Ponderings

“I’m learning to let go without leaving claw marks,” remarked a fellow sojourner. “You can’t let go if you’re still holding on,” offered another. And so it is that I find myself learning to hold with open hands.

Buddhism teaches that our desire for good things to last is a major source of our suffering. Our happiness lies in the intentional studied practice of letting go, our embrace of the spiritual principle of impermanence. Although as Christians we are not typically familiar with the concept of impermanence and may even be skeptical, I was surprised to find this principle woven throughout the teachings of John’s gospel as I was studying Jesus’ “farewell discourses” this week. Given that there is nothing new under the sun, this should be no surprise and epiphany is the fruit of expanded spiritual reading; the more we learn from other traditions, the more we find in our own.

All of which is a more comfortable conversation than the one at hand, impermanence.

To be sure, I love the concept when the waters are rough. Years ago my screen saver was: “This too shall pass.” The promise buoyed this pastor’s heart as we moved through the Open and Affirming process, as we moved into and back out of a co-pastor staffing model. The promise was grounding when my mother heart trembled facing broken limbs, IEP’s and playground bullies. This too shall pass, and it did and it does.

Last July, as Darlene and I shared our wedding intentions and read the words of impermanence on our day of bliss in front of witnesses, I shuddered. The ying of the yang (or the other way round) reverberates. Having tasted the sweet intoxicating nectar of love, the thought of ever having to bid farewell is utterly paralyzing. The specter of such grief takes my breath away. I confess that it is my ardent hope to share a nursing home bed with my beloved and to exit this world hand in hand. But I also know it is unlikely.

During the holidays this year I was mindful of the melancholic edges of the nostalgia that dance in the air. As a young parent, I felt only a wisp of nostalgia’s veil; as my children have become adults and my siblings are spread across the country, the veil becomes more dense. As I ponder the nexus of the emotions, I am aware that it is grief that I taste. I grieve the loss of the morning banter with my childhood siblings in the magic light of Christmas morning; I grieve the loss of seeing the magic through the eyes of my own young children. The grief is healthy and the scrapbook in my mind precious, but if I spend my holidays holding yesterday, I miss the wonder of today. Our suffering is commensurate with our grip on what has past.

For the early Christians (for whom the New Testament is written), those who knew the people who knew the man, the instinct to reach for yesterday was a very real but limiting dynamic. The communities that had gathered around both the teachings of Jesus (aka: Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the mystic encounters with Christ (aka: Paul’s letters) were searching for a way to hold the scrapbook while embracing a new day. Jesus was gone and the world appeared merciless; reveling in tales of the glory days did not provide the necessary hope for a community facing persecution. Nested where the east meets the west, the biblical narratives sound a parallel sound to the Buddhist teachings. This too shall pass.

So it is that we hold our scrapbooks in a season of change. As a church community, we gather next weekend to adopt a new name; we welcome new staff and bid others a teary farewell. The best of times, the worst of times; the mountain tops and the valleys… this too shall pass.

And for this too I give thanks.

“One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.” Yoruba Proverb (Nigeria)

A long, long time ago, people asked questions about the meaning of life and the fundamental values that we might share to make the most of our sojourn here. In fact the questions began long before our ability to articulate and record them. Our earliest fragments of human thought bear witness to instinctive yearning for understanding. And from these earliest sources comes the simplest of propositions: treat others the way that you wish to be treated. We find it in Confucius’ teachings, in the Old Testament likely penned during the Exile; it is repeated again in Jesus teachings and in the indigenous traditions of Nigeria. Across centuries, continents and cultures, the simple challenge of ethical reciprocity reverberates; yet between us and the peace of the promise is our ego.

I’ve heard ego explained as an acronym for “easing god out”, and perhaps it is a handy tool for this movement is the heart of the matter. Whatever nouns we might use for the sacred, the problem is a human one. Instinctively, with neither thought nor desire, I assume that the world revolves around me and mine. Tragically the value of rugged individualism that lies at the heart of our American culture is actually antithetical to compassion’s call in the golden rule. It may be the American way to seek fortune for me and mine, but compassion demands that my motive incorporate your wellbeing not simply my own. It is hubris, ego unchecked, that lies beneath so many of our social ills. So many of our culture wars are reflective of a failure to practice compassion.

