go hungry. At our church, we subtract busy programs and as many meetings as we can during Lent to focus on worship.
Subtracting what pushes into the margins is a healthy practice to delineate where life is to start and stop. Life has a way of spilling into the margins. We eat too much chocolate, consume too much social media, and drink our worries away. Wait, where is the margin? We expend too much time overparenting, pour more energy into work relationships than our marriage, and make rest a distant priority. Margin? What margin?

Perhaps it is time to wonder if Lent can be a time of addition. Can you add a screen time limit to your own phone? Add an automated gift to your favorite charity that feeds the hungry? Add to your calendar a date night with your spouse, or a self-care day for yourself? A couple of years ago, my family added hosting a weekly dinner with friends during Lent. Each Friday, we invited friends or family to our home for a nice meal, conversation, and games. We didn’t do it perfectly. There were a couple of weeks it didn’t work out, and isn’t that how it goes when you are trying to maintain margins? Each week, we simply start over.

When we add what matters, the margin seems to work itself out, no subtraction required.

A question for littles

What is something you love to do together you wish we would do more?

A question for former littles

Think of some of the most meaningful ways you spend your time. What do you do that gets in the way of spending time meaningfully? Do you want to spent more time alone/with friends/with family doing what is meaningful to you?

A spiritual practice

Try adding one meaningful thing to your life for the next four weeks of Lent. It could be a daily or weekly practice. Like most important things you don’t want to forget, add it to your calendar. Make that time sacred and nonnegotiable.

The Church is Not Perfect, But…

The Christian Church is many things. Perfect is not one of them. Going to church may or may not be your thing. I respect you where you are. When I talk about church, that I do not speak of it idealistically. I am aware of its flaws and messiness.

And yet, I love the Christian Church. Going to worship for me is like being a student in what Anne Lamott has called “forgiveness school.” Church gives me practice at forgiveness school. The best way to practice forgiveness is to be around people. People like me need a lot of forgiveness. I am as far from perfect as ice cream is from being diet food.

Which is why I gather weekly with others who are far from perfect. Our imperfection is heard in our communal music. You know what I mean if worship is your thing. Some people are meant to sing. They should sing aloud throughout the day, beginning with their grocery lists. Other singers are embarrassed, some refuse. We are altogether a messy choir, reflecting the way we move about our lives and come back again and again to forgiveness school.

At forgiveness school that looks like worship, we say much the same thing from week to week. It is not unusual to sing 200 year old hymns, which is nothing compared to the 2,000 year old Lord’s Prayer. From decade to decade, many of our words are the same, not because we ran out of creative juices but because there is comfort in speaking the same words my great-grandmother spoke at forgiveness school.

When I lead the 2,000 year old prayer, I step back from the microphone and listen. I let my words get tangled up in the words of the other imperfect people in the room, worshipping over the radio, or with me on Facebook live. The beauty is in the cloud of familiar words stretching from that moment to so many moments before.

All the words lead to the one word, forgiveness, a song in itself.

Heavy Words & Little Ears

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday in a language of heavy words. In the Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal, we confess in words that would have done me in at an elementary-aged spelling bee, and might still give me trouble were it not for spell-check: self-indulgence, hypocrisy, exploitation of people, and self-examination.

The last phrase is both heavy and light all at once. When you look deeply at your own self, what do you find? I find all the heavy words at work. Am I self-indulgent? Let me think about it after I drink a third cup of coffee with a splash of cream. Hypocritical? Indeed. Do I exploit people when I buy cheap stuff on Amazon. Yikes. Let’s be done now.

Coupled with the heaviness of Lent’s language, however, is an airy lightness. Sure, you are bound to embody those words by nature of your humanity. They run in your blood and move to your heart. And yet, the 40 day self-examination moves us in a single direction: to Easter. Lent is a hard look at our own selves and a grateful look at what God has already done about it. You carry around heavy words and Jesus lifts them off your back. You are overwhelmed by your relationship with the aforementioned heavy words and Jesus erases them to scribble the one word “forgiven” all over you.

Lent gives us language to teach ourselves and our kids that the heavy words do not define us or own us. Jesus’ one word, however, does.

A question for littles

Forgiveness means there is nothing we can do to undo God’s love for us. It sticks to us like the stickiest glue ever invented. What sticky things can they find in the house? (For example: stickers, tape, the maple syrup on the kitchen table from breakfast.) Talk about God’s love as stickier than even that!

A question for former littles

Wonder together about self-indulgence. Be honest about what tempts you to self-indulge. (Hello, chocolate chip cookies.) What does it feel like when you self-indulge? Why is hard to be honest about it? How does Jesus’ word “forgiven” written all over you change how you feel about yourself?

A spiritual practice

Self-examination is indeed a heavy phrase. Let it also be a freeing phrase.

Sit still and scan your body from your toes to the top of your head. Remember God made your body out of love and in the image of God. Imagine examining your heart. What do you find there? Let your heart tell you. Take one deep breath and then another, as you say this prayer: “I am forgiven. Let my heart love my neighbor and myself.”

To Know and Be Known

This is not a schmaltzy Valentine’s Day post, lest the photograph mislead you. Tomorrow is not my favorite day of the year, although I have found it to be a good excuse to buy my kids a new book and chocolate. The point of Valentine’s Day is to express our human love for one another, but with that comes heaps of opportunities for missed expectations (disappointment) which can lead to not loving moments on such a lovely day of the year. At least there is chocolate!

Because our staff is reading The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, I better understand my relationship with Valentine’s Day. Turns out, Valentine’s Day, it’s not you, it’s me! Have you heard of this tool to understand our personalities? The Enneagram, as Ian Morgan Cron, co-author of the book explains, is “a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.”

Yikes. Have you ever wished someone would be different and therefore easier to love? Guilty. Have you crossed your fingers hoping someone you love might change as the years go by? Guilty. Learning my enneagram number taught me that although I am a unique human being created in the image of God like no other human being, I am also like many other human beings in the world. We are people who avoid Valentine’s Day because it can be accompanied by disappointment. When we encounter disappointment on Valentine’s Day, we distance from the very person who is trying to love us.

Like other people who identify as a 5 (The Observer), I prefer to think more than feel. I have to work hard to process my feelings. I like learning and listening as long as it isn’t small talk, and when someone says, “Tell me about yourself”, I wish I had an invisibility cloak. I will know a hundred things about a friend or conversation partner before they know 10 things about me. Anyone who identifies as a 5 would describe themselves similarly.

This new understanding of myself has been clarifying in a life-giving way, just in time for Valentine’s Day. I know myself more truly as a pastor, mom, wife and friend. Most importantly, I know to be more gentle on myself and others, especially on Feb. 14th. I am a 5, my husband is a 2, and that could lead to a whole series of blogposts.

For now, remember you are known by the Maker as your true, broken, messy self, which makes slightly more sense when you know your own true, broken, messy self.

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