Author: Everydaystories

Jesus Junk

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Underneath the labyrinthine exchange of roadways, the Interstate highway, the elevated expressway, and city streets that carry the heaviest traffic in our city, at the end of the dead end road beyond the fast food and drive thru Starbucks, there’s a mega-store. My skin crawls and I feel a little sick every time I see it. I went in a couple of times just to look around and felt dirty just being there. But, sadly, I think I’m pretty alone in my revulsion over this store. Recently there were protests and the city-council spent hours trying (rightly in my opinion) to keep a strip-club from opening a couple miles to the east of this place, but, I’ve never heard of anyone being anything but pleased by this store’s presence in our fair city.

Even so, I can’t help thinking if Jesus were to come to town, there might be some serious table turning action taking place down there.

So, can we talk about Jesus junk and cheap churchy tchotchkes and bad books and those who profit, bigly, off the sales of that stuff? This mega-store is crammed wall to wall with Jesus home décor, and Jesus jewelry, with Jesus plush-throws, and Jesus tees in every size, with Jesus baby burp cloths and nativity napkins and Jesus is the Reason for the Season soup mugs. The place is filled with the scent of “manger mixed with myrrh” melted wax (you can buy it in a set with the handy light-up nativity scented wax warmer for only $25.99).

A couple times I’ve been given gift cards to the Jesus Junk store. Last year I went there thinking I could use my gift card to buy a new Bible. The cover was coming off my old leather-bound Oxford Annotated NRSV and I thought it might be time to replace it. I braved my way through the Jesus gift gallery and past the thousands of glossy-covered books selling a “God loves America Best–Jesus is your Ultimate Life Insurance–Do you Know Where you’re Going when you Die? (and, in the mean-time, Heaven on Earth can be Yours if you follow our Ten Easy Ways to make your Husband Feel like a King)” kind of pseudo-Christianity. Way in the back of the store is their fairly large Bible section.

The Women’s Thin-line Pretty in Pink King James Version Bible complete with a matching pink journal and pink pen was only fifty bucks. But nowhere, amongst all their Biblical offerings was a single Bible for which a woman was a member of the editorial board. Not one. I’ve been exaggerating a little (could you tell?) about the stuff this store sells like hot cakes, but I’m not exaggerating at all about this. Every one of the hundreds of Bibles in a breathtakingly large array of colors and covers and versions and editions was translated and edited only by men. Why does that matter? Because women, like men, were created in God’s image. Women, like men, have brains and are scholars and are capable carriers of God’s stories. The more broadly representative the editors and translators of God’s word, the more accurate, the more inclusive the important editorial decisions. The earnest salesman helped me look at every version of the Bible sold in his store. Dozens of versions, no women editors. “Isn’t this strange?” I asked him. He admitted it was. He said he’d never really thought about it before.

Isn’t that the way it is with the whole big, let’s show the world how much we love Jesus by buying stuff with his name on it charade? We just don’t think about it. We have this good citizen-consumer attitude “It’s nice we have that big Christian store selling Christian things for all the good Christian people.” But, is it nice? Or, is it maybe a sham? Is it maybe a place where day after day hour after hour God’s name is taken in vain?

Using God’s name to make a buck, using God’s name to enhance one’s own wealth, using God’s name to  please one’s investors, using God’s name to improve one’s business, using God’s name to silence half of God’s people seems to me to be risky. What I’ve read in my plain old black leather covered study Bible indicates God has never been all that pleased when people claim things in God’s name that are self-serving. Who benefits from the sale of Jesus Junk? Are the factory workers paid living wages to make all that stuff? Are they given full-benefits, do they get to take Sabbath rest? And what will happen to the Jesus junk when it’s gathered dust on our shelves and our kids have to go through our stuff after they’ve sent us to the old-folk’s home? Will it be valuable, or will it go to the landfill where it will be buried with no hope of resurrection?

Who benefits from Bibles edited only by conservative old white men? Who is being served? Is it God? And who benefits from books that trumpet piety and morality and “Christian” values that leave out the poor and the vulnerable and venerate the rich and powerful?

I don’t like the strip club in the middle of town. It’s degrading and dehumanizing. But, at least it’s not selling its’ tainted wares in the name of God.

Ben’s Box and November in Nebraska

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It’s November 27th and it was 67 degrees when I went to the grocery store an hour ago. (I live in Nebraska). We’ve had high temperatures in the mid-sixties since Thanksgiving Day, four days ago. (I live in Nebraska). The weather has been beautiful. On Black Friday Mike and I took advantage of it and hung our (minimal) Christmas lights a whole week ahead of the beginning of Advent, because we live in Nebraska and who knew when we might have another day so nice for hanging lights?

