5 Stories that Answer Your Question About My Church

A student of mine, finally breaking past that professor-student barrier, casually asks.  A friend tosses the question out over dinner, months absent from my weekly routine now sitting accepted at my side with bowls of soup and love.  And an acquaintance at the market, someone from the old story caught off-guard, wants to be polite.  We get the question from diverse places, "How is the church plant going?" And to that question I never know what to say because I think the question is really a different one all together.  How is it thriving in my soul?  How is it changing the way I experience God?  How is it a place you might venture into?  

We are planting a church, just a year old this week, in our town, or more specifically from our living room.  It's a small venture at the moment and yet in every way, as C.S. Lewis says, "The inside is bigger than the outside."

When we're asked, "How is it going?" or, "What kind of church are you starting?" we don't share numbers or dates, measures that are irrelevant to our present vision. We don't give locations and times as if we're only the church part-time in certain places.  We tell you stories.

As we join with the greater narrative of God, that one begun 'in the beginning' to rescue and restore all things, we find that delineating the church from the other domains of our life becomes an impossible surgery to perform. We find that the answers about our impact and mission and viability are intermixed with our accounts of common, daily life with neighbors and with our group and with the 'other.' These are our stories that will answer your question.

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After I released my students from class on Monday, my life-giving part-time job mentoring future shepherds, I stopped in at the tea shop where my friend works.  Her swearing-in to the state bar was that afternoon and acknowledging important days can be done with a surprise hug. We had walked with her during her last stressful semester of law school. She'd arrive for core group with her notes in hand, having her husband quiz her on the drive over. I'd helped her find a space in the seminary library for a change of scenery during her bar studies.  We'd prayed together the night before the results came out and rejoiced, distracted and dizzy, in the morning to see her name on that laudable list. And Monday was the day her title would change.

The church comes into your labor to share the joy of what's coming.

When I was done working that Thursday during my sons' fall break I went to my friend's home where they were playing.  But instead of rounding them up to go with "thank yous" and "I appreciate its," I sat down in the chair and gathered her small daughter up in my lap and we talked about the kitties in the window.  My friend crept out on her errand while I was present with the kids, familiar and usual; they never knew she was gone.  We were trading off that day: my sons with her while I worked a few hours and then I stayed with all while she met with a teacher. A year ago the distance between our homes wouldn't have allowed that. But this summer they moved into our neighborhood.

The church moves into the neighborhood and splits the load of life.

During a weekend in May we gathered in an ample mountain home and dreamed.  We, our kids, and our dogs spilled over the sofas in comfortable company and made welcoming lists upon which no scribbled idea was bad. We talked of missional ventures, finding the acute suffering, relational ideals and worship. Thereto, sorry and shy, we named what we were not drawn to and nearly whispered it, the elderly.  Yet, four months later when we picked up steam in our service to the community, we gathered at a trailer park and painted the eaves of the smiling gray woman, pulled the weeds of the retired shuffling feet, cleaned the gutters and bagged the leaves where those looking through the windows grow dim. And then we returned again. And soon we'll serve them Thanksgiving dinner.

The church lets Jesus lead them where they are afraid to go.

When she saw the pain in my eyes and the fear of the future she said, "We'll take care of you." For months she did just that with income and presence. Sometimes it looks like she's commanding the universe to bend to her will but when we kill our assumptions and move into the depths of her heart we see she's running for her life after Jesus. She lined up work and a partner for my husband.  Then took her hands off and let it roll.  When that partnership changed, another friend took the reigns.  His faithful pledge to our community sprang forth in an interview and bloomed into a new job for my husband. And now these friends, together, knowingly smile at their creativity that elicited the income that frees us to do the beloved work, that which we can't not do.

The church enters the tension to give food to the hungry and set captives free.

When we met him, he was rough around the edges but fighting for a different kind of life. The record of his life was long with rap sheets and alarming detentions.  But friends said, "God has other plans for him." So we stuck close for this entire year; listening with accepting ears, offering affirming words, working alongside his frustration and doubt, living lives of compassion he could receive.  The other day, he asked a question far more important than any other we've received so far. "Is there room in your church for someone like me?" Yes. And there's room in the Kingdom of Jesus too.

The church intentionally lives so that others will ask.

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I love that you ask me how my church is going, but I know that you're really asking, cloaked and curious. "How is your life with God?"  My answer is this: come with us and give yourselves to the stories and then you'll know just how much bigger is the inside than the outside.

The Tricky Path of Memory

My memory from a year I had only two sons:

One in 3T cinched-waist painters-pants and the other in red, shiny rainboots better known as 'bike breaks,' they hurried through our last school things: one last link on the paper chain of every book we'd read, the final spelling test and diorama and times-table quiz.  We raced to put the markers in the box, the scraps in the trash, the final folders in their pockets.  We checked the marble jar, cheering for our success, and grabbed the last prizes from the exhausted treasure box.  And then we turned out the light and jumped down the stairs to summer.

Lifting the lid off the sandbox was summer's grand opening event. The cool grit sifted through their tender fingers, shovels flying to dig the tunnel, crash the load, scatter the granules all around.  I put my feet on the deck rail, and penned in my journal what freedom felt like: like jumping in a lake, like standing in a breeze, like love. 

That memory is wrong. 

Because I have this habit of writing down our days I looked back at the journal from that time, that very day.  And very little of it was true. 

The true story:  Youngest Son had woken up sick that morning, throwing up as my husband left the house for the job that killed his soul.  I cleaned the mess, put him back in bed and began studies with Oldest Son.  As we neared the finish, Youngest awoke and I soothed him with a cartoon. Oldest was finishing up some writing, but wanted to watch too.  And there was an explosion over the injustice of, "no." Youngest sipped some water, tossed it back up, rocked. And I sat encumbered with the duty of love: hold one for comfort, hold the other for character.

Slowly, the work was finished.  Oldest made his own lunch.  Youngest went back to sleep.  And later, when his stomach was steady, bananas and water and bread, we ventured outside to the sandbox.  We did sit out there for two hours.  We did sing over summer.  But it wasn't with anticipation. It was with relief. 

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It's funny how our memories fade, how we create the pasts in our minds that we wish we'd had.  How we tell stories of joy and yet we forget that what brought the joy on was some level of grief.  None of us just hops from joy to joy to joy.  We experience it staccatoed between the hours of tedious toil.  First one, then the other.  But the photo in our mind only remembers the smiles. 

Perhaps that's the grace of God; the suffering's been consoled so let's rejoice in that. We made it through another tantrum, another hard discussion, another stretching strain.  Feel that?  Relief. Gratitude. Hope.

