Sabbatical

Sabbatical Last Corner

(Rounding a curve on a walk near Wisconsin Dells,
where my family vacationed last week.)

Here it is! The final day of sabbatical before re-entering congregational life. These past three months have been, as I have told you so many times, a gracious gift to my family and to me. What I haven’t made clear is how a sabbatical is a gracious gift to a congregation as well.

The last corner of a sabbatical begins tomorrow when I open the door to my cozy office for the first time in 12 weeks, set the books I read on their shelves, find a home for a new little sign I found in a thrift store, and finally, encounter people’s faces.

I have missed the staff at St. John and I have missed my worshipping community. In our time apart, so much has happened! The staff did their work week after week without me. What inside jokes did I miss? What went right/wrong that now makes for a great story? Who bought them coffee while I was away? (I sure hope someone did that!)

And what was worship like Sunday after Sunday? How did Jesus show up in the lives of the people in the pews and on Facebook and on the other side of the radio broadcast? They heard a faithful and creative line-up of preachers. And I missed the funerals of beloved members of our community. What else did I miss? And what did the congregation miss from me as I took a deep sabbatical breath and wasted so much time with Jesus? They will hear those stories from the pulpit. Hearing their stories is the trickier business.

Story-swapping is the last curve on the sabbatical trail. In the stories, we will hear what Jesus has been up to in our lives and in our community of faith. Those stories will shape the next leg of our journey together. Will my realization that I don’t take enough time to pray and reflect impact our community? What difference might my ponderings around worship, after worshipping in many communities in-person and mostly online, make in the one hour people are most likely to gather as members of the body of Christ at St. John?

The answers, I hope, will be found in our story-swapping conversations. So be ready, folks at St. John, to tell me what I missed, what you noticed, what you now ponder, too. And Jesus will meet us there.

A few pages back on the calendar, two things happened. I began my sabbatical and we entered road construction season! Near my house, a significant project continues where crews have been sweating it out week after week. Thanks be to God for people who make it possible to get from here to there.

The conclusion of the project near my house will be most welcomed by everyone. For workers, an end to the sun brutally beating down on them throughout this inordinately sweltering summer. For businesses nearby, easier access for customers. For moms, no more worry that kind-looking SLOW/STOP sign-holders are judging how often they drive by (sports practices, the pool, camps, coffee dates, repeat).

None of us will freely admit that sometime “down the road” in the future, we will do this all over again. No road is fixed forever! Roads, like people, require a substantial amount of regular maintenance to smooth things out. We never leave behind all the bumps. Always they exist, most noticeable when they rise to the surface, next to the patched-up cracks.

I am a couple of weeks away from my last day of sabbatical, which will happen before the end of the construction project is celebrated. Before the road is ready and perhaps before I am ready, I will enter the church building for the very first time in three months. (Such a sabbatical, by the way, is made possible by extraordinary ordained and lay staff and an encouraging Council. Thank you, Jesus, for every one of these people.)

These months have set me firmly in the slow lane. I have learned to look around and notice people, such as the people who live in the same house as me. I know them so much better now. I even talk more slowly most of the time. I learned to rest more, ask for help (that’s a fib, I didn’t learn that, I just wish I did), and to take time to write.

I like the slow lane. It’s quieter here and I don’t spend so much time worrying about running out of time.

It will take a few days or more, but I will merge back into the faster lane, even as I miss the slow lane. There is just as much to see in any lane you choose. What I learned in the slow lane will not be easily lost. I am too grateful.

So, down the road when the bumps present themselves, when cracks need patching, I can remember there is always a slow lane. It is open for any day trip, hour trip, minute trip to remember that we, like any road under our wheels, are never fixed forever. We wish repairs would happen faster and maintenance wouldn’t be so much work. But being human does require slow lanes, along with Jesus’ merciful maintenance of the bumps, and entire seasons of constructing self-compassion around the cracks. And somehow, that is enough to move you from one day to the next, from here to there.

