Ponderings

Like many of you, I was doing catch up yesterday figuring out “Kony 2012”. The media blitz was amazingly effect in bringing attention to a particularly despicable warlord in Uganda. But as I read, I discovered that, though every article agreed that behaviors of this man are heinous, this is a nuanced situation not well tended by an American social media blitz.

Some articles talked about the roots of colonialism, others named the handy scape-goating of identifying one bad dude in a sea of trouble. Perhaps the most helpful article I read was one shared on Facebook by Deb Patterson, an article printed in the Christian Science Monitor that gave background on the situation and talked about the importance of understanding how Africans are dealing with African problems. Sending white saviors across the globe to fix Africans problems is, the article pointed out, at the root of the problem and can never be the way to a just peace.

The challenge is that it is we (whoever we may be) would always rather fix their (whoever they may be) problems than address our own. In fairness, far sightedness comes naturally. It’s easier to see a problem at arm’s length. When the dilemma is too close, it becomes blurry and the nuance can be hard to recognize. The advantage of focusing on a problem at least once removed is that we have a better chance of being removed also from both judgment and change. But while our attention is kept at arm’s length, there are plenty of problems closer to us that need our attention.

The Turner v. Clayton trial started this week in St. Louis. This is a particularly sticky wicket that involves many of us, albeit indirectly. At issue is whether a child on the city side of the street can go to the school assigned to children on the other (county) side – and who should pay for it.

Although the county schools involved are quick to point out that they have and do and will welcome city students, they plead that to simply open the ‘borders’ will unleash a tidal wave of new students necessitating new buildings and more. Given that most of us want our children in neighborhood schools, I can’t help but think the solution is to support the city in providing quality schools in all of our neighborhoods, but St. Louis (as a region) has a long (and mostly untold) story of disparity in funding of neighborhood schools.

My personal beef with the case is that the families who were and are in the suit are families of privilege that are already paying tuition to the county schools; the suit is asking for the bill to be sent, instead, to the already financially strapped city schools. If Turner wins, there will be no St. Louis Public Schools. And tragically the one who is on trial and at risk isn’t even represented at the table.

The real crux of the issue, though unnamed, is about property values. If houses on both sides of the road can go to the same school, their values would become equivalent. Currently the same three bedroom circa 1960’s ranch house in good condition has wildly different values on a lot in Town and Country, Rock Hill, or Riverview Gardens. “Location, location, location” is code for “school district”. And if we lift the school district lines, and the property values are allowed to level, the high rent districts stand to lose, big.

Even as I type this, I pause to reflect on whether or not I’ve crossed the line from preaching to meddling. This issue, the disparity in our public education and our property values upon which it rests, is so sensitive that even amongst communities that read liberal preacher blogs there are a myriad of tender opinions. Writing about Kony would be much safer and apparently simpler; he is clearly a bad dude in a land far away.

Genuine compassion, we are learning, begins at the center of our being and radiates outward. Although I will continue to hold the people of Uganda in my heart and prayers, my eyes and my pen are called to stay closer to home. Our issues are also nuanced and messy, but a path for just peace will emerge if we focus on our own business with our eyes and ears open. So instead of buying the Kony 2012 t-shirt, I’m going to buy one to support the St. Louis Public Schools.

Al Fischer is a music teacher in a Catholic school and the music director at the church where he and his family are members. Actually, Al used to be a music teacher in a Catholic school and used to direct the music at his church. When word got out that Al was headed to New York to legally wed his partner of 20 years (Charlie Robin), the school fired him. And when the press got wind of “popular teacher fired for planning gay wedding”, the church fired him too.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

When I came out as a lesbian, the church where I am on staff didn’t fire me. And when I announced that I wanted to marry my partner of just about a year, my church went with me to Iowa to celebrate. In fact, when a reporter from the Riverfront Times wanted to write about our the story, my church said, “come with us!” (and she did!) But stories like Al’s remind me that what I experienced is really quite unique and oh so very special.

