Kicked Out: A Parable

A young couple came for pre-marital counseling with their pastor as was required. The pastor warmly welcomed the young people into her study and began to chat with them about the matters related to their upcoming wedding. The bride-to-be, who was a member of the church, shared from their dating history, shared her own ideas of what marriage would be and why it was the right choice for them from her perspective, how they had grown through ten years of dating, and of their decision to pay for the entire wedding themselves. The groom was coaxed into sharing his simple story of being a hard-working and fiercely dedicated small dairy farmer with 60 head of cattle, and new small business co-owner, (and apparently a committed reader of TIME magazine, as was offered by the prospective bride). As the conversation unfolded, the bride was comfortable, chatty and at ease, but the groom was morose and answered only in the most basic terms the questions put to him.

After an hour and a half of conversation and sharing, as the couple got ready to go after a departing prayer, the pastor suddenly realized, she had never asked the prospective groom about his religious affiliation. She corrected this error and received the response,"none." But then he paused and added. "I was kicked out of the church."

The minister curiously inquired how such a thing could be... teasing that HAD to be a good story, but when the young man opened up and shared his story, the teasing stopped. Three generations of his family had faithfully attended a small, main-line denomination congregation near their rural, mountain home. Since his Grandmother had been a little girl, she and her children and subsequently her grandchildren had all attended, been baptized, married in, and buried from that same little church. The life of a dairy farmer is not conducive to frequent worship attendance, and they were not regular in their participation, but did give readily whenever they could.

The congregation decided to hold a financial campaign for a new furnace in the church, soliciting the financial support of all of their member families. The groom-to-be's family gave what support they could afford as farmers, and Grandmother gave a bit more, a gift totaling $350; significant for them. The project was completed, and the furnace installed. Exactly three weeks after the unveiling of the new furnace, another letter came in the mail, this one informing the family that they had been "removed" from the rolls of the church.

The groom-to-be, suddenly animated, shared: "We were 'thrown out'. After giving that gift, we were removed from the church for not being in attendance often enough. And what's more, when the next capital funds campaign came around, the church sent us a letter for another donation." The grandmother subsequently died, without being reinstated in the church of her baptism, and was buried out of the local funeral home, instead of her beloved church.

An embarrassed silence descended on the pastor's study. Then the pastor said the only thing that seemed possible to say: "I'm sorry. On behalf of the [mainline denomination] church, I apologize for the treatment you received"

The level of tension in the groom's face and across his shoulders and in his muscular forearms gradually relaxed. The cross that this quiet dairy farmer's family faith had been hung on by the church they loved, had been lowered to the ground and offered back for possible resuscitation. The bride-to-be quietly thanked the pastor, and said, "That means a lot to [the groom]."

When the church of Jesus Christ stops seeing the names on its membership rolls as being individual people's lives on their own journeys of faith, and see them as numbers only... 2,000 worshiping; 3,300 in three services; over 12,000 members... we have chosen an accounting model of ministry, instead of the ministry of sharing of the promise of love in Jesus Christ. And we wonder why mainstream denominations are declining in attendance to near oblivion.

Who are "those people" who are calling you and your church to give them back their faith, small though it may be compared to yours? Who will look past their poor attendance? Who will look at their hearts and struggles at faithfulness in a world that fights them every step of the way to be anything but faithful to their love for Jesus? What crosses are we erecting that establish barriers between the Christian "extraordinaire" and the Christian "inadéquat"? I'll warn you they may not be the ones seminary and progressive education have taught us they are. The gift of love in Jesus Christ may have been denied to someone who looks and acts and sounds and lives a lot like you. Do you have any idea who they may be?

Faith is a fragile thing until it is given good ground in which to grow. Or in the case of this parable, new milk cows don't give birth to themselves. It takes a birth mother, a sleep-deprived farmer, and a whole lot of daily feeding, nursing, cleaning, pasturing, hay-mowing, field inspecting, animal doctoring, medication administering, and time, time, time to produce a calf that will become a milk-producing cow. I wonder what it takes to plant the seeds of faith in a Christian and prayerfully, patiently, with care, love, joy and anticipation bring forth a "Christian extraordinaire"? I wonder?