Usually, hanging lights involves snot freezing as it drips from one’s nose when tipped upside down from the ladder. Usually, hanging the twinkling cheer involves fingers frozen stiff with cold and a face lacerated by leaves whipped up into mini-tornadoes while one stands defenseless atop a ladder. Not this year. I’m not complaining, except, it is a little weird. Shorts, flip-flops and Christmas tree displays go together in Florida maybe, but not here, except today. Today even that sight made sense in a very nonsensical way.

One of the errands I ran today was to mail a box to Benjamin, my youngest son. He lives in New York City and because he started a new job in October he has no vacation time and was not able to come home for Thanksgiving. For the same reason, he won’t be coming home for Christmas. The box I mailed holds a Christmas ornament for each year of his life so far. Every year since they were babies, I bought each of my sons a new ornament for our tree. My mother did the same for me and my brothers when we were little. When we left home, she sent the ornaments with us so we’d have a little bit of home on our Christmas trees even if we lived far away. I still have the little gingerbread house, and angel with orange fluffy hair and Raggedly Ann from the trees of my childhood.  This year Benjamin will have his jointed frog that he broke and secretly fixed with chewing gum and the Santa whose arms and legs move at the tug of a string, and a delicate carved wooden ornament in the shape of Nebraska tied with a red ribbon among twenty-some others.

Once I graduated from college  I spent most of my Christmases far away from home. My first husband and I were both pastors. We served churches in Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan and since churches generally expect their pastor(s) to be present for Christmas Eve at least, getting home to Nebraska for the holidays wasn’t usually feasible. Once in a while my parents came to where we were for the holidays, but mostly we created traditions of our own with our boys and talked with my family by phone late in the day on Christmas.

That the day would come when my own children might not be home for the holidays is something I always anticipated. That  we would not always be in the same place, enjoying the same glittering tree was inherent in my buying ornaments for them to “take with them someday.” But, knowing the day would come is not the same as living that day. Dropping off that box today I felt my heart. It ripped a little bit inside my chest as I gave the woman Ben’s address.

This five day streak of near record breaking warmth in Nebraska in November just doesn’t seem right. Neither does sending Ben his box. I’m not complaining exactly, but it is a little weird.

 

Litany

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Harvey Weinstein is not why I knitted four beautiful hot pink pussy hats and marched in the Women’s March last spring. I didn’t know about him last spring. Donald Trump was not why I marched in the Women’s March, either, but he was part of it.

Bobby, the neighbor boy who climbed the rough bricks outside our bathroom to peep in when  I was seven to see what a girl looked like after I told him, “no” when he offered me a dime to show him—Bobby started it. And Mark, the high school choir friend who was pretty immature but nice enough to hang around in a group until I told him I didn’t want to go with him to prom and I didn’t want to date him at all, after which he began loudly taunting me across the cafeteria so badly I retreated to one of the music practice rooms to eat my lunch for the rest of the year, and who yelled his usual taunt, loudly enough to be heard across the Civic Auditorium as I crossed the stage to receive my diploma at graduation. Mark added another verse to the litany being written deep inside me.

Then there was the nice divorced man from the church who had joined while I was away for my sophomore year of college who started showing up at my work place just as I clocked out at eleven pm. He was older and I didn’t like him “like that.” But, if somebody went to my church, I trusted them, because well, they went to my church and I had always trusted the people in my church. “Let’s go to coffee,” he’d say. “Sure.” I’d say. I had “go to coffee buddies” at college, why not at home during the summer, too?  Except one night he said he needed to stop by his house, did I mind tagging along? It turns out, I minded. I was ashamed. I should have known better. I didn’t tell anyone. Litany verse three.

Verse four, later that summer at the city pool. Shaken, I decided to leave after a man cornered me and would not accept my pleas of “leave me alone.”

Verse five, on my twenty-first birthday, when on a boat on the Baltic Sea as part of an  overseas study program, I left our group to return to my cabin alone and was followed by a drunken fool who tried to force his way into my cabin after me.

Verse six, the date with an exchange student during my senior year of college that turned ugly fast.

Verse seven, the seminary professor and admissions counselor at a school I visited, who looked me in the eye not once, but stared at my chest the whole time he interviewed me.

Verses eight and nine the man who tried to trick me into following him into an old barn to see some things he said were being stored there that belonged to the church where I was the pastor, and the used condom I found on the seat of my car in the pastor’s parking space outside the church a couple of weeks after I’d rebuffed him.

Litany verses ten, eleven, twelve, they’re all just more of the same. More of the same old rotten thing. More of the same thing women just chalk up to “the way things are.” Unless there’s violence, unless there’s long lasting physical harm, most of the time we women just move on and try to be “smarter” the next time—because so far, there has always been a next time.

I never added up the verses of my very personal litany, I never brought them out to see the light of day. I left them, unremembered deep in the dusty file cabinet of my life’s forgettable moments until last November, when enough people were willing to excuse a self-admitted “pussy grabber” to elect him President of the United States of America.

I marched in the march for many reasons. I knit and wore my hat for one. It was a proud defiance against the litany of disrespect shown me and women throughout the ages.

