Christmastime is Here

There was an article in the paper the other day that said that since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, many churches are cancelling their Sunday services in expectation of low turnout.

That kind of logic completely baffles me.

When I was a kid and Christmas fell on a Sunday, it didn’t mean we were less likely to go to church, it meant that we most definitely were going to have our behinds in the pew that Sunday. 

But let’s face it, Christmas is an odd time of the year and as the years come and go it seems to only gets stranger. 

People have been complaining about Christmas and materialism for decades beginning, perhaps, with Charlie Brown and one little Christmas tree among dozens of aluminum trees.  (Did they really make such things?)

For many people, Christmas is a sad time of the year.  This year’s Christmas episode of Glee had two characters arguing over whether their Christmas special should be only happy songs.  I, myself, have suffered through some gut-punchingly sad Christmases but also some gloriously happy ones. 

There was that Christmas, my senior year of high school, when I got everything I wanted (for the record, a mechanical kitty cat, a TI-85 calculator and tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera—which I think says everything you ever need to know about me).

The nature of Christmas though is to be both happy and sad.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus.  The sanctuary which had been clothed in blue during Advent is now white and pure.  Red poinsettias decorate the altar and while they are beautiful, an explosion of color, there is, in that juxtaposition of red on white, a reminder of what Jesus was born to do.

He was born to die.  He was born to shed his blood, to sacrifice himself for all who had lived and for all who ever will. 

And so every Christmas there must be conflicting emotions.  There is joy, sheer pleasure and joy at the birth of Christ.  Who among us, even those of us with the hardest hearts, doesn’t feel happiness over the birth of a child?  I like to think of Jesus, the baby, as a giggler, one quick to smile and let out big spit bubbles with each laugh.  I like to think of him, grabbing onto Joseph’s finger with his tiny hand, bonding with his human father.  Was there ever a child so loved?

Or so hated?

Remember Herod’s decree that all boys under the age of two should be killed?

Before Jesus said his first word, he was already hunted and his family on the run.

So it’s okay to feel conflicting emotions at Christmas because, as I said before, Christmas is, at its core, a story of both hope and suffering.  It is perhaps the only holiday that speaks to who we are, our essential selves, because we too are creatures who experience great joy and great heartache. 

That God so loved the world, He sent His only son …

Not just so that we would know Him but so we would know that He knew us.

Do Not Be Afraid!

Though I have never been as big a fan of the Lord of the Rings as I have of the Narnia series, I suppose I do feel a bit of kinship to Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit.  Bilbo is as sensible as they come.  When Gandalf stops by to recruit him for an adventure, Biblo is hesitant.  Actually he flat out turns Gandalf down, but Gandalf being the crafty, manipulative wizard he is, doesn’t take no for an answer.  He plays to Bilbo’s curiosity and his pride.

At one point in the trailer to the new movie version of The Hobbit, Bilbo asks Gandalf, “Can you promise that I will come back?” 

And Gandalf replies, “No—and if you do, you will not be the same.”

Such is the case in every adventure.  We do not know how the adventure will end.  We only know that if we survive it, we will not be the same.  Faced with such knowledge, it may be easier to hole up in a little Hobbit hovel and leave the rest of the world on the other side of the door.  But if we’re willing to take a risk, the rewards could be amazing. 

But fear is our greatest stumbling block.

Fear immobilizes.

I think about the night I had my flat tire on the highway.  It was really such a great story, involving prayer, angels and the presence of God.  But the rest of the story that night was much darker.  While my Road Ranger/Angel got me to class, I still had the long, dark journey home to come.  I was riding on two bald tires with no spare this time.  It was late and when I pulled onto the highway, it began to rain.

I was terrified I would blow a tire.  I was so scared, I almost pulled over.  Now what would pulling over have accomplished?  Well, nothing.  It made no sense to pull over when my tires were still functioning, but the thought of what might happen nearly made me do something completely irrational.  Instead, I prayed without ceasing the entire ride home.

And I made it.

Fear paralyzes.

I’ve written many times this past year and a half about fear.  I’ve written how opening myself to God and agreeing to say “yes,” has allowed me to move past many fears.  I’m doing things I never would have dreamed of.  Someone once asked me if God had taken away the fear.  And I think my answer surprised her.

No, God has not taken away my fear.  If I had no fear, I’d have no need of faith.  I wouldn’t have to depend on God.  So I still fear, but I also listen and I follow when God motions me into the deeper end of the pool.

Why do I do these things?  Why do I roll over fear?  Because like Bilbo, I understand that there is more to life than the four walls that I call home.  There’s something else out there, something that calls to me and encourages me to be more than I could imagine. 

Think of the shepherds watching their flocks that night.  With all due respect to shepherds, they didn’t lead exciting lives.  They minded sheep.  They watched for predators.  Their days were all alike.  Again and again, nothing changed.

And then, that night, angels appeared.

They appeared to the lowest of the low.  They didn’t appear to men and women already looking for them.  They appeared to the Bilbo Baggins’ of the world, good, sensible shepherds.

And what was the first thing they said?  “Do not be afraid—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

The angels then glorified God and then *poof* were gone.

