Noticing

I have been noticing my home lately.  A lot.  The little things that I find beautiful, the reasons that brought us here.  The molding and arches in the living and dining room, for instance.

Thirty-two years ago, that's when we came, in the dead of winter.  At the time, much of the house had been recently re-done.  A new kitchen, new paper and paint everywhere, a new heating system (which was to prove a costly nightmare, but: whatever).  The French doors gleamed, the glass sparkled, and the brass hinges shone.

I was newly pregnant with our boys and desperately ill on the sixteen-degree day on which we moved in.  My husband set up the bed and I crawled in;  perhaps, I thought, never to be heard from again.

Bu the house eventually filled with light and laughter: three children and their friends, and a succession of dogs, cats, birds, and one guinea pig.  Woodwork and linoleum took a beating, floors got scuffed, rugs got peed on.  Family life.  A lot of things broke ~ the house is now nearly 100 years old ~ and some of them got fixed. 

After our son died, no one cared about home maintenance anymore. We were focused on survival, and the house became pretty dilapidated. We did some work on the outside, but the inside continued to crumble.

We are beginning, finally, to develop plans and estimates for an overhaul of the third floor.  It has been well-occupied by teenagers and young adults for the past 35 years, meaning that it needs . . .  everything.  I suppose that's why I'm more alert to my surroundings in general, what with trying to re-imagine bedrooms and bath.  That and the knowledge that we will most certainly move sometime in the next decade. 

So, I'm paying attention.  It really is a beautiful home.

Neuroscience and Prayer

Tonight our congregation held our fourth Wednesday night Lenten service ~ one of a series of short, reflective evenings following a simple soup supper.  I've been preaching on practices of prayer, and tonight, running a little low on energy, I was grateful for the gratitude expressed by two women for the homilies.

One of them, a local college president whose field is neuroscience, offered something particularly fascinating.  She showed me the copious notes she had taken on the practice of daily examen and said that she is eager to think about the idea of a regular review of the day in the context of how our brains work.

She has already shared a bit of information on brain responses to change with our adult Sunday School class ~ a helpful contribution for a church in transition.  (I am the interim pastor, there for the express purpose of helping them make the move from their recently retired pastor of nearly forty years to the leadership of the next installed pastor.)

I can hardly wait to hear what she has to say about the examen and neuroscience!

It's a Beautiful Morning

It's been weeks and weeks since I've been out for a long morning walk ~ winter cold and winter flu and a resolve to build back up slowly ~ but this morning's darkness bespoke a clear sky and warm, still air.

Irresistible.

The red-winged blackbirds are calling, and a solitary grebe plowed across the lake.  Sure signs of the spring to come.

Image: Lower Lake, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights OH

Downton Withdrawal

It seemed to have everything:

The intriguing stratification of classes, with the lavish lifestyle and every whim of those upstairs tended to by the devotion to detail and long hours of toil expended by those downstairs;

The sweep of history, from the Titanic through World War I and deep into the Roaring Twenties, but almost entirely reflected in the minutiae of one household’s life rather than by the grand panoramas of battlefield and Parliament;

The arcane structure of the British aristocracy, with its titles and fox-hunts and connections to both court and agriculture;

The dazzling fashions, with appropriate attire always a matter of some urgency and its modifications indicative of changes ~ in the lives of women, in particular; and

The drama necessitated to sustain an audience: deaths of young characters, arrivals and departures of mysterious strangers, births – both upstairs and down – out of wedlock (and, finally and joyfully, a downstairs birth accomplished upstairs!), criminal violence, fractured relationships, jilted lovers and all of it, of course, captured by the acerbic wit of the Dowager Countess.

As I awoke this morning, however, with a bit of Lady Mary-like leisure available to me, my thoughts were that perhaps the great appeal of Downton lies in the tension it portrays ~ between the rigidly formal and restrained lifestyle of its inhabitants and the passionate feelings not always contained by the precision of table settings, the cold grandeur of libraries, and the stares of ancestral portraits.   In our own era of ultra-casual dress, fast food, messy homes, and politicians who shout near-obscenities at one another on national television, we might long for a bit of Downton glamour and control to rub off on us  ~ and yet perhaps we are a bit relieved to see that neither spatkling crystal nor luxury cars prevent its characters from outward explosions of emotion, wild and inappropriate passions, and deep friendship and love.

