Tag Archives: connection

I Wrote a Book When Few People Read Books

A year ago I wrote a book even though reading books is a rarity. If you are reading this, perhaps you also read books. Or, maybe not. It is possible you used to read many books and now you pick up a book only once in a while.

I recently read (in an actual book!) that reading fiction broadens our perspectives of other people. A book is like someone else’s shoes we get to slip in and out of. A story parks us briefly in another person’s mind.

Because of books, I have at least a slightly more honest understanding of people who grew up on a Native American reservation, or raised a child within inner-city poverty, or battled addiction or contended with a family member’s addiction. None of these scenarios are my own. Without fiction, I would remain ignorant and probably judgmental – certainly less understanding of people whose lives differ from mine.

The book I wrote is an Advent daily devotional called Wait, An Advent of the
Familiar. Although few people read books, we all live among people whose stories differ from our own. There is a variety of footwear for us to try on. I wrote the book in hopes of making life with so many other people slightly more honest and understanding.

In the book, I often invite you to imagine you are a character in a play. Family members join you on stage, for example at the holiday dinner table. What part do you play? What family member is the antagonist? Is there a hero on stage? Who is helpful – annoyingly helpful? Which character goes mostly unnoticed?

If these questions are uninteresting, this might get you to turn the page.

The way you play your part “on stage” will influence the next generation of your family, the next cast of characters whom you may never meet.

Think about it, how did the decisions your parents and grandparents make shape which family you are now closest with, or distant from? The book is a tool to walk in other family members’ stories, and to take a more neutral look at your own.

The 24 devotions in the Advent devotional book lead to the story you know very well, regardless of your relationship with books. You need not be an avid reader to get swept up in the story of the God who put on sandals to understand your life.

Happy (almost) Advent! May this season offer clarity and healing to your relationships, lighten your heart and broaden your footwear.

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

Who Will You Avoid at Thanksgiving By Scrolling on Your Phone?

(This is an excerpt adapted from a chapter that didn’t make it into my Advent devotional book. The book is meant to offer you a new perspective on your own self, and on your relationships with family.)

I may forever question my parenting decisions in regard to devices. Our second son, born the same year as the iPhone, has never known an app-less world. Before the creation of the iPhone, I explain to these space-age creatures who are my kids, the word apps referred exclusively to appetizers. They still don’t believe me.

I love what my phone and tablet do for me. My Christmas shopping list is safely tucked away from nosy children. The recipe I am excited to try for a holiday meal is bookmarked. And all the Christmas music!  

It is ironic that by definition a phone, meant to be a tool for connection, has a way of blocking connection. Phones and tablets hold hostage our attention like neurotic Christmas lights, jumping ahead in the line of our priorities. Try the spiritual practice of eye contact and then struggle when your watch or phone call out for you like a needy toddler, “look at me!”

A week from Thursday, you may be required to set down your device and face a room full of humans, many of whom are related to you. It is possible you may prefer the company of your device to the company of at least one or two of those humans. It’s okay, you can keep that a secret!

To dial back the dread you may feel, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Kathleen Smith, offers this uncomplicated tip: person-to-person relationships.

The idea is to sit down with one person at the gathering and strike up a conversation. Your conversation need not be deep. No need to address a sticky point in your relationship. “But short, personal inquiries about each other are an important glue in our society, families, and organization. They bolster mental health and create trust in relationships.”[1]

Can you set aside your phone and ask someone about the dish he brought to the meal? Or sit beside the person who seems left out of the conversation and simply say hello? What might happen if you ask her the highlight of the past year? What was great? What was rough?

Families so often make the mistake of assuming they know each other, or that it might be too vulnerable to get to know one another. What if, dear Lord, the person asks you a question back?! Yes, this is a risk of person-to-person contact.

Each day, there is a temptation to rely on a device to pass the time, entertain, even distract us. What connection might you miss next week if you scrutinize over the Wordle instead of sharing caring words with the person beside you?

As soon as you finish the last turkey sandwich, it will be Advent. Advent is the assurance that nothing can distract God from loving you. In the birth of Christ, God did not communicate such love from far away, but up close up, person-to-person.

If God came all this way, join me in wondering what might happen at Thanksgiving if we ignore our distracting devices and travel across the room to sit beside someone we’d rather not? Moving helps with digestion, so it would be a win-win.

Reflection

When does your phone distract you from your relationships with loved ones? And, think this one through: who is one person you could get to know better over the holiday?

