Prayer Life

In seminary you hear a lot, “make sure to develop a prayer life now, because you won’t have time in the parish.” While I will acknowledge there is a lot of wisdom in that statement, I would also push back on it. Four months into internship, it is true that I am busy. I also don’t have the community I had in seminary to nurture spiritual growth. I don’t have daily chapel, or an organized centering prayer group, or a multitude of Growth in Faith opportunities. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, I find that my prayer life is growing in the parish. Not in organized, planned ways, but out of need.

Prayer on internship has for me proven not to be about wanting to try it on, but about needing to know I am not alone. Whether I’m sitting in my car in a hospital parking lot, trying to write a sermon to speak to people’s lives, struggling to hold my own grief and concern for an ill elderly member so I can minister to her friends, or frightened by footsteps in the snow behind my house, sometimes there is nowhere to go but God. Nothing to do but to fall back into the arms of a loving God. So my wisdom would be, yes, try to develop a prayer life in seminary. But if you fail, know that God will still be waiting to catch you when no one else will.

Advent 3 Sermon - Isaiah 35:1-10

Below is the sermon I preached last Wednesday night. This is what happens when the Californian tries to preach hope after five and a half feet of snow. You get a sermon where the good news statement is: "Someday spring will come."

So I brought something to share with you today. This is my Christmas cactus. I know he looks sort of sickly; this is actually really good for him. I got this little fellow from a cutting off my grandmother’s Christmas cactus, who got hers off a cutting from her mother, so this guy’s been in the family for a while. On the front of your bulletin you’ll see a picture that looks very much like my grandmother’s. Her’s is huge, overflowing its pot. And every Christmas it produces so many flowers that it turns purple. My little guy, I’m delighted that for Christmas he has created this new little shoot…

It is not my cactus’s fault that he is so spindly; he has had a pretty rough life. My dad cut him from my grandmother’s in California and carefully grew him roots. Then he had to fly from California to Chicago in dad’s suitcase, where his roots fell off. So I had to grow him new roots in a cup over the summer. Then I planted him and stuck him in the window in my apartment, where the breeze frequently knocked him to the ground, so I had to scoop him off the floor and replant him several times. I forgot him when I went home for a month, so he suffered alone without water. And then, to get him here I had to drive him a thousand miles in the back of the Jeep, smashed between the window and a suitcase to keep him upright. I’m not sure on the laws about transporting plants over international lines, so to get him across the Canadian border and then back into the states, I hid him under a sweater for two days, which he did not like at all. And now he sits here in Syracuse, stable for the first time in his young life, trying to recover from a life of travel and upheaval, so far from my grandmother’s warm living room.

In today’s text, Isaiah paints a picture of a desert in bloom. And not just in bloom, but abundantly green and lush. We are talking radical climate change. Streams of water rush through the arid dry lands. It will be so rich and fertile that it will become a swamp.

Let’s take this in context. Judea is a desert country. On the front cover of your bulletin there is also a picture of the Judean wilderness. It is a hot, dry, dust-bowl of a place, parched by the middle eastern sun. The Jordan River is the only water to snake through the region, and it meets its end in the Dead Sea. Because there is no outlet, the water of the Dead Sea is thick with minerals. Nothing can grow there; nothing can be sustained by its water. Hot, dry, the only water too thick to provide life, it is a wasteland.

In the middle of this, Isaiah says, crocuses will bloom. Streams of fresh, cool, water will rush until the desert is alive with life. This is not just a few blossoms on my little cactus; this is a radical reversal of how things are. And not just will the desert become a jungle, but the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will not just walk again, but they will leap like deer. This is new life on a grand scale. When God comes, things are different, radically different. God dreams big.

Last week it snowed for ninety-seven hours straight. Ninety-seven solid hours without so much as a slowing in the fluttering whiteness. Even the heartiest snow-lover can get a little bit weary at a storm that dumps four feet in four days. Every day I sat at the front window of my house and watched the snow piled on the bushes rise to meet the icicles growing down from the roof. I wondered, and maybe you did too, if this storm would ever stop. Or if Lake Ontario would just continue to dump its entire contents on my front lawn, until nothing is left but a vast dry lake bed and my poor, buried little house.

