Sabbath

"Self-care is never a selfish act- it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others."
~ Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, pg. 49-50.

Well I did take some time off- these past two days. It was lovely because I didn't do much. I am always surprised at how tired I feel on those days- when I let my body catch up with herself and not force her to run at a crazy pace.

One thing I did was spend a lot of time with my dog, Jonah, pictured above. I walked him, played with him, snuggled him, and just looked at him (i think he is very cute and nice to look at!). If you didn't know this about me before, I really love my dog! Up until I started at Grace I got to spend a lot of time with him each day, and I've really missed that. It was so great to be with him. He is a place where I get renewed. When I come home, he is usually curled up in his bed or on the couch, and I go over to him and lay/kneel down beside him. I immediately feel so much better just being with him. He is a reminder to me of God's love and presence in my life. Sometimes he will jump up on the couch and lay right on top of my laptop as if to say "HEY! Put that thing away and give me some love!" Sometimes he'll bark at me until I get up and play with him, feed him, or just come down to his level. Sometimes I need to be barked at to remember to pay attention to Jonah or to God.

Another thing I did was go for a long walk with Brian over to Lime Kiln Park. We stood by the raging river and watched it go by, getting dizzy concentrating on the rushing water. We noticed all kinds of things around the banks- different trees, the way the water flowed and swirled in places. It felt so good to just lose myself in it. Nature is so refreshing and a great reminder for me of who God is and who I am in this world. There is much to learn and much to appreciate just by being still in nature. For our Grafton Clergy book study this year we are reading Leaving Church, by Barbara Brown Taylor (one of my favorite authors). I read this yesterday and it was exactly how I felt standing at the rivers edge:

"How long do you think this river has been here?" I asked Ed..."Forever, I guess," he said at last. If I softened my gaze and stopped holding myself apart from all that surrounded me I became part of something so old and so powerfully alive that I lost track of my self. The river ran through me. Trees breathed for me. My feet grew from rock. (85)

She also writes, "I know plenty of people who find God most reliably in books, in buidlings, and even in other people. I have found God in all of these places too, but the most reliable meeting place for me has always been creation. Since I first became aware of the Divine Presence in that lit-up field in Kansas, I have always known where to go when my own flame is guttering. To lie with my back flat on the fragrant ground is to receive a transfusion of the same power that makes the green blade rise." (80)

I guess our sabbath times and places can be closer than we think.

Monday, Monday

Here it is...Monday! Most pastors take Mondays as their days off. Not me- I take Friday. This is partly because I like to have more time to work on my sermon before Thursday evening worship, and partly because I like having Fridays off! It means that sometimes I kind of get a weekend.

However, it means that I work Monday. And I'm beginning to understand why many pastors take Monday off. I'm tired after Sunday, especially after a Sunday like yesterday where I started working at 7 am and didn't finish until 8 pm. No joke. Pastors have strange schedules.

But I do think that we aren't any different than anyone else in that there just never seems to be enough time in the day or week. Can I get an Amen? (I was at All People's in Milwaukee yesterday! I love this- I might start using it in my sermons so look out!!!)

There are so many things vying for our attention, scattering us into many directions, asking that we be in 3 places at once. It's hard to find breathing space. It's hard to focus on what gives us life.

How do you find your breathing space? Do you find it?

monday five...moving on

1. How many times have you moved?
Oh my goodness...too many to count. When my parents were here last weekend we were looking through one of my baby photo albums...ONE album took me through 4 different houses. Eee gad. Then there was college and seminary....college: 10 moves. Seminary: 4. I also moved in with the family I nannied for. I also moved to Grafton. I hope and pray that I am DONE with moving for a good, long while.

2. What do you love and hate about moving?
I love meeting new people. I hate how long it takes to get settled...to get my things in the best place. I hate feeling like a foreigner. I hate not knowing how to get places and what the shortcuts are. I hate leaving friends behind.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?
Ha, funny you should ask. I have always been a do-it-myself-with-the-help-of-family-and-friends kind of person. However, my dad is getting up there and, well, you've seen how many times I've moved! So when I was moving up to Grafton, I decided to hire movers. I felt so lucky and was sooo excited. Unfortunately, they didn't show up, causing me to say many words that I can't put in this blog. But I am blessed with some great friends and a great brother and sister-in-law who came to my rescue, helping me rent and load a U-Haul. My parents drove down from Northern Wisconsin to Chicago to help drive up here. And then lots of lovely people from Grace came to help me unload. Blessings out of a situation that at first seemed very un-blessing like!

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?
Don't use "Reliance Relocation" movers.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?
I always feel like I'm in the middle of an inner move. Life is always changing and we are always coming from one place, heading towards another. I am always learning and growing and thinking about what the future may bring, and what I can do today to best prepare myself for it. This is not always a good thing. I need to remind myself from time to time to relax and just be. To trust God and not to think so much about everything.

Anniversaries...

Since I moved here, I have been thinking a lot about what my life was like a year ago. When I started at Grace in mid-July 2007, a year before that I was wrapping up my internship in campus ministry in Saint Louis, a job and place I dearly loved. Then it was back to seminary in August 2006, beginning what I like to call the year of Advent...waiting...to graduate and begin ministry as a Pastor.

As we entered the church season of Advent this past December, I was thinking about how in December 2006 I had just completed many long and detailed forms describing who I was as a person and as a pastor. Those were the forms that would be sent to prospective congregations (which turned out to be Grace!). When I finished them I had no idea who would be reading them and where they would be reading them.