Thank you, Lord, for your deep connection with us. Hold my attention, that I might receive the abundance of your life to share with my family. Amen.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

[1] The Power of Contact – by Kathleen Smith (substack.com)

A Time for Every Matter…But Not Every Matter Matters

If you were to ask me what a pastor does, I would say we tend to the matters named in Ecclesiastes, chapter three: birth and death, planting and harvesting, weeping and laughing, tearing (broken relationships) and sewing (mending relationships), love and hate, war and peace.

I was 26 when I was ordained at Holy Nativity Lutheran Church in New Hope, Minnesota, a most welcoming and gracious first call congregation. With them, I tended to the chapter three matters: walked with the grieving, celebrated the new births, prayed with those tearing or mending relationships, and prayed for peace in this forever war-torn world.

Twenty-six!!!??!!! Good Lord, who was I to walk with people through these matters that matter so much in our lives? “You are a pastor? You look like a teenager.” I did! Who was I to help people comprehend life matters?

The privilege of seeing all at once so many matters that mattered shaped my understanding of what matters. Not every matter matters. Some do, some do not.

My spiritual director might point out here that I am speaking of letting go. What matters in life is what we keep and what we throw away (Ecclesiastes 3:6b). We tend to keep matters that do not matter.

What matter matters so much to you when perhaps you should let it go?

  • It is a physical matters matter? Are you holding onto possessions that get in your way? Or spending money on things that serve little purpose in your life? Are you keeping house more than you are keeping relationships with the people who live with you or near you?
  • Is it a relationship matter? Does an old grudge matter so much that it gets in the way of your other relationships? Or are you so swept up in work matters that you go home without truly connecting with another human being?
  • Is it a faith matter? Imagine your life as though you could trust God more than anything or anyone else. Imagine your life as though the things that don’t really matter, really do not matter! This gives you margin to tend to the matters that do matter.

Perhaps there are few things that do matter, once we sift through what doesn’t matter.

  • What we have does not matter as much. What matters is that we take care of what we do have.
  • Where we live does not matter. What matters is that we live with love for our neighbors.
  • The one to whom you belong matters – the one in whom you can put your trust, who has claimed you as one who matters.

To God, your every matter matters.

Photo by Jorgen Hendriksen on Unsplash

Imaginary Enemies

I hope I wasn’t the only one who grew up with imaginary friends. I also had real live friends, but my two imaginary friends were the most reliable. Always there when I needed them!

Since then, both of them have moved on, or I have moved on. Perhaps both.

There comes a time when the imaginary people must move on, and we must move on. Definitely both.

Just as there are reliable, imaginary friends, there are reliable, imaginary enemies. People we have pitted against us, even though they may not even exist. Imagined enemies we have learned to hate.

I noticed when our president spoke against imaginary enemies in his eulogy for Charlie Kirk. His words reminded me of Fredrick Backman’s definition of hate in his novel, “Beartown.”

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.

At about minute 24 of the eulogy, the president referred to debates he’d had with Charlie Kirk. According to the president, Kirk did not hate his opponents. That, the president explained, was where they disagreed. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want what’s best for them,” the president proclaimed to a cheering funeral crowd.

Like any president ever, ours has a long line of opponents, enemies he has made here and there. And yet, I’m not sure all of his enemies are real. I wonder if his love for having an enemy can threaten to create imaginary enemies, enemies that invite people to hate even further.

Hate is so powerfully stimulating, it can baptize a crowd of Christians in an amnesia bath, foregoing a substantial pillar of the Christian faith: love thine enemies (real or imagined), do good to those who hate you, offer the other cheek, and so on.

When there is tension in the air in our society, in your family, or in your work, you are in charge of only one person: You. You cannot change the people around you, especially your enemies, but you can decide how you will move through the tension.

  • How do I want to show up in this anxious time of our country?
  • What emotion do I need to notice in myself, so that it does not get the best of me?
  • Am I watching too much news? (I appreciated Danielle Webster’s words in this episode of The Prairie Beat podcast.)

Blessed are you as you wrestle with your place in this anxious time, for you will be filled with the real live love of the God who came to live among you in a real live body simply to love. Love. Love.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

The Story of Things

Not long ago, I brought Holy Communion to a man in his assisting living apartment. Prior to settling there, he had moved several times, packing and unpacking boxes in a number of places throughout the years. His last few moves required fewer boxes.

Atop his kitchen cabinets sat a handful of interesting items. They were random and quite old. There had to be a reason he kept these particular things, packing and unpacking them again and again.