Now if you’re a shepherd, what do you do?  I can almost see them, staring at the now empty sky with their mouths hanging open.  It’s silent.  No one dares to breathe.  What just happened?

And then one guy says, “We should go check it out.”

What do you do when confronted with angels or mysterious wizards?  What do you do when the challenge is set before you?  How do you ignore the chance to change your life forever even if it means leaving the safety and security of where you are?

You can’t ignore it.  You have to follow no matter where the journey leads you.

Such is life.  It is filled with heartache and bitterness.  It leaves scars and wounds so deep you think you’ll never recover.  It’s nothing that you can hide from.  Agreeing to take the journey is not so much about abandoning fear as it is agreeing to hope.

We take the journey because we hope.

And faith rests in hope.

A Voice in the Wilderness

A few years ago, there was a very popular grammar book (sort of seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it) entitled Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.  The title itself emphasized the importance of punctuation.  Does the panda on the cover eat shoots and leaves or does he bring a gun to the party, does he eat, shoot and leave?

We see some interesting punctuation placement in the Bible as well.  In Isaiah 40:3: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare a way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

But in Mark 1:3 the same phrase is rewritten slightly and changes the meaning completely.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

See the difference?  In Isaiah, the voice itself is not in the wilderness.  In Mark, the voice is most definitely residing in the wilderness, which as Biblical scholars will tell you, was an effort to link the passage to John the Baptist who, of course, lived in the wilderness.

Regardless of the changes made in Mark’s gospel, and the reasons for the change, I find the idea of a voice in the wilderness, crying out, to be much more moving.

It’s moving because we all live in the wilderness.  We do not live as John the Baptist did.  We are not dressed in animal skins (well most of us aren’t).  We aren’t hunters and gatherers, living off the land.  But we do live in a metaphorical wilderness, a cold, sometimes desolate, barren and lonely place.  It’s a place of struggle and suffering. 

Imagine a desert as far as the eye can see with the heat rippling in waves off the ground.  This place is our wilderness, a place of hunger and thirst.  And the scary part is that it is a place of mirages, a place to be fooled, a place to wind up like the cartoon characters, drinking sand we think is water.

But then out of this wilderness is a voice crying out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

What does this voice tell us?  Oh, many, many things.

It tells us we are not alone.  That has always struck me first about that line “a voice crying out in the wilderness,” that we are not alone.  There is someone else out there, someone who knows something about the world that we do not, a voice that even if the only thing it said was “hello” would still offer us more hope than we could dare to imagine.

But this voice offers something more.  Not only does it tell us we’re not alone.  It tells us that someone is coming.  Please note that the voice doesn’t tell us to go to the Lord, to try and find Him, the voice tells us that He is coming to us in the midst of our suffering and abandonment.  He is coming.

How beautiful.

A voice crying out …

You are not alone.

The Lord is coming.

There's a Snake in my Boot

One of my favorite lines from Toy Story 2 is Woody’s exclamation at discovering all the toys and accessories connected to the Sheriff Woody brand.  He is overjoyed and overwhelmed to discover that the world he thought he knew is so much larger.  Though he loves his owner, Andy and his friends like Buzz Lightyear and Bo Peep, it’s as if Woody has finally found his family.  He has a horse, Bullseye, and a new friend Jessie.

He has a whole world created just for him.  And when he explores that world he finds a toy boot with a spring loaded snake.  And here comes the line, delivered with perfect pausing by Tom Hanks:  “Oh look, there’s a snake … in my boot.”  It’s silly and I don’t know why I love the line so much.  Again I think it’s how Tom Hanks says it.  It’s cute.

I was thinking of that line today when I was walking the labyrinth at church.  I’m used to having things jump out at me or run from me.  I’ve startled my share of rabbits and lizards and birds and they’ve startled me right back.

But today was the first time I had seen a snake.

At first I thought it was a lizard, rising up out of the grass and slinking onto the six inch high fencing that marks the path.  But then I noticed the head was too flat and too round for a lizard and then I noticed the body was way too long.  The snake was only about a foot and a half long.  It was mostly black with a gray mottled head.

It looked harmless, but snakes in Florida scare me, so I kept my distance and just watched it.

It really was a beautiful thing.  At first I wanted there to be some message there.  Here I am walking a path, trying to be there with God and there’s a snake preventing me from getting to the center of the labyrinth.

But the more I watched the snake, the more that connection faded.  The snake was beautiful and lithe.  It rose up, peering up over the fencing and then twisted its way through a Simpson Stopper, hiding for a second before moving on through the path.

Because of the snake’s size and because of the fencing, the snake was really forced to “walk” the labyrinth with me.  It could only move in the same spiral pattern I was moving in.  And I wondered if snakes could think, what this one would be thinking. 

I’m sure the snake didn’t feel trapped, but I’m sure he probably wondered why he seemed only able to move in one direction.  Perhaps that’s why he stopped and climbed the shrub, so he could see just where he was.

And then, of course, I started thinking about perspective.   How are we similar to this poor snake?  Are we trapped by repetitive behavior?  Are we lost in a maze and don’t even realize it?  What does it take to change our behavior when it seems like we’re in rut, when we keep making the same mistakes over and over?