And then, Wednesday morning, something surprising happened. I was driving to work, slipping and sliding down Valley Drive on the way to Seneca Turnpike, when a flash of light caught my eye. I blinked, squinting as the light became brighter. It was the sun. I looked up into the brilliant blue winter sky, blinking at the sunlight reflecting off the snowbanks. The sun lasted for maybe five minutes, before the clouds rolled back in and the snow started again. But in that moment, I heard the faint sound of crocuses blooming, of streams rushing wild through the desert, of new life, of hope, of spring. This bright blue sky reminded me that God is still working in the world. Even in the depth of winter, even when I cannot see it, God is still bringing about the restoration of everything, bringing water into deserts of desperation and despair. Living water, abundant water, water like we cannot imagine.

I have huge hopes for my sad little Christmas cactus. Hopes that it will one day blossom and grow like the one at my grandmother’s house. That its yellowish leaves will turn to deep rich green and it will burst forth from its pot. That someday it too will turn magenta and grow heavy with the weight of its blossoms. It may seem impossible now, but this little Christmas cactus has that potential inside of it. And I believe that it someday could be as big and lush and flowering as my grandmother’s cactus. But the hope I have for my little cactus dwarf in comparison to the hope God has for the world. Hope that life-giving water will rush through deserts of pain and despair, nourishing and refreshing us.

Pastor Gaetz has taken to walking into the office every morning and announcing, “isn’t today a lovely spring day.” As the snow whips and billows outside, my cheeks pink and my hands chapped from shoveling, his pronouncement about spring seems far away. But Pastor Gaetz is right, as far away and as foreign as spring may now seem amidst this world of white, spring is coming. The days are coming again where sun will beat down as fiercely and overwhelmingly as snow currently blankets the world. Like streams in the desert, this abundance of white will transform into a lush, green wilderness.

In today’s reading from Isaiah, God promises new life. And not just new life, but new life abundantly, from the most desolate and unexpected of places. God’s advent into the world is not of small change, but of total renewal, of complete reversal. God’s promises are extravagant, abundant, unimaginable. God comes to bring sight to the blind, sound to the deaf, joy in the midst of sorry, sunlight in the depth of winter. God’s visions for our lives are bigger than we could ever imagine. In the dark places and times, do not be afraid to dream big. Because the promise we have is that God dreams even bigger. Amen.

Becoming

On top of my TV stand sits a little Christmas cactus in a terra cotta pot. I grew it from a cutting off my grandmother’s Christmas cactus. Grandma’s is huge; thick with deep green branches that turn a rich magenta in the winter from its overabundance of blossoms. Mine is a few sickly, little, yellowish sprouts poking up from the dry soil. It’s not my Christmas cactus’s fault that it is so sickly looking; it has had a rough life. It started out as a cutting that my dad carefully grew roots on, which subsequently fell off in dad’s suitcase on a flight from California to Chicago. In Chicago I re-rooted it, planted it, and placed it on a ledge in my apartment, where I promptly forgot about it a lot, leaving it for long periods without water. Then, just a few months ago it drove from Chicago to Syracuse in the back of my Jeep, smashed between the window and a suitcase to keep it upright. Crossing the Canadian border it even spent two days hidden under a sweater. Yet still it soldiers on. A little bit yellower, sure, but every bit as determined to grow as when it was still attached to my grandmother’s plant. While it has not flowered this year, it has recently sent off a new little green shoot. In the midst of winter, in the midst of adversity, far from the tropical climates it prefers, my determined little Christmas cactus is stubbornly growing.

Martin Luther wrote: “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” So become little Christmas cactus, become. Grow and change and flower. This is just a step in the process, there are bigger things ahead.

Blue Skies

It has been snowing for four straight days. The “lake-effect snow machine” is churning off Lake Ontario and dumping directly on Syracuse. 36” already, another 12”-15” anticipated for today, and no break expected until Friday. This weather is hard for me. I grew up in southern California, and even though I’ve since lived in more wintery places snow is still a foreign concept to me. My house is becoming increasingly cave-like as the snow pile on the bushes grows to meet the icicles coming down from the roof. And most of my adult life I have not owned a car, so I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve driven in the snow. Living alone, the snow feels claustrophobic and isolating, despite its beauty.