Compassion does not ask that I place my needs below yours, but that I understand yours to be as worthy as my own. In a sense it is a right sizing or clarity of sight, recognizing my own needs in light of the community. While not the sole domain of any particular economic system, compassion demands that if I would seek medical care for my child’s broken leg, I would likewise value the same for your child’s. The golden rule reminds us that if a quality education is imperative for my child, I must likewise value the same for yours. If I do not like people to talk badly about me (who does?), I should not speak badly about others. If violence is abhorrent to receive, I should not perpetrate it. It’s all so very simple, so where does it break down?

As a young feminist, I was deeply moved by an article by Valerie Saiving Goldstein that took to task Christianity’s traditional understanding of sin as pride. Pride, she argued (as I recall), is an archetypal understanding of sin from a male perspective; for women, the archetype is more appropriately understood as self-negation. As the church’s liturgy and teaching focuses on the male archetype, she warned, we have only heightened the experience of alienation for women. Although this argument is recreated from shards of memory more than two decades removed, what I heard then and remember now is that there are differences in how we experience alienation from the sacred that do, in our culture, play out along lines of gender.

What I’m discovering on this side of the mythical hill of life, however, is that pride and self-negation are two sides of the same coin. Indeed this might have been Goldstein’s point, lost on a youthful reader. The challenge of being human is finding a ground of being that is neither too big nor too small, a place of being between the arrogance of youth and the defeat of midlife, an experience of connection that recognizes value in interrelatedness rather than individualism.

Ironically, it is as we engage in acts of compassion and experience our interrelatedness that we find the healthy place of humility that is nestled between the poles of pride and self-negation. In our interrelatedness, we find our right size. Jesus taught that when we serve, we are served. As we reach out, we discover within. In giving, we receive.

A message at once timeless and timely. Always.

It’s Friday morning and the house is quiet. With the Christmas tree down, even the kitten has left the front room in search of more interesting play places. (Current favorite? Recycle crate in kitchen.) I’m left alone to sort the tasks and the feelings of the late January grayness.

Task wise it seems pretty straightforward. A trip to Goodwill is top of the list and necessary before I can vacuum the rug that lies beneath the piles. A trip to Costco for the cat-lady size cases of cat food and litter is also in the offing. Off the list and freeing the schedule is the Friday bread baking routine. With oven repair still “at least two weeks” out, both bread and cookies will come in packages. (And I think I need both today.) But before any of this, of course, is the ritual of writing and posting – preferably before the newsletter deadline @9am.

The routine is different on this day of the week because Friday is my Sabbath day, a day when tasks are secondary to spirit. Friday is the day when I can stay in my pajamas all day if need be, take a bath at noon, talk to no one, laugh or cry, shop or hibernate. Friday is the day when I make space for the habits of the heart to emerge. Or at least I try to. What generally happens is that when I make space for the buried me to emerge, her first order of business is a roaring tantrum for all the sins of the preceding week. My spirit unwinds much like a toddler’s. Friday’s invariably include a few tears, a nap, and then much needed laughter.

Somebody once said that it is darkest just before the dawn and while I won’t pretend to know the validity of the science, I think there is much spiritual truth in the axiom. As we watch the young child’s tantrum (preferably from a distance!), we see the essence of our human spirit pushing against itself in an effort to find release. In order to let go the emotional baggage that we carry in our hearts we must touch each bag one last time as we take it to the curb. By taking a weekly Sabbath day, my prayerful hope is that I can learn to carry the bags to the curb before they require a forklift. By making space to unwind each week, my hope is that the practice of coiling and uncoiling will come with more ease and grace. This rhythm of compression and release is something we practice hundreds of times a day most often unawares. It is the beat of our spiritual life and dangerous only when we find no safe release.