This summer is now a memory.  And I wrote very little, recorded few moments.  I pushed through it with tenacity and resolve. I remember some remarkable moments: one boy shaving, one boy pitching, one boy Scouting, loud and loose.

They pushed themselves into new places, because I had to be somewhere else; a mother working for pay for the first time in their lives. There were days of shooing and shushing and day camps to give them the attention I couldn't spare.  What this summer left me with were a few small but necessary paychecks -- food in the fridge and gas in the car -- and a void in that place where mother is printed first over my heart.

The pains of change are never gentle. There's a reason to call transition the hardest point in birthing a human; transition creates pain.  When Oldest was coming hard and fast I groaned to my husband that I wanted to just go home.  He wiped my forehead and said, "You can't."  As the baby needs to come out, so our new life needs to emerge, young and incomplete but so full of everything that's possible.

I wonder what my future self will remember? I wonder what my memory will record?  What in the God-hewn story of the summer they were 15 and 12 and 7 will spring forth as waxing, winsome, or worthy?

• Those moments in film school when 15 learned teamwork and editing and tact and won the prize for his efforts. 
• Those days in engineering when 12 found a new love to pursue this year and beyond.  
• Those times in camp when 7 got on a bus, helped a new friend, joined a group, spoke his needs. 

Sometimes the mama has to decrease to see the babes ascend.

The only summer they will ever be 15 and 12 and 7 is now past.  And in the autumn I find again what they will always ever be: charismatic, confident and competent.

May my memory hold fast.  May I never forget.  The path of descent is the path of transformation.

When the Spirit Shows Up

When I breathed the prayers last August, heart breaking from the betrayal -- "Holy Spirit, move your people toward me," -- I envisioned that Spirit, He, coming swiftly, stretching his ear out long, or just turning around to face me.  I also envisioned that he was already there beneath the surface where he'd just pop his head up over the ripples made when the boat sank in my soul.  If he wasn't already with me, then he could redress swiftly, like a Peregrin Falcon.  However, I'd lived for years in faith so I knew that if anyone had really wandered it was veritably me.

I, thus, imagined that he was already with his people.  That he was in the control room and I could cut to the chase by talking to him instead of the person.  He'd provoke them to do the right thing and, daily, as I prayed that prayer, they did. They sent cards, stuffed money in the mailbox, called, asked us our names, and said yes.  They showed up because the Spirit was doing his job and they were doing theirs.  That's how healing happens to us all.

It was the most affirming time I can remember.  It was the time when the Spirit seemed to move to the head of the Trinitarian conference table.  The very first time when I vowed not to keep him silent, kicking my Baptist roots aside to hear his voice and witness his power.  What I've seen of him this year gives me such joy and gratitude.  It makes me want to throw him a party. Turns out, Pentecost is already on the calendar.

In all kinds of places the Holy Spirit is depicted with wings. In Scripture, yes, but poetry and literature too as well as our own delimited minds which make things up until we're unsure if they were ever true.  Monstrous wings, like a dragon; gilded and bright; golden expanses fanning the innards of my soul.  I considered this metaphor yesterday morning, out on the deck, beginning summer's liturgy on a fresh journal page.

And then I saw gray wings above me, alighting on the phone pole. And I heard a cooing that isn't a normal part of our dawn chorus.  For years I've sat on the deck in the early summer mornings watching nature for signs of God and I've seen him in so many ways. But on this morning he showed up as pure an image as my mind could grasp. He showed up as a morning dove.

I shooed him off. "I see you.  Don't sit around here. Go move your people."

You never know how the Spirit will come to you... mighty wind, tongue of fire, feathery wings. But I'm convinced that we ignore him much of the time and wait for some other great sign, as if the transformed human heart wasn't evidence enough.  As if causing the dead to live again wasn't a wave of a brand new ship coming in.

There is another sure sign of his presence though. And this one cut me to the quick.

In John 20:21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you."  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld."

The newly risen Jesus sees his disciples for the first time and the first thing he says is "Peace."  Isn't that the symbol we attribute to a dove?  And then he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit, right out of the depths of himself.

When I read this scripture my White Pine tree pollinated right in front of me, blowing a cloud of yellow dust around the yard like I had just waved a magic wand and disappeared beneath it. It was a silent release of all the tree's hopes, a breath of new life.  "Receive the Holy Spirit" happens just like that, in the quiet back yard of a wandering pilgrim mother trying to find the way forward.

Nature is amazing me this week.

I read it again and I didn't have to wonder long, "Who were they to forgive?"  The answer is evident; the people they were hiding in fear from, the ones who had killed their Master Rabbi.  The people they were now sent to.  How hard that had to be -- to move past the crime in order to begin the craft.

I won't be effective if I believe people are defective.  If I believe there is no hope for them, no value, no worth.  If I believe their incompetence is the greatest thing about them and if I can't forgive them for their violent acts that turn my world upside down.

Forgive their maligned allegiances.  Forgive their abandonment.  Forgive their pride and arrogance.  Forgive them for condoning the evil, supporting it, calling for it.  Forgive them for building faulty bonds, for calling something virtuous when it's really cowardly. For their silence, for their absence -- forgive them.  We can't do it on our own, it's the work of the Spirit of God, breathed into us, knowing that the way forward leads to crosses of our own.  I thought I already had, but did it again.  I forgave them.

The Holy Spirit gives us new breath in our stale lungs.  And with that breath we speak new words, the first being the hardest of all, "I forgive you."

And if you can do that, then you know that the Spirit is probably alighted on your telephone pole, cooing at you to go move your people.

Summer Reading: Strong Women

I come from a line of them.  Women who change the world through activism and love. Women who persevere through widowhood and cancer and displacement.  Women who welcome others by opening their lives.  And women who receive their strength from the Lord.  Somehow I find my place; a little bit teacher, a little bit activist, a little bit minister and a little bit creative spirit.  In the second half of life, I want to lean more and more in, as if I'm sitting across from all of them, steaming chai in their favorite cups, straining to hear their own dreams and voices and sorrows.  I come from strong women. This summer is a tribute to them.

My great grandmother, once the national child welfare consultant for the Salvation Army, is quoted in the first one -- I never knew.  The second one was given to me by my aunt after she was deemed cancer free.  The third is an inscribed 1982 Christmas gift from my grandmother -- her favorite stories. The fourth is a woman whom I'm going to go hear tonight so she can sign my copy.