In fairness it wasn’t, and isn’t, always easy for churches to stand in the precipice between the way the world used to be and the way it is today. Like any institution, churches like familiarity and exist to self perpetuate. Change comes very slowly to institutions, and as change unfurls with warp speed in our information soaked culture, it is incredibly difficult for most of us to keep up.

Our churches are reeling with the implications, many of us are still holding hymn books that are new (three decades ago) and assuming that high tech means having a sound system that allows the aging ears to hear the sermon. Still grappling with gender language for God, we are totally unseated by the so-called progressive conversations that swap verbs for nouns when talking about the sacred and make a distinction between being spiritual and being religious. Socially the pressures are even more acute and it is here that we see the strongest backlash. The sacred line in the sand is motherhood and apple pie or, in a word, patriarchy.

We see the attempt to hold the line for patriarchy in a number of venues today. Nowhere is this clearer than the assault on women’s reproductive health and choice. While churches have been the backbone of the anti-abortion movement, it is stunning to see church folk line up to also limit access to contraceptives! Same-gender marriage is a total insult to patriarchy as it denies the basic framework necessary for patriarchy to function. So it is perhaps not surprising that even as the majority of Americans concede that same-gender marriage is a basic human right, the bulk of American Christendom continues to stand firmly opposed.

To be sure, same gender couples that dare to expect the same rights and privileges afforded to everybody else are still something of an oddity. Let’s face it; Bride magazine still assumes that the hand holding Mrs. Right’s is going to be Mr.’s. The wedding industry, to which the church is (for better or worse) inexorably linked, makes its bread and butter on heterosexuality. Simply allowing gay folk in the door is big stuff for most modern churches, respecting and now even condoning same-gender marriage is still the niche of the very left.

This past week a judge in Texas announced that she would no longer preside at opposite-gender weddings. As long as the law of the land (Texas-style) precludes her own participation in the ceremony with a partner of her choosing, she’s simply going to sit this one out. I remember a few years back when some of my clergy colleagues suggested that we, as clergy, refuse to sign all marriage licenses until we can sign licenses for all of our couples. Although the challenge was indeed compelling and several of us at church discussed the implications, I wasn’t that courageous. I have deep respect for this Texas jurist.

One approach is to walk away from the tradition, but theologically, I’m with Al and Charlie. I think marriage is not only a right and privilege, I believe that it is a sacred covenant that I want not only for my own relationship but also for all of our families. Knowing what I do today, I would not intentionally deny the blessing of marriage to anyone, gay or straight.

As Al and Charlie head for New York next week, Ed and Scott are filling another bus to headed to Iowa and Maryland just enacted legislation making marriage legal in one more state. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) As we move along the winding arc, I can hear the spirit calling in the front and feel the pull of the church holding the rear guard. Together, however slowly, we will get there.

In the meantime, I am one St. Louis pastor grateful for the witness offered by Al Fischer and Charlie Robin. As we said in Iowa last July, Mazel tov!

It’s a strange Thursday afternoon when I am home early with no appointments on the calendar. Admittedly I hadn’t opened my calendar so my open evening may be reflective of neglect more than availability. Regardless, I took it and began the weekly exhale as I begin to ponder. I realize that we are constantly drawing conclusions based on partial facts (like that of my open evening) and often they are valid, but not always. I’m pondering the benign assumptions and the more catastrophic ones when I get a quixotic text: “want to see a movie?”

What you must know is that I like movies a lot and popcorn even more. But what I most love about movies is sitting in the dark, holding hands. So this was a no brainer. Except that when I finally found the destination, it was a classroom at UMSL not a theater, the flick a hard-hitting documentary not light-hearted entertainment, and the popcorn wasn’t exactly the butter dripping theater variety. But I did get to sit close to my beloved in the dark and hold hands. Happy me.

The film was #4 in the “Eyes on the Prize” (PBS) series and looked at the Civil Rights Movement from 1961-1963. It was riveting, filled with information that was largely familiar but insights that were striking and new. Given the educational venue, there was a discussion after the film and the question, “what will you take home?”