Now, let me preach a moment with the fire-like passion of the prophets:

This is not the way God intended things to be.

“At last this is flesh of my flesh,” the cry of joy from Adam in meeting Eve is not a cry of domination, but of mutuality, of partnership, of communion, of shared respect and shared pleasure.

“This is my beloved and this is my friend,” the delighted words of the bride about her groom in the Song of Solomon is not about power and possession, but about the tenderness and equality of true partners, willing the very best for each other.

“Wives submit to your husbands, Husbands love your wives like Christ loves the church,” the letter to the Christians in Ephesus is not proscribing subservient women pleasing dominating men, but, in true poetic reciprocity, each loving and serving the other with self-giving love like Jesus.

How about we start a new litany? A litany with verses about respect and tenderness?

How about verses where we march to a deeply humane beat?

How about verses in which we no longer keep quiet?

How about verses where we sing the truth?

How about verses about love?

Simply love.

What a litany.

Damn that dark green sedan!

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I had a recurring dream as a child. I was on my tricycle on the sidewalk in front of our house, the little light green house on North 49th Street where we lived until I was four and a half. I was on my red tricycle when a big dark green old-fashioned sedan came careening down the hill on the sidewalk. When I had the dream, I always woke up terrified and crying just before the car plowed over me.

Again and again I had that dream as a child. I was as powerless to stop the dream from recurring as I was powerless in the dream to either get away from the car, or to stop the car on its menacing dive toward my destruction.

Monday I awoke refreshed and happy from a good night’s sleep but taking my phone off its charger and sitting down in the easy chair in our bedroom I read the headlines of Sunday night’s massacre in Las Vegas. I felt the familiar feeling from childhood–the recurring dream in which I am utterly powerless, utterly unable to change the course of events around me. I wanted to scream, but instead I simply sat, stunned, sad, and suddenly weary as if I had not slept in years.

Why does this nightmare, this gun violence nightmare, this only in America nightmare, why does it keep coming, keep bearing down on us again and again and again?  When will we wake up? When will we claim our power to stop this from happening? When will we decide we are not scared little children waking from a bad dream, but full-grown adults fully capable of making this stop? When will we insist that just as cars don’t belong on the sidewalk where children ride their trikes, rapid fire weapons and hand guns have no legitimate place among us?

How long until we wake up, claim our power, and put a stop to this nightmare once and for all? Because, unlike my recurring childhood dream where I awakened shaken, but very much healthy and alive, in this national gun violence recurring nightmare– real children of God die, needlessly, violently,

Every. Single. Time.

In the name of God who said, “Do not kill” how about we wake up and collectively decide God probably got it right on that accord? How about we wake up? How about we make the nightmares stop? How about we claim our power? How about we do it, beginning now?

This nightmare needs to stop. Please, God, make it stop. Please, my fellow Americans, make it stop. Please.

I’ll do my part, and you do yours, I’ll contact my senators and representatives and I’ll be persistent and you contact yours and be persistent and dogged and unwavering and together we will make it stop.

And then, oh! and then, we will awaken, we will awaken, living the recurring dream, being refreshed and happy on each new day that the Lord has made for all of us to rejoice and be glad in.

What we don’t know

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“Becky, we think you don’t know what’s been happening in your home when you aren’t there.”

Sharon, my neighbor, told me this story with deep sadness and after apologizing for not having told me sooner, while also apologizing for “stepping in where maybe I don’t belong–maybe this is none of my business…

…The other day the boys came in the house from your house and went into Jon’s (her son) room. It was Jon and Jake (another middle-school kid who hung around our neighborhood once in a while) and Adam (my son).” She said, “I was putting away laundry out in the hall and Jon’s door was open a little. I heard Adam say, “My Dad hates me!” and the way he said it was just heart-breaking. And then Jake said, “I know, man. My dad hates me, too.” And Jon said, “Shut-up Jake! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your dad doesn’t hate you, he’s just being a dad. Adam’s dad really does hate him.”

Sharon, wagging her head and looking at me with sorrow in her eyes said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Sharon was right. I didn’t know what was happening in my home when I wasn’t there. That day, once I knew, I knew I needed to act. I needed to change things. I needed to protect my sons. I needed to stop thinking I was able to hold everything together and I was the only one being harmed by my husband’s anger. Once I knew his anger wasn’t being directed only at me but at the kids too, my responsibility to the kids was clear.

I don’t beat myself up about not knowing. None of us know what we don’t know until we know it.

Sometimes we think we know because we know something else. But seriously, we can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

I have a friend who didn’t know her husband was sexually abusing their daughter. She didn’t know until she did know. I have a friend who didn’t know his wife had been carrying on an affair for years. He didn’t know until he did know. I have a pastor friend who didn’t know the administrative assistant was embezzling money. She didn’t know until she did know.