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade by Rickie Solinger and Elaine Tyler May 

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Gbowee, Leymah

Just Lead!: A No Whining, No Complaining, No Nonsense Practical Guide for Women Leaders in the Church by Sherry Surratt, Jenni Catron

Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible, and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O'Connor

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott 

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Wonder Women: Navigating the Challenges of Motherhood, Career, and Identity (Frames) by Barna Group and Kate Harris 

The White Umbrella: Walking with Survivors of Sex Trafficking by Mary Frances Bowley

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Kitchen House: A Novel by Kathleen Grissom

When They Get Sick in the Worst Way

What I noticed while waiting for the call:

• The blossoms on the Crabapple, past bloom, drift to the grass.  Countless petals of white, spent effette, sprinkling an interment of time. Just last week it was full to bursting.  Now fall so the fruit can swell.

• The spots on the rug, half-empty bottles need combining, the chain left in a knot on the dresser, the mending never done.  The dusty details passed over for someday, when there was time. Today I make it.

• The silence.  Each one hoping, reasoning, shoving away the thought.  Wasn't I just writing him letters to urge him deeper into life?  Check the temp, the phone, the water, the phone again.  Keep the silence busy.

• The sorrowful song in my head sings: I know you have a little life in you yet. I know you have a lot of strength left.  Repeat and repeat. 

He's sleeping and wakes when I touch his neck. A long groan. A few weary steps. Back down again. Wretched week; upset piled upon upset. Sleep more, son.  There's nothing here to miss.

We are on the edge. Waiting for the grim.

The symptoms could be.  The signs point.  There were notes and tests in that little room the other night, where the waiting began.  Weary and cold, he laid under the blanket fresh from the warmer, the one with the scent that reminded me of his birth.  And together we waited to hear.

Only that little room knows that we pressed into the silence with settled concern.  That we blithely compared the spotted ceiling tiles to the rash coursing across his chest, his arms, his legs.  No one else laughed with us at the magazine's swimsuits and redundant chai tea products. Or saw that I lingered on the page that said When to Let Go and Move On.  No one was a witness to the banter we maintained even after the doctor left in his first stuffed silence. But no one saw the nurture, when I laid my denim jacket over his shivering frame until a blanket could come.  When I tried to decipher his groans; was it the neck, the stomach, the dread?  And no one was with us when we both released the heavy breath when the doctor left us finally with his bleak suspicion hanging wide-open and heavy in the air.

I asked my boy, "Is this the moment life changes?"  Wasn't yesterday regular quotidian, when we were once all doing homework, slicing peppers, thinking about a birthday?  And then in this one single evening page we wipe it clean and wait, pen at the ready, to write it in a different setting, a different tone.

When you wait for the call that says leukemia or not, you notice things.

The sweat on his head.  How much he looks like his dad.  How the fear dances in his eyes, liquid blue in this moment.  Which is all we really have.

The mistakes, the attitudes, the efforts and cries and persistence.  Silent phone in your pocket, you notice the tension melt away.  What's past is past and what we have can be made new. You notice the messy rug, but you don't speak it.  The verboten wrappers but you don't scold.  He's resting now, doing the right thing. He knows the exact right thing in this moment.  Maybe this is when to let go and move on.

It's been forever since he left his door wide like this, since he asked my advice, since I responded with this level of care, sat with him, touched his skin.  What the dim brings to light humbles the heart.  The moment is honor and fear, tribute and terror.  We walk it together.

The call comes and says just what I knew, deep within.  It's likely not.  It's looking good.  We'll keep checking.  It's not over.

But it's over enough.  We've begun something new.  The fruit is coming.

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Two weeks ago this was our wonder.  When grim news comes at you like a gale, you stand up to it convinced it won't take you down.  Wasn't this the boy I just spent Lent fixing my heart to?  Wasn't this supposed to be the fruitful time?  It can't come crashing down.  Not now.

God's mercy came through with a different diagnosis. One that he's healed from, that was endurable.  It's all over and done.  All the strength is back.  The vigor is ours again.  What we've won is another chance to see each other in a new way.  We've won more days to learn to see each other as human, not as obstacle.  We win because we have each other.  Still.

He Had Something to Say

I've never shot a gun.  Never liked the sound of them, never liked the threat of force, the very idea that the point of the thing was to steal away a life.  But sometimes a mom has to take aim at the things that creep in to destroy and devour her vision of family.  At every stage of their growth, these boys that turn so suddenly to men, new threats pop-up to which we turn, petrified, and fire.  Eat or be eaten.  How good can that other option be?

When I determined my lenten fast would be to become more like Jesus by taking-up my three boys, to let my days be less of me and more of them, I made commitments to each of them: walking to school every day with one, taking another to lunch each week, and writing another a letter each day -- 40 letters over Lent, over 53,000 words that felt like a million.  This barrage of words was my attempt to reduce the distractions, to focus on the moving-forward story, to put a hedge of hope around the growing one.  The shotgun effect promises that at least some of these words could possibly, hopefully, hit the adolescent heart. And in this resurrection season, it means that the kingdom has a chance.

Today he wrote back.  And he wanted me to share.

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Dear Mom,

Today I sat down on the bed in the office, laptop resting on my lap, reading through some of the things you’ve posted before I get to my work. And I’m just reading. Reading the stories of the things you went through as a youth. The times to laugh and the times to endure the hardships of life. The life lessons. All of it. Because really, there isn’t anything else that needs to be done except read, understand and absorb.

I know you wanted to do this for me. You heard what I’ve been saying to you for the past little while, and you thought that this would be a good way to communicate to me.

It was, and I’m happy that you put the time into writing these. I knew that I was a messed-up person with a list of flaws that can go around the moon a few times. An adolescent who probably won’t be able to fully comprehend life for the next…I dunno, decade. I don’t really find many ways in which I can love myself for who I am or what I do.

But I just read. I mean, you’re doing this for me, so I don’t want to be rude.

At first, I was resistant to the idea of you taking this much time out of your day to write these for me. I didn’t want you to, because I’ve got two younger siblings that need the attention more than me. And I know that writing is something that sometimes takes you a while. But you said that you were going to do unique things for both of them for Lent as well, so I decided that it was allright after all.

And I just read.

Because you asked me to.

You kept updating your one Facebook post that you began back in March, and in that time racked up likes and comments across the board. People who saw you post the letters were really supportive of what you were hoping to accomplish. Even Grandma posted a comment. That’s how big it got.

And I was just reading.

You either physically sent me an email with the link to the newest post, or I had to go on Facebook or the blog by myself in order to read. Some of them I skimmed through, others I read all the way. Some had embarrassing moments, which I looked at with a smile on my face and closed my laptop to remember how crazy that moment was. Others had stories from your misspent youth, and I have no idea how much you may have spiced them up to make them worth reading. Others were sad moments that you wanted to revisit in order to make a point, and I could tell from the way you wrote them that it pained you to do so.

There was a life lesson in each story, and I knew it. So did I stop reading?

No.

Heck no.