It takes perspective.  It takes focus.  It takes centering ourselves to God and allowing Him to guide us.

In the end that was what both the snake and I were doing, though the snake couldn’t have known.  We were both moving to the center of the labyrinth, searching for God.

Giant Yellow Flashlights

Henry is on an adventure.  We know this not just because he is headed deep into a darkened, abandoned, mine shaft, but because he has brought with him his trusty flashlight and not just any flashlight, but a giant, yellow Eveready, the kind with a battery seemingly large enough to power a small car.

When I was watching this episode of my new favorite show Once Upon a Time a few weeks ago, I felt an immediate kinship to the boy Henry because of that giant, yellow flashlight.  Months ago, I told the children at church during a Kid’s Talk, that I own many, many flashlights and I told them the reason was because I was afraid of the dark.  And while that statement was 100% true, my fascination with flashlights comes from more than just a fear of the dark, it comes from a love of adventure.

Every child is born curious.  Curiosity leads to exploration and while that exploration can sometimes be dangerous, we only grow when we explore, when we test boundaries and see what lies on the other side of the woods.

In Once Upon a Time, Henry doesn’t have to seek adventure; he lives it, unwillingly drawn into a fairy tale that has gone horribly wrong.  While the town he lives in, Storybrooke, Maine, seems like every other small town in America, Henry knows it is very different. His adopted mother is the evil queen from Snow White.  His teacher is Snow White.  His therapist (because really who wouldn’t need one at this point) is Jiminy Cricket.  Every person in the town, with the exception of Henry and his biological mother, is a character from the fairy tales trapped in an enchantment that has caused them to forget who they are.

Henry takes it upon himself to try and free the residents of Storybrooke by reminding them who they really are.  He is relentless, almost obnoxious in this quest.  He will do anything, lie, run away, cry, laugh, smile, and plot to free them.  It’s a difficult task because you can’t just go up to someone and tell them they’re Snow White.  Really.  No really, you’re Snow White—and not be thought crazy.  But Henry doesn’t give up even when the journey takes him to some truly frightening places.

When I was a kid, my thirst for adventure never got much farther than the backyard.  Lucky for me there was an abandoned hotel that sat smack up against our yard.  Those darkened windows, padlocked doors and burnt siding were a siren call for adventuresome children—namely those not named Kendra.  I wanted in the hotel.  I wanted to see what was inside, but I was scared to death of getting in trouble.

So I called my friend (we’ll call him Andrew) and told him I had found a way inside.  That was mostly a lie on my part.  I hadn’t really found a way, but I was sure Andrew would.  And sure enough, about five minutes after arriving at my house, he found a way inside the hotel through the rotted out cellar doors.  He took a candle down into the basement with him and I remember wishing he would take a flashlight, but when it came to adventures, flashlights were my thing and candles were Andrew’s.

He disappeared into the shadows.

A few minutes later, he raced back up the steps screaming.

“What?  What?” I asked him.

He gulped for breath and then started laughing.  “I sat on a frog,” he said.

I never made it inside the hotel, much to my parents’ relief I think.  The hotel was torn down a few years later.  And I had to be content to listening to Andrew’s tales of wonderment.

I wonder if I’ve changed any since childhood.  I think that I still long for adventure, for quests, for discovering new things, but I’m terrified too.  I wonder if I had been alive when Jesus was alive, if I had seen him collecting disciples and followers, would I have dropped everything and followed him or would I have worried about what my family would say, or who would take care of my cat while I was gone.

Quests and adventures come in all sizes from sneaking into spooky old buildings to saving a town from an evil curse.  And we have to weigh the call.   Perhaps trespassing doesn’t past the test, but surely saving thousands of people does.

I have my own giant, yellow, flashlight.  It’s sitting on the desk next to my computer.  It gets so little use it’s more of a decorative object.  It’s also a reminder.

To be ready.

Tent Pegs and signs of God's Awesomeness

One of the stories I still remember from Sunday school when I was a teenager is the story of Deborah and a woman named Jael. 

Deborah is a Judge.  She is the leader of Israel and a prophet.  Israel is being oppressed by the Canaanites and when the Israelites cry out to God to help them, God responds through Deborah.

Deborah calls to Barak and tells him that God is commanding him to take ten thousand men and meet King Jabin’s army led by a man named Sisera.  God then promises to deliver Sisera into Barak’s hand.

But for whatever reason, Barak isn't particularly anxious to rush into a battle, even one commanded to him by God, so he decides to test Deborah and God in Judges 4:8: “If you go with me, I will go: but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” 

In other words, Barak is saying to Deborah to put her money where her mouth is.  If she really believes Sisera’s army will be defeated, then she should have no problem coming with them. 

Deborah agrees to go with him but for his lack of faith, she tells him this in the very next verse: “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

That woman turns out to be Jael.

Jael is the wife of Heber the Kenite and since her clan has peace with King Jabin, when Sisera’s army is defeated, he seeks solace in Jael’s tent.  She gives no indication that she is his enemy.  She gives him milk to drink.  She puts him to bed, covers him up and seems to soothe him.