“Tell me about these things,” I asked.

He explained what he had kept and why: the first gift he gave to his mother at ten-years old, purchased downtown with his own money; a dish she often used in their kitchen when he was growing up…

I was riveted. That he had managed to hold onto these few special things for so many decades, each with its own story, was touching. Perhaps because I am not a keeper. What stories have I haphazardly left behind in my diligence to minimize?

The two kids waving handkerchiefs and forever frozen as Hummels also tell a story. When my mom and I visited my aunt and uncle before they moved from their home to an assisted living apartment, my aunt handed me this story. She had babysat both my older brother and me when we were little. When I went off to kindergarten, she explained, my mom gave her this Hummel as a thank you gift. “Now you get to have it,” my aunt told me.

I promise to keep it.

Later on in that house, my cousins would discover this photo as they did the hard work of deciding what to keep…

and what not to keep! A time to keep and a time to throw away…

Your most special things tell a story that piece together your own story: gifts given and received, mementos, each a landmark in your life, each a reminder of a precious relationship or milestone. Each one evidence of God’s faithfulness to guide you through life.

Back in that man’s assisted living apartment, I shared with him the sacrament and the ancient story of God’s love for him in Jesus Christ. In bread and wine, he tasted the promise that God will keep him forever.

The Case of the Missing Lids

It happens to you.

You finish a meal and you are left with the leftovers. You reach into the drawer or cupboard where containers and lids take up residence. You find the perfect container but cannot locate the lid. You know it was just there! How do containers and lids separate? It is madness!

If you live alone, you wonder what you did with the lid and investigate, or give up, depending on the day and how much you want to bother with a missing lid.

If you live with other people, however, you open the case of the missing lid and go looking for someone to blame! At our house, the list of suspects includes the teenager who leaves a trail of containers and lids throughout the house, the old guy Marcus visits each week and delivers a meal in these containers, the dishwasher (you never know), or the dog who has been known to mistake a lid for a frisbee.

Blame is a lovely distraction. In fact, the missing lid will never be found, I know this to be true. The time we spend distractedly looking for someone to blame could be better spent reorganizing the system to make it less likely for lids to go missing in the first place.

If I zoom out a bit, I can see this fact: we toss lids into a drawer and hope for the best. Because multiple people do the dishes at our house, not everyone files lids (or containers) in exactly the same drawer. Also, lids crack and get tossed before a replacement is found, like benching a basketball player without sending in a sub, leaving only four on the floor, an incomplete team.

Blame will not get to the bottom drawer of any of this, it will instead stifle creative wondering and problem-solving. Blame keeps me frustrated instead of curious. Blame also makes a person crabby, which is no fun.

Blame for me extends beyond the lid drawer to relationships, just as it does for you.

Kathleen Smith has me considering blame after reading “Blame is a Giant Penguin.” (This is a subscriber-only article.)

“Moving past blame isn’t about letting people off the hook or excusing bad behavior. It’s about not needing a villain to steady the ship or make sense of one’s current functioning, a feat for the uber-narrative brain.”

This is to say, blame distracts us from the actual facts. It keeps us from thinking through the relationship to be honest with our own part in the problem.

  • Who are you blaming instead of zooming out to see the problem differently? Maybe more honestly?

Zooming out offers you a Christ-like view of your relationships, adding mercy to the question. It keeps you from being distracted by blame and reorients you to the everyday wonder of being alive.

  • What blame are you carrying that needs letting go?
  • How does blame melt away when you prayerfully define how you want to live? How you invite people to treat you?

When I zoom out and see my own part in a relationship problem, I often recognize that I have not been clear with how I want to be treated. I distractedly let someone else shape a relationship that needed more input from me.

Blaming is easy and so often it leaves us stuck. God’s gift of your life deserves a wider, zoomed out view of how you want to define your relationships (even with the lids.)

Case closed.

Photo by Luke Peterson on Unsplash

2007

High school graduation is just around the corner, with this year’s “Pomp and Circumstance” procession including yet another Lewton. Those preparing to graduate share in common one unusual attribute. Someday, their kids and grandkids will scoff at their antiquity, finding it difficult to believe that these old people entered the world with the iPhone.

That’s right! This year’s graduates have only known a world in which apps refer to applications and not appetizers, a society that devotes an entire device to one particular person. (Remember sharing a generic home computer with everyone in your family?)