Yesterday a chance encounter showed the rhythm. I wasn’t even aware that I was holding my breath until a friend invited me to exhale. I’d spent a good share of the day sorting pictures for our congregation’s annual report, which is a genuinely pleasant task, but I’d become overwhelmed. Where does one even begin to describe the life and work of community over the course of a year together? With a few tweets mailed in and a pile of pictures, I opened a Publisher doc and started dropping pieces on pages. Pretty quickly I turned to Facebook to pirate more pictures. For hours it was a total mess and even now is many hours from a final project. My head hurt and my stomach grumbled as I walked to the printer to see what I had. Scott and Mickey happened to be in the office for a meeting and Scott looked over my shoulder and smiled at the fledgling report, “2011 was a great year for this church!” he proclaimed. And he’s right. Exhausted from the task of sorting, I wasn’t looking at the picture that was emerging on the page. He’s right. 2011 was an incredibly wonderful year for our community.

As I ponder the encounter, I am reminded that without doing the sometimes-tedious work of pulling out the detail and organizing the memorabilia, we might miss the opportunity to celebrate and honor.

So we tend the tasks of gray January days.

But first, another cup of coffee to honor the most important task of all: listening to the spirit alive within.

On the first snow of the year we are mesmerized by both the beauty and the vulnerability. This first snow was particularly poignant for the layer of ice that lie beneath, made all the more relevant by our anti-government fervor that has created a shortage of communal dollars for salt and ploughs. The perfect storm, of course, was for all of this to converge on a Wednesday morning during rush hour. We spent a full 30 minutes traversing our one-mile jaunt across Maplewood yesterday, the highways closed and the side streets teeming. By mid-day ploughs were out and drivers were not and a fresh layer of snow fell to refix our hearts on beauty.

Delighting in the beauty of our first snow day yesterday, I admit that by day’s end I was sliding quite ungracefully toward the finish line. It was an ordinary day in many ways, filled with meetings and conversations planned and not, celebratory and prayerfilled, challenging and affirming. It was an ordinary experience of the extraordinary gauntlet of human emotions that we are blessed to share on any given day. The extraordinary emerged throughout the many encounters with the depth of the exchange, the integrity witnessed, the hope expressed. Extraordinary too was the ice beneath the snow that defined the day from start to finish. Ice hidden beneath the snow is powerful beyond measure, exquisite in beauty, and treacherous. Yesterday was just such a day.

Perhaps the harbinger of ride was seemingly innocuous choice to clean the oven the evening before. It was the inaugural run for our new oven, with 10 months worth of spill over waiting to be cooked off by the miraculous ‘self clean’ cycle. By all means an extraordinarily ordinary task. But something went terribly awry. After becoming extremely hot (the exterior too hot to touch even hours later) the oven powered off in a locked position. And so the snow day began. The day ended with shards of glass falling in and around the locked oven door that popped and crumbled when jiggled on its hinges. Still inaccessible is the storied serial number inside the doorframe that is required for warranty work.

As I sit with warm coffee looking at the cold snow, I am pondering yesterday’s ride. I am tempted to focus on the epic fail of my frustration by day’s end (grateful to be held and loved when I am feeling quite unlovable).

The real struggle of life, I find, isn’t how to handle any particular situation but rather how to ride from one to another. When there is a crisis or a joy, my heart and mind and body all rally to the cause. I can move with relative grace and find a ground of being in the highs and lows. But in the ordinary jaunts of life, moving from one emotion to another, the switching stations get weary. I get lazy and hurry through, sometimes skating successfully but other times careening on the ice.

Today is a new day. The sales rep from IKEA sent a copy of the receipt for the oven (ty!) and I’ll try calling the repair people again… this time sharing the exact date of purchase and also the news of the shattered glass door. As I anticipate the call, I am aware of the heightened emotion in my gut. So I take a deep breath. And another.

Our choices are simple enough. We can play this thing called life the way we always have and get familiar if unsatisfying results; or we can practice a new way of being.

Aware of the ice, I am choosing to slow down today.