While we were in the midst of Lent this February and March, I passed the year anniversary of being assigned to ministry in the areas of either Illinois, Iowa, or Wisconsin. Then I found out I was assigned to the Greater Milwaukee Synod, and the weight of uncertainty I'd been carrying all year began to lift.

Then on April 6, 2007 (a year ago this past Sunday), I made my first trip up to Grafton. I met Pastor Paul, Karen, and Sue. I got a tour of Grace and Grafton/Cedarburg. And to think- exactly one year after that I was standing in the pulpit and preaching.

All this is to say that we never know where God is taking us. We can't predict the future, no matter how hard we try. We don't know what is going to happen. But looking back on my life always helps calm my questions and anxieties about what's coming. God has brought me along this far- what would make me think that God would abandon me now? Even though God is with us all the time, somehow it's easier to see God looking back than in the moment or looking forward.

As I was writing this, this song came on my iPod which I thought was appropriate:
"You should know wherever you go, if your head's in the clouds or you're stuck on the ground, you have my committment, whatever I can do, there will always be room in my heart for you. You should know wherever you go, I'll be waiting here...You should know wherever you go, anytime of the day and reason at all, you have my word, whatever I can do. There will always be room in my heart. You should know, wherever you go...there will always be room in my heart for you. "
~"Room in My Heart", Storyhill.


Where were you a year ago? How was God working in your life?

Water, Water, Everywhere

"It rattles softly at the window like the fingers of a child as I sit on the edge of the tub to tie my shoes. It comes down the glass in crooked paths to stir my heart absurdly as it always has, and dear God in Heaven, the sound of it on the roof...It is the rain, and it tastes of silver; it is the rain, and it smells of christening."
~Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night. I was having terrible dreams. In one dream I waded through drifts of snow trying to keep my house safe from intruders, and in another I was floating at sea on a deflating raft. When I woke up, I could hear the rain falling outside my window. It soothed me back to sleep.

I love the sound of rain. I love what rain does for the world- cleaning it, making it greener, helping it produce food. It reminds me of my baptism. I imagine it as God's grace, tapping on my roof, soaking through my clothes, trying to get to me to wash me clean.

One of my favorite memories is going downtown with my friends every summer to go to the Taste of Chicago. We joined millions of people feasting in the streets. One year, the sky was dark and low with rain clouds. And then suddenly they opened and drenched us all. It was so much fun, and when I got home, I felt cleaner and fresher than I ever had before or since.

Another powerful memory is when I came home from college one April to go to my Uncle Ken's funeral. He was my dad's brother, and a very beloved uncle and godfather. My dad and I sat together in a dark room and cried, and we listened to the rain pounding on the roof. I thought of it as God crying with us.

It's a gray day today, but I don't mind. In fact I feel so good, I didn't even need coffee this morning! The rain is washing away all the dullness of winter, soaking into the ground to help make it green. It is melting away the heavy drifts of snow. There are flowers blooming outside my window, with more promising to come soon!

In these changing days of spring, I am feeling so connected to the resurrection of Jesus. The tomb is empty, the stone rolled away. "He is not here, he has been risen" say the angels in Luke's gospel (24:5). Life follows death. Spring follows winter. Light comes into our darkness. I pray that you will find hope in Christ through God's word and through the reminders of resurrection God gives us in creation. Christ is risen. Alleluia!

Words and Wisdom

"When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit." Mark 13:11

"For I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict." Luke 21:15

Words like these are what helped finally make up my mind. I had been thinking about being a pastor for many years, but I thought "Who am I to speak God's word to these people? Who am I to stand up in front of them every week and talk? Why would they listen?"

But then at a gathering of young people "considering" seminary in Nashville one June, I heard pastor and highly respected theologian Walter Bruggeman preach on these words. I realized, it is not ME that would be speaking and leading as a pastor, but God through me. If that is the case, I thought, then I can do this.

Jesus speaks these words to his disciples shortly before his betrayal and arrest. As Pastor Paul reminded us on Sunday Jesus knew these things were coming. He knew it was going to be a bumpy road (not that it had really been all that smooth for him and his disciples so far) and that he would no longer be there to lead them and try to tell them where they were going wrong. So he promises to give them the words they will need.

I have started to joke with people that I am changing my job description to "Person who says I don't know." It's true, there's a lot to learn about Grace, God, and life! We are always disciples. I don't claim to have all the answers. This can be hard sometimes as I WANT to have answers for some of the questions people ask me about life and faith.

But I always fall back on these texts. God will give me what I need. As long as I remember to pray and believe, I have to trust that the words that come from my mouth are what God wants me to say. I have to trust that God will come to each of you to give you the words and the wisdom that you need. It doesn't always happen when we want it to. But as Luke goes on to say in chapter 21, "Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."

May God be with us, giving us the right words and the trust that our endurance will bring us through into God's glory.

I'm still here...

Hello!

Just a quick note to say I have not forgotten about my blog! Nicaragua and coming back to Lent/Holy Week has taken up a great deal of time lately. I will write about Nicaragua as soon as I can. In the meantime, I am loving the busy-ness of this season. I love seeing you at the Wednesday Lenten meals and worship. I have always loved this because it makes me feel like we are a family, getting together for dinner at the end of the day. The worship at Grace has been really enjoyable for me too- I love Holden Evening Prayer and having the confirmation students involved in worship (particularly the great skits!) has been a joy.

There is so much going on at Grace, and at times our schedules and "to do" lists get pretty hairy. But I am so thankful for this (okay, today I'm thankful, but sometimes it makes me want to take a nap). We are so blessed to have a vibrant, faithful, growing congregation. And I am blessed to have the Holy Spirit (who often comes to me through my Americanos from Alterra) to help me minister. God bless your Lenten journey!