Each letter was something special to absorb. Each letter was something that you knew that I didn’t, and because I’m still only 14, it’s info that I’m going to be learning in the next few years…mostly likely the hard way.

Without realizing it, you created a mother-son moment with each letter. I looked forward to each day’s entry, wondering what else you wanted me to understand. It’s odd that you were able to speak to me more strongly in this way than you would if we were in a one-on-one conversation about the same topic.

I appreciate that you went and decided to do this. Even if it was just for Lent. It was well worth it.

And know that I’m doing my best to listen to every word you have to say.

I’ll keep reading. I promise.

Love,

Jacob

For the record, Hon -- nothing was spiced up.  Life is full of spice.

Live the Gift of Life

Dear Jacob,

This won't be my last letter to you, just as it isn't my first.  I've written you letters in my journals over the years, unedited and raw and private.  Here are a couple:

May 4, 1999
Jacob, I should have filled up this book by now with thoughts of you . The day of your arrival is coming quickly and I have to say that, spiritually, I am not very well tuned for it.  Physically, I am ready and waiting as sleeping is becoming difficult and my fingers and feet have swollen.  Emotionally, I have been prepared to love you since I learned of your coming. I only wish I could protect you your entire life the way that I can now.  I hope that the choices I've made on your behalf will have been adequate. 

You have no idea what kind of life you're about to embark on, my son, but in order for it to be successful, I pray that you learn to fear God and keep His commandments.  He loves you more than I could ever be able.  Love, Mom

March 27, 2010
Dear Jacob, I'm up in the mountains in a foot of snow practicing silence because I want to be able to hear and know what God is saying to me.  I wonder if that sounds strange or ridiculous to you.  I've never done this before and to be honest, it feels a little strange to me. 

But I'm getting used to the quiet. Everyone here is doing the same thing so it doesn't feel quite so strange after a few hours.  One of the things that I keep asking God about (did you know that you can just talk quietly to him in your head?) is how to be a better mom for you.  You are on my mind and heart and God knows this.  I think he likes that I care so much about you.  He cares about you too. 

So, I keep asking, "God what do you want me to hear?" and "How can I break the bad habits I've formed in the way I relate to Jacob?"  I know that I interrupt you when you talk to me and that you think I'm mean sometimes.  I know that I get frustrated and don't contain it very well.  I know that none of these things make you feel valued.   

I say to you boys a lot, "Just do the right thing." But sometimes I don't do the right thing. I want to ask you to forgive me.  Do you think that you can do that? 

I know that your life is yours and little by little as you grow I let you make your own choices. I'll do more and more of that and I'm looking forward to watching you grow and change and become who God made you to be.  I knew when I was pregnant with you that you were a child of great purpose. I can't tell you what that purpose is, but I can encourage you as you find it.  I'll miss the boy, but I look forward to the man. 

All that to say, I love you so very much.  I want to the be the mom that God wants me to be. I'll fail sometimes.  I ask you to give me grace when I do.  You have not failed me. I am proud of you. I'm looking forward to the future.  Love, Mom

When your dad ended his time at the church he interned at, eight months of youth camps and lessons and post-football events, he had the chance to sum it all up.  There was a wall in the youth room that was sectioned off, one square for each person and you could write anything you wanted in that square, grafitti, poem or collage. Dad chose to give them the last words from the book of Ecclesiastes.

When Solomon summed up all of life, his experiences that had given him wisdom, he came down to this: Fear God and keep his commandments. We can infuse life with all the vanity, all the striving, all the boldness but the worth of a soul is found in this one thing.  Dad painted it on the wall for them to see, washed out the brush and exited the building.

Ecclesiastes chapter 12 is a beautiful final chapter, when all is said and done, finished and settled, everything considered.  Dad used this same chapter when he gave the eulogy at his own father's funeral, the chapter that implores us to enjoy our creator while we're young and have the vigor to do it.  The chapter where it then describes the body of an old man whose capabilities are lessened, his youth blown away like smoke.  It's the experience of walking with God when we're young that carries us through into complete trust and unity with him when we're old.  These were the words your dad said in honor of his father; he knew him, he loved him, he lived him.

David's last words to Solomon in 2 Samuel 23 were, "Be strong;  show what you're made of! Do what God tells you.  Walk in the paths he shows you: Follow the life-map absolutely, keep an eye out for the signposts, his course for life set out in the revelation to Moses; then you'll get on well in whatever you do and wherever you go."

The last words Moses spoke to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 33, "The God who lives forever is your safe place. His arms are always under you.  He drove away from in front of you those who hate you, and said, 'destroy!'  So Israel lives in a safe place, the well of Jacob is safe."

At the end of his letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote, "Receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves."

Jesus's final words in Luke 23 are, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

All of these wise men -- men who changed the world -- had the same last thing to say, God is worthy of entrusting to all of life.

This letter today most certainly won't be my last words to you. But there will come a day when you read this over again and the advancement that life has offered you between readings will shed a new light. I would say the same thing as Solomon, David and Moses. I would nod with assent to Paul and Jesus. What we have, this life, is not ours alone. The Father longs for us to live it back to him, to wear his name as we spend our days, to move as if his arms are always under us.  We live and persist in living because that honors the life-giver.  We don't lay down our life until it is required of us and then it goes straightaway to God to keep. It was and always will be his.

You are a gift.  You have always been loved.  You matter.  You are welcome here.  It is Easter.  God is still in the business of making all things new.

Love,
Mom

Laugh the All-Embracing

Dear Jacob,

I don't think my brother and I look at all alike.  He got the narrow face and the strong nose and dark eyes from my dad's side of the family, Englishmen with a Native American mix.  I got the round face and the freckles from my mom's side, Scots and Oklahomans. Our features have very little in common save for what we each have left of our hair which is and has always been dark brown.

The deeper and more quiet truth is that in every aspect of our lives we have nothing in common. There's a little piece of faith that might connect at the most middle place and there are memories of about 18 years of living in the same house. I find it fascinating that genetic commonality doesn't play a part in connecting people much at all. There's nothing in your bones that guarantees you'll be known by a person.  Nothing in your pumping heart that truly avows you together.  Relationships are a choice.

Your Dad's brother was adopted out of an Italian American family. Your Dad himself was chosen from a completely different one, his nationality unknown to us. It goes without saying that they have no ancestral connection.  Dad is three years younger than your uncle but he was taller than Doug and everyone else when he was thirteen.  Your uncle could run and dance. Dad skated and flipped off the diving board. They were different in every way -- physically, morally, intellectually.  Yet as they age, their intentional trajectory only brings them closer.