And then today while I was driving to work the clouds parted and the sun came out. It wasn’t even out for five minutes, but that little break was like balm to my weary soul. In that little flash of blue sky and sunshine I felt like Noah must have felt when the rainbow arched across the sky after the flood. Beyond the snow, beyond the clouds, the sky is still blue. The sun is still shining, even though I cannot see it. In the cold, dark, loneliness of winter, God is still here.

Great Escapes

I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s newest book, The Lacuna. The book is an autobiography of the fictional William Harrison Shepherd, a Mexican-American cook turned writer. The book is masterfully done. I was pulled in immediately by Kingsolver’s sharp prose, engaging characters, and a storyline that twists and dances its way through the history of two countries and leaves you guessing until the very end.

But what captured me most about the book was the title. Though it sounds Spanish, fitting with the setting of the book, lacuna is actually an English word, meaning a gap, an empty space, or a missing part. The lacuna in the story is an underwater cave Shepherd discovers as a boy. When the tide is right, Shepherd can swim all the way through the cave, emerging in a totally new place. This imagery of a secret passageway through time and space becomes the metaphor on which the entire plot turns.

I didn’t do a lot of pleasure reading in seminary, but right around the last couple weeks of the semester, I always found myself picking up a book. Usually Harry Potter or something else light, familiar, and well worn; I am the sort of person who reads books over and over again, delighting at the familiarity. Books were my lacuna, secret passageways out of the end-of-semester stress and into a new world. On internship when everything is so unfamiliar, books offer the same gift, a way to disappear from this life and spend some time with old friends. And so I offer a prayer of thanksgiving for books and the people who write them. Entire worlds that fit in the space of my bookshelf, offering no end of escapes and adventures if only for a few hours.

So you want to go to seminary?

This video has been making the rounds on Facebook recently. As much as it makes me laugh (“rural North Dakota”, whoever made this was clearly Lutheran ☺), I struggled with the video because in between offensive comments the man asked some tough questions and the woman had no good answers. All she could offer were cliqued quips that sounded even more naïve in the automated computer voice. I wondered: could I do any better?

The questions the video raised caught me off-guard. After all, I’m three years and a fair amount of student loans into this seminary experience. I also feel just as, if not more, called to be in this profession as I did when I started. But the man is right. I know all the statistics. Clergy do have the highest rates of alcoholism, depression and obesity, the moving constantly thing is hard, and there isn’t lucrative financial compensation. On paper, this seminary thing is crazy.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, maybe there isn’t supposed to be a rational answer. I did not come to seminary because I listed the pros and cons and being a pastor came out as the best option. I came to seminary because it began to feel like the only option. Vocation, be it to seminary or the medical field or accounting, is the thing you find you cannot not do.

The woman in the video said she wanted to go to seminary because she was called by God. I would change the voice and say that I am in seminary because God called me. The action is all God’s. And no, it doesn’t make any logical sense. But faith doesn’t always make logical sense. That’s why it’s called faith. Following God’s call to seminary may not measure up to the world’s standards of success, but neither does following a carpenter’s son and a ragtag bunch of fishermen. So here I am. Naïve? Maybe. Idealistic? Probably. Called by God? Yes, I think that too. Dear man in the video, I’ll let you know how it turns out for me.

The Absurdity of Faith

This Saturday I set off the burglar alarm at church. Again. This time it was the one in the theater, set off by the draft of me opening the main doors because the theater doors did not get shut the night before. So I didn’t even know it was going off until the police arrived. After meeting the police officer, determining nothing was wrong, and showing him out of the building, I re-alarmed the system and left. I can never stay in the office after setting off the alarm; it makes me too jumpy.

Driving back to the vicarage I was so angry. “Why is nothing ever simple here!” I yelled at God. God, in her infinite wisdom, did not answer.

That afternoon I made a hospital call. I was coming off a bad experience at the hospital, so I had been dreading this all weekend. Not the visit itself, but having to face my fear and go back in the hospital. But after the burglar alarm, I found I wasn’t as scared any more. The absurdity of the day served to put things back into perspective for me, remind me of who was really in charge. The silent God wasn’t answering, but she was moving. Moving in my heart and soul and spirit to knock me down from my self-confidence, remind me of God’s confidence, and teach me to laugh again. Thanks be to God who comes in the unexpected, in the absurd. Thanks be to God, who moves.