Grace Is Infuriating! ~ A Luke 15 Sermon for Lent 4

On the face of it, today's gospel parable looks simple.  There’s a father, and he has two sons. The younger of the sons insults the father by asking for his share of the family inheritance; he might as well have said, “Dad, I wish you were dead, because I want my money now!”  Upon receiving the money, the younger son vanishes, and might never have been heard from again, but for his wasteful tendencies.  When the money’s all gone and he finds himself miserably working on a pig farm – and pigs, we recall, are animals Jews are not permitted to touch or eat, so he has reached a new low in being required to feed pigs – he makes up his mind to go home, where he is welcomed by his father with open, loving arms, and a grand feast.

“He was lost and now he is found!”  The theme of the story is bolstered by the two very short parables which precede it. We did not read those today, but let me remind you quickly: A shepherd with 100 sheep is entirely focused on the one lost sheep, and rejoices when he finally finds that little lost one.  A woman with ten coins tears her house apart looking for the one she has lost, and exults when she discovers it.  One animal, or item, or child goes missing, and we search, or we wait, and when it, or he or she, is restored to us, we are wild with delight.  In today’s story, the father is SO wild with joy that when he sees his son, far off in the distance, he goes running down the road to meet him.  We might not think much of that – wouldn’t we do the same? – but in those days, for an older man, a landowner and family patriarch, to run, would have been undignified and unseemly, not something he would do at all.  That little verb “ran” – “he ran” – offers us a world of information about the father’s anxiety, relief, love, and joy.  He doesn’t even wait to see what the son has to say, or even if he has anything to say at all; the father runs – and embraces and kisses. 

So, there you have it.  A father and a son.  The lost and the found.  The sinner and the merciful. 

Except . . .  except, there’s another brother.  The elder brother.  The brother who makes no unreasonable requests, who stays home and does his share of the work, who remains faithful to the father and to all that he is called to do.  Plenty of ink has been spilled in the last century over family relationships and the motives behind them, so we can easily recognize this fellow: the firstborn, the responsible one, the one who does everything right.  I would hazard a guess that many of us here ARE the firstborn, in personality traits and behavior if not in literal birth order. 

And we know about this life of the firstborn, right?  He gets good grades, his younger brother goofs off and even has to repeat a course or two – but their parents love them both.  Huh?  He gets a job every summer while his younger brother gets arrested and has to go to juvenile court – and their mom gives the younger one even more attention – what’s that about?  He gets a good adult job and even sends money home, while his younger brother can’t seem to stick with any work at all and even moves back in with their parents, who seem fine with that arrangement.  He drops everything to help their parents with their finances and their move to assisted living when their situation changes, while his younger sibling is still receiving a monthly allowance from them.  We all know these stories.  Maybe we ARE these stories. 

And so we understand the elder brother in the parable.  We understand him so well that we gloss right over him.  We know that the real problem boy in this story is the younger son, the one who has squandered all his money, has been reduced to feeing pigs, and has come in shame, with a speech of repentance on his lips.  So much drama there – most of the paintings and sculptures depicting this parable focus on the re-uniting of father and younger son.   That’s the big moment, right?

Do we then miss the other son’s story?  Do we miss the reminder that there are others ways in which to separate ourselves from God?  Other ways in which to sin? 

Let’s look at that older brother.  He approaches the house, hears the music and dancing, and hesitates.  Instead of rushing in to find out what all the celebration is about, he first asks one of the slaves.  And then, when he has his answer, he refuses to go inside.  He speaks angrily to his father when his father begs him to come in.  “I’ve worked like a slave for you!  I’ve followed all the rules!  You’ve never offered me even a small party, and here this . . .  this reprobate . . . this son of yours (imagine the disdain in his tone of voice) . . .  he makes a complete mess of his life and you welcome him back with the fatted calf!” 