I didn’t know what was happening in my home when I wasn’t there because what was happening when I was there was different than what was happening when I wasn’t, and because my boys didn’t tell me  and because I didn’t even think to ask (even though maybe I should have).

Jake thought he knew what Adam was going through because he thought it was the same thing he was experiencing at home. But then Jon set him straight with the charming candor of fourteen year old boys, “Shut-up, Jake! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Today I’ve been thinking most of us who are white people need someone with Jon’s candor right about now. “Shut-up! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Before we weigh-in against athletes taking a knee in prayerful protest we might be wise to acknowledge we don’t know what we don’t know about being dark-skinned in this country because we don’t have dark skin. The only way we can possibly begin to know what we don’t know is by paying attention, listening, and turning off our preconceived notions about how much we think we know. We need to be humble enough to listen when our neighbors tell us what they’ve seen and experienced even if what they tell us makes us uncomfortable and means that we need to change things because now we do know.

Maybe there are a whole lot of us who don’t know what’s happening to our neighbors here in the home of the brave and the land of the free. Maybe it’s time to hold off on knee-jerk reactions and to be very quiet instead to listen well to those who, with sorrow in their eyes and truth on their tongues, tell us what they know, so we can begin to know it, too.

Maybe, when we really listen, we’ll be moved to bend our knees in contrition, to say, I didn’t know until I knew but now I do. And then, arm in arm we can stand up and begin to do what’s right together.

 

Transformed

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It was one of those calls that comes out of the blue. A local therapist introduced herself and explained, “One of your church members, Connie Smith* has been seeing me for some time now. She asked me to call you. Would you be willing to join us for one of her therapy sessions in the near future?” When I asked what it was about, she said, “Let’s just wait until you are here to talk about that.”

The call left me curious and anxious because Connie came to the church at the invitation of a couple who had recently left the church in a huff without being honest about why they were leaving. They managed to sow seeds of dissention as they went. What kind of ugly bomb was about to be dropped at my feet? How was I about to be blamed this time for something out of my control? (I was suffering from PTCSD- post-traumatic-church-syndrome from ugliness at my prior congregation).

I’ll come back to Connie’s story but for now, I’ll let you stew momentarily, as I did, wondering (and worrying) what in the world Connie needed her minister to visit about with her therapist.

The Godsquad, the church youth group I spent my favorite hours of every week of every year I was in Junior and Senior High with, used to belt out these words from scripture with far greater enthusiasm than musicality:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and anyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He who loveth not, (clap, clap, clap) knoweth not God for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another first John four seven and eight…” Repeat ad nauseum ad infinitum.

When I left the Godsquad for college, though I was raised in a mainline congregation, I was what anyone would describe as a religious conservative. Heavily influenced by my Grandma Zahller, who, due to Multiple Sclerosis lived in an apartment in our basement, my deep faith, nurtured and nourished at church, included a lot of Grandma’s legalism.

Over time, with serious study of the Bible, nurturing relationships with professors and classmates and eventually colleagues; with travel, the accumulation of life experiences, and ongoing reflection and introspection my mind was changed on many things.  God kept working at prying my heart open wider and wider to see God’s love revealed in folks I previously would have considered outside of God’s grace.

In the midst of the conflict and ugliness in the congregation I served before serving Connie’s congregation, I was overtaken by the question, “What would happen if a church decided to make loving one another and all the ‘others’ beyond it, its highest aim? What would happen if I, as a pastor, made love my mantra?”

When I interviewed with the congregation where Connie became a member, I was exhausted and dispirited from the dysfunction and conflict in my current congregation coupled with my own heartbreak swirling around my recent divorce. Connie’s congregation too, had been through a heartbreaking season of divisiveness. The search committee interviewing me for the job asked, “What about gay people? What about gay marriage? Would you perform one?”

I told the story about my own journey to a broader and more inclusive faith. I told the story of my respected colleague and friend whose faith was palpable and whose pastoral skills and love for God were contagious. I shared how that colleague coming out to me was the beginning of my transformation. I told them about reading Mel White’s memoir, Stranger at the Gate (Penguin Publishing Group, 1995), and how it helped me sort through the Biblical and theological baggage I had carried with me over the years.  I told them I had never officiated a gay marriage or commitment ceremony, but was ready and happily willing to do so. I also told them, “I understand this is still a controversial issue and this congregation has just been through hell. I understand you simply want and need some time to heal. I also understand that God’s love extends to all God’s children and it’s not our place to erect barriers to anyone who wants to share that love of God in full fellowship with us. So here’s what I’ll tell you, I will pray that God does not bring to this congregation anyone whom we are not yet ready to welcome with arms wide open in the inexhaustible love of God. I’ll pray that I will not be asked to officiate any marriage here until this congregation can fully share the couple’s joy.”