Equal Under the Scantron Machine

My internship site is a polling place. As I sit in my office and work on a sermon for All Saints Day, a steady stream of people have been walking past my window all day, off to do their civic duty. I am easily distracted while sermon writing, so I admit I have spent most of my day staring out the window, amazed at the broad swath of people coming to vote. Business people in sharp suits, single mothers with small children, older people, younger people, people pushing walkers and pushing strollers. What has captured my attention is the equality of all of these people in the action of voting. Everyone gets one vote, no more and no less. Our government is no paradigm of perfect representation, and we can talk about barriers to voting, hanging chads, gerrymandered districts and the like, but in its purest form there is something amazing about an election. In a nation so divided by race and class and access to power, we are all equal in the eyes of the great scantron machine that counts the ballots.

This week we are celebrating All Saints Day. This is a day for remembering, creatively enough, all of the saints. Not just the ones with great wisdom or knowledge or ability to perform miracles, but the ordinary, everyday saints as well. Saints like you and me. So on this election day in the middle of All Saints week, I remember that in God’s eyes we are all saints, all equal in the loving embrace of God.

The Lark in my Heartbeat

This week I did two rather unrelated self-care activities. I went to a retreat about Benedictine spirituality and a Josh Ritter concert. On the retreat we talked about the importance of taking Sabbath time. One of the presenters shared one of her practices for introducing moments of Sabbath into her day. She has a CD of chants she plays in her office. When her favorite song comes on she stops what she is doing to devote her attention to listening to the song. For two minutes she takes time to breathe and re-center herself on God.

It seemed like a simple practice so I decided to give it a try. Only problem is I don’t have any chant music. Nor did I think I would like listening to a CD of chanting all the time. But I can listen to quite a bit of Josh Ritter. So I tried it using “Lark” off of Josh Ritter’s new CD So Runs the World Away. The chorus of the song goes like this:

I am assured, yes I am assured yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can yes surpass the speed yes
Of my understanding and my need

The song helps me remember that in the midst of all the crazy I can find peace. The three minutes and five seconds of the song takes no time out of my day yet leaves me feeling refreshed, focused, and assured of God’s desire for peace in my life. Josh Ritter spirituality, somehow I think St Benedict would approve.

Theology Duck

A few weeks ago I found myself having to write a sermon on a Friday. Fridays are normally my day off so I really try not to do that, but on this particular week there was no getting around it. The other problem was this Friday was an absolutely beautiful day. Being stuck inside was the last place I wanted to be. What to do? Luckily, I live in beautiful upstate New York. I took my laptop and went to Skaneateles, a little village on the northernmost tip of Skaneateles Lake, just a half an hour from Syracuse. I got a cup of coffee and found a little park right at the tip of the lake. Here is a view from the bench where I wrote my sermon.


This duck helped.
Great text, beautiful day, friendly duck, decent sermon. The life of an intern is pretty good.

Prayer

“Listen Lord, Listen Lord, not to our words but to our prayers. You alone, you alone, understand and care.”

The lyrics above are from a song from the Taizé community in France. I led a Taizé-style worship for a while and know the song well, but the meaning of it never hit me until last week.

I’ve never been much of a pray-er. I’ve tried various types and styles and methods, but nothing has ever really stuck for me. I struggle with that. After all, I’m in seminary, I’m studying to be a pastor, shouldn’t I be good at praying.

But we were singing this song in worship last week, and I was feeling totally overwhelmed by the experience of being in a new place, juggling new responsibilities, and trying to figure out who I am in this new role that is “vicar,” when suddenly it hit me. Maybe my problem is I have been defining prayer too narrowly. Prayer doesn’t have to be carefully composed soliloquies. (As one of my favorite bloggers points out: “I leave that to the real professionals like Thomas Cramner and the Blessed Mother.”) God doesn’t need my words; God hears my prayers. Even the ones I don’t know or cannot speak; the ones “too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).

And not only does God hear, but God cares. The God who is creator of the universe and Lord of all, cares about the worries and concerns of one small, lonely intern in upstate New York. This is, as Dr. Satterlee would say, some good news.