Ranting, Raving and Moralizing: For the Sake of Our Children

I live in a community of Amish and Old Order Mennonites. Probably the thing I admire most about them is they know how to raise children. Amish children play loudly, enthusiastically, sweatily, and laugh with happiness constantly ... without anyone telling them how to. They've been allowed to figure out how to be their own people. They know how to be kids. They know what the outdoors is for, and use it well, completely, and without fear. They are also polite, inquisitive, generous, loving and respectful. They know how to work hard, because they get the privilege of contributing to the work of the family as soon as they can toddle. They have the most peace-filled childhoods I've seen, which leads me to believe they must be children and therefore people of great hope. The Amish children I live near, along with my own children, give me hope. But I see a lot of very un-hope-filled and un-hopeful childhood situations. Tonight I am their Lorax. (Yes, I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please.)

I'm full up to the brim with "children-as-trophy" parenting and "new-relationship-new-chidren" parenting, and "here, they-are-disturbing-me" parenting. Children are people, precious and deserving of our whole being, not just playthings for the days we feel we can spare them some time. They are not made to be quiet, or orderly or thoughtful or patient or still. They were made to be loud, disorderly, jump up and down and run around, squeal, scream, laugh and cry with abandon. They don't break that easily, they are made of resilient stuff, but they need to be cared for with love that never breaks, ever. They wash, and the things that get damaged as they make their way through experiments, adventures, conquests and imagination weren't really that important anyway. They are!

Here's a few rants that boiled up inside of me today. You can add your own to the list too. Christ has a better reality in mind for our children! It's time to be better than we've been... for the sake of our children...


We have lost track what childhood should be, and tried to make it "better". We have succeeded for ourselves and failed our children.

Church, we are in the world AND OF IT, when we program children instead of allowing them to encounter the world/God/each other for themselves.

Church, what if we started daycares for people to come and play with their children? We probably will have to show the parents how to play!

Have you smiled at your children today? Do they know you think their are amazing and worthy of the best of you?

Tears, disappointments, bruises from playing and hearing "no" doesn't hurt children. Being too busy for them does.

We are filling the world with children who don't know what their parent's faces look like, only the back of their heads.

If you don't have time to enjoy your kids, you aren't living right. God does not bless us based on your productivity. No A's for overachievement.

Are we producing children to fulfill some quota/expectation/personal goal, or giving birth to children for God to bless the world through?

Children thrive with average parents, laughter and unconditional love. Super-parenting, "I'm serious!" and overplanning are the enemies of a happy childhood.

We will never run out of ways to love; we will never lack for occasions to love; we will never come up short of people to love as long as the world has kids.

To learn if you are touching anyone with your life, look into the eyes of your kids.

So sad for kids. What happened to fun and being cared for and love? What happened to imagination and playing? What happened to just being a kid?

I predict if we brought back recess and art to schools, we'd see test grades increase and disruptions in classrooms decrease.

Adults stop ruining kids lives by organizing, planning, overthinking, overspending and overgoal-setting for them. Let them be kids, let them skip and jump and run.

This mom believes children should play with toys, stuffed animals, imagine, create, run barefoot, get dirty & NOT need organized to do it.

Slow down, watch the sun set, read books, turn off the electronics, hold hands, talk and tell jokes. Do it for you. Do it for your kids.

Thank God for parents and grandparents and adults everywhere who really care about helping children become exactly who God made them to be.

No More Howling at the Moon: A Lament for What Will Not Be of Me

I didn't know I was having a midlife crisis until somewhere in the middle of trying to survive a triple infection...bronchitis, sinus and ear...I discovered that my misery far outreached my physical symptoms. "What in the world is wrong with me?" I wondered. Surely a nap, a Tylenol and another afternoon to rest and it will all be better. But this isn't an illness in the "take two asprin and call me in the morning" sense. This is a midlife crisis, wrapped around me like a blanket, making the misery of my feverish brow nearly pleasant by comparison.

Since when do women have midlife crises?

I thought that only the guys got these, and with them came some sporty new vehicle model and a sporty new female model as well. Nothing new in my life, though. Same old salt-colored, french fry smelling, four-door. It IS red, but it also has a cargo rack and fold-down backseats for accommodating the groceries. Same old husband of 21 years, a bit grayer, a bit softer around the middle, but much more than a great companion to an old and soft-around-the-middle wife. Besides, he's tons cuter than any of the newer models I've seen posing on the tabloids at the checkout counter at my favorite WalMart.

So how did I figure out I was having a midlife crisis? I went back to a place of origins in my life, and discovered there was no longer any future there. My place of origins and I had failed to succeed at fulfilling our dreams.