And then she takes a tent peg and a hammer and drives the peg through Sisera’s skull while he sleeps.  (Judges 4:17-21)

The Old Testament is filled with these sorts of stories.  From the plagues of Egypt to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the fabled walls of Jericho, the world of the Old Testament is a savage, frightening place.  It’s such a bloodbath, I have to wonder how anyone choosing sides, could have chosen anyone but God to stand behind.

Which is why the reading today from Isaiah surprised me in its tone.  Isaiah 40:1-2 says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term ….”

And then later these words in Isaiah 40:5: “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Do those words sound familiar?  They sing for me.  I can’t hear those words without hearing them sung.  Handel used them in his Messiah.  We hear them every Christmas. 

In the midst of stories filled with one horror after the next, we have Isaiah, a book of promises, that in the darkest times, our God is less a wrathful, vengeful God and more a God of redemption and salvation and restoration.  He is both all-powerful—no enemy can stand against Him—and all-loving—there is none kinder, none gentler, none more forgiving.

It sometimes hard for me to see that the violent, wrathful God of the Old Testament is the same gentle, loving, forgiving God of the New Testament.  But Isaiah, I think, acts as a bridge.  God is all these things and more.  He is an awesome God.

Lost in the Shelves

Recently, author Ann Patchett opened a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee.   It used to be that opening a bookstore, even one that was financed by a well-respected author like Patchett, wouldn’t be news.  But in an age when large bookstore chains like Borders are closing their doors, Patchett’s store, named Parnassus Books, is making headlines.

Patchett decided to open a bookstore in Nashville after discovering that the city itself didn’t have a bookstore other than several university stores.  It’s shocking to me that a city as large as Nashville could be without a bookstore and it saddens me even though I myself have contributed to this scenario.

I haven’t been to a bookstore in months.  These days I do all my shopping online either buying digital copies on my Kindle or physical copies off of amazon.com.  It used to be only a few years ago that I would make a trip to Barnes and Noble three or four times a week.  Even after I purchased a Kindle, I would still make that trip to B&N, bringing my Kindle with me.

Eventually my addiction to Barnes and Noble waned.  I wish I could say that I miss it, but I don’t.  Sometimes I get wistful for the days when I would peruse the shelves and find a book that I hadn’t been looking for but couldn’t live without.

Even though I have moved on from physical bookstores, it still distresses me that they are disappearing at an alarming rate.  I worry especially about small towns who are thrilled to have a Walmart, but have no place to get lost in among thousands of books.  Even libraries are having a hard time with funding these days.

I grew up in a small town.  We had a library and one bookstore, a small used bookstore named First Edition.  I still think that name’s priceless.  About once a week, or once every two weeks, we would make the hour drive to the mall and visit the tiny bookstore there, Walden Books.  And about once a year or every two years, we made the trip down I-95 to Florida, stopping at the same Little Professor that first night at the hotel.

Most of the books I owned as a kid were used books that I purchased or traded for at First Edition.  School Book Fairs, much more than they are now, were precious things.  Having so many new books right there at school—there is nothing better in all the world than new book smell.

The town library was a good size—it even had a second floor—but it was never large enough to get lost in.  That was what I wanted as a child.  I wanted a library or a bookstore that I could get lost in, that I could hide in, that I could find a nook to curl up in and read without worry of anyone bothering me.

It wasn’t until we moved to Ohio when I was sixteen that I got my first taste of the large chain bookstore that I could get lost in.  And a few years after that, I would wind up working in one.

Now those stores are dying and I’m at a loss as to how to save them.

Though I love the convenience of having a Kindle, I worry about a world where we are beholden to technology.  My books, my own written words, even my photographs do not exist as hard copies.  They are stored on technology that goes obsolete every few years.  Think about it.  A few months ago, I wrote about seeing a Fore-Edge Bible that was around 400 years old.  I personally own a Jules Verne book that was published and printed in the 19^th century.  We have books that are hundreds of years old, but I can’t even find a computer to play a floppy disk from ten years ago.

I worry that the death of the bookstore says something less about how we interact with the written word and says something more about how we interact with each other.  Places like Barnes and Noble thrived, not just because of their large selection of books, but because they offered a place for the community to gather. 

Years ago, people met in churches and community centers, at lodges and libraries.  Then they migrated to bookstores.  Both young and old gathering to play chess, to hold political debates, to finish math homework, to be tutored, to date, to write that first novel, to linger over a steaming cup of a coffee.

Where will people meet now?

I can only hope they would head back to church, but that is probably unlikely in the near future.  I can only hope that people will not substitute real human interaction with Facebook, email or cellphones.  Because we need human interaction.  We need to meet with people face to face.  The world is far too big and far too lonely to do it any other way.