Home

Saturday was the one-month anniversary of arriving in Syracuse. On Friday I will have been on internship a month. Nestled between those anniversaries lies another one. One month ago tomorrow marks the day I decided to drive six hours in the middle of the night to spend the day with people I love. Rationally, this was probably a terrible decision. One could argue it was not responsible of me to start internship on as little sleep as I did. But for my soul, it was perfect. I stayed on my old roommate’s couch, snuggled a friend’s new kitten, met my pastor for coffee, and generally immersed myself in the wonderful feeling of being home.

What is home? In the past ten years I have lived in eleven houses in five states, as well as several periods of extended couch surfing. In this transient stage of my life, home has become not a building, but a place where there are people who know me and love me. Thus my parents’ house in California is home, but so is Washington, DC, where I built a community for myself after college. LSTC is home. Syracuse is not home yet, but I can see how it could be. And in this strange year where most of my classmates are in diaspora across the country, sometimes it seems like Skype is home.

So here's to that ever-expanding place called home. Where people love you and the space feels familiar and safe. Even if sometimes those places are virtual.

Learning to Trust

I spent last week at the Synod Ministerium for the Upstate New York Synod. Synod Ministerium is a chance for all rostered leaders in the synod to meet for fellowship and continuing education. This year the presenter was Dr. Craig Satterlee, LSTC’s homiletics professor, which was especially nice for me. With all the new in my life, it was wonderful to have a familiar face around.

Dr. Satterlee’s presentation was on “Preaching in Times of Transition.” His final lecture dealt with how clergy can take care of themselves during times of transition. After each of the lectures was a time for questions and discussion, but it was not until this topic that the conversation really took off. I sat and listened as seasoned clergy (one man in the room had been ordained fifty-one years) struggled with the same questions my classmates and I ask. How to maintain balance? How to set healthy boundaries? How to keep a strong prayer life? How to trust God?

As I sat in that room, thirteen days into my internship, it was strangely comforting to hear experience clergy asking the same questions I struggle with. It helped me remember that this path I walk is not mine to control. I will never reach a point where I am suddenly magically a pastor. Instead it is about being open to do the work I am called to; knowing I am not able and trusting in God to get me through.

The Victor

Half the people at my internship site call me “The Victor.” My formal title is vicar, but that not being a familiar word they settled on the closest thing they could figure out. I must admit it makes me smile every time I hear it. Most days I do not feel very victorious in this new and unfamiliar place, a cheery “hey Victor” helps me remember that people here believe in me.

I preached and led worship for the first time on Wednesday night. Standing alone in the cavernous sanctuary as I was getting ready for the service, I did not feel very victorious. Shivering in the cold and dwarfed by the enormity of the space, I did not feel up to the task of faithfully leading God’s people in worship.

But it was Holy Cross day on Wednesday. And on Holy Cross day we celebrate the triumph of the cross. With shouts and praise and glorious red paraments, we celebrate the incredible juxtaposition that is Christ’s victory in the cross, God’s strength in human weakness, eternal life from death. “Foolishness,” Paul called it, “but the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).

What a day to begin my year as “victor.” A year where I will stand in this liminal space, not yet ordained but not quite lay. As I learn, and grow, and make tremendous mistakes, I pray that I remember the way of the One I follow. One whose power is in weakness.

Re-Calculating…

Dad got me a GPS system for my birthday. He thought it would be helpful for our cross-country drive and then for navigating my way around Syracuse for the first couple of months. He was right; it has already proven to be invaluable for both of those things. The GPS got us safely from California to upstate New York, a distance of over 3,200 miles, found us restaurants, got us to attractions, and even led us to an amazing hotel right off the Mississippi River that was not listed in the AAA guidebooks. And now in Syracuse, Simon (as the GPS has come to be called) has led me safely to and from my house to such adventures as the grocery store, the airport, church, and several Starbucks (free internet!).

But as helpful as Simon is, driving with a GPS has also reminded me that while having extensive knowledge of every road in the United States, Canada, and Mexico is helpful, it is still not as good as being a human and having logic. The other day he tried to lead me into a creek, not knowing that there was a bridge out. And yesterday, on the way to my daily “find a Starbucks to check email” adventure, he directed me to a field. I can only assume that there either used to be or will someday be a Starbucks there. Right now, there is grass, and no free wireless. Simon is wonderful and he is helpful, but he is not a replacement for paying attention and knowing where I am going.