The invention of this personalized device unleashed a storm of issues no one saw coming, or bothered to mention in 2007: data breaches, bullying, mental health worries (crises?), pornography, never-ending workdays, brand new gambling addictions, and a handful other unfortunate byproducts of the iPhone.

Although these issues are real, the blame for the storm cannot land entirely on any one device. These issues are in fact the byproduct of our sinful condition as broken humans. Human beings steal things, bully, and make poor choices. We set our own desires above the well-being of our neighbors. The device born in 2007 brought nothing new, only new variations on very old problems. There is, after all, nothing new under the sun.1

I have spent the past 17 years wrestling with the meaning of the invention of the iPhone for my kids. It has changed the landscape of their childhood, like any influential invention throughout time: the wheel, antibiotics, the printing press, Elvis Presley’s hip moves.

The wrestling match with a new invention is meant first for the grown-ups, not the kids.

Like any issue we encounter as parents and guardians, this is a faith issue. The match has less to do with a device and everything to do with how we choose to “fear, love and trust God above all things.”2

Instead of blaming a device, I might ask myself these questions:

  • How am I maneuvering life with the iPhone?
  • Do I rely on this gadget for the assurance, comfort and joy only God can deliver and offers me each moment?
  • What impact has this new-ish device had on my own ability to love my neighbor, tend to my well-being, and nurture relationships with those closest to me?

Kids do not learn from listening, they learn from looking. They learn from looking at the wrestling matches of the adults around them as these adults contend with new inventions, relationship disasters, social media, and work stress. What learning has the class of 2025 soaked up from the adults around them?

Just for fun, let’s go back to Elvis’ hips.

In 1956, Elvis was invited onto NBC’s “The Steve Allen Show” under strict instructions to keep his hips under control. One columnist at the time wrote: “Will Elvis rock and wriggle on Steve Allen’s Show tonight??? While thirty million teenage fans applaud in wild delight??? And will he shake his torso like a trotter with the heaves??? Will Presley’s fans all rally at the nearest TV set??? While mom and pop retire just as far as they can get??? Will maidens swoon and lads grow faint when Elvis starts to squeal???3

Elvis’ hips behaved, they did not rock nor wriggle. There was no need for mom and pop to retire as far as they could get. It appeared they had succeeded at teaching kids that hips are not for dance moves.

But what if the adults had offered a different kind of response, less appalled and more amazed at what hips can do? I’m not saying Elvis’ hips and iPhones are worth comparing, but I do wonder how the response of adults can help or hinder progress.

The maidens and lads refenced in the article would go on to hear their own grandkids and great-grandkids scoff at their antiquity, that their generation weathered the stormy moves of a rock star’s hips…until the next invention captured everyone’s attention and produced a new set of fears.

Although the world changes, Beloved Graduates, it also stays the same, as does our lifelong instruction: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

  1. Ecclesiastes 1:9 ↩︎
  2. Luther’s response to the First Commandment. ↩︎
  3. http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/steve-allen-show.html ↩︎

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash

Round Tables

Churches have tables – oh so many tables!

There are the cumbersome rectangular tables that arrived in churches when people were unaware of back injuries. You can find tiny tables in classrooms, where grown-ups also squeeze in around from time to time when the grown-up tables are busy. There is, of course, the Lord’s Table, that most important where we feast with the saints in light.

And then there are the round tables. Pay attention to the round tables.

In the church I serve, the round tables may be akin to your dining room table at home. They are the place where everything happens: eating, crafting, homeworking, and visiting. Unlike most dinner tables, because of the superb custodial staff at staff at St. John, there are no piles on these tables. They are fully functional!

The round tables at this church have hosted family conversations, hopefully providing an on-ramp for parents and guardians to begin meaningful conversations about the tricky matters of life: money, relationships, body image. At these tables, families have gathered to grieve.

People sit at the round tables to imagine God’s desired future: planning weddings, holding meetings, and gathering with church partners.

Famously, the Knights of the Round Table used that very shape to ensure peace in the kingdom. At a round table, you come face-to-face with the people impacted by the conversation and decisions that are made. The table must be round, lest we lose sight of each individual member of the body of Christ.

Wherever you go, may your tables be round this week, that is, may you sit beside those who are impacted by the decisions you make, and together may you find peace. May you come face-to-face with those who accompany you through this life. May you draw near to those whom God has strategically placed in your life, not overlooking them in the busyness of your days, but refreshing your memory on the uniqueness of their eye color.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash

The Way

As a seminary student, I remember discussing with classmates how long a pastor should serve a congregation. The lore was that a pastor’s call should conclude around seven years, seven being a number that reflects completion in the Bible.