Sometimes when I look at you, I see your dad. Maybe today it's your nose, yesterday the gait of your stride, the depth in your voice when I call you.  I wonder if Dad's mom ever looked at him the way I look at you and tried to see, to imagine, that there was something genetically familiar in his face, the glint of his shiny hair, the way he said a word.  When Sam was around a month, Grandma Lou was holding him in her lap and she just shook her head and said, "I know there's no good reason for it, but right now he really looks like his Grandfather."  I think there's always a desire to see something of yourself in your kids.

Samuel is your Dad's exact likeness.  I've seen it from day one. Benjamin, when his hair is not so shaggy away from his face, is so obviously my child that I shiver.  You were always this puzzling mixture, the specifics of which I could never pin down.  I think your nose is his, but your face might be the shape of mine.  Your skin is clear like Dad's but it browns like someone else's.  And your blue, blue eyes are a complete mystery.  Dad must have had a parent with blue eyes in order for them to be so strong and lovely on you.  I wonder what it's like for you to have a question mark in your heritage.

I see myself in you in other ways though.  There's the music in you that came from me, the years of lessons and theory and practice, the pieces I'd finger on the back of the pew while I stood to sing hymns out of the book.  There's the strength of words; your ability to write them, speak them, use them to your advantage. Words have always been my engine and they are a similar tool for you.  If I could I'd infuse your school with humanities studies instead of math and science because the stories are the things that draw you, the things you want to create, far more than a rocket engine or energy source .

Then there's your humor that infuses me with delight.  For years I wasn't sure if you'd ever quite get there, to that comic place that bonds rather than isolates.  As a young boy, those first jokes you told were so full of effort and yet bereft of satire, but we laughed anyway for the preciousness.  And then last year there was a moment when I laughed with hilarity at something you said and it wasn't sympathizing or stooping; it was real.  Your clever mind was suddenly occupying the same space as mine -- as if you finally found and opened the secret room where all the adults cavort and dance when the children are put to bed.

When we laugh together we tell one another that we belong.  Laughing with others is a ticket into the room of acceptance and grace.  I remember as a teenager gathered around the lockers that I wanted to be caught laughing.  If others saw me laugh they knew I was a member because laughter indicates belonging.  So, I'd open my mouth wider, move my shoulders higher, howl. It's a maneuver everyone uses to make sure they fit. You'll refine it as you age, but the rule of belonging always applies to laughter.

The flip side is that if you refuse to laugh you're the killjoy, the judge, the grinch. The quickest way to clear a room full of friends, kill a conversation at the table, mark yourself as a dissenter is to refuse to laugh when the room is giggling with approval.  It's like jumping out of a gang, violent and quick.  Your silence is a disapproving distance, a strong judgement on each and every one.

I love to laugh, throwing back the head, yelping with surprise.  I used to want to be the funniest person in the room but I'm now content to just be that person's biggest fan.  Truly funny people include others.  Greedy humor tears people down, demands that we all approve when we really don't. What I'm seeing bit by bit is that your true humor is all-embracing, maybe self-effacing, unrehearsed, imperfect. That's what I love the most.  It's most like my own heart.

I think the more you grow, the more we'll connect, the more common ground we'll find.  It doesn't just happen though.  Blood doesn't axiomatically bind.  Relationships are a choice. You can shut them down, or open them up.  Laughter is one way.  Love is the other.

Love, joy, peace. It's like one thing leads to another.  Blood is the element that gives us full permission to love.  There's no question that I do and will love you forever.  We won't always laugh, but I hope that we do because I want you to always know that you belong to me, that you're accepted, you're in the club. Love makes way for laughing joy, makes way for perfect peace and knowing.  We'll get there.  Sometimes we pass right by it on our way.

Love,
Mom

Do What You Don't Want to Do

Dear Jacob,

When I was growing up my mother tried to light advent candles with us.  In much the same way that we do in our home each December she would bring out the table wreath, read a scripture and light one candle each week until Christmas.

Candles have traditionally been a symbol for hope, placed in windows to indicate safety for slaves and at church altars to represent the pains we want to leave with Christ.  When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the hope of God's light that entered the world via the manger.

Candlelight is mesmerizing; it highlights us all. When we sit in shadow our defenses decrease.  We note the gleam in the eyes and open up our hearts -- which clarifies their value in romantic backdrops.  I loved having the chance to say the verse and strike the match.  Lingerer that I am, sitting fixated at the edge of the flame kept me in that place of quiet wonder.  Breaking my gaze took me back to sensibility and bedtime.

As much as I remember the tradition with fondness, we didn't do it every year.  Several years ago when I was trying to instill practices that might create a family culture I asked, "Mom, why didn't we do that wonderful advent observance every year? I really enjoyed those times."  She looked at me perfectly dumbfounded.  As much as my mom likes to remember the beauty in things and tell the good stories, she let herself stoop to that place of vulnerable verity.  As if she'd been yearning to say the words aloud for eons, from the time when I first came and disrupted her world, she breathed out from her depths, "Oh, because you two were terrible!"

At that time I had just two small boys. Boys who bounced and interrupted and shredded the papers I carefully designed for them to color while they listened to the verses. Boys who didn't actually listen to the verses.  Boys who argued over who got to light the candle, who got to turn out the light, who had to put the supplies away.  Oh, how I related to my own mother's lament.  For the want of ten minutes to reflect, I had to pay out what felt tenfold by a demonstration of my own poor behavior mirrored back to me.

I got it.

There have been a few years where we both began and ended on night one and simply packed the wreath back away.  There have been years where I made you sit there anyway.  There have been very few moments of cooperation.  Children make it difficult for a mother to create a memory.  But I was that child too and what I remember was wonder.

This year I made something up.  I decided that we'd bring a Tenebrae to our home, that we'd think about how the shadows grow in this week of holy.  I set up the candles in a row, the straight line of Jesus' triumphal entry to the cross.  Every night we extinguish a candle until Good Friday when all the lights go out, the final candle being the very Christ candle we lit at Christmas.

When I announced it and invited you three to come I tensed for the reaction.  One brother is young enough to be excited about the fire.  One is compliant enough to give me his humor.  But you, who are capable of a heckling wrestle, got up and sat down and when I gave you your verse to read, you read it clearly without drama, without interest to be sure, but with respect.  And we blew out the next candle.

Thank you.

Thank you for demonstrating what sacrifice looks like.  For not demanding the death of an experience that could lead to wonder.  For curbing your desire to debunk and decry and disrupt.  For being an example to your brothers of consideration and heed and care. For expanding the room that it takes to consider what it might be like to see a life snuffed out.