I was called to be the church’s pastor. Time passed, conversations among the elders and others, Bible studies etc. took place and when Peg and Nora came to worship on the recommendation of a minister in the town from which they recently moved, our congregation welcomed them with arms wide open. It wasn’t long before both held positions of leadership and service. They loved God and God’s people. That they were in love with each other was never an issue, in fact, their love increased our congregation’s love, because love is like that—it multiplies and expands. Love is love is love.

Later on, talking with a friend about how over time my mind had been changed and God had extended my understanding of the breadth and inclusivity of God’s love, I admitted I still struggled with the whole idea of people being transgender. “I just don’t get it.” I said. “I have a hard time seeing it as somehow, ‘normal.’” I told her I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I  knew I needed more understanding so when the time came to be welcoming and loving like God is welcoming and loving I’d be completely ready. I told her a classmate’s handsome husband had transitioned a few years earlier and I had been “weirded-out” by it. My friend said she’d loan a book to me. Jennifer Boylan’s 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders (Broadway/Doubleday/RandomHouse) did for me part of what Mel White’s story did when I was working on coming to a better understanding of homosexuality.

Boylan’s book was on the back seat of my car when I pulled into the parking lot at Connie’s therapist’s office. I’d been driving around with it on my back seat for three or four weeks because I kept forgetting to return it after I finished reading it.

“Connie has something she wants you to know about her but she’s afraid to tell you because when she has told other pastors in other churches she has been ostracized and not allowed to remain in the church.”  I turned to Connie, thinking, pedophile? Murderer? Former felon? I said, “Connie, I don’t know what you’re about to tell me, but I promise you, whatever you tell me will not limit God’s love for you, nor will it limit your welcome in our congregation.” Connie, looking very nervous asked her therapist to tell me.

“Connie is transgender.”

So, maybe you saw this coming. I absolutely, sure as shootin’ at the time did not.

“I will pray that God does not bring to this congregation anyone whom we are not yet ready to welcome with arms wide open in the love of God.” Isn’t that just like God to take such good care of Connie that God prepared me just in time to be able to say, without hesitation, “Oh! Connie, God loves you so much.  You are loved and you are welcome. You are part of our congregation. You are God’s beloved daughter and I am glad to be your pastor.”

What would happen if we were to expend our Christian energy loving others extravagantly like God loves? What would happen if we quit squandering our Christian energy and tarnishing Jesus’ good name by narrowly drawing lines and boxes around who’s in and who’s out of God’s grace? What would happen in this weary, broken and fragmented world if we just let go and let God’s love fill us and flow through us, like it flowed through Jesus who opened his heart, his life, his arms wide for all of us?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is love is love is of God.

 

 

 

*I change names and some details to protect confidentiality.

Wait

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I met a church member for lunch in mid-town today. She waited patiently while the parking meter and I conferred. Relieved as I was not to need change, which I’d forgotten, I got flustered when I couldn’t find the slot for entering my debit card in the new-fangled meter I parked behind. When I finally figured it out, inserted my card and removed it quickly as instructed on the little screen, the screen flashed back at me, “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.”

There were way too many waits. Before long my lunch companion and I had the giggles.

Waiting doesn’t always evoke giggles. Waiting can be hard.

Waiting for an eighteen year old who thinks she’s grown up already to grow up already,

Waiting for an addicted sibling to hit bottom,

Waiting for the divorce process to run its’ course,

Waiting for the results from the biopsy,

Waiting to hear back from the interview,

Waiting can be hard.

My birth mother waited 25 years hoping one day she could tell me she loved me and explain why she placed me for adoption. All she could do back then was wait. Adoption laws have changed and the internet has made virtually obsolete old state laws about confidentiality in closed adoptions.  But back then, all she could do was wait. Wait to see if I would contact the adoption agency looking for information.

When I looked it was for medical information. Thinking we might try to start our family while serving in Zaire, it seemed prudent to find out whatever I could about my family history. Maybe I had sisters who had already borne children. Maybe there were risks and complications I should be aware of before blithely becoming pregnant at the equator with limited medical care.

The social worker sent a form. “On this page please write about yourself. We have learned that birth parents are more willing to share information when they know something about the adopted adult seeking information.” What was I supposed to write? One page, no identifying information. I wrote my whole life story in three paragraphs and sent it by air-mail from France where we were in language school. Then I waited. Two weeks for the letter to make it to Omaha. At least two weeks to get a return letter from the social worker. When it came, all the medical information was updated. It had not been difficult to find my birth mom and she was happy to provide the requested information.  At the end of the form was a note, “your birth mother would like to make contact with you. Are you willing to exchange letters, through our agency, without sharing any identifying information? If so, we can begin the process even as you file the appropriate forms with the Secretary of State.”

Several weeks later our mailbox at Language School was filled with a fat manila envelope, filled with a long letter and many, many photos of people, “your Aunt Alice,” “your Aunt Ruth” “your Grandma” “your sister” “your sister” (but, none of my aunts were named Alice and my Aunt Ruth looked nothing like the woman in that photo and my beloved grandmothers had both died, and I had brothers, not sisters). I was disoriented by suddenly having a whole other family besides my own whom I had known all my life.