Last night I had the privilege of watching the moon rise on a clear winter’s night. The hour was quiet in my home and I was nestled under a lap quilt on my red couch beneath the picture window, feeling the rhythm of my breathing as the sky beckoned the hour. As the sky gently darkened, the moon appeared ever brighter as it moved through the night sky. What began as a splash of white on a pale blue backdrop became a luminous ball against a dark inky field.

From my perspective, the change was not only dramatic but unfolded with truly remarkable speed. The moon moved no less than 20 degrees in my field of vision in just so many minutes. Were the moon and stars really moving at the speed it appeared to me in the moment, our days would be but a couple of hours. Perspective is powerful and oft misleading, allowing me to misperceive myself as the center of a universe in whose shadow I am but a particle. Some months back I was struck by a passing interchange with a friend, their tone had indicated what I understood to be serious offense. Reluctantly I followed up, dreading to learn what I had done that had so deeply offended. As I listened to my friend express their concern, I was humbled to learn that though the concern was (as I had intuited) grave, it was totally unrelated to me. Contrary to the ego centered instincts that are mine, the world and its people do not revolve around me.

As I lie nestled on my red couch watching the moon rise, I was struck by the many lessons offered in the night sky.

I wondered about the part of the moon that appeared missing. It was a full moon and yet not, already bits of the left side are gone for a season. Where is the moon when we can’t see it? I wondered about the precious things in life that appear to be missing but perhaps have simply cycled out of our view for a season. With my children now young adults, our holiday gatherings had a distinctively different texture; the wonder of childhood a wistful memory with new wonder poised to unfold. The witness of the moon’s changing face is too a promise of return without need of my intervention. There is nothing that I can do that can speed or slow the return of the pieces that appear missing. In this much, I see my place right sized and am grateful. Knowing what isn’t mine to control, I can more fully enjoy the place in which I find myself today.

Once again nestled on the red couch now with the Friday morning sun dancing in the front room, I am grateful for the prescient reminder of a power greater than my own. The ancient Mayan’s predicated this would be the year to end all years and the earthly powers that dominate the headlines today seem bent on obliging; but from where I sit, I can see that beyond our human prattling, the sun and moon still rise as if on cue and I am grateful.

As my place is one of gratitude and breathing, I watch another lesson unfold in the sky before more, this one the power of contrast. The moon has appeared almost insignificant in the late afternoon sun. Not until dusk does the moon begin to appear relevant and it demands my attention only when the sky around it has turned to night. Instinctively we seek to measure our worth in the light of others, and to be sure a big fish looms large in a small pond. But is the moon any less worthy in the light of day? How grateful I am that the moon continues it’s pace even as it shadowed by the sun. May we do likewise.

For a few short hours, I am still pondering in the 12th month of the year 2011. By any measure, 2011 was a remarkable year.

Commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we witnessed the Arab Spring, the end of the war in Iraq, and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street. A devastating earthquake rocked Japan and tornadoes ravaged the Midwest. Teachers and public servants in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio saw huge losses to bargaining rights that had once seemed secure and even local school districts announced pending layoffs. The housing market is still perilously low and unemployment depressingly high. We are living the proverb of interesting times.

Despite these truly game changing winds, I admit that my experience of 2011 has been shaped not by global events but rather by the very personal experience of sharing a marriage and building a common life. On the eve of this year, I blogged, “gay marriage, it’s personal” (the announcement of my engagement). The ensuing year has been amazing both personally and professionally, with perhaps the most rewarding intersection imaginable for a minister when our congregation travelled with us for our Iowa weddings (nine church couples sharing and renewing vows together!). The event itself was an experience of bliss that I could not have imagined possible, and it was a precious gift to have the event covered not only by our local Webster Kirkwood Times but also to have the church featured in St. Louis’ Riverfront Times. As I sit in my living room battle shipping with my beloved and surrounded by pictures of the journey, I feel profoundly grateful.