I have been realizing for about six months now, that as a little girl, coming of age in the era of the Equal Rights Amendment, Title IX (1972,) and modern Girl Scouting, that I swallowed completely the concept, "You can be anything you want to be!" as a girl. I grew up thinking, like my classmates, that it was nothing short of normal to aspire to be a female president, a female doctor, a female airline pilot, a female engineer. I could think of nothing to stop me, and never questioned even once, that if I wanted to become it, and was willing to work hard, I could be anything. I never dreamed of the common things. I never aspired to being a clerk at a store, a librarian, a secretary, or any of the things that women did when I was young. I could be a teacher or a nurse of course, but why settle for those? I could be so much more! I was free to be me! I was free to be whoever I wanted to be!

Only problem was, there's a pretty big gap between the dreaming and the coming true.

Oh, I had big enough dreams of changing the world, of making it a better place, of feeding the hungry, curing the sick, wiping away the tears of the world and finding the answer to world peace, but Engineering didn't pan out. Chemistry was the source of a degree, but didn't offer much of an opportunity to do anything beyond verifying what we wanted in the finished product at our plant was actually there. I needed a career. I needed a job start to "being anything I wanted to be" with! I needed to get on with fixing the world.

Then I found it. The church, the final frontier for women. And HERE, I not only had an interest, AND a passion, but I had a calling as well. I was going to change the world through the love of Jesus Christ for the world!

Things started well enough. Slowly, but well. This was it! This was what I was good at, and I could use all of my God-given gifts, abilities, talents and skills, all of them, in this one calling to help people find their lives in Jesus Christ. It was the best of the best of the best of dreams come true, and there seemed to be no limit to where my dreams for God's Kingdom would allow me to go.

But here I am, looking 50 years old in the face, and realizing that not only is God not going to use me to set the world on fire, but there are days and weeks, where my chances at keeping my job and a roof over my head are not that clear. The dream to change the world isn't going to come about after all, not by sacrifice, not by hard work, not by prayer, not by selflessness, not by anything I can do at all. I'm not the one, I'm the wrong gender. I was wrong.

I've been following a dream.
I've been howling at the moon.

It's a hard, hard thing to face that your dreams are not going to be fulfilled, that others are going to get to be the ones who reach your dream, not you. I'm struggling with that right now. I lament that I am not the one that God chose. I'm not the one, no matter how willing I was to be used, that God needs. I'm grieved that I can't be who or what the church thinks it needs. I'm sorry that I spent so much time taking time and my best energy away from my family to focus on something I thought I was supposed to do. I'm discouraged, but I'm not destroyed. There is plenty of work to be done in the church for former big-dreamers.

Why am I putting this very personal story of disappointment on a blog in front of the whole world to see my failing? I have only one reason and it is this. We need to validate those who do not turn out having the ability or the chance to save the world, just as much as those who actually do. It's nice to follow the tweets of the important and read the blogs of the wise and revered. It's great to attend conferences led by the movers and the shakers, read the works of the brightest and the best, and hope that someday you might be able to contribute even a small percentage as much. But that isn't reality, and shaking the hands of the ones who set the course of the rivers doesn't mean their greatness will rub off. Most of us are not destined to do anything more than make a ripple in a small pool.

What was it Edison said about failure? "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that will not work." I have a new thought arising in me and it is this: it may take the efforts of 10,000 of us to bring about the success of one. It may require 10,000 average Monas to make one truly amazing "Mona Lisa". How many Sister Sarah's were there to bring about one Mother Teresa? How many sister's of John and Charles Wesley were there that failed to succeed personally, while John and Charles brought an entire Christian revival to life?...Emily, Sukey, Anne, Hetty, Patty, Molly, and Kezzy. How many of us have dreams and for reasons we have no control over, will never be able to fulfill them?

I don't suggest that we should cease to hold the possibility of dreaming up before our daughters or our sons. I encourage my children every day to stretch themselves and go beyond what they've done before. But I think that we need to also help them to see that there are many factors that they will not be able to control along the way, and that not everyone will write the great American novel. Not everyone will find the cure to cancer. Not everyone will find a solution to the problems of fossil fuel consumption. We are good and worthy and valid human beings for the dreaming and for the trying, not only for the succeeding.

That's what I'm trying to convince myself right now. It's time for me to stop howling at the moon, and maybe, with a little luck, learn to appreciate what it is, just to look into it's beautiful light.