We had to wait a long while to meet each other and then to become more than strangers to each other. I was overwhelmed. I needed time. My birth mother was patient with me. She waited until I was ready to know her better.

Waiting isn’t easy, but, so many times in life we simply have to wait. We can’t control other people. We can’t control all the circumstances and moving pieces of our lives intersecting with the lives of others. Paul, the Apostle wrote to the Romans, “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” Sometimes it takes God awhile to get all the pieces lined up for that good to come to pass. Sometimes, when we get in too big a hurry, we throw monkey wrenches into the ways God is working. Getting impatient can backfire on us.

Sometimes I try to fix things, resolve things, and settle things before it’s time. I was working on doing just that about something earlier this summer when, on a Sunday in front of the whole congregation, while singing our closing hymn in church, the heavens opened and I heard the trumpets sound as a bright light shined down on me in the sanctuary. (Ok. It wasn’t like that at all). It was just the third verse of an oldie-moldy hymn spoke to me as if directly from God’s mouth to my ears. We were singing  “Take Time to Be Holy” when these words were God’s words directly to me, “Take time to be holy, let him be thy guide, and run not before him, whatever betide; in joy or in sorrow, still follow they Lord. And, looking to Jesus, still trust in his word.” ( W.D. Longstaff, 1882).

And run not before him… Sometimes the word of the day is “wait.” “Wait,” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.”

Folding up a blanket

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Folding up a blanket. She was folding up a blanket. It’s such a normal thing to do I almost didn’t register what she was doing. I’d just done it myself a couple days earlier.

Last week I stayed several nights with my son and his love in their apartment. Adam cleared amplifiers and instruments out of his small music room to make room for an air mattress for me. On his desk, next to a happy red lamp was a “welcome Mom” note and a little painted nativity inside a gourd- a welcome gift for me.  I went to the Twin Cities for a quick, unplanned get-away when a weekend retreat for the church was cancelled at the last minute. The cancellation freed up my week and gave me time to rest my world-weary soul before fall programing begins in earnest at the church.

On Friday morning I folded up the blankets Adam and Elektra gave me to use, and I put them away in their living room. I rolled up my sheets and pillow cases and pillows.  Pulling the plug on the queen-sized air mattress, I was happy. It served me well enough, but it was a lot lower to the ground than I remembered it being when I used it last five years ago. As I put away my temporary bedroom I looked forward to sharing a king-sized bed at the Hampton Inn with Mike that night after he flew in for the weekend. The air mattress and pump, sheets, pillows and pillow cases all fit nicely in one big rectangular bag that I tossed into the trunk of my car before spending the day exploring the city with a cousin, also world-weary, whom I hadn’t seen in too long.

Two concerts, two art exhibits, sight-seeing, a little shopping (I had never been to IKEA before), long walks drinking in early autumn beauty, plenty of good food, time to finish a good book uninterrupted, time to repair some broken jewelry and to patch the elbows of a favorite jacket, sitting Zen meditation with Adam one morning in a beautiful Zen center (a first for me), a blazing fire pit on a beautiful evening, time alone, time with both Minneapolis offspring-sons, time to walk relaxed and hand-in-hand with Mike; it all added up to a wonderfully refreshing week.

Yesterday morning Mike and I didn’t make the bed, we just closed the door behind us and checked out of that Hampton Inn and put our bags in the trunk of my car. Instead of hopping on the freeway we took the longer, but more scenic, route through the city to wend our way to worship and later brunch with Jackson before hitting the highway for home.

Crossing town, we were stopped at a light when to my left I saw the young girl folding up a blanket. She was maybe 13 or 14. She had a long black pony tail. She and a young man were on the cement stoop in front of a business. The porch was small, maybe eight feet long and four feet wide across the front of the building. Another woman, just a little older looking, with a pock-marked face and her own long black ponytail stepped to the stop-light before waiting there for the others to join her.

The young girl was folding up a blanket. Maybe I wouldn’t even have noticed her if I hadn’t just folded up my own temporary bed two mornings earlier. I looked at them for several seconds before it registered with me, they slept on that stoop! Her blanket, folded first into thirds and then neatly rolled into a tight tube, would go with her wherever she was going to spend the day. They had no king-sized bed waiting for them at home, no temporary room for the night, not even an air mattress to soften that hard cement stoop. No cheerful red bedside lamp to read by late into the night. No window shades to draw to keep out lights from passing cars and the stares of strangers.

Our traffic light turned green and we drove away.

The girl folding her blanket went with me to worship. She was there when we prayed and when we communed. She, along with my suitcase and other bags, came home with me, too. She’s here, on my mind and in my heart. She was folding a blanket and it looked like a perfectly normal thing for her to do.

