Category Archives: faith

Dreamers Wanted

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My cell phone is sleeping. It is turned off and tucked into a drawer until noon, and shortly after will resume its nap until this evening. I’ve been a real crabbypants lately, made worse by checking the proliferating number of COVID-19 cases in our county.

Checking the cases makes me slightly anxious. Feeling slightly anxious leads to feeling slightly more anxious. Feeling slightly more anxious makes me crabby at a lack of cooperation by fellow citizens of Dickinson to wear masks in public. Crabby about masks makes me crabby at people. And too much crabbiness is not very pastoral.

Which is why this is a Sabbath Day for my cell phone and me. Because I have been a crabbypants.

I need a break from my own reactions to this season of America’s history in real time. A break from defensive feelings that keep bubbling up in me: judgement, anger, disappointment.

Today, I am not a defender. I’ll choose to be a dreamer. Dreaming is easier when my cell phone is napping and my amygdala isn’t on edge.

And 2020 could use more dreamers and fewer defenders.

How To Not Plan For the Future

(Photo by Cassidy Kelley on Unsplash)

Planning and me go together like cookie dough and chocolate chips. Give me the job of planning the meal, planning the vacation, planning the congregational visioning process, planning the closet reorganizing, planning the preaching schedule, planning the family calendar, and I’m as happy as Homer with a Duff Beer.

Imagining a future and trying to have some say in it…remember when that seemed possible? Remember six months ago when you had a vacation on your calendar? A game plan for the holidays? A coffee date for next week?

Those were the days.

And yet. All this time you have been breathing, and you didn’t have to plan a thing. All day your heart has been lub-dubbing and none of your plans made that happen, either.

God is always up to some life-giving something, it seems, without our getting too involved in all the details.

What Do You Expect?

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Expectations are in the air. Whether you know it or not, expectations you carry around for yourself, your family, your friends, and your community and its leaders give shape to your life.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as I regularly hear conspiracies related to COVID-19. In North Dakota, apparently conspiracy theories are our thing. I’ve bent my pastoral ear to theories about hospitals receiving more revenue for COVID-19 patients , or death certificates recklessly adding COVID-19 as a cause of death, or that this whole thing will go away after the election.

I suspect there might be an expectation that the system is out to get people. That the Democrats or the Republicans or the refugees or the women or the people who are gay are out to get you. There is an expectation that a person’s freedoms are at risk, that the world is getting worse, that all leaders are suspect.

It leads me to wonder about my role as a spiritual leader. What do people expect of me right now? Do they expect me to challenge their conspiracies? Expect me to remind them the very person they are naming as suspect may have been the doctor they have trusted for decades, or the refugee who dreams of work and well-being as much as they do.

Expectations. In my marriage and in my life as a pastor, I have found that unpacking expectations deescalates an angry moment. It adds clarity to the muck of assumptions and suspicions.

Perhaps my pastoral question needs to center on expectations.

“What are you expecting God to do in the midst of this?”

“How are you expecting communal healing in 2020?”

“How do you expect God needs you and I to speak truth into these matters?”

“What to do you expect our own church and our own local community to look like in a year if we have spoken so many untruths?”

There was no expectation life would emerge from that empty tomb on Easter morning. So I refuse to accept that this world has gotten worse and all leaders are suspect. I’ll expect an alternative. And perhaps I need to expect myself to ask more faithful questions out loud.

New Week, New Mercy

(Photo by Raphael Renter on Unsplash)

As though the mom-guilt I already experience isn’t enough, a global pandemic is a guilt game-changer.

Ordinarily, I feel guilty about working too much or too little; spending too little time with my kids or smothering them; screen time surveillance for my kids; whether I am taking enough time for our marriage, for myself, for our friends; why I can’t “find time” to exercise.

These days, I also worry about being present for my elementary-aged kiddo on at-home school days, getting her outside, and screen time surveillance is an entirely redefined conundrum!

If you are a parent dealing with an extra helping of guilt, I offer you these words…

*Be gentle on yourself. We have never done this before. Take a deep breath and then another.

*Kids are the most amazing and resilient creatures. While you need to do your best, you need not take the place of Jesus for them. Remind yourself and your kids that God’s mercy makes us enough for this wild work.

*Read a book, take a walk, or stare at the stars. There is enough beauty and wonder to assure you these months are a tiny blip in your life.

*Jesus doesn’t love what you do as much as Jesus loves who you are, beloved child of God.

This is a new week. And there is plenty of new mercy just for you.

The Deep Breath That Is Saturday

(Photo by Michelle on Unsplash)

Look at you! You made it all the way to Saturday. Perhaps it was a long way, or a quick trip. Here you are.

Saturdays can be a deep breath when you stop to recognize how shallow you’ve been breathing for so many days. You’ve taken in only the minimal amount of breath to get by; today you can breathe deep.

Sit down and breathe.

Feel the weight on your shoulders and wonder what all that’s about. Maybe some of that weight should sit somewhere else. You’ve got breaths to take.

Look around at the people and place in your life. Scroll through the past week and wonder what you missed in the lives of these people in the place where you are, and what you will refuse to miss in the week ahead. Abundant life demands a creative tapestry of the word “no”. No to this if it makes you too busy and your breath too shallow. No to that if your shoulders are heavy with demands that need not be yours.

There is enough breath for you to take it into the depths of your soul. People who studied Hebrew know a lovely secret that the Hebrew word for breath (you read in the Old Testament) is also the word for Spirit. A deep breath is an inhalation of the Holy Spirit. So take a breath and then another and let the life-giving Spirit enliven every cell in your body, every thought, every heartbeat, every movement.

Thank you, Saturday. We should do this more often.

Walking the Car Lots

I have one dad and one daughter.