Children don't stop to think that in all the discomfort brought on by their mother's trips and photos and bang trimming and ties-just-for-the-ceremony that these are the moments that mothers get to remember too.  That mothers shoot for the joy and are often left with the jumble. Children don't know just how long a mother's memory can be, how we hold in our cries of entitlement even until the day when our grown daughter gives us permission to release them to the world, the world she came and changed for our own good.  Children sometimes forget that their very lives are their mother's days.

There will be many things that you question having to do in life.  Our first examination upon any invitation is to ask, "What's in it for me?"  When the invitations start coming, you might get it wrong at first and stay home. But later you'll begin to get it right.  Your best friend's daughter will dance in a recital and you'll go.  Your wife's company will have a stuffy Christmas party and you'll go.  Your children will sing in the Easter cantata and because you know what your absence does to their hearts, you'll go.  Absence speaks louder than presence sometimes.  Do what you don't want to do.  Do what will honor the other.

You can choose to fight against the things you don't understand.  But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.


I love you,
Mom

Expect That Life Gets Better

Dear Jacob,

When I was in high school there was a girl who was determined to set my hair on fire.  In my sophomore year, the second year of what my family remembers as my Black Period, she would glare at me on her way out to the smoking section and hiss as she flicked her lighter. As much hairspray as we used in the 1980's every hallway in my school was highly flammable, so I wondered if she had a death wish.  She did.  Mine.  My hair was in its glorious Cure season.  Everyone else succumbed to the spiral permed ratted-to-the-ceiling trend.  She chose to sport the latter; just as much hairspray with far less death-before-dawn results.

I endured her hostilities that entire year. Fortunately I didn't have to venture into "her" hallway often and I could usually cut through the commons. One day, however, she caught up with me. That day when we came to blows was frightening to say the least. She jumped at me from behind, firmly tugging at the collar on my buttoned-to-the-neck black vintage shirt.  I heard the flick, flick of her lighter and clued in to what was happening.  She was nearly a foot shorter than I was so when I elbowed her away I'm pretty sure I connected with her face, though her hair could easily have been that hard thing I felt.  She didn't touch me ever again, but she took to swearing at me from a distance.  When she graduated I was free.

There are some ridiculous things we have to endure when we're young.  When other people are insecure and self-preoccupied, when they're clamoring after success and identity and ever so carefully creating their container they sometimes respond to people around them with selfishness and cruelty.  It's a classic marker of adolescence (even if they're adults).  It's a classic sign of fear.

I'm hoping to help alleviate some of that fear.  I'm here to guarantee something for you:  life gets better.  There won't always be teachers who want to reform you to the nth degree for an off-the-cuff comment you make.  There won't always be guys six inches shorter than you who get in your face and swipe your glasses to the ground.  There won't always be random insults and course gestures thrown around in public places.  There will be, at some point, maturity and decency, gentleness and respect.  There will be mutuality and cooperation, faith and trust.  There will be a point when, at the very least, the adults around you will go to great lengths to hide their crazy.

I found this quote by a man named Richard Rohr a couple of years ago. I don't jive with all of his writings, but I enjoyed this:  The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.  I've worked with infants and toddlers, children and youth, college-aged young adults and seminary students.  I've been around first-half-of-lifers a lot; I was one of them myself.  I can attest that this statement is obvious, proven and true.  The problem is you won't identify this kind of wisdom when you're young. You're too busy striving.  Rohr also says that from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself.  So when there's an older person telling you ridiculous things like "life gets better" you will always think they're witless.

Here are the things that I love about life as an adult:

You get to worry less about your wrong choices.  You'll still make mistakes; still call yourself stupid sometimes.  You'll continue to wish you'd never said that, sent that email, or tripped in front of those people.  As you go along you realize that these things never cease but if you're moving toward maturity you recover more quickly and accept the consequences more nimbly.  No matter how catastrophic the situation may be, you can take a deep breath, give yourself some grace and move into the inglorious place of trying again.

You have more room for generosity.  At your age, your resources are pretty limited.  Your benevolent parents helicopter in all of your supplies, determine the hours and rate of pay for allowances, pick you up, take you home, veto purchases and movies and nag and hover (so I'm told). There's very little wiggle room if you were to decide that you'd like to give part of your stuff, or part of yourself, away.  But giving begins with loving and loving begins with yourself.  As life goes on, with faith on your side, you learn to be okay with who you are and you begin to move out of that place of scarcity and into a reality of abundance. When you can maintain a posture of having and being more than enough, you begin to see the joy in giving away your time, money, and skills.  And even your heart.

You can reject haste.  Adolescence has one speed: fast.  Everything is urgent.  All problems are crises.  All complications apocalyptic.  The phrases of youth sound like, "Mom, I need this book by tomorrow!"  "I forgot to get that project done!"  "If I don't show up on time I'll miss everything!"  Meanwhile, from my vantage point I see that planning is a friend, it's better to complete the project and turn it in late than to turn it in on time incomplete (at graduate level we don't give do-overs), and being fashionably late leaves less room for me to say something stupid in that awkward empty space before everyone arrives.  Adults know that when you slow down you see what's important, hear your kid's questions, discover your world and increase peace.  It's a truism that speed kills.  We can choose a different way.

You get to play a supporting role in other people's lives.  In the first half of life there is a great deal of jockeying for position.  There's the desire to be noticed and notable, to get things right, and to feel secure.  I have found, since I rounded that corner into life's second half, that one of my greatest pleasures is to journey along with younger people and cheer them on as they figure out their script. Once you guys could tie your shoes, get in and out of the car unattended and prepare your own breakfast I proceeded to change performances.  I became more of a coach than an architect. I moved into an assistant role rather than a starring one.  More and more I get to say, "It's your choice, choose wisely."  And when I see you (and my mentees) choose well, it is all the reward I need.

You get to express your convictions with composure.  When I was in high school I took a spiritual gifts inventory and "mercy" came up off-the-chart at the top.  I was determined to change the world, or burn it down trying.  Nothing made me angrier than injustice.  I went to Hands Across America on a bus with all my hippie friends and I bought the record for We Are The World by USA for Africa.  I had a t-shirt with Reagan's cartoon face on it saying "We begin bombing in five minutes" and I wore black for two weeks straight starting on February 22, 1987 -- the day Andy Warhol died.  Don't judge. I was passionate. The problem was that if you weren't as passionate as I was, you were an unfeeling imbecile.  The older you get, the more you can allow for other people's perspectives.  Instead of fearing them, you learn to respect those who don't believe along your lines, defend your causes or radiate your level of passion.  In essence, you learn to love people more than  movements and you find that you get along much, much better.