But, how can it be normal for kids to be homeless, sleeping on cement stoops and folding their blankets there the next morning for all the world, for tourists like me, to drive by and to see?

When did I see you homeless and pass you by, Jesus?

When did I see you without a bed and not offer you so much as the air-mattress packed in the trunk of my car as we drove by?

I left home for a few days because I was world-weary and I came home feeling more whole but carrying a kid with a long black ponytail folding a blanket.

We can’t continue to drive by and let that be normal, can we?

At Last

~ Everydaystories ~ Leave a comment

When I climb into bed at night, I giggle. I’ve been giggling as I nestle under the sheets and onto my pillows for the past six and a half years and all indications are, the giggle isn’t going away. Mike noticed it first. “Do you realize you giggle when you crawl into bed next to me?” “Hmm! I guess I do” I agreed.

The giggle is pure delight. Mike is “at last this is flesh of my flesh” to me. Mike is home and my safest place. Mike is my other half. Seeing Mike makes me grin and I can’t help it. Between us, there’s a magnetic field of some sort—drawing us toward each other. We “met” on Match.com. The first time we met for coffee was two months, a whole lot of e-mails and phone calls later. One of my first thoughts when I sat across from him made me blush, Becky! I said, in my head with the inflection my mother might have used when slightly incredulous and to set me straight, what are you thinking? I was thinking, I’d like to run my fingers through his hair right there at his temples.

His eyes are gentle and kind and…they twinkle and the hair at his temples is a gorgeous gray, highlighting his smiling eyes.

We both lived a long time before we found each other.

Mike was married before. His marriage lasted twenty-two years and produced three great kids. He and his ex-wife eventually had different priorities and they were divorced. The failure of his marriage was painful. Mike’s a family man. In fact, he moved out of the family home into an apartment just a block away so he could continue to be a very present father for the two of his children still at home. Sad, angry, lonely he built a new life for himself. When we met he’d been divorced for three years, his marriage had been over except on paper and in living arrangements for several more than that.

I was married before. I was married for nineteen years and our marriage produced three great kids. My ex-husband struggled with mental health issues. For many years he blamed his depression and struggles on external stresses, circumstances and people. Then, I started to get more of the blame. I was sad and lonely and one of my wisest, dearest friends guessed it. She asked “are you happy?” I told her “no, I’m just figuring it out one day at a time. This is the ‘for worse’ of the ‘for better for worse’ parts of the vows.” She said she couldn’t do it. She said she was crazy about her husband and he was crazy about her. I said “all marriages take work”. She said, “and some simply don’t work.” I told her mine was working just fine (even though it wasn’t).

A few months later a neighbor down the street sat me down to tell me she was concerned about my kids. “I don’t think you know what’s happening when you’re away at the church.” I didn’t know. She described a conversation she overheard putting away laundry in the hall while my son and her son and another neighbor boy were hanging out in her son’s room. The anger that had been turned on me was being turned on my children, too.

The divorce was pretty hellish. I don’t know many people who make it through divorce unscathed, we sure didn’t. So, when all the dust settled, and I eventually had full-custody of the kids, I moved home to Nebraska to be near my aging parents and one of my brothers. They helped me and the boys heal, and my brother and I helped our parents navigate some cruel blows from aging.

For eight years I said I was wearing a hat with three bills. Above one it said, “Mom” above another it said, “Daughter” and above the third it said, “Minister.” I just spun the hat around my head depending on the moment. Nowhere on the hat was there room for anything that said, simply, “Becky.”

A bit of Becky time eventually came. My elder two graduated from high school, my youngest was a high school junior, my mother “graduated” too.  And that’s when Mike and I met.

I didn’t know what was missing in my life until I met Mike. I had no idea what marriage could really be even though I tried my darndest to make a good marriage the first go around. There are other stories to be told about divorcing and dealing with guilt and the fact that all of us “miss the mark” all of us fall short in different ways at different times in life. We can wrestle later with thoughts about divorce and sin and forgiveness and the Bible and making sense out of what ancient, yet still living documents teach us about God’s will.

But, I can say this for sure. Mike is a gift to me from God. Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

Mike and I are wholly married to each other in the holy way God imagined and dreamed for all God’s children. Genesis says God looked on God’s very good creation and realized something not yet perfected, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” said God. And God fashioned another human just perfect for the first. Flesh of each other’s flesh, bone of each other’s bone.

All of this story brings me closer to the point I want to make.

Mike and I have six young adult children. What I want desperately for each of them is that they find someone fashioned just right for them to journey with through life. I want each of them to dance with delight because they are so well loved and to find the embrace of one with whom they know they are “home.” One who, at last, is flesh of their flesh. I want them to shiver with the pleasures of intimacy and break into grins when their special other turns the corner. I want them to have that someone they trust and can count on when cancer strikes, when stress is high. I want them to giggle when they climb into bed next to each other even when they are growing old.