Messy Make You Awesome

Oh, how I would love to open my kitchen cabinet doors to discover a gleaming oasis of organization. Instead of moving mixing bowls to get to a serving bowl, all bowls would be equally accessible. Some people’s dreams are inspired by dramatic home renovations on HGTV. I simply long for less crashing when I reach for a bowl.

Until the day arrives when only my husband and I open the kitchen cabinets, the crashing will persist. There is no possibility of an oasis for now. Like the lives we live, the cabinets will be messy, imperfect, oasis-less.

I have rounded the corner to the last third of my congregation’s gift of a sabbatical. The abundance of time I have to hang out with Jesus in prayer, to say yes to late night conversations with kiddos and my husband, and to Uber my kids here there and everywhere will shift in a month.

In my morning devotions, a question posed was whether I carry around heavy burdens from my past. Whether old sins linger and weigh on my shoulders. For me, it is the little things that snowball into a heavy burden. It is the everyday obnoxious, pestering questions:

Did I do enough for my family? For the church?

Whom did I disappoint?

Why did I say that?

Why didn’t I say that?

Could I have done that better?

Those are the pesky questions that keep me up at night and scratch at my soul, more than heavy burdens from my past.

And so, when I opened the kitchen cabinet and moved three things to get to a bowl this morning, I wondered if God was reminding me there is no oasis here. No organization or perfection to simplify life. As long as your heart is involved and your daily work (at home or anywhere) involves leading with your heart, you are in for messy cabinets, messy calendars, messy moments, messy sleep schedules. As long as you deeply care for people, do not expect perfection in your pantry.

This is why I wrote myself a note today. While the previous paragraph makes complete sense to me right now, in a couple of months when the messy cabinets are messier and I long for more time just to sit with Jesus, I will need a reminder. I will need a reminder that life with people involved is like needing the bowl that happens to be tucked into the corner, behind three other things. Always there is reaching and crashing. Remember, the note will nudge me, messy cabinets accompany life. The reaching, perhaps, could sound like Jesus’ reaching for me when I get stuck in the pestering questions. The crashing, perhaps, could sound like the slippery waters of baptism protecting me from the sticky burden of worrying whether I have done enough, or whether I am enough.

The moral of the story: If your cabinets are messy, you are awesome. Or more importantly, you are enough. And that is awesome.

Why I Don’t Tell My Kids God Has a Plan

It seems like the standard, automatic Christian response: “God has a plan.” Why in the world would I not say that to my own kids? Because this Christian mantra makes me uncomfortable. Let me tell you why.

I notice the words are spoken in the face of events we do not understand and would like to make sense of: cancer, tragedy, a difficult transition, or an uncertain future. “God has a plan,” the Christian deduces.

Perhaps saying these four words will provide a sense of comfort when our kids face trials (from heartache to addiction), or intense decisions (from how should I dress to whom shall I marry). We hope in these words to remind our kids they are part of a bigger design and God has it all under control. However, I suspect these four words dilute the incredible gift of God’s presence.

For at least three reasons, I avoid this Christian phrase.

If everything is in God’s plan, then the terrible thing becomes part of God’s design, too. With this mantra, we tell our kids they may be destined for cancer or heart disease or divorce or addiction or fetal demise or a fatal accident because God is just that kind of event planner. Nations are meant to go to war and domestic abuse is a thing that happens. And who determines whether something is or is not in God’s plan? This seems very confusing both to kids and grown-ups.
This notion really sucks for the poor. If God’s plan means some humans are impoverished while others are not, we risk placing kids in a position of inherent privilege. They are simply “the lucky ones,” which is how slavery persisted and how Hitler did his convincing. A strong enough belief in God’s immutable plan abdicates kids from the messy and complex work of loving our neighbor. A plan is straightforward, but loving our impoverished neighbor is anything but.
Christian words meant to eliminate complexity make me nervous. Reducing confusing things to “God’s plan” releases us from the hard work of sitting with God and wondering. All seasons of life require reflection with God, an unpeeling of the many layers around each difficult experience we encounter. An automatic response discourages kids (and grown-ups) from deep conversation with God about the complexity of human life.