And so I pray for Ann Patchett’s bookstore.  And I continue to have my own dreams of returning to my hometown one day and opening up a bookstore there.  I pray that people will continue to hunger for books.  I pray that everyone will one day know what it feels like to hold an old book in your hand, run your fingers along the brittle pages and tremble with this knowledge: Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote in The Shadow of the Wind, “Every book … has a soul.  The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.  Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

Advent

It seems hard to believe but today is the first Sunday of Advent.  It’s not even December yet.  I can’t even start opening the little windows and doors on my Advent calendar.  But because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, here we are in November lighting the first candle on the Advent wreath at church.

Today, instead of a sermon, my friend Judy presented a Godly Play lesson to the congregation.  It was the first lesson of Advent.  It was the beginning to a story we’re all familiar with, a story that takes place in a small town called Bethlehem. 

Because Judy was giving a demonstration of a lesson, she spoke in the same tones she uses with the children and I thought the tone was perfect for the story.  Her tone was gentle, soothing, and I guess because we all know how the story ends, that this perfect little child will one day brutally die on the cross for all of us, Judy’s tone was also somewhat haunting and mysterious.

Stories are special that way.  They draw us in.  They open our eyes to things previously unseen.  They speak to us in ways that normal conversation cannot.  They stir our imagination.  They allow us to feel and to hope.

Recently I read the novel Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu.  It’s the story of a little girl who loves fairy tales whether they be written by Tolkien, Lewis or L’Engle.  When a strange woman kidnaps her best friend, the girl follows them into the forest, a forest populated by characters from the stories of Hans Christian Andersen.

There is a quote from this novel that I have fallen in love with, a quote about the power of stories.  It reads as follows:  “Now you know the world is more than it seems to be.  You know this, of course, because you read stories.  You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift underneath it.  And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people—a great many people—who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes.  But we know better.”

Stories allow us to believe in things we cannot see.

Now the story of Jesus and his birth in Bethlehem is no fairy tale.  But, at the same time, none of us were there to witness it.  A good storyteller can bring the event to life.  A good storyteller sets the scene. Who were Jesus’ parents?  Why were they running?  Where were they running to?  Why a manger?  There’s a sense of urgency, but a sense of great anticipation as if the whole universe were holding its breath.

Who doesn’t want to know what happens next?

This is Advent.

It is a story filled with great joy and great drama and great danger.

To tell the story in a day would do it no justice, but to let it unfold slowly over the course of a month allows us a chance to savor each moment and recognize how glorious and special the birth of Jesus is.

Shine

In Exodus chapter 34 verses 29-35, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the two (new) tablets of the covenant.  Can you imagine what he’s thinking?  After all, the last time he came down from the mountain with tablets, he wound up smashing them after seeing the golden calf the Israelites had built to worship while he was gone.  Exodus 32:19 says, “Moses’ anger burned hot.”

I think that’s probably an understatement.

So here is Moses coming down from Mount Sinai for the second time with tablets.  Is he angry?  Is he holding that anger back right under the surface, ready to explode?  Or is he resigned?  Is he tired?  I tend to think at this point, he’s probably pretty tired.  Praying to God can be exhausting in and of itself.  But actually meeting God?  Standing in His presence, taking notes as God lays the foundation for an entire civilization. 

It sounds exhausting.

Moses comes down from the mountain and is undoubtedly so fatigued he doesn’t even notice something very important.  Exodus 34:29-30 says, “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking to God.  When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.”

Maybe Moses thinks they are afraid to come near him because they are worried he might throw something again.  Maybe he sees them all take one giant step back from him and sighs.  Clearly, he is unaware of how being in the presence of God had changed him.  Exodus doesn’t say who tells Moses to figuratively powder his nose, but it’s probably Moses’ go to guy, Aaron.

From that day on, Moses wears a veil.  When he speaks to God, he removes the veil.  And after he shares God’s word with the Israelites, he replaces the veil, because otherwise he is almost impossible to look at.

Yesterday, during the Eucharist preceding the election of our next bishop, I received Holy Communion from Bishop Hugo and I realized something then about Bishop Hugo and about some other people I have met in my life, like Sister Julie, the nun I adored as a child.  I realized that there are people today who still shine.

There are people who, much like how a nail becomes magnetized if you rub it against a magnet, spend so much time with God that some of His divine presence rubs off on them.

People like Bishop Hugo and Sister Julie don’t have to say anything.  All they have to do is look at you and there is something in their eyes that tells you they have seen God.  When Bishop Hugo looks at me, I feel he is looking straight to my soul.  When Sister Julie looked at me when I was a child, I felt God’s loving kindness in a way that was pure and perfect and unsullied by the sins of the world.

Moses was chosen.

Matthew 22: 14 says, “For many are all called, but few are chosen.” The only thing that separates us from the saints is our willingness to say yes, our willingness to move forward, to check out strange sights like a burning bush that doesn’t consume the bush, branches or leaves, our willingness to spend time in God’s presence and listen, really listen, and stay for a while there with Him.

And then we too can shine.

God doesn’t just command saints.

He commands us all.  Matthew 5:16 says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Do not cover yourself as Moses did.  But that light shine.

Harmony

For a while I tried to convince myself it wasn’t the tire.  The car was shuddering and shaking so violently, I thought it might fall apart right there on the highway, but I told myself all I needed to do was find my groove.  I kept speeding up and then slowing down, trying to find that perfect speed where the car wouldn’t shake.  Once or twice I thought I found it, but the vibrations always crept back, slowly and then more vigorously. 