Driving with a GPS system has a lot of similarities to my life as I begin internship, I think. After all, I have been in seminary for two years now; I know a lot of stuff. A lot of random stuff. I understand two biblical languages. I can quote obscure theologians. I have read countless books on preaching and pastoral care. I know the Book of Concord cover to cover (more or less…). With everything so fresh in my mind, in terms of academic knowledge I am probably more prepared right now than I will ever be at any other point in my ministry. Right now, I am a lot like Simon.

But as much as I know, what I don’t know is more important. Because what I don’t know is how to use this knowledge. What I don’t know is how to move my knowledge from my head to my heart, to preach a sermon that speaks to people’s lives, to sit and be in a pastoral care visit and let God work through my be-ing, to translate academic theology into language that is meaningful. What I don’t know is how to be a pastor.

The time has come to turn off the GPS. To accept that I’m going to get real lost and I’m going to make a lot of mistakes. And sometimes I’m going to find myself sitting in the middle of a field, with no idea how I got there. But that is part of the journey; that is part of the adventure. That is part of learning to led God do the leading.

Heading Out

“I just don’t want to do that,” I tell God persistently. I am sitting on the floor cross-legged, knees tucked to my chest, the very picture of childhood obstinance except that I am an adult. I am pouting, I know it, I do not care. “It looks hard, and I am tired. And besides, look at all the things I am still carrying.” I gesture to the bags behind me, bags filled with hurt feelings and broken relationships. “I am already carrying all of that around, you cannot possibly expect me to have the strength to face this new challenge, not with all of that. It’s too heavy, and I am just one person.”

“What makes you think you are going out alone?” God settles herself down on the floor in front of me. She reaches out her hand and touches my forehead. Her fingers trace the outline of the place where through the waters of baptism she marked me as her child. “I am coming with you.”

“Oh,” I sigh. “Well, I still have to carry all this stuff. And it’s still heavy.”

“And about that stuff, why are you bringing all that with you anyway?” Her voice is soft, calm and concerned. I look over my shoulder at the pile of bags containing all my old grudges and anger standing behind me.

“Well, what else am I going to do with them? I can’t leave them here. And besides, I learned things from those problems. It’s just that they’re so heavy, and I’m bound to get more of them. I don’t know that I can handle anymore quite yet.”

“Since I’m coming with you, how about I carry them for a while?”

“They’re pretty heavy,” I caution, “I don’t know if you will be able to lift them all.” God looks at me, a slight frown creasing her brow, behind which her eyes twinkle with amusement.

“I am God, I think I can probably handle them,” she comments drily. She reaches around her back and pulls out her bag. It is one of those black sack-bags. You know the type, black leather, looks professional and can carry anything but the kitchen sink. God’s is sleek and sophisticated, the very picture of hip elegance. I smile. Those bags can carry a lot of stuff, but even God’s bag is dwarfed in comparison to my collection of mismatched luggage. There is no way all of my bags are going in there. God does not seem to notice the vast size difference.

“Hand me one,” she says calmly. I reach over and drag a bag towards me. At this awkward angle even I, so familiar with its weight, have trouble maneuvering it. God reaches past me, lifts it from my grasp, and without a thought, slides it easily into her bag. And then the next, and the next. She keeps going until, to my surprise, all of my bags are inside hers. Her bag does not even look full. I lean over to peer inside, but God pulls her bag back towards herself and closes the latch.

“Yours are not the only bags I have in there,” she says, smiling, “best to leave other people’s problems to themselves.” Rising to her feet, she swings the now-loaded handbag over her shoulder as if it still weighed nothing.

“Ready to go?” she asks, offering her hand as I struggle to my feet. I take her outstretched hand. I feel lighter but oddly clumsy without the bags' familiar weight

“Not really,” I sigh, as she pulls me to my feet. Even without the bags, I am still apprehensive. The memory of their weight on my shoulders is hard to forget. But God gives my hand a comforting squeeze, and smiles warmly at my hesitation. At last I turn, squaring my shoulders towards this new direction.

“If you promise to come with me,” I say softly, “I suppose I can.”

"Of course," she smiles warmly, reaching out to brush my forehead one last time. "Of course, always."