Vaguely aware of tragedy and angst on a global scale, I’ve been largely enveloped in a very personal bubble of bliss. I’ve had the added benefit of sharing my experience in the context of community that has shaped not only my individual experience but demonstrated the beauty of communal transformation. Building on our Mission, Vision and Values and the resulting influx of new members and friends, we faced new challenges as a congregation. Our Governing Body, with the organizing help of the Naming Circle, has asked our congregation to engage in the search for a new name. Our Worship and Learning Teams have worked together to find new rubrics upon which to organize our program life (“Charter for Compassion” with the related “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”). In December we look at Step 12, which is simply to love our enemy; in January we will start over with step 1, learn about compassion. Given the complex world that awaits us, such a cyclical study is reassuring and immensely welcome.

And the irony that unfolds when we match Compassion’s 12 steps with the 12 months of the year is priceless. We find ourselves dancing our holiday traditions with compassion’s challenge of “loving our enemy”.

For the remaining hours of 2012, reveling in the joy that the year has rendered I see too the costs of discipleship. Bliss-filled though my year has been, a 49-year-old woman can’t marry another woman without more than a few sideways glances. And we’ve had plenty. For every step forward in the cycle of life there is a return to learning, lessons yet undone. Readier than ever for the complexities of life, I admit to being more aware of, but no less flummoxed by, the challenges along the way.

Moving through this step this month we are faced with the uncomfortable truth that ‘loving my enemy’ isn’t offering charity to a distant them but rather the embrace of a one-time friend who’s not sharing our joy today. Loving my enemy isn’t a prideful offering but rather a recognition of the places where I have stumbled without wallowing in self pity and remorse, it is seeing myself in the eyes of the one I would dismiss and choosing to embrace both of us. Loving my enemy is that spiritual place between hubris and humiliation, humility.

As I revel in the last few hours of this magical year in my life, I am tempted to pronounce the coming landscape less interesting. But I am a wee bit less naive this year. The truth, as I am coming to learn, is that in all life fully lived there are cycles and surprises. Happiness is not defined by the landscape but rather by the practice of the heart.

And now we return to step 1: Learn about compassion.

As I print the storied Christmas Eve texts from Luke and Isaiah, I again pause with the realization that I am taking the precious verses out of their contexts and culling from them the depth of their challenge.

The text from Isaiah promising a new day goes on to graphically describe the end of the old way, definitely not the warm fuzzy we seek on Christmas Eve. The text from Luke is, as we’ve been discovering with Borg and Crossan’s “The First Christmas”, the prelude to a call to a realignment of our politics and priorities. Maybe these meaty messages are good news for Washington gridlock, but they don’t deliver the prescribed sentiment of the season.

So it is that these texts will be plucked from their complicated homes, and in churches across the land these texts will be illumined on Christmas eve with candles and classical strains to yield a nostalgic patina draping our weary world.

As I print the storied texts this year, I find myself wondering about the ethics and efficacy of such proof texting.

In fairness, I realized that for months now we’ve been sharing texts from other religious traditions that parallel the teachings from our bible stories, all of them plucked from their contextual homes. As I prowl the internet for parallel teachings which share new insight, I invariably find bits and parts, publishing them without any awareness of what comes before or after them in the text. The text themselves are new to me, their context absolutely a mystery. Admittedly it’s easier that way.

Marianne Williamson, author of many volumes, has been known to express wonderment that one quote has been plucked from the midst of the forest and used to define all of her work. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…” To be sure, it is a beautiful quote and one that has inspired millions; mostly famously this text is mis-remembered as being quoted by Nelson Mandela in his historic inauguration as President of South Africa in 1994 (it wasn’t). All the more it is humbling to know that one paragraph buried in one volume becomes the defining word without the author’s intent or consent.

As a person who shares a lot of words, both in sermons and articles, I am often bemused by the bits that get remembered and repeated. Without the context, a tongue in cheek quip becomes a call to the opposite of what I might have intended. Nuance is tough to share in the age of tweets. And once the words have left my tongue and I’ve hit send, they will be culled by winds of which I have no control. A study in letting go, even the most adamant atheists of today’s bloggers must place their trust in a higher power.