God’s plan, I hope to help my own kids understand, is to walk with them, listen, encourage and comfort. It is to set the people they need in their lives at precisely the right time. God’s presence is enough of a plan.

And You Thought THAT Felt Scary?

So many years ago for the very first time, I witnessed the pink lines on the stick. That was scary. What was happening in my body at that moment felt scary. The feeling intensified when a “helpful” co-worker told me, “Just you wait. A few weeks ago before my first child was born, I sat weeping on the steps in my house, wondering how something the size of a watermelon was going to come out of me.” “Thanks for the encouragement,” I did not say.

Outside the entrance of Mercy Hospital nine months later, Marcus and I loaded up our first born, trying to make sense of the car seat situation. We were now responsible for a human being’s survival! That felt scary.

In the next several years, we would leave our kiddo and then kids with a babysitter, then a day care provider, then a teacher. Each time, that felt scary.

We would leave them behind at a new school, a camp, a sleepover at a friend’s. Today, one of my sons walked alone into a room to take his permit test. He didn’t say it, but I knew it felt scary. Big questions, big stakes. He passed.

He left behind the part of his life in which he could not drive, only bike or walk or sit in a passenger seat. He left behind some of his dependence upon me and in doing so, he now shares some of the scary feelings with me. Moving into a new season of life is never without them. The scary feelings accompany independence.

In an audiobook I’m currently reading called Learning to Pray, James Martin, SJ, suggested talking to God about feelings such as these, and asking God what these feelings might mean. What does it mean, God, that I am scared when my kiddos gain independence. Along with that question, he offered another. Who is Jesus for me?

What do these feelings mean? Who is Jesus?

I feel scared when my kids gain independence perhaps because I worry whether Marcus and I have equipped them enough for that particular new independence. Of course, I feel scared for what might happen, scared for so many reasons. The scary feelings are simply too much for me to carry on my own.

Kids absorb some of the scary feelings when they gain independence. While I am still responsible for a human being’s survival, my kids are big enough to carry much of that responsibility, too.

Still, the scary feelings can be overwhelming. Jesus, then, is the porter who carries the heavy, scary feelings not only as far as your hotel room, but to all places at all times. He is the companion who does not leave my kids even when I leave them at a new school or a friend’s sleepover. He is the friend at camp and the passenger in the car.

Jesus is the one who reminds me the scary feelings are fine as along as they do not hinder the independence. (Easy for him to say.)

In years to come, at my child’s graduation, wedding, or who knows what, I will look back on the day of the permit and giggle at myself. “You thought THAT felt scary?” I’ll say. But I’ll say it more nicely than that co-worker. I don’t need to be a jerk myself.

Focus Beyond the Family (Part 3/3): “Kids, the world is bigger than your baseball game.”

(Photo Credit: https://www.legion.org/memorialday/photos/237598/memorial-day-border. May 29, 2017)

My kids and I spent Memorial Day in my hometown of Sherwood, North Dakota. Two miles from Canada, I grew up understanding a border to be peaceful, and international neighbors to be neighbors. Each year, roughly a week after joyfully arriving at the last day of school, students were called back to school to take part in the annual Memorial Day program. You can read more by clicking on the link in the photo caption.

In a nutshell, Memorial Day in Sherwood typically begins at the Canadian/American border, where Canadian veterans and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and American veterans and local police officers march from their respective ports to the borderline, where they exchange their nations’ flags.

People my age and older recall riding a bus from Sherwood School those freezing mornings (my memories involve freezing rain, but maybe I’m exaggerating) with our instruments and joining the march to play…something…I can’t remember…I’m sure it was “lovely”.

The program continued at the school, with a choir singing each country’s anthem as well as the songs of each branch of the military. A slideshow, which has evolved into an impressive video production, displays pictures of each of Sherwood’s veterans who are now deceased.

Next, the program moves from the north end of Main Street where the school is located, to the south end where a stone memorial at the city’s fire hall commemorates two men who died fighting an oil fire near Sherwood in 1991. The program concludes at the city cemetery, where a designated person places a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldiers.