I can think of a lot of other things that I love.  As an adult you can freely appreciate your parents without feeling like you're being corny and embarassed.  You can truly have friends that know you, that see who you really are and who let you express appreciation for life instead of constant criticism.  As an adult you get the priviledge of changing what you think is admirable and priceless and good because you don't care if others look at you funny.  You don't care what others think at all if its a matter of your integrity or faith or parenting.

What I think I love the most is the fact that the past becomes a treasure that I get to dig into to find its worth. Rather than being panicky about the future, I get to reflect on the life I've lived, to remember your young tender faces on the day you each were born, to giggle at all the beautiful ways you learned new things because none of it, none of it, is remembered with exasperation or anger or fear.  The older I get it's all gratitude and pleasure.  The older I get everything is grace.

Keep searching for the script.  You'll find it.  And one day, I'm convinced, you'll own it.


Love,
Mom

Call Pain by a New Name

Dear Jacob,

This is a picture of your smiling Grandpa Wayne.  The only time I didn't see him smile was when he wasn't feeling well.  In the last few years of his life he didn't feel well a lot.

I have never known someone with a heart like your Grandpa Wayne's. He had a remarkable "pastor humor" which meant he told very corny jokes and then would smile, pleased, at himself.  He always found a way to invite people into small discussion groups with him and he loved to help others.  One time, because I was notorious for leaving my lights on, my car battery died while I was at work. I called Grandpa Wayne and he drove to the store, bought me a new battery, drove to my work and installed it for me in the middle of the day. This was the man I knew before Dad and I were even married.

He loved to take people where they needed to go, and would buy them coffee just to talk, and always, always in the most natural way possible he told people about Jesus. There are some people who have the gift of evangelism. They are few and far between.  Grandpa Wayne was one of them.  It was remarkable to watch him share the best story of his life and to have people take in his words without offense.  He told it from such an unquestionable place of love. It was the exact same place from which he looked at you when you were born.

Just about a month before Dad and I were married, Grandpa underwent heart bypass surgery.  He had his procedure done in the very same hospital and by the very same surgeon who had performed Mema's surgery...the one she didn't come home from.

Less than two years prior, we had gathered in that same waiting room for six hours, my mother, her sister, my cousins, my brother and I.  We were invited to take over a private waiting room while we awaited word from the surgeon.  The truth is, that when a nurse asks your family to move from the public waiting room to a private one, it is to tell you that your Mema has died.  It is to give you a place to react in whatever way you need. It is to allow the surgeon a safe place to briefly explain and to hold your hand with his thick fingers and say, "I'm so sorry."  Less than two years prior we were clinging to one another in that little room absorbed in our grief.

The day of Grandpa Wayne's surgery, there I was again sitting in the same public waiting room looking at the same art on the wall, watching the same security guard circle for the exact same reason.  I was skeptical of any scrub-attired nurse approaching us, any collared chaplain within earshot.  No one was taking me to that little room. It was the surgeon himself who came out to tell us that Wayne was finished and in recovery, but I didn't even want to shake his thick, scratchy hand in my relief.  That evening Dad and Grandma Lou and I went to church because I think that was something that was helpful to Grandma Lou after the events of the day. In the middle of the service all that courage, that bravery I'd utilized all day long, failed me.  All those not-so-old memories came back to me and I left in tears.

Pain is like that.  I don't know that it sneaks up on us so much as we seem to circle back around to see it again.  Think of it as if you're ascending a mountain. You don't go straight up a mountain, you circle around it, or drive through switchbacks in which you're seeing the same thing down below, but you just see it from a different perspective.  When we seem to experience pain that we thought we were "over" we hopefully see it from a new perspective and it gets a little smaller from our vantage point. There are some pains that we never leave behind though.  We just learn to live over the top if it.  We learn to let its voice get farther away.

Grandpa Wayne had diabetes. He couldn't see well, couldn't feel the tips of his fingers, and shuffled when he walked. When you were born he was on kidney dialysis three times a week, was on permanent disability and had congestive heart failure. These ailments were growing increasingly difficult for him.  Grandma Lou was a warrior-caregiver but he didn't eat quite right and he didn't watch his fluid intake. At some point in his failing health, Dad remembers. there was a specific day in which Dad became like a father to his own dad.  It's pretty safe to say that it wasn't a good day.  When you were born we all breathed a sigh of relief.  He had made it.  He had lived to see his grandson.  We named you after him.

I know that Grandpa Wayne was crazy excited to meet you.  He bought you story books about the guys he was descended from: John Quincy Adams and Paul Revere. While you don't have a blood claim to those historical figures it's cool that you're somehow still in the family line.  We'd sit Grandpa on the couch and he'd hold you and call you by your middle name. He never knew your second middle name.  He would have liked it, I think.

I would often be gone overnight to take seminary classes while I finished my Master's but one particular class had to be taken at a different campus which was near Grandma Lou and Grandpa Wayne.  One day in April I flew to Southern California while you and Dad stayed home in Grass Valley. While I was there, Grandpa was admitted to the hospital again.  He had a wound that wouldn't heal and some other complaints.

When my class took a break I went to the hospital to sit with Grandma Lou and Grandpa.  It wasn't a good sight.  He was struggling to breathe. He was groaning.  He wanted water so badly but because of his congestive heart failure there were strict orders not to give him any.  He pleaded with me to give him some.  If I could go back and change anything I'd have given him water. At the time I thought I might hurt him.  At the time I didn't know he was dying.

Grandpa had developed gangrene in his toe. The doctors wanted to amputate it.  And then his foot.  And then a good part of his leg. Grandma Lou and I were distraught with these options.  Grandpa wasn't a small man, wasn't a strong man.  How would he learn to walk again?  We called Dad who spoke with the doctors and then we said, "You need to come."  He tossed things into a bag, strapped you in and drove hard to Southern California.  He didn't make it in time.

Once they stabilized Grandpa and he was resting I took your exhausted Grandmother to get something to eat and then I drove back to school for my evening portion of class.  About an hour later she showed up at my classroom door.  I followed her outside and she told me right there on the sidewalk, clear black sky covering us, that while we'd been to dinner Grandpa had had two heart attacks.  He was gone.

It was fifteen years ago today, twenty five days before your first birthday, when Grandpa Wayne passed away.

You were a hit at his funeral, new life coursing through your aggressive beating heart, banging on the sympathy cards people slipped into your fat hands. You were the joy that tempered our pain.  You were the precious gift we were able to give the man who had adopted your dad into life and love.  When your birthday rolled around we all gathered again in our home in Northern California, held an open house for anyone to come by and tell you what a testimonial you were to grace.  We cried a little that day, because Grandpa couldn't give you more books, tell you more jokes, give you more love and guidance.