I want that for each of our six children and for you and for your children and our neighbors and for our neighbor’s children. And here’s the kicker–one of our kids is gay and that doesn’t change one bit my hopes and prayers and dreams–they are the same for all six of our kids. I want them to know, if they want to know, I want them to really know love. I want them not to have to live life alone. And not to have to pretend to be who they aren’t because there isn’t anything more lonely than that. I don’t care if the one my kid loves is he, she or they. I want them to find the one for whom they say, “at last.”

Once upon a time and even now, there are those so caught up in religious rules and regulations they would deny the holiness of the love Mike and I share because we were both married before. And right now, this very week when there’s so much hurt and so much heart ache and sorrow out there and each of us needs another to shore us up and help us find home, this very week there are religious zealots who have written a heinous and ugly declaration denying the holiness of love to those who are LGBTQ+.

To them I say, Stop it already! God’s love is bigger than your limited imaginations.

And to God I say, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for second chances. Thank you for the gift of my Mike. Thank you that as soon as I finish writing and click “publish” I will go upstairs and climb into bed and giggle as I nestle under the sheets and onto my pillows and next to my already sleeping sweet husband.

Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you.

Still Speaking

~ Everydaystories ~ 1 Comment

Mrs. Clark opened her door after I knocked. “I was baking bread this morning and thought of you. Here’s a loaf. I hope you like it.”  She took in a deep breath, bowed her head and crumpled forward like a flower drooping. Bringing her clasped hands up to her chest a second passed before she breathed again and straightened to meet my gaze. “You remembered.” She said. “You remembered. It’s been a year today since my Walter died.” We visited a little bit there on her cozy front porch before I headed back down the street two houses to my own house where one of my babies was napping and the other two needed to be picked up from nursery school.

I didn’t remember it was the anniversary of her Walter’s death but I let Helen think whatever she wanted to think. But here’s what happened:

I’d been at the church the night before. There was a meeting and as was fairly common for that congregation someone acted ugly about something. Some congregations are truly skilled at arguing about things about which Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God Almighty and all the angels don’t give a rat’s patootie. This congregation got a lot of things right, but boy–howdy some of them sure could act ugly. And sometimes they directed that ugliness at us, their co-pastors. Even when it wasn’t aimed directly at us, some of it usually splattered in our direction.

When I climbed into bed I congratulated myself for not being worked-up about the ugliness. My skin must be getting thicker, I thought. I’ve been doing ministry long enough I’ve learned to let things just roll off my back. I thought. Hmm. I thought, a little over ten years into this and I’m getting the knack of it.

At two a.m. I woke up because someone was sobbing. It took me a moment to realize the person sobbing was me. With a sleeping husband beside me and three sleeping little boys across the hall I stifled myself quickly. And then as I was just waking up to my heart-wrenching doubts that so frequently follow on the heels of church members complaining–I’m not cut out to be a minister, this has all been some big mistake–I heard, in my head, but plain as day, an instruction, “Go downstairs and read.”

For years and years a thin little volume called, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck, Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983.) has been my frequent companion, spiritual guide and source of strength. The morning of the church meeting I skipped my prayer time. The boys were little, life was demanding and I just skipped praying (it happens!) In our family room at 2:00 am I turned to the words I missed in the morning, the words I was told to go downstairs to read. The Psalm was about God not abandoning us in a pit. And one of the readings for reflection was from St. Teresa of Avila (Way of Perfection). Part of it read,

Sometimes, too, God allows his servants to have stormy days…although they are distressed and seek to calm themselves, they are unable to do so…Let them not tire themselves seeking to infuse sense into an understanding which is, at the moment incapable of it. But let them pray as well as they can and even not pray at all, but consider the soul to be sick and give it some rest, busying themselves in some other act of virtue.

Wow! I read the words again and again. They sure seemed to be written just for me, just for right then.

I spent the rest of that sleepless night writing a letter to one of our youth group kids who was going through a rough time and making some bad choices in the process and then baking bread so there was a fresh loaf for my family to wake up to and another to share.

By mid-morning I was wondering if I was maybe a little crazy for thinking God had time or inclination to call me downstairs in the night.  But then I took the loaf of bread to Helen Clark for no real reason other than she was the first person who came to mind when I thought about what to do with it.

I bowed my head on my way home from her house. I don’t know how, I don’t understand God’s mysterious ways, but it sure seemed to me, I’d just been used.

I’d just been used by God to carry comfort in the form of freshly baked bread to a woman who needed comforting, and in the process God lifted me from my own little pit of church drama and self-doubt to comfort me, too.

I don’t usually hear instructions in the night. But if God spoke to Joseph and Samuel and others of his servants in dreams and in that still small voice long ago, based on that one night when my children were young and I was, too, I have to believe, as our United Church of Christ brothers and sisters affirm, God is still speaking today. It’s up to us to be sure we listen.