When I was the young daughter of my dad long ago, we could not leave the city of Minot without driving through a car lot or two. Minot was the big city where we went for doctor appointments, regional basketball tournaments, and car parts (my dad ran a gas station). And Minot offered a half dozen car lots for my dad to drive through.

Up and down the rows of cars we went, slowing to a stop so my dad could get out from the driver’s seat and I would roll my eyes and wonder when it would ever end. More rows of cars. More car lots. More slowing to a stop. More opening the door even in the dead of winter to peak inside the windows.

And shortly after those days did end, I had a daughter who loves to walk through the car lots not too many blocks from our home. Up and down the rows of cars we walk. Slowing to a stop so she can peak in the windows and act appalled at the price tag. Today, she said to a very expensive and very shiny SUV, “Now that’s just stupid.”

So here I am again. More rows of cars. More car lots. Because my one dad and my one daughter are two of my very favorite people in the entire world.

No, No, No, No, Yes

jim trott on Tumblr | Vicar of dibley, British tv comedies, British sitcoms

If you are not aware this is Jim from “Vicar of Dibley”, then woe is you. Unless your life is absolutely overflowing with laughter and lightheartedness (that is, if you have no idea what is going on in the world), you may need to subscribe to Britbox on Amazon Prime this weekend and get to know Jim and his eccentric priest, Geraldine Granger, the Vicar in the village of Dibley.

It will only take a few hours of your life to make you forget there is anything weird going on in the world. If ever you needed to hang out in the delightful village of Dibley, now is the time.

Jim has a unique way of speaking, repeating “No, no, no, no” only to finally reach the word “yes”. I feel Jim bubble up inside me these days through the otherwise normal questions my kids ask.

“Can we have a sleepover?”

“Can we go out for supper at a real restaurant where someone else cleans up?”

“Can we go somewhere for the weekend?”

“No, no, no…” I say, again and again. Not yet. Someday. Maybe soon? I don’t really know. Want to play Four Square? Should we go pick up donuts?

There will come a day when my kids ask one of those questions and I will respond naturally, “No, no, no, no…yes!” It will occur to me that we are free to move about and they will have sleepovers and we will go out to a restaurant and travel somewhere for the weekend and it will be amazing!

Until then, go to Dibley this weekend and laugh until you cry. And if you wonder whether the weirdness of these days will last forever, you can be sure the answer is no, no, no, NO.

Lucky To Be Alive Right Now

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And…back to “Hamilton”, when Eliza (almost Hamilton) sang again and again, “Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now!”

It was the slow birth of America and Eliza was caught up in the excitement of midwifing a country. The people were on the brink of freedom and they felt lucky to be alive to see it.

Today, we are not united by American freedoms, we are divided by them. Divided by narcissistic political ideologies, by Christian extremism, by racism so embodied in our values we miss it, by our fear of the stranger.

And yet, how lucky we are to be alive right now! How lucky we are to be part of the loud cry to dismantle racism; that our kids might see our generational mistakes for what they are, name the pain that has been caused, and pave a path of hope for those dehumanized by the American quest for power.

How lucky we are to be alive in a pandemic when all our busy schedules were put on hold and we, for a moment, glimpsed the truth that relationships and people matter most.

How lucky we are that our kids are experiencing disruption and we have been able to walk with them. Life is a series of disruptions and this time we could encourage them through it.

How lucky we are, if we might live like we are alive right now to the Spirit’s breezes and windstorms. How lucky we are to be alive in the Spirit’s aliveness, calling us out of our stupor to birth a new possibility for the neighbor and the stranger. How lucky.

When Hamilton Streams in My Head All Day

“My name is Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton.”

Finally, I know the tune! I do know your name, Alexander Hamilton! “In New York you can be a new man. Just you wait.”

I am a few years behind in getting to the musical, “Hamilton”. The majority of my little family does not adore musicals as much as I do, so it took me a while. Thanks to Disney+ and Amazon Prime, I’ve been watching and listening to Hamilton constantly for the past four days, much to my family’s chagrin. When the music isn’t playing outside my head it is playing inside of it. Or, I sing the tunes to my family until I suspect their eyes might not roll back into their proper place.

“And I’m not throwing away my shot!” I sing to them.

“We’re gonna Rise Up!” I sing to them.

My family thinks I’m ridiculous, but I can’t get enough of Alexander Hamilton’s life. (I prefer this musical to his 800 page biographies.) Getting caught up in the music and story of this courageous immigrant who couldn’t seem to die, as he sings, is a delightful right now to “Take a Break”.

While I cannot cheer on my favorite sports team from a seat at Target Field or worship in the same room with the entire community of faith at St. John, I can be united in the long ago revolutionary fight for freedom. I can admire the genius of the writing and the breathtaking talent of the small crew who pulled off this brilliant musical.

So I will watch and listen to “Hamilton”, as the king of England sings, forever and ever and ever.

What’s For Supper?

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Like many moms throughout this day, someone will ask me “What’s for supper?” approximately 85 times. It is a burning question fueled not by hunger. Usually this question emerges from the corner of the brain assigned to “Annoying and Impertinent Questions to Ask a Parent All Day Long.”

“What’s for supper?”

“I’m bored, what can I do?”

“Do I have to?”

“Mom, can you [fill in the blank with something he or she can do but wants you to do instead] for me?”

Today when someone asks me “What’s for supper?” I’m going to play dumb.

“Who is Supper? Is he a new friend? Do you need to bring him something? What? A cookie? A Gatorade? What? Supper is not a new friend? Is Supper your new teacher? Do you need to get her an apple? No? You look angry. Did you rename the dog Supper? And we need to get something for the dog? That’s a lame name, you know. Why would you name the dog Supper? Anyway, I need to go start making supper.”