Each of the 84 years of this program has drawn a crowd, often including the governor of our state. It requires a great deal of planning and manpower, even though the number of volunteers to pull off such a program has dwindled over the years, in proportion to the shrinking of a small town like my hometown.

This year, even though the border portion of the program could not take place because of the pandemic and closed borders, I wanted my kids to spend Memorial Day in Sherwood. We sat on the bleachers, just as I had for so many of these programs, just as I had for the funerals of the two men who perished in the oil fire.

“Kids,” I try to remind my own, “The world is bigger than your baseball games, your jobs, your hobbies, your accomplishments.” When a moment arises to gather for something that is not kid-centered, I find those moments invaluable. Every kid, every grown-up, every human needs to know we are small parts of something larger than ourselves.

Not long ago, I admired the parents who spend so much of their time and money coaching kids’ sports teams. Volunteer parents receive very little gratitude for the sweat equity they have in their kids’ sports. Now, however, I am not so sure. I am starting to wonder about the danger of living in communities where we spend much of our free time and money watching our kids’ activities. Kids learned to be watched and adored or yelled at. They get to be part of a team, and that offers good life learning. But the humble act of sitting in the bleachers and hearing a story you’ve heard so many times about people whom you will never know, but whom you do know played a part in your living where you live…I suspect this is how we practice being human together.

Regardless of how I feel about war and politics and American flags, I need my kids to know they live in a community. You live in a community. Every one you know lives in some kind of community. A community functions best when we all proclaim a singular hope to make them community better for everyone.

My generation has often exchanged shared communal activities for kids’ sports, my own family included. I wonder what that means for the next generations. Who will set out the chairs for the community program? Who will organize the order of the program? Who will do the work of telling our story? It is a story that is not mine or yours or theirs, but ours. A story we may not even tell precisely the same way. (All family stories are like that; we do not remember things the same.)

I hope to raise kids who know that the responsibility of living in a community falls on them. Jesus’ call to love a neighbor is a call to them. The yearning for peaceful borders is not something to entrust to someone else.

Kids’ busy lives are not the whole world. The world is bigger as much as it is filled with possibilities for them to make it better. I only believe that because a community taught me, year after year on freezing Memorial Day mornings when I thought school was over but apparently it wasn’t because I needed to sing “O Canada” and play taps and occasionally I found it all very boring.

Now, I get it.

Focus Beyond the Family (Part 2): Watch Your (Jesus) Language at the Table

In my last post, your homework was to imagine yourself in your church home, or in your church homelessness. “Where are you from?” How did you arrive at the place where you are, rooted in or uprooted from church. I am suggesting that your faith walk, as you turn and look back on the path, influences how you raise your own kids or grandkids in the faith.

We know only what we know, and what we know shapes how we might talk about Jesus in our homes. Talking is teaching. You might talk to your kids about nutrition, money, and time management. Talking about Jesus is a way of inviting kids into a wider lens of the Christian faith.

Let me break up that babbling with a story. Maybe 20 years ago, I first laid eyes on the colorful, elastic WWJD bracelets. Soon, those bands were everywhere! Whenever you had a moral dilemma, the bracelet, like the proverbial angel on your shoulder, would remind you to ask: “What Would Jesus Do?”. With one easy question, you would know how to act like a Christian!

At around the same time, churches that teach easy answers began to grow. The bracelet and this-or-that kinds of churches offered an easier way to be Christian. “Be good,” the bracelet whispered to wearers all day long. Christians who appeared to follow the bracelet’s orders were called “good Christians”. If anything bad happened to them, bystanders were perplexed. “Why would something so bad happen to someone like her (him)? She (he) is so nice?”

Kate Bowler is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke University. At the virtual Festival of Homiletics last week (a geeky preacher gathering), she described WWJD Christianity this way: “Our lives are meant to be proof of God’s work and love, so our lives must be put together.”

Put-together lives prove that the bracelet works; that the Christian faith promises a better life. Lives that do not look put together are questionable. “Why don’t they just slip on the bracelet? It’s so easy!” WWJD Christians wonder, looking at empty wrists from their lenses obstructed by logs.