As I ponder my memories of childhood Christmas’, I’m pretty sure that what I’ve held all these years are likely just the subtexts. The random bits form a crazy quilt which both echoes and distorts the events of my early years, and when my brothers and I pull out our memory quilts and compare, my parents invariably both laugh and cringe. “That’s not how it was!” someone may shout, but memory bears its own veracity. My parents’ learned shrugs are a healthy model of letting go that I will need to use as my children make their own crazy quilts.

Looking again at the texts that we cull for our Christmas Eve worship, I see that though out of context, they are quips that speak to hope, that convey compassion, that inspire us to be better than we thought possible. As I hold my crazy quilt of Christmas memories, I see vividly displayed the wide-eyed wonderment of childhood that stands the test of time. And though a rose deserves to be honored in the context of its thorny bush, I realize that reveling in the scented beauty for at least one silent night is worthy.

May our lights be refreshed as we again revel in the wonder, singing carols and reading stories, both secular and sacred. May our lives bear witness to the light that illumines even the longest night.

Recently I had the luxury of working in my pajamas all morning, which made the awaiting hot water all the more tantalizing. Except that when I turned the faucet on, the forthcoming water was tepid. Unbelievable. I ran it for awhile just to make sure and the longer it ran the cooler it got. Given that it’s a Friday pleasure to work in pajamas, the tepid water meant that either I would be lucky enough to learn how to light a pilot light or it was going to be a long miserable weekend.

I went down to the basement and gave the old water heater a once over. It looked like, well, an old water heater. I got down on the floor and looked for flame and didn’t see any; but in all fairness, I didn’t have a clue about what I was looking for. Perhaps, I reasoned, old faithful had simply lived its life and needed to be replaced. Back at the computer a quick bit of research revealed that if the worst case scenario was the reality, not only was it going to be miserable weekend (replacement wouldn’t come until Monday), it was also going to be a frugal Christmas (who knew those contraptions are so expensive!?!). Now I had a strong drive to find the pilot light and make it bright.

And I hit pay dirt: how-to videos. Who knew? I sat with rapt attention while watching a video about how to check and light the pilot light on an old water heater. Amazing. I watched twice just to make sure I understood (fire and gas together make me a wee bit cautious) and then off I went back down to the basement. Ten minutes later, the pilot was lit… thirty minutes later I had the unparalleled luxury of hot water from a tap.

Miracles come in all shapes and sizes. Some have scientific explanations and even come with how-to videos. Regardless, there is nothing as miraculous as hot water from the tap.

What strikes me about the hot water and for that matter most of life is how an experience of a miracle is an interactive process. Even when it is flowing unassisted, I do not revel in the wonder without a prayerful pause. What we bring to the process affects the outcome, and sometimes a willingness to be guided is our greatest offering.

Borg and Crossan in their book, The First Christmas, make a tongue in cheek comparison between the fabled Bethlehem star and GPS tracking devices. Behind pointing out the leaps of our traditional imagery, they point out that neither the shepherds nor the wise men followed a star into a barn. What was beaming wasn’t a star up in the sky but rather a light from within the child. Their reframe invites us to study not astronomy so much as the Quaker concept of the Inner Light; the promise of many religious traditions that the light of the sacred beckoning from the one we call Christ is also beckoning from within each of us.

All the while we are looking in the distant sky for the light; we miss the opportunity to revel in the wonder of the light already shining in us. The wise men, according to tradition, were studied not only in astronomy but also humility. They were able and willing to ask for directions and follow directions. Whether or not this proves that a woman was among them is beside the point. Making openness to help a gender issue might be funny but it subtly denies the important truth that all of us need help sometimes to see what is right in front of us.

To see the light, we do need each other. Your light is obvious and brilliant to me even as my own is elusive. But when you hold my hand and point, safe in the glow of your light, I begin to see my own. This is the exquisite gift of community.

As we careen into Christmas week at church, we do so in the context of community and we are incredibly blessed to have one another. We may read the map differently and even squabble about whether it’s time to stop for directions, but together we find and celebrate the wonder of the light… already and yet coming.