And then, despite my earlier denial, the tread ripped off the tire and I found myself on the side of the highway, my Road Ranger angel only seconds behind me.

Yesterday, I took my car in to get two new tires and while I was there, I asked them to take a look at my brakes too.  An hour later, the mechanic came back to get me.

“Can I show you something?” he said.

I followed him back to the garage where they were working on my car.  The mechanic held something up for me to look at.  “See this?” he said.  “This is a brake pad.  See how it has a pad?”  He motioned me to look at my own car.  “See how you don’t have one?  That’s metal on metal.”

“That would explain the burning smell,” I told him, trying to smile even though I felt like crying at the thought of spending more money.

An hour later, I was back on the road and it felt wonderful.  The shimmying and shaking was gone from the back end.  It felt like driving on a cloud.  And when I braked, it didn’t sound like the world was coming to end or smell like the fires of Hell were about to open up under me.

Just the other night at Alpha, I was telling people how when I do what God wants me to do everything is beautifully and gloriously smooth.  It’s only when I’m on the wrong path that things seem horribly discordant.  Sort of like driving on a bad tire and thinking I can find the groove even as the vibrations are causing enough friction to rip the tire apart.

Two nights ago, I should have pulled over.  I should have turned around.  I was so determined to get to class, I sacrificed my own safety and were it not for God’s watchful presence, I don’t know what might have happened.  I’m still amazed my tread could rip off going 70 mph and I never lost control of the car.  That’s crazy.  It was almost disastrous. 

I think back to this summer when I kept trying to get my air conditioning fixed and every time I tried, something horrible happened, increasing in horribleness each time I tried, until finally I said, “Stop.”

Now the air conditioning still isn’t fixed, but once I stopped trying to fix it, it was like this weight had been lifted from me.  I can’t know God’s plan here totally except to suspect that the money I would have spent fixing the air is going to be needed elsewhere.

Over the past few months I have been driving on bad tires both literally and figuratively, figuratively in the sense that even though I knew I didn’t have the energy to teach, go to school and attend church during the week as I had been, I kept going—until I blew that figurative tire and wound up in the hospital. 

I thought I could find a groove.  For a while, I considered giving up one of the three, teaching, school or church when the answer was actually more subtle and simple.

I had known for a few weeks that the back tire was bad.  I should have fixed it.

And I had known for the past few years that my health was bad.  I should have fixed it sooner.

Now that I have the time off, I hope to heal in such a way that my life becomes as smooth as my car ride is currently.

What things are you wrestling with in your own life?  What things do you need to let go of?  What things do you need to fix?  Stop trying to find grooves and take a step back.  Grooves are small and thin and require a lot of energy to maintain.  Paths, on the other hand, are wide and clearly marked.

Take a step back and find the path, not the groove.

Drive

I was driving down the highway to class last night and knew almost right away I was in trouble.  I hadn’t driven my car at a high rate of speed in weeks and I had forgotten how much the back end was shimmying and how bald the back tire was and now I was driving at 70 mph praying that tire wouldn’t blow.

Lately, getting to class has been a struggle.  Three weeks ago, a rock flew up and hit and cracked my windshield.  I still made it to class.  Two weeks ago, I was in the hospital the day of class.  Last week, class was cancelled.

So even though I was driving with a ticking time bomb of a tire, I was determined to get to class.

I prayed to God.  I asked for the same Angel of God that followed the Israelites out of Egypt to go before me and behind me, to swallow me in a bubble of protection.  Just let me make it to class.

I made it half way when the tire blew.  Actually, the tread fell off.  This is not the first time this has happened to me.  Treads shouldn’t fall off tires these days, unless you’re driving a big rig, but they fall off for me.  Last time, I was almost home, going 40 mph.  Now I was far away from home and going much, much faster.

But I didn’t lose control.  I was in the fast lane and traffic was heavy, but I was still able to pull over to the shoulder without getting hit.  I sat for a moment, ready to kick myself for driving on a tire I knew was bad and then I got out and took a look.

At first it didn’t even look bad.  The tire wasn’t even flat yet.  But then I moved around the back and saw that the tread was shredded and had peeled off a quarter of the way.

As soon as I stood up from looking at the tire, a truck pulled up behind me.  The lettering on the hood of the truck said “Road Ranger” and I would find out later that the truck was one of many employed by Orange County to patrol the highway looking for stranded motorists.  I asked the man how much he would charge for changing the tire and he said that it was free.

Fifteen minutes later I was back on the road.

A friend of mine told me that those guys are never around when you need them.  But here was this man right behind me, not ten minutes after I had prayed for an angel to follow me.

There are so many lessons here.  I really don’t even know where to begin.  But I think there are two things going on here.  I’m going to address one today and one tomorrow in this blog.

Yesterday, I finished reading Stephen King’s new book 11/22/63.  I won’t spoil anything except to say that it is a book about a man, Jake, trying to change the past, trying, in this case, to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  But every time he gets close to changing the past, sometimes in little ways, sometimes in larger, the past intervenes.  Cars break down.  Jake is attacked.  The past works against Jake every second, trying to preserve history.