If faith were a series of moral questions and easy answers, how easy it would be, indeed. Listen to the bracelet. Follow the commandments (all 613 of them), and life will go your way. And teaching kids something easy is much, much easier than teaching them something hard.

All might be well until the perfect future unravels, one string at a time. The easy answers will not stand up to our own human brokenness. The bracelet cannot save the WWJD Christian from addiction, abuse, divorce, war, racial injustice, cyber-bullying, cancer, bankruptcy, and on and on. Life has a way of spinning a tornado, even through the put-together lives.

At the table with kids, watch your Jesus language. If Jesus rewards those who are good (how could something so bad happen to her), if faith promises a better life (we need to try harder to be good so God will give us a better future), how would we explain the truth about being human? Every kid needs to know the difference between a fairy godmother and Jesus Christ. Conversation points abound, so find one and wiggle into it.

~At the table, when the conversation turns to “the bad kid” in your kid’s classroom, Jesus language would wonder what is going on in that kid’s life? How could your child pray for her or his classmate instead of join in the easy work of vilifying?

~At the table, when the conversation turns to politics and “the abhorrent other side”, Jesus language points us past this-or-that language and recognizes the holes in our own argument.

~At the table, when a kid (or maybe a grown-up) expounds on the next new thing to buy, Jesus language might match that question with a story about a time your family was generous with money. Chip away at changing the narrative around money in your home.

In the next post, also the last in this series, we will focus farther beyond the family, as the Christian faith is meant to do. We will point kids to a lived faith in a broken world, recalling the origins of the Christian story. Our story began with sermons that preached a kind of mercy, Jesus language, that does not fit on a bracelet.

Focus Beyond the Family (Part 1): Erasing Easy Answers to Faith Questions

*Welcome to a three-part series called “Focus Beyond the Family”, meant to widen the lens on the wild work of raising kids in the Christian faith. In the next three posts, I hope to get you wondering: (1) what you expect from church, (2) how you might talk about Jesus at home, and (3) understanding faith as an arrow that points us beyond our own families.

If your faith orientation is Christianity, you might have hopes of raising your kiddo(s) or grandkiddo(s) in the Christian faith. This is not easy work. Perhaps your child was baptized, goes to (went to) some Sunday School or Confirmation classes, and you sit (sat) together at church. Either you chose that church or your (your spouse’s) extended family chose it for you.

If you are doing the hard work of raising kiddo(s) in the Christian faith, here is a quick tip regarding churches. There are two kinds of churches: one kind provides all the answers, and the other kind does not. One kind quotes a singular verse from the library of books that is the Bible, the other tells you the mysterious, broad-stroke story of God who loved the world so much that God slipped into skin to experience it close up. One kind preaches morality (“be good”), the other preaches that you can never be good enough, so welcome to grace. One kind talks in “this or that” language, the other relies on the two words: “and yet”.

One kind of church promises that faith will make your life better. The other kind of church will never, ever make such a promise. The former kind of church, through the voices of beautiful faces and blindingly white teeth, proclaims that having faith will make your marriage better, your kids more obedient, and will pave the way toward a better future. The latter kind of church promises that you, child of God, are both beloved and broken, and Jesus Christ will always put you back together, and yet life will not always be better. The Christian life is a series of broken roads with no easy-to-follow answer signs, and a never-ending promise of Jesus’ mercy.

What does all of this distinguishing between two kinds churches have to do with you? With your faith? With your life?

I’m enjoying the book, Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First. It is written by Laura Tremaine, who invites you into thoughtful conversation and reflection. I’ve been journaling my answers as I reflect and I’m looking forward to raising her relationship-deepening questions with friends. One question Tremaine asks is: “Where are you from?” This is a standard, yet telling question.

While she asks the question more generally, I invite you to wonder from a church perspective.

~If you are (or are not) part of a church community, how did you arrive at that decision? From where have you come along your faith walk?

~How has your past experience with the Christian Church shaped what you might expect from the church?

~Do you expect easy answers or more obedient kids or a better life?

~Do you expect church to help fix your problems or to help you live with your problems?