And it is very good.

As a product of the evangelical Sunday School movement, I hold an interesting bag of paradoxes and passions.

On the one hand, I have zero tolerance for proselytizing efforts that presume a deficiency and purport to offer the cure. I know that this intolerance belies a resentment I’ve yet to let go, but in fairness I earned this intolerance. Aside from the countless theological lessons I must continue to unlearn, I hold a particularly haunting memory of sitting in the dark on a pew being threatened with the fires of hell if I didn’t say the right prayer the right way right now. When I received the prized miniature assortment of Russell Stover’s as a reward for my coming forward, I was assured that I had probably said ‘it’ good enough. For years I lived in fear that ‘probably’ was a weak guarantee. The Hershey bar later earned for memorizing multiplication tables tasted all the more sweet without the bitter threat of damnation.

On the other hand, what I also found in that same community of my childhood is a treasure trove not only of bible stories but something even more valuable: love. At Olive Street Friends Church (whose name later became Battle Creek Friends Church), I was enveloped each Sunday morning in a community that loved me. I remember Olive Adam’s amazing smiles and warm hugs, and I will forever be changed by the place that Dorothy Ecklund made for me in her classroom and her heart. She changed my life for good, absolutely. Significant was that I didn’t come with my family; my parents weren’t sitting upstairs with the other parents. For at least a couple of those years my brothers and I even arrived with a handful of other vagabonds on a rusted old school bus. To be sure we knew whose kids had parents upstairs in big church; they knew the teachers in more intimate ways from potlucks and home groups. But those of us who did not have those benefits were every bit as welcome, perhaps more so in that there was a communal imperative for outreach and we were the fruit of that endeavor.

Coming into adult eschewing the theology that propelled church buses into unchurched neighborhoods, I found myself in church traditions that understood outreach to be about benevolence and occasionally justice. Admittedly I have some concern that our efforts in benevolence send fire trucks to houses engulfed in flames. Moved by a passion for justice, I have been most proud of my denomination and local church as both have made bold prophetic stands and pushed themselves and all of us to advocate for the more fundamental issues of justice. At the same time, the food pantries must be stocked and safe shelter provided for those in need and I am grateful for such outreach. Mission1 (in the United Church of Christ last month) was a great example of this commitment to outreach.

All of this is good and right and holy, but still leaves the lonely alone. Where is the invitation for the neighbor child who wants a spiritual community? Where is the invitation for the spiritual but not religious young adult who yearns for a place to call ‘home’? Where is the invitation for the middle aged man who has spent a lifetime avoiding judgmental zealots but still grieves the loss of a community with which to pray? At the end of the day, outreach which is about benevolence and even justice is ‘us’ helping ‘them’ and misses an incredible opportunity to foster compassion using hospitality to build a bridge between us and them. If our outreach stops with charity and prophetic witness, we have missed the heart of the gospel.

What was unique in the stories we have of Jesus is the consistent movement of the us-them line. If we are following Jesus’ teaching on the road to compassion, we are inviting people to join us. Not because we have the answers, but because we are called to share hospitality. Zacchaeus (the little man that Jesus called down from the tree in Luke’s gospel) didn’t need a bag of groceries or a new tax code; he needed a friend, he needed to be included at the table, he needed to belong. We all do.

Of course there is a risk to all this warm fuzzy welcome stuff: change. As Jesus’ stories attest, when them becomes us, us becomes them. We change. If we could let people join our table without changing us, we might be more inviting. But we’ve learned that when our guest list expands, so too do the traditions around our table. Each new guest brings new traditions and, lest our table prayer wax on and cool the meal, we let go of something old in the wonderment of building new relationships. We change.

This Christmas, let’s ponder ways that we can share this most precious gift: love. We can invite a neighbor to coffee or even to share our Christmas table. More daring yet, we can invite them to join us in the pew on Christmas Eve (or day!).

[Note: The art today are drawn by a fun artist, Henry Martin. http://www.sermons4kids.com/hmartin.htm]