Month: March 2020

Love, a Country Church and Covid-19

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My Column for The Elgin Review March 25, 2020.

We love our little country church. We love its bell tower and bell—Its rope recently repaired by Jon Grothe so Norman could ring it first to call us to worship on his confirmation day last spring. We love the timelessness of the church’s clean prairie design. We love how it sits proud, nestled in a grove of trees atop the little rise across from our graveyard, next to our playground, neighbor to Kinney cattle and Currie family fields. We love the church’s interior, the warmth of the well-worn walnut pews, the banners made by the Reddings hanging neatly, demarking the seasons of the church year, the burgundy curtains over the age rippled windows. We love the pretty old piano that Joann Anderson wakens from its weekday slumbers into full-voiced praise on Sunday mornings.  We love the cross that lights up above our chancel and the brass vases on the altar lovingly filled with flowers by Sharon Wilkinson. We love the plaque at the back of the sanctuary bearing the names of our congregation’s charter members, names that include Clarks and Kinneys and Curries, descendants of whom are still among our members today. We love our little country church.

But what we love more than all those truly lovely things, is each other. Sunday morning in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic we loved each other so much we kept away from each other and didn’t find our way to our little church on the top of the rise ½ mile south of HWY 70. Instead, we traveled a new way to find each other via Zoom, the online meeting application. Gwen Kinney connected with Zoom by landline while on speaker phone with her mother-in-law, Phyllis at The Willows in Neligh. Barb Henery and Sharon Wilkinson mastered new tricks of technology and video-conferenced in from the comfort of their homes in Elgin. Others called in on cell phones and landlines while Mike and I attended from the comfort of the parsonage in Neligh.

Our worship service wasn’t what we are used to. We didn’t sing hymns because they lag badly on Zoom. When we prayed the Lord’s prayer it wasn’t exactly in unison—our voices were like echoes and descants of each other’s. I shared scripture and some thoughts about the story and we passed Christ’s peace to each other, not by shaking hands, but by listening as each took a turn “checking in,” sharing how we are doing in the midst of social distancing and news about the pandemic. We prayed for each other and for our neighbors and when I’d given the benediction at the end of the service, I had tears in my eyes as I clicked the button on my computer to end our Zoom session for the day. God was truly with us.

Park Church isn’t our building, as lovely as it is. Park Church is people who love God, each other, and you, our neighbors. If you find yourself lonely, longing for community and connection during this challenging season, you are welcome here. For now, our services will be on Zoom. E-mail me at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com  or call me at 402.540.5615 and I’ll give you the link and instructions for meeting with us. If you’re having difficulty during this time, give me a call or send a text. I’ll try to help. God is with us. God is always with us.

A Very Present Help

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My column for The Elgin Review, March 17, 202

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Psalm 46:1-3,7 NRSV)

What a strange and disquieting thing it is to live on the front side of a silent, invisible disaster. Last spring, when the floods came to northeast Nebraska, the waters roared and foamed, the ice creaked and cracked in our rivers and our eyes could see the devastation unfolding around us. There was evidence of the danger at hand.

This spring Covid 19 threatens to roar over us like a world-wide flood, not of waters, but of disease and we cannot yet see it. Trucks whir past our houses down the highway. Children laugh and goof around on the sidewalks. Calves frolic in the fields. Everything feels so normal, and yet not. I don’t know about you, but the pit of my stomach feels funny.

Here in Antelope county, life around us goes on almost like normal for now. For my kids, living in other places, the spread of the virus and its threat is more real.

My son in New York City has been working from home since last week. He texted us his current fear is catching cabin fever. Usually he works on the 39th floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings. Now, his “office” is his large computer monitor in his very small bedroom in his small apartment shared with two roommates. He may be working from there for the rest of the spring.

My daughter-in-law just started working from home in Minneapolis instead of in the big corporate office where she usually writes software.

My son in Pittsburgh, PA drives Lyft for a living. He wonders how long he will be able to or want to continue to drive in close quarters with strangers who may be carrying the disease. He doesn’t want to get sick, but even more urgently he doesn’t want to become a vector for the spread of Covid-19. What if he gets it from one of his passengers, and before he knows he’s sick, spreads it around the city by driving people where they need to go? But, what will he do without income?

Last spring, when Nebraska flooded, we knew what to do. We looked out for our neighbors. We did what it took to rescue strangers. People worked hard to help each other out of harm’s way, and when the devastation was done, people helped with the clean-up, comforted those who grieved and helped each other get back on their feet.

With faith in God, and trust in our neighbors, we weathered the 2020 floods.

I’m confident we’ll do the same with Covid-19. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. Cancel your gatherings and trips and celebrations. Prepare but don’t hoard. Check in on your older neighbors. Hunker down at home. It won’t be forever, but forever God is with us.

If you’re feeling unsettled by this pandemic, if social isolation leaves you feeling sad, know that your neighbors at Park Congregational United Church of Christ stand ready to care for you. You can reach out to me at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com.

Walking with Jesus

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My Column for The Elgin Review 3.4.2020

For the first 199, 900 years of human history, give or take a few, we humans traveled, at our fastest, behind good carriage horses, about twelve miles per hour. Or, when walking, somewhere around five miles per hour. It’s only been in the past 120 years since the proliferation of the automobile that traveling sixty-five or seventy miles per hour is normal.

Think of how much more information we are asking our brains to take in and process now than humans ever had to process for almost all of human history before us.

And, for the first 199,950 years of human history, give or take a few, we humans saw and took in only what was around us in the natural world, or what we read on scrolls, or, after the invention of the printing press on a printed page. It wasn’t until the 1950s that we began watching moving images every day on tv, and not until the 1990s that we began to take into our brains mega pixels of information, sometimes for hours at a time, on our computers and smart phones.

Is it any wonder so many of us feel unsettled, harried and stressed much of the time? Is it any wonder Attention Deficit Disorder is rampant in our kids? Maybe in another hundred years our human brains will have time to adapt to the amount of information now being thrown at us, but right now, our evolution hasn’t really been given much time to catch up with our inventions.

For the past 1700 years, give or take, Christians have taken forty days before Easter to give something up in order to open room in our lives to reflect on how we’re doing in relationship with God and to make whatever adjustments we recognize we need to make. This season, called Lent, seems all the more important in our modern, media driven, fast paced age.

At Park Congregational Church our theme for Lent this year is “Walking with Jesus.” In our worship services we are thinking about where Jesus walked and what Jesus did in his ministry. In addition, we are actually walking. Every week I am suggesting different ways of walking our prayers during the week.  I am encouraging folks to give up some of our hurry and our information overload to slow and notice all the things we can see and appreciate at three or four miles per hour that we miss when we’re going somewhere between twenty-five and seventy miles per hour.

Whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, I encourage you to take some time every day to get away from the steady stream of information overload. I encourage you to walk somewhere, noticing as you go things you cannot notice when you’re traveling at your usual pace. If you are a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to wonder as you walk what Jesus might notice or point out to you were he walking right there with you.

You are welcome to join us in worship, as always. Last week we “walked with Jesus into the wilderness of temptation.” This coming Sunday we’ll “walk with Jesus up a mountain of encouragement.” Worship is at 9:15, ten miles west of Elgin on Hwy 70 and ½ mile south.