We can imagine the rest, can’t we?  “Where is the justice in this situation?”  That’s what the elder son wants to know.  Researches tell us that children develop a sense of fairness – a sense of justice – early on, at home with brothers and sisters, on the playground with friends and schoolmates, on the sports field, in the classroom – and they expect conflicts to be resolved fairly, and protest when they are not.  Our elder son today is still protesting: “It’s not fair!  You’re not fair! 

And at this point, the story becomes the father’s story.  For what does he say?  “You are always with me, and all that I have is yours.” The father cannot give the elder son anything more, because he has already given him everything: all of his presence, and all that he possesses.  What more is there, beyond all?

Well . . . maybe one more thing, and that is what the father is trying to give the elder son at the end.  The one more thing that the father has to convey is the knowledge, the certainty,  that his gifts, extravagant and complete as they are, are for both sons.  No matter how alienated, or why – whether by intentional, physical separation; by wasteful disdain and disregard; by rigid, angry self-righteousness – the father’s gifts and love, like those of God, are never exhausted, never limited by human concepts of fairness, never allocated according to some sort of human concept of scarcity.   It CAN be infuriating, can’t it? – this wild, sweeping, expansive range of God’s grace, which seems to know no boundaries nor be fenced in by any concept of justice that we understand.  And yet, there it is – there GOD is, running down the road toward us, arms flung open, coat flapping in the wind, or standing next to us, hands of compassion for our oh-so-limited understanding of abundant love grasping our clenched fists – there God is with God’s infuriating, outrageous, all-encompassing love.  Amen.

*Most of the ideas in this sermon are well-known, but they are also beautifully summarized in two Working Preacher essays, one by Professor Alan Hultgren (3/10/13) and the other by Professor Matt Skinner (3/14/10).  I am also indebted to my former professor The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes for his introduction to an emphasis on the elder brother, one version of which can be found in his sermon,“The Problem with Being Good,” (04/03/11).  For the title, I think my friend and colleague, The Rev. Tricia Dykers-Koenig.

Contemplative Walking

               Red-tailed Hunter.

Cleveland Contemplative Walkers ~ the mutual brainchild of two friends, both of us spiritual directors, both of us people who like to get outside and walk.  I’m not sure how we came up with the idea, other than it having emerged from a more general conversation one day, morphing into a Facebook page and group, and becoming a real live walk this morning.

Four of us showed up, all with a variety of church connections and relationships (although neither was a requirement!).  It was cold, around 30 degrees, and cloudy, with a few slow-falling snowflakes, but we had a lovely time.  I’m not sure how contemplative we were ~ we kept breaking into pairs to talk ~ but our surroundings were utterly still and gray and peace-filled.

We ~ or at least I ~ tried to infuse the walk with a bit of “program,” inviting people to discuss what they remember of past great walks.  One woman talked about the astonishing beauty of Zion National Park.  Another, who is British, talked about a college geology walk ‘round the canals of Birmingham, England, which are longer in mileage than the canals of Venice.  And I mentioned a hunger walk made during my senior year of high school.  Seventeen-year-olds can hop out of bed in the morning and decide to walk 20 miles! ~ although the immediate consequence was that my big toenails turned black and fell off.

Augustine offered that “it is solved by walking.”  We did not solve any world or national problems this morning.  But we did make some inroads into friendship, which might be the most effective solution of all.

A New Place!

As of this month, I've been blogging for twelve years!  It's time for something new, something unabashedly public, and so I am moving over here.  I'd like to use a template a bit snazzier than my past versions, so my first task is to figure that out.  Look for sermons, meditations, and reflections about the usual (nature, spirituality, religion, family, suicide prevention, loss, books, movies, and life in general).  I'm also going to try to post pretty much every day as a basic writing discipline: short pieces of around 500 words (another writing discipline).    I am an alternately highly focused and wildly random person, so we'll see how that goes.