The closing scene with the coffin of a child killed on Bloody Sunday was the source of the tears that filled our eyes, and certainly provided a haunting invitation to tell the story in it’s fullness. But there is another piece, another hidden in plain sight nothing new piece, that was striking for me. It was the broad and diverse base of leadership introduced in the film, all black men. We give lip service to MLK being one among many, but it is both poignant and powerful to hear from a diverse group of men who share their stories both as they converge with and also diverge from King’s message. There was not one movement but rather a convergence filled with diversity that at once inspired and also conspired. There were vulnerable moments that were integral to what would become an incredibly powerful period.

Watching these diverse individual leaders, I was struck by the place of white allies. Significant though white allies were in the movement, they were significant and helpful only inasmuch as they were following those whose freedom was on the line.

I heard in a way that I hadn’t before how white allies were the first to say “wait”; how poignant and true King’s reverberating challenge that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Vulnerable though it may be to stand as an ally, an ally goes home to the privilege that is denied to the freedom fighter. Allies may be valuable in that they are often more welcome at the seats of power than the freedom fighter; likely because the relative safety of the ally affords space to be ‘nice’, those whose freedom is defined in the struggle cannot afford to make the nice concessions. (Read: Nice is over rated if justice hangs in wait.) If allies are to be of any service, their service must be in following; true allies must relinquish the head of the table and the microphone.

Seeing this truth anew reminds me of both the power and the importance of my own authenticity. I am a white woman, a place of remarkable privilege in our culture. For the most part I raised my children as a heterosexual white woman and have been truly stunned by the privilege removed as I have named my place as a lesbian in our culture. Painfully I see now how, as an ally still cloaked in the privilege of heterosexual marriage, too often I said, “wait.” I realize how differently the issues of freedom and justice feel when they are no longer one step removed. As an ally I had only a part of a story, today I see so much more.

To be sure, we need allies. Lots of them. But we need to lead from places of authenticity and as allies we must follow those doing likewise. Our assumptions may be good as far as they go, but never should we pass on an opportunity to respect the fuller truth.

We had “that” congregational meeting last Sunday.
You know the one, it’s the one that folk will reference for a decade or even more. It’s the perfect storm that no one knew how to stop and it blew right on through the scheduled worship. While neither our best nor our worst, it was surely one of our most memorable moments in community. Even as we stood in mass to adopt the name “Peace”, we were experiencing the uncomfortable truth that peace is not the absence of conflict.

And we learn, learned, and will learn lots.

Let me be clear, I don’t care for chaos and when a meeting goes off script I admit to feeling extreme discomfort. As the years pass and I understand my own stuff better, I realize that I am never going to like meetings that go off script. But as the week has unfolded, I’m struck by the many important lessons gleaned and suspect that we would be wise to pause in this place and name what we have learned. Here are a few of things for which I am grateful to be holding:

Monday morning quarterbacking is tempting, easy, and typically unhelpful but invaluable is the learning possible from our mistakes. One thing I learned this week is that we are a community that is willing to do this uncomfortable and invaluable learning. I have been in numerous conversations with members and leaders this week where people are owning and naming their own pieces, identifying areas of learning and growth, and recommitting to community in new ways. Truly, it’s the kind of learning that is priceless even as it is painful.

We learned that much of the important work of our community when done well happens quietly and usually unseen. This is especially true, and always has been, for issues that deal with personnel. We learned that the apparent seamlessness of our communal experience was in fact because things were being done quietly and effectively behind the scenes; but even our best efforts cannot make good things last forever. Our elected leadership, those who donate their time and talent to sit around table together making and implementing plans for our common life, are an incredibly committed group of talented people and I am honored to serve with them. While our leaders continue to ponder the most transparent processes, we can offer our gratitude for their work even as we move through our grief.

We learned that Robert has a lot of rules that we don’t yet understand. Perhaps the most salient learning of the day is that there are no shortcuts for learning the rules. The point of Robert’s Rules is to bring order and it is no small irony that it was in our communal questioning of the rules that we reached our most disorderly state. I suspect that I’m not the only one that’s been doing a crash course this week!