New Life and Fish Puke

I’ve found myself sitting with the story of Jonah a lot recently. Specifically chapter 2; where Jonah is swallowed—and subsequently vomited up on the beach—by a rather large fish. Prior to his unpleasant trip the wrong way through a fish throat, Jonah spends three—I would imagine fairly long and miserable—days in the belly of the aforementioned fish. Imagine what it must be like in the belly of a fish. Dark, I think, and dank. It probably smells horrible. The inside of the stomach, partially digested pieces of other things the fish had eaten recently, and stomach acids probably pressed down on Jonah from all sides, making it difficult to move. At the mercy of the fish, unsure if he would live or die, swimming through the murky insides of a stomach, Jonah must have felt very alone, very afraid, and very miserable. Jonah’s three days in the fish correspond to the length of time in which ancient Israelite tradition said it took to travel to the land of the dead. Thus it seems like Jonah went through a metaphorical death in the belly of the fish. And then on the third day, the unexpected happened. Jonah prays to God and finds himself vomited (the NRSV translates it as “spewed,” but the Hebrew yaque is much more closely translated as “vomited”) onto the beach. For Jonah this, with all its stench and unpleasantness, was resurrection and new life. Free from the belly of the fish, he set out to Nineveh.

As I mentioned in my last post, this past semester, past year really, has been a difficult one. As thing after thing piled up around me; the weight of expectations pulled on me in an almost physical manner. I mucked around, feeling like I caused more trouble than I helped. I couldn’t see my way out of a year where crises fell one after another; some major, an unexpected family emergency and the loss of a serious relationship, and some not so major. As I struggled to make it through the day, I felt dragged down, like someone was pressing on my shoulders, like slogging through mud, like swimming through the belly of a giant fish. Problems with friends, masses of paperwork, half-finished school assignments, and my own mistakes floated around me like partially digested hunks of fish food. In this year of my own fish belly I did the only thing I knew to do. I pulled inside myself. I tucked into a ball, hunkered down, and did what I needed to do. I was not thriving by any means, but I survived.

And then, unexpectedly, a few weeks ago, I felt the rumblings of change. It started with a change in the weather, the gradual shift from winter to spring, the first few brave buds poking out of the frozen soil. Then it was the shift in my course schedule, as daily work fell to the side in the focus of final projects. The end was in sight, the year could not last forever, the fish was about to release its victim. The semester came to an end, spewing me out onto the beach of summer (I joked with a friend that being vomited out by a fish is not a pleasant experience, but at least there’s light at the end of the fish throat), and I hopped a plane to anywhere but here to recover, to count my losses, and to figure out how to go forward.

Sitting on the beach, God speaks to Jonah again and sends him to Nineveh. Jonah still does not want to go to Nineveh but grudgingly, slime oozing from his body and squishing between his toes with every step, he does. And then, to Jonah’s disgust, God forgives the people of Nineveh, just as Jonah had suspected God would. Jonah laments in 4:2, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning.” I don’t benefit from this, God, Jonah laments, this is the same mess we were in when I started! I spent three days in the belly of a fish for this! God comforts Jonah, maybe this is bigger than you. More is going on here than you can see, trust me. I know you are miserable, but if I love Nineveh this much, how much must I also love you.

Like Jonah, I am learning that new life is rarely clean or orderly. I think we expect that of new life; we expect it to be, well, new. Pop Christianity says that if we only accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior everything will be all right. Pray to God and all our prayers will be answered, we will get everything we have ever desired, life will be easy. Jesus suffered and died for our sins, and now we live as post-resurrection people free to live forever with Christ, shouldn’t that mean something? And yet, here I sit, stranded in an airport from my own stupidity, angrily picking hunks of partially digested fish vomit out of my hair, tired and frustrated and sore. Don’t I deserve a break, God? I want to yell. Hasn’t this year been long enough?