Courtney Martin: Reinventing feminism | Video on TED.com

Courtney Martin: Reinventing feminism | Video on TED.com

Named by Love

I had a very odd dream the other night. Maybe it was because we were laughing after church about the occasional rumors that have gone around during my ministry that I was pregnant…which would have put me up at around 10 children by now. (NO, I’m not pregnant.) But for whatever reason, I had an odd dream that I went to a hospital and a baby girl was presented to me that looked like me, blue eyes and dark hair, and that she was “mine.” I was to take her home, even though I was totally unprepared to do so, and even more pressingly, I was to give her a name. I froze. I didn’t know this baby’s name.

There I was, in this crazy dream, with a brand new baby, thought to be mine, to name and raise. What a conundrum I was in! I remember trying to wildly run through names and remember the pros and cons of them like we had when we named our own children. But I was panicked. What if I gave this brand new person the wrong name? Thank goodness I woke up shortly thereafter. But the dream has continued to haunt me. Who was that baby? Who did she belong to? Was she mine, or, even more perplexing, was she me? Am I to interpret this metaphorically as an image of my own personal resurrection in some way? What did that dream mean? What was her name?

I believe with great enthusiasm that all of our lives are full of little resurrections. We are not people with faith, but we are people on a journey of faith. We are constantly turning our lives over to Jesus Christ; deepening our dependence on him, learning what he wants us to do with our lives, and claiming our experience of him as the way forward towards our goal of perfect relationship with him. We are never done with this task. It will be a journey from cradle to grave for every one of us, and in the midst of this, there are moments of newness and clarity that are astounding. They are like births when we are named again.

In my life, it seems those moments of newness and clarity have often been around times of struggle with my faith. I remember, for instance, in 1986, when in virtual faithlessness, I somehow managed to reconnect my life weakly back to Jesus Christ by visiting a church. It was not a church I had ever attended before, nor do I remember anything about it now, except that I was virtually faithless, and God used that tiny step I made towards him, to jumpstart a new beginning in my life. It was not yet a time of renaming, but the moment wasn't far away.

As I began from that time to worship more regularly in a nearby congregation, it seemed that things were changing in me. Old anxieties were abating and new questions were arising faster than I could answer them. I found myself wondering who this God was really? For reasons that made no sense at the time, I went to a public library, took out a book and read for myself for the first time the graphic details of Jesus' scourging, suffering and death at the hands of the Romans, and wondered why a man of such wisdom and integrity would submit to such a thing without defending himself or protesting? For the first time in my life I sensed both the hope and dismay that was symbolized by his cross. Why did he do it? Could it have anything actually to do with me? Would believing in this man who suffered so in dying, and was somehow still strangely alive in this church where I was worshiping, be a direction for my life that I should trust? What if I did believe in him as worthy of my commitment? What if I did not?

Questions followed questions, until finally Christ whispered softly enough for me to hear him through all my frantic questioning, and said, “Stop worrying so much, just trust in me! I'll take care of the worrying, in fact, I'll take care of you. I can give you an role to play in the most amazing story you've ever known, and I'll even tell you your real name; 'Jennifer, Beloved of God'.” It was the most joyous moment of my life, the moment I learned my "real" name, the moment I started to belong to Jesus Christ.

That is what my dream reminds me of, all the literally newborn and the no-longer-newborn human beings walking around not knowing who they are, or where they can find peace and joy for their lives. They are angry, they are hopeless, they are lonely, they are full of anxieties and fears with no way to make them go away. You know these people. They may even be you.

Lent is a time for all wanderers and all questioners to find their way home in order to be given their true name. As in baptism we speak the child's name and affirm that they are "child of God," I am aware that every time we gather for Sunday worship we need to reaffirm the name of each person who is present; 'Beloved of God'. Especially in this season of Lent as we approach Easter, we need to rehearse again and again our name. Who are we this day? 'Beloved of God'. What does Christ long for us to claim? That we are 'Beloved of God'. Who might I encounter this day who needs to know they are 'Beloved of God'?

I guess I'm still asking a lot of questions even now that I know my name really well. And as I said, on this fierce journey I am living, I sometimes stumble over my questions of faith again, and have to be refamiliarized with my name and reality in Jesus' amazing, on-going story. But more often than not, I ask the questions now not for my sake, but for the sake of all the other nameless babies, who are being handed to me metaphorically, who need to be named...who need to know 'You are, Beloved of God' means them.

I suspect the interpretation of my dream falls pretty nearly right about here.