Sometimes in our own lives, we feel the world is conspiring against us and—I’m going to say it—sometimes the world is.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Whether you believe in the devil or not, whether you believe the enemy acts aggressively in people’s lives, believe this—when you try to do something good, when you have moved and positioned your life on the path to God, there will be things that happen that try and knock you off.  Temptations will be greater, maybe because you’ll notice them more, and weird and strange things will happen, like rocks to your windshield and shredded tires.

But good things will happen too because God always has your back.

A few weeks ago, when I drove home from school in excruciating pain, not knowing if I would make it home at all, an ambulance drove behind me most of the way.

And last night, a “road ranger” followed me and took care of me when I found myself on the side of the road.

The world is a harsh place, but God lives there with us.  He inhabits every molecule, every atom and when you start looking for Him, you will be amazed at all the places He shows Himself.

Running Blind

When I was in the hospital a few weeks ago, the TV became my best friend.  I was blessed with a private room, but when I didn’t have visitors I was incredibly lonely and more than a little freaked out about where I was.  For example I treasure doors that lock.  Lying in my bed that night all I could think was what was to stop some crazy person from just walking into my room?

I left the TV on the whole night.  Periodically little messages from the hospital would pop up on the screen asking if you wanted to learn more about “avoiding the flu” or “preventing falls.”  And every time I clicked no.  Even when I had vertigo years ago, I never fell.  I wasn’t going to waste my time watching a video on it.

And while I didn’t fall that night in the hospital, I did have to laugh at myself, because I repeatedly ran and bumped into things in my room.  I wasn’t on any medication that I wasn’t normally on but somehow just being in the hospital was completely disorienting. 

In order to use the bathroom, I had to unplug the IV machine from the wall and then wheel the IV into the bathroom with me.  And since they were pumping me non-stop full of fluids, that was a frequent occurrence.  Every time I got up, though, that plug fought me to come out of the wall and I wound up banging my knuckles on the bedpost.  And every time I leaned over to get a better look at the plug, I bumped my head on this knob sticking out of the wall.

(It was only a few days ago that I realized the sore spot on my forehead was from that knob.)

And every time I walked into the bathroom, I banged my shoulder or my hip or my knee on the wall or a door frame.  It was a comedy of errors.

If you have been keeping up with my blog for the past six months or so, you know that while I may have literally been disoriented in the hospital, I have been figuratively disoriented, lost and frustrated in my life recently.  Every time I try to do something it seems like I’m running a maze blind.  And since I’m running, every time I hit a dead end, I hit it hard.

Think back to this summer when I tried over and over to get my air conditioning fixed and every time I called someone out, something bad happened.  What started as a simple leak grew into something that involved the copper pipes and then the unit itself.  Fixing it meant going through the downstairs neighbor’s condo, but when they tried that, they broke her pipes leading to her water heater.  When they said they were going to need a jackhammer, I told them no and sent them on their way.

And then there has been my struggle with wanting to go to seminary fulltime and being frustrated because I don’t have the energy to work, go to school and go to church.  It got to such a point that a couple of months ago, I leaned forward in my chair at work and got ready to march down to the principal and give her my two-weeks-notice.  I didn’t know what I was going to do for money; I just knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.

All the while I kept thinking about Jesus asleep on the boat during the storm.  I kept thinking about his delay in saving the synagogue ruler’s daughter and I tried to remind myself that God always has a plan and that, yes, sometimes we are completely blind to it.

As I sat that day in my classroom ready to give my two-weeks-notice, a still small voice managed to break through all the noise in my head.

It was just two words.

They weren’t poetic, but they were profound and the message was for me and me alone.

Two words:  Health Insurance.

As soon as I heard those words, I sat back in my chair and knew without a doubt that I could not quit my job any time soon.  The seminary had made it clear that their insurance was not for people with a chronic condition and whatever these fevers were that had been plaguing me for two years, they were most definitely chronic and most definitely in need of healing.

At the time, I wasn’t in a fever/pain cycle, but the cycle returned a few weeks later, pain worse than ever and sending me to the hospital which I most definitely needed insurance for.

Two words kept me in my job and I am so thankful for those two words because I have since discovered too that the reason I didn't have the energy to teach, go to school and be involved in church is also related to my health.  And I'm hoping that once I feel better, I'll be able to return to teaching with a rediscovered sense of purpose, with a renewed love.  Because I do love teaching.  I know that now more than ever.  I still want to go to seminary fulltime.  But I also know that teaching was my first love and will always be special to me.  And I can't wait to get back to the classroom.

I can’t tell you not to run blindly down the maze of life because that’s exactly what I plan on doing.  It’s in my nature to hurry, to want to get where I’m going already.  But I can tell you that when you hit those brick walls hard, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and turn around and try another way.  Don’t keep running down the same dark, dead end path.

God knows our lives.  He sees it all, past, present and future laid out before Him.  Trusting Him is a lifelong journey, one in which we can only pray that He’ll give us the strength for.