But new life is just that, life. And life is messy and complicated and sometimes smells like the inside of a fish. Jesus promised that we might “have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10), not that abundant life wouldn’t be hard. But this hard and abundant life is good. So I struggle to my feet on this beach called life, blinking in the bright sunlight, brushing seaweed and fish innards and muck off my arms and shoulders as best I can. I wish I could tell you that in the sunlight I dance and rejoice and praise the God who rescued me from the depths, but realistically it is all I can do to grit my teeth and set out doggedly again in the direction God pointed into this new life. Jesus came out of the tomb, Jonah went to Nineveh, and I too will keep on walking. And I know in front of me there are more Ninevehs, more tombs, more fish bellies. I know this post-resurrection life will not be easy. There are ahead of me more days, weeks, months, even years, where the weight of the world will drag on me so much that it will be enough to get out of bed and brush my teeth in the morning. In those dark days, as in these ones, I am grateful for good friends, friends who are willing to sit in the belly of the fish with me. Who do not try to lessen the pain, but who instead make me laugh as they assure me that yes, it really does smell that bad in here, and lean over to wipe away the hot, salty tears that leave trails through the fish ooze on my cheeks. And mostly I am grateful for a God who is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2). Thanks be to God, who is with us in life and death, on beaches and in fish bellies. Amen.

Springtime Resurrections

It’s a hard day not to feel optimistic about the world. One of those days where there’s enough of a cool breeze in the air to remind you it’s still March, but in the breaks of the breeze the sun beats down strong enough to be almost hot in its focus. The snow is completely gone and the world seems to be waking up from its slumber. You can almost hear the plants groaning as they push through the earth, stretching their tiny green shoots like a cat after a long nap. Out of the long, dark winter comes proof that God is once again doing a new thing with the world in Springtime, that the world is once again being reborn.

I think it is safe to say that this has been a long, dark year for me. The growth that has been required of me this year as I stretch and grow myself to figure out who I will be as a pastor has been hard and painful at times, and it has felt like the winter of this year would never end. Yet in days like today I remember that God is doing a new thing with me too. That through the darkness of Lent comes the bright morning dawn of Easter. That the grave is not the end, but that grace and love and resurrection are in the air. That the tiny blades of grass poking from the earth, the grave-clothes in the tomb, who I am today, is just the beginning of the story. A story that God is continuing to unfold. Thanks be to God, who works though winter, through a tomb, through us, and brings new life into the world.

Reflections on a cell phone

My cell phone is turned off. Seriously turned off. Not like on vibrate or silent in my bag or off for a flight to be turned on as soon as the flight attendants give the comforting “it is now safe to use portable communication devices” announcement, but completely and totally off. For the next two weeks. I am supposed to be reflecting on Iceland’s culture and stark beauty and experiencing a “profound experience of darkness,” or so said the course description. Above all, I am supposed to be saving myself the outlandish out-of-country charges I would face for using my cell phone in Iceland. All these things I’m sure are happening. But what I find myself most noticing the most is that my cell phone is turned off.

It is not like I am without communication. The house I am staying at in fact is some sort of a model technology house and literally has wireless internet streaming from the outlets in the wall, so my connection to gmail, to Facebook, to blogs, to Skype, is actually better and faster than my $10 ATT wireless in Chicago. But still, I find myself feeling a little bit lost without my cell phone. Being cut off from it, I’m realizing my phone has become a bit of a security blanket. I can think of rough times in my life where I have sat on the couch with my cell phone in my hand looking at all the people I could call if whatever it was got bad enough. Oftentimes knowing that in my hand was a list of people I could call at any time was enough to not need to call anyone. Just that realization that people who loved me were out there was enough.

The people who love me are still out there, even with my cell phone off. For the next two weeks they are not just a phone call away, or a street away, or a quick train trip. They are an ocean away, but they are still out there. So this trip becomes, for me, about more than just experiencing a new culture in this land of beauty and harsh extremes. Being on this beautiful island in the middle of the north Atlantic, with great internet and no cell phone is also about discovering new ways of connectedness, new ways of remembering my community and my support system. There will be times in ministry where, for one reason or another, there will be no one I can call. There will be things I will have to deal with in life that will be difficult and painful and I will feel alone and that phone will have to sit unopened in my lap. And in those times, maybe I will remember Iceland. I will remember the experience of finding new community in the place where I am. Of learning to eat cheese on cookies, playing Bananagrams with someone who beat me despite playing in his second language and ending up with all the Q’s and X’s, and waking up to a five-alarm sunrise at 10 am. But I will also remember the people across the ocean who remind me that my home and my welcome are still in that place. And I will be glad to remember that the world is small. Thanks be to God, whose arms can reach across as vast a space as the ocean and across as small a space as a cell phone.