Growing up, one of my pastors practiced the seven-year model. My Methodist colleagues are often transferred at the seven-year mark. If God created everything and even rested within seven days, seven years as a pastor in the same congregation should do it. Marcus and I entered this life of pastor/teacher expecting to move if not every seven years than at least every so often.

And yet, here I am in the same congregation for 17 years, long past not only one seven-year mark but two. Perhaps this is on my mind because it was 18 years ago, around this time of year, when Marcus and I travelled from our home in the Twin Cities to Dickinson to interview. I interviewed at a congregation that astoundingly had called only two senior pastors within a stretch of 50 years. They had completely rebelled against the unwritten seven-year rule! Who were these people?!?

Any long-term pastor can tell you the gift of a long-term call is that relationships grow deeper, which can serve to further a congregation’s mission to follow Christ. You become more aware of someone’s quiet gifts and someone else’s profound wisdom. You learn who has a genuine desire to learn or to serve in Jesus’ name. You have the privilege of entering into multiple generations of a family’s life and proclaim God’s hope through Christ.

On the flipside, the goodbyes get harder as the relationships grow deeper. You must witness more people join the communion of saints, people you have grown to love as you serve alongside them. It becomes like watching the introduction to a television show. The intro moves you through the years to give you a flashback of all that has happened in the lives of the characters. This way, by the time the episode begins, the characters are more familiar.

Being a pastor for a long time is like that. God brings new staff members to a congregation, yet you are the one who has lived through much of the introduction.

  • You can see the group of people who once gathered for coffee before worship on Sunday mornings. Now, they are no longer living, or no longer able to come to the church building to worship. Their absence is felt each week.
  • You can see that group of people who served in leadership roles. Their wisdom continues to be beneficial, but you have to know who they are.
  • You can hear the sounds of worship that both changed and stayed the same from one generation to the next. You endured some of the trials and tribulations through the changes and the sameness; you felt the impact on the community of faith; you have lost enough sleep over the years to know what is at stake.

How long should a pastor serve a congregation? Like perhaps any question in the universe that relates to relationships, the answer is less important than the question.

The question is not how long, but how now?

This question is not reserved for pastors. How does a pastor, a deacon, a lay person, a young person, an old person, a new person, a seasoned person, serve a congregation now? What difference does it make that God gathered these people at this time for this community of faith, which ever community it might be?

The answer is less important the question, the question is less a question than a prayer.

Lord, you are the way, the truth, and the life. Guide our feet, you who are the way. Instill in us wisdom, you who are the truth. Renew us by your grace, you who are life. Amen.

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There is Crying in the Bible

There is no crying in baseball…although I would not mind if Yankee fans shed a few tears tonight. Otherwise, there is no crying in baseball, but there is indeed crying in the Bible.

Jesus cried in John 11 at the death of Lazarus. In the Greek, the word for weeping describes tears falling down Jesus’ face. He cried (a different Greek word) out to the Father to awaken Lazarus from the dead, and God the Father did. Other times, Jesus cried out to God for justice, or comfort. Some of his cries shed tears while other cries were heard and heeded by God the Father.

Jesus cried. It is what humans do. Overcome by joy or sorrow, our faces leak, as Bob Maloogalooga, one of my favorite movie characters observed. When the psalmist wrote that you are intricately made, perhaps he also had in mind the well of your emotions. Crying, Jesus taught us, is a human response to life.

Back in 1 Kings, there is crying. The prophet Elijah was sent to a widow. He asked her to help him and later he helped her. She had a young son who was ill to the point that “there was no breath left in him.” (1 Kings 17:17).

She blamed Elijah. “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!”

Elijah asked for the boy, laid him down and cried out to the Lord. “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?”

This reminds me of a prayer Will Willimon cried out to God. Just before entering a hospital room where a young boy was gravely ill, where despair held everyone captive, and hope was absent. He cried out to God, “Don’t you make me go in there and lie for you!”

Cries speak the depth of who we are. They pull from the corners of our most honest self, the corners we mostly leave untouched.

Cries connect you with the God who hears them, as both Elijah and Jesus show you. There is crying in the Bible. There is crying in life.

There is no cry that goes unheard by God, who became a human who cries, who tenderly gathers up your cries and holds them for you.

Even the potential cries of Yankee fans, God will hear them. At least I think so. Some things I do not know.

What prayer might you cry out to God?

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