Today, peel the layers of what you expect church to be or do for you and your family as you recollect your own church origin stories. In the next two posts, we will use what you learned to erase the easy faith answers. Then, with a blank canvas, we can create a more lasting portrait of a life of Christian faith.

How to Successfully Avoid Your Daily Devotions

Each of your days begins with the reliable promise of 24-hours. On some days, those hours stretch out languidly, and on other days the hours rush past. One by one, they disappear, like when you blow on the seedhead of a dandelion. Now you see them, now you don’t.

Finding a rhythm during my sabbatical has been tricky, but my days go more smoothly when I begin by reading a daily devotion and spend some minutes in silence. Today, l successfully avoided both.

How? I slept in a bit, made a yummy donut run with my daughter, bought a cart-full of groceries (two teenage boys to feed), and spent the rest of the morning making (and sampling) monster cookies. During my sugary morning, I listened to a sermon from a preaching conference called the Festival of Homiletics, a podcast wondering how customized our lives should be, and another podcast offering great wisdom about summer screentime for families. In other words, I consumed cookies and information, two of my favorite things!

And right…no daily devotions.

The hours in a day have a habit of marching ahead. How often do you take a good look at your day before it slips away (like the dandelion seedhead) and ask yourself what is at its center? Does the center of your day have to do with accomplishing tasks? Looking good? Sounding capable? Or just getting through it? What is it that holds your day together; the string that connects the hours as they unfold? And what does the way you begin your day have to do with the rest of your day?

Before the hours of a new day arrive, I invite you to wonder how you might begin the first hours, and what difference that might make. How can the center, that is, what holds your day together, position you firmly in the love of God in Jesus Christ?

The spiritual practice of devotions (or a walk or a prayer or a guided meditation) might remind you the days filled with hours do not go on forever. You have only so many days, only so many hours, and no matter how you spend them, each one is pure gift from the God who is love.

On the days I successfully avoid reading devotions, I tend to forget the gift of each hour and who gave them to me. The hours march on and therefore so do I until suddenly the seeds are all caught up in the wind and I turn off the last light. Perhaps tomorrow I will be less successful! And maybe even a tiny bit wiser.

A Mom on Sabbatical

What have I learned in nearly two weeks of sabbatical time? I can sum it up in two words: slow down.

A year or two ago, I stopped at the post office to mail a package. It was a quick stop between Walmart and a haircut and I was hustling. Hustling is a drug that keeps you moving. It makes you feel amazing and unstoppable and completely unaware of how addicted you’ve become. I was pushing my pin number into the machine on the post office counter, but the machine kept rejecting my card.

“It worked when I was at Walmart a few minutes ago,” I assured the nice man at the counter, saying between the lines that there is actually money in my checking account! “You can slow down,” he gently prodded, seeing how flustered I had gotten. After a few more useless tries, I abandoned the debit card and handed over my credit card.

Later, I would realize I mistyped the four numbers of my pin. In my mindless hustle, I had thrown it off by a number enough times to lock up my card.

Now, nearly two weeks into this slower season of sabbatical, I am noticing more. I notice when I am tired and need more sleep, and then I go to bed earlier and sleep. I notice I tend to eat more when I’m in a hurry. I notice how easy it is for any one person in my family to default to a screen for distraction. I notice the majority of my breaths are shallow.

I notice how fun it is to prepare food when I don’t have to rush. I notice how much more meaningful conversations become when I’m not watching a clock to get back to work. I notice I take more time for contemplative prayer and daily devotions. I notice my families faces (even though not all teenagers appreciate such noticing).

“You can slow down”, came the wisdom behind, of all places, the post office counter! I’m listening. I’m slowing down.

What might that look like for you today? Notice when you are walking fast without needing to. Notice when you read, eat, or talk too fast. Notice your breaths and whether they are deep or always shallow.

In the noticing, often called mindfulness, Jesus’ presence becomes obvious. If there is one thing we do not attribute to Jesus, it is hustle! He was in no hurry moving from village to village, miracle to miracle, conversation to conversation, prayer to prayer.

How might the practice of slowing down help you notice the peace of Jesus’ presence today?

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