When dad had his toes amputated this was the first memory I went to. This was the first thought that crossed my mind.  It had all started in Grandpa's toes. As I sat with your dad, pregnant belly wobbling with the inside-Sam, and listened to the doctor's recommendation I was back in that Southern California hospital room saying, "Please God, No. How will he ever walk again?"

We are told that we get over pain, but really we just learn to live with it.  It always finds a way to be seen again a little further up in our journey.  It finds our weakest place, that spot on our way up the mountain where the trees are cleared away and we can see all the way down.  It fills our vision.  We begin to believe that what happened to us before will surely happen to us again.  We believe the lie that we can't change because that pain keeps us immobile. We believe that pain is what gives us our full identity. It's not true.  But pain likes to be the loudest thing in our life.

There are many things that I've had to persevere through once, twice, and again; betrayals, agony, loneliness, desertion, accusation, mockery and even death. It's not so much that I feel these things as I hear them, echoing in my head, my heart, like an empty room in my new place of address.  "He stabbed you in the back."  "She never called you again."  "She thinks you lied about her husband."  "You only thought they were your friends."  "They didn't wait with you in your darkest hour."  "You will never get through this."  Pain leaves me hollow, sweeps the floor with my hope, keeps me living in the dark.

What comforts me is to know that Jesus suffered through all of these things too. And that was just in the last week of his life.  You know the Easter story; he overcame it all in a big way.  When we rose he pulled us up with him.  He renamed our pain and called it growth.  These are the things I'm thinking about this Holy Week; I have a savior who can re-envision all of my pain.  So do you.


Love,
Mom

Travel Through Tension

Dear Jacob,

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. This week is always my greatest struggle of the year for the personal miseries attached to it.

It was in this season that Mema died and when, too, another year we lost your Grandpa Wayne and a great aunt of mine one right after the next.  Then my Grandmother two years later.  What is it about March and April, the great spring precursor to summer's fullness of life, that suddenly steals the soul from us and carries it back to God?  It's so counter to the motive of the rebirth pushing through the earth today. Perhaps these loved ones did us a great service by leaving us in the spring, this season where hope is visible, touchable, where we can find examples of growing strong all around to hold up our grieving arms.

I have always wanted to celebrate Easter in a grander way.  I compare it to its Advent brother and wonder why the birth gets a month of merry, when this, this, is the raison d'être for our living.  The incarnate Babe is important, nothing truer can be said, but the new kingdom that comes rushing in with the resurrection is the putting to rights that all of creation longs for.  The resurrection is the crux, the strong point, and yet we give it a day, a meal.

When I was growing up we never mentioned Lent, only Easter.  Sometimes there were palm branches for today, sometimes a Good Friday thought.  It was about resurrection, yes of course, and our worship pastors often pulled out every instrument and joyous chorus.  But it was also, in a side-by-side contention, about new clothes and ham and chocolate.  As grand as we could make it, it was just one day.  Easter seemed, seems still, to be something we bumped into as we went around a corner. 

I don't know if you know that the Sabbath was always Saturday, the last day of the week.  Yet the Church worships on Sunday because that was the day of His rising. He was crucified at midday Friday, there was sundown Friday, sundown Saturday and then he rose on Sunday morning.  In a great act of (perhaps a justified?) disobedience we collectively moved the Sabbath day, the worship day, to Sunday so that each week we could touch and practice and celebrate the resurrection. I wonder what the Father feels about that. I wonder that the average worshipper even thinks it.  Soon our family will move back to Sunday worship and we'll participate in that great unified voice that gives all praise to one risen God.

It wasn't until later in my life that I at least invited Good Friday practices in.  When you were very young Dad would come home for lunch on Good Friday to stay with you so that I could attend our community's Good Friday service alone.  The Baptists, the Lutherans, the Church of God, the Bible churches would all gather on the Presbyterian's grounds and we'd give a common expression of lament and hope and praise.  It moved me in ways that worship never had. It pushed me out of that rutted way of thinking, that Easter was just one day, and left me exposed -- this story shaped more than my lone corner of Christianity. There wasn't a single believer who could sidestep the full angst, the sorrowful reflection of the death of Christ.  Ecumenical, unified, together.  We all knew that the only way to Easter is through Good Friday. 

When I schooled you at home I made it a practice, every year, to take off the week before and the week after Easter.  When people looked at me wide-eyed jealous that we took a two week spring break I'd explain, "One for Holy Week and one to plan the rest of the year."  But what did we ever do for Holy Week?  You never knew that I racked my brain trying to find something in the evangelical world, some tool, some idea, some observance that we could do together.  I longed for a practice, a custom to mark these final seven days. All I could come up with was more silence, more reverence, more sacred symbol.  All I knew, was that, as children, you would fight against it.  It was easier to avoid.

Holy week, for me, is a week of solemn knowing; knowing what my Savior headed into and knowing what he suffered for me, for certain my failures as a parent, for my children and my inability to bring them to him.  Holy week always feels urgent to me, like the week before a final exam in a semester when I've shirked; when no amount of study or correction or pleading will ever help me pass the test.  I have the same sickness as everyone else -- stalling, avoiding, serving myself -- and it makes me want to run and hide from the Savior entering the city.  Not yet.  Don't come yet.  I'm not ready.

Teachers can only give us opportunity to learn, but they can't make us do it.  We, as a race, had the chance to learn from a great Teacher yet we still didn't understand him, his yoke, before he entered the city on the donkey.  We couldn't comprehend the cross and if we miss the cross, we miss the celebration. The final object lessons of the Teacher -- the anointing, the foot washing, the supper -- were lost on us.  Just niceties in a story we thought was taking us somewhere else.

I guess I think that Good Friday was the day we all failed the test.  The inclusive F for all of mankind was inevitable; our work, no matter how hard, would never be enough.  But Jesus doesn't just take the test for us, he takes the test away.  I think that rubs raw on the Western heart that wants to do everything for itself.  It chafes my ego.  It embarrasses yours.  We don't know what to do with surrogates.  We don't know how to call them real. Yet, when the Substitute rises from the dead, we can know he's real. We celebrate the real.  We rise right along with him.

Last week I flew to be with my family for a funeral and then I got back on a plane in order to come home to a wedding.  I was caught in that amalgamation of chagrin and solace. This is what Holy Week feels like to me.  A necessary entanglement. It's a balancing act to walk into a season that's full of both misery and joy.  We feel tension and expectation, dread and hope.  Perhaps it's okay that I wrestle with it every year.  Perhaps that's exactly the point.

Take the two opposite things that Jesus is to you and post them in a place where you can grapple with them.  Hold onto that both/and tension this full week.  Let it do its work in you. When Easter Sunday comes He invites the misery to cease. Praise be to God.

And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. -- 1 John 5: 11-13

Love,
Mom