Books That Have Helped Make Me Who I Am

I just added a bookshelf to this blog with a particular purpose in mind. I want to keep a record of the books that have made me who I am including those which most influenced me as a child. You will find a little of everything here; fiction, children's literature, poetry, non-fiction. This is the beginning point only. It will grow over time. If you find it intriguing, you might want to do the same thing. It's worth paying tribute to the books and authors who have touched your life.

Oh, and I couldn't help myself, I had to add the books that I'm currently reading to the shelves as well! Enjoy!

A Sherlockian New Year

"... my vocation, at last I have found it ... My vocation is Love!"
— Thérèse of Lisieux

As many of you know, I received my Christmas present a bit early this year. I became the “Mommy” of a new puppy named Sherlock. He will be 3 months old when you are reading this, and is half lhasa apso and half dachsund. Of course we all believe he is the cutest, smartest, best puppy ever. We are thrilled with the new “member” of our family.

Although my husband has, the children and I have never had the opportunity to raise a puppy to adult doghood. We knew going into it that we were taking on a job, and quite possibly a challenging job. But we find that Sherlock is more joy than job! What you learn about puppies quickly is how spontaneously and completely they fulfill our Christian “vocation” quoted from St. Thérèse, above.

Sherlock is devoted to me with a kind of devotion that is seldom found in the human species. I can accidentally bang him with my foot when I walk past him, and he will look up at me with the same joy that he had the moment before, hoping that I am showing him some attention instead of an accidental nudge. When I let him out of his kennel in the morning, you’d think I was the savior of his small world, letting him out of a lifetime of imprisonment. As he waits while I fill his food dish, he seems just plain grateful that I’ve taken the effort to fix HIM a meal. When I come home from work, or come out of a room when he hasn’t seen me for a few moments, he greets me with purest joy, as if my existence is all he needs in the world to be happy. He falls asleep at my feet, and follows me from room to room just so he can be near to me. Love is the definition of a puppy, (or at least of our puppy, Sherlock).

Love is intended to be the definition of a Christian as well. What our puppy came filled with, it seems that humans have to discover (or perhaps it is re-discover). Love may have been basic to our personality when we were born, or when we were young, but in the course of growing up, so many of us have been allowed to, or in some cases, bred not to love. Humans have opted for many other choices of survival and found other ways to manage the challenges of life besides love. We have culturally determined that love is a weaker stance than power and aggression when it comes to managing conflict and stress. We have culturally determined that the individual should have priority over the interests of the greatest good for all. We have culturally determined that when we can’t have what we think we need, it is better to compete for it than to compromise for it.

But “competition”, “the individual”, “power” and “aggression” are about as far from the list in First Corinthians 13 as possible. First Corinthians’ love moves us on a path towards “patience”, “kindness”, “not enviousness or boastfulness or arrogance or rudeness”, “does not insist on its own way”, “is not irritable or resentful”, “does not rejoice in wrongdoing”. Maybe we all should be taking puppy classes?

Puppies have got naturally what humans have to work toward. But ironically, there is no greater need in any human being than to love and be loved. I have therefore made my New Year’s resolution, to the glory of God, and in honor of my new puppy, to being recommitted to the vocation of love! It's a first for me. I've never set such a commitment for myself before. I am going to be intentional this year about doing all things in love.

Think with me just a moment about what a a world full (a church full) of people like myself (puppy lovers, cat lovers, fast-car lovers, trout-fishing lovers, etc.) committing themselves in 2011...to Jesus Christ who is love, the only PERFECT love...would look like. Think about every decision coming out of a loving center in you, every action being based on love, every word being formed in love before it leaves your mouth. Think about how you would live with your family differently, how you would relate to others at work differently, how the world would be different and you would be different in the world if you lived in love with Jesus, and lived that out in the world.

Sound wimpy? No way! Love is the most challenging and hardest of all things to maintain faithfully. It takes the strongest of all people to live in a culture dead-set on changing all of our love into anger and hatred, to stand unswervingly on the foundation of love in all things. Love is guaranteed to be challenging, is guaranteed to break your heart at times, is guaranteed to cause you to suffer for the sake of someone else’s good. But love is also the puppy-like ability to always confidently, no matter what happens to you, come back again with joy (found in Christ) and the complete belief that love will win the day.

Let no darkness into your life this deep wintertime. Dwell in the warm glow of the fire of love! Be filled with love! Be passionate in all loving! Be hope-filled that love in all things will create a way to produce loving responses in others. It’s a challenge that Sherlock has placed before me, and I in turn invite you to join in. Love one another as Christ has loved us...as modeled to me this winter, in the love of a puppy.