As I ponder what the codes by which we’ve agreed to live, certainly we have dear Robert. Closer to home we also have our mission (Following the God made known in the life and teachings of Jesus, we gather as an Open and Affirming community to worship, learn and serve), our values (Inclusive, Inquisitive, Intimate, Intentional, and Inspirational) and our vision (We desire to be a leader in helping the wider community affirm that God is still speaking).

But like Moses’ people carrying the 10 Commandments, we sometimes find the words too numerous to recall. So over the centuries and across the continents, wise teachers have brought it down to this: treat others the way you wish to be treated. My own faith is buoyed by Jesus’ encounter where he names love of neighbor alongside the ancient Shema, love of god. For indeed, if we are loving God, we cannot help but love our neighbor – and if we love our neighbor, we are by definition loving God.

The real beauty of the last Sunday morning is that, at least in the public speaking and conversations in which I was privileged to be a part, we tried to practice compassion. Though we were in turbulent waters, even here we practiced respectful tones and careful words. We can be incredibly grateful for this. And we can do the next right thing: love one another.

Although there is much more to learn, I’m grateful for a quiet sunny morning to reflect, to breath, to watch the kitten stretch. I am grateful for the promise of the rainbow which follows the rain. And too I am grateful for our community’s new name: Peace United Church of Christ, a name that describes and also challenges.

On Sunday, our community faces an important choice. We will be invited to change our name for the third time in our nearly 100-year history. Each change has been caused by events outside of our community; the first two caused by denominational shifts and changes, this one by changes in the politics of American Christianity. On Sunday, we will be invited to be known as Peace United Church of Christ. (Annual Congregational meeting at 9:45am)

The name Peace emerged from a pool of more than 80 names. With two rounds of congregational responses, we moved to six and finally one: Peace. It was a name that seemed to be buried in the 80 and an unlikely choice, but as the second round of responses were tabulated, Peace was a surprise, strong and clear winner. In the ensuing weeks, I’ve been pondering the name and its significance for our community.

Peace (Friedens in German) was a very popular name for churches of our heritage. The irenic (peaceful) spirit was a hallmark of German Evangelical communities. While some churches organized around dogma, creeds or ethnicities, the Evangelicals (of our heritage) gathered in a belief that what we share in Jesus’ example is more valuable than what we don’t. Eschewing litmus tests for faith (creeds), our forebears were free to share progressive ideas both for faith and life… and indeed many did!

Peace is not, they learned, the absence of conflict. Many of our forbearers immigrated to the states in the later half of the 19th century following a failed revolution. They were no strangers to conflict, but then neither was Jesus. And still they believed Jesus about God. They immigrated, they started over, and they built schools and hospitals in the Mississippi river valley. And they built churches, like ours, where neighborhood children were welcome regardless of what names they used for God.

Peace is not flashy. Peace is perhaps one of the more mundane among the 80 potential names. A common response to the announcement has been, “It wasn’t my first choice, but it’s really growing on me.” People’s faces exhibit serenity as they speak of the name, a serenity that I cannot help but think would make the founders of our church so very proud. Neither bold nor self-effacing, this name offers both definition and challenge with a humility that honors our history.

Peace is a choice. As we stand on this precipice, we feel the vulnerability of the heady winds. The vulnerability is not comfortable, so how will we respond? An important learning for me is that drama and conflict are human instincts; we are hard wired for emotional clashes. Our survival as hunter-gatherers depended upon it. But as we have settled into communities and ultimately into our modern (and now post-modern) cultures, we have new choices about how to engage with one another, how to respond to fight-flight instincts. We can choose to embrace peace, or not. The name, like the concept, is a choice; peace is neither given nor bestowed.

Peace United Church of Christ is a name that speaks to a path, not a destination. The name not only embodies the heart of our historic church and offers a much-needed beacon in our modern one; the name is an invitation for how we share with one another in this day. Peace is a name that affirms where we’ve been and illumines where we are going, even as it provides context for engagement today.

Peace United Church of Christ is truly a beautiful offering.
Is it ours?

“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.