Moment in Faith

When Pastor Debbie asked me the other day if I would do a Moment in Faith this Sunday, I said what I always say to her when she asks me to do something, “Of course, sure, no problem.”  It didn’t matter that I was in a hospital bed at the time and she was sitting across from said hospital bed visiting me.

I just kind of laughed to myself and thought, “Wow, Pastor Debbie sure does have a lot of faith.”

When I went to see my doctor this past Monday morning, I knew I wasn’t feeling well and I knew I hadn’t been feeling well for quite some time.  But I had no idea that she was going to suggest admitting me to the hospital that day.  And it goes to show how sick I felt that I didn’t argue with her.  The only thing I argued with her about was going back to school that morning so that I could get everything together for the time I would be out.

“You can’t call someone?” the doctor asked me.

“No,” I said, “I need to be there in person.”

On the way out of the doctor’s office I called ahead to school and told them I would need coverage for the rest of the day and for the week.  I mentioned that I would be going to the hospital, but that I was coming in to get plans together.

By the time I got to school, a crowd of my friends had gathered by the door.  I had come to work because I figured there were a thousand things I needed to do.  But when I got there, I discovered that most of those things had already been done for me.  Teachers had been found to cover my classes.  A friend was driving me to the hospital and other teachers were covering her classes.  Someone else was making copies for me.  Someone else was driving my car home.  Someone else was in charge of the car key.  The front office staff was taking care of substitutes for the week.  Anything I could think of was already done.

Not one person asked that day, “Do I have the time to help Kendra?”  Not one person said, “I’m too busy.”

Because true giving is not something we do with our brains, it’s something we do with our hearts. 

When I think of true giving, I think of the Stations of the Cross hung up here around the church.  Everyone knows that my mother made those and donated them to us.  In my blog, I have written more of the story of how those stations came to be, so indulge me for a minute as I tell the story again.

I think it was last spring that Pastor Debbie mentioned wanting Stations of the Cross.  At first, I thought maybe I could make them, but when I thought about it, I knew I was the wrong person.  I knew the right person was my mom.  When I was little, my mom lived to make art, whether it be paintings or crafts, she was always at work. 

Lately, though, over the past fifteen or twenty years, my mom has not been able to do very many art projects, so when I asked her if she would do the Stations of the Cross, she hesitated for a moment, but just a moment.  In the end, she made those stations out of love for me and out of love for God.

My mom never asked for money for them.  Every time I offered, she turned it down.  She never asked herself, “Can I afford this?” because the answer would have been no.  She lives on disability.  She couldn’t even mail the stations until she had gotten her check.  She didn’t let the “how” bog her down.  She just concentrated on the “doing.”

She gave from her heart.

It is only when we give from the heart that we are truly blessed.

His Pleasure

It has not been a happy two weeks.

I despise pain.

I hate being cooped up.

I used to love my couch.  Now I think it’s time we broke up.

I miss being able to walk freely.  I miss being able to amble. 

In the midst of this all, though, in the midst of a pity party free for all, I have managed to rediscover two passions that I had been long without, two passions I had ignored for so long I had forgotten that I even missed them.

For instance, I find myself staying up late to read again.  I can’t put books down even as the hours tick away.  It has been a long time since I’ve been unable to put a book down, a long time since I’ve told myself “just one more page,” and then went on reading another hour.  I did that this past week twice, with the new biography on Steve Jobs and with a young adult fantasy novel.

Reading and writing.  For most of my life, they were the only two hobbies I knew to list when someone asked what I did with my free time.  And I’ve neglected both the past year and a half, mostly because I no longer have free time.

Yesterday I wrote my first short story in years.  Inspired by the Dystopian novels I read a few weeks ago, I wrote a story about three scrappy, wounded and sometimes downright unlikeable kids fighting to stay alive in a world decimated by plague.  They were loyal to each other, to a fault and the more I wrote about them, the more I fell in love with them.

When I write a story or a novel, I always have a beginning, middle and end in mind.  I always have a framework.  And sometimes, if I’m lucky, something magical happens.  The characters flesh out and begin to dictate their own story.  Sometimes they know better than me.

All yesterday, I kept thanking God for giving me this story, for giving me these characters to love.  It had been so long since I had felt that way.  It had been so long since I had last written fiction.  And it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

In the movie, Chariots of Fire, runner Eric Liddell says this:  “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast.  And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

That is how I feel when I write, when I write beautifully and honestly, when I tell a true story even in a fictional construction.  I feel God’s pleasure wash over me.

The past few years I have felt the joy of responding to the call of God to the priesthood, but I’ve been neglecting the first gift He ever gave me, the love of story.

And it’s taken pain and physical illness to remind me that God calls me to do two things, to be His priest and to write beautifully for His pleasure.

One day, I’m quite certain, those two calls will intersect and what a glorious day that will be.

Love's Labour's Lost

It doesn’t take much for me to get cabin fever.

It’s one thing if it’s my choice to stay inside, but too many days of rain, or too many days of a bad back keeping me couch bound, and I start to go a little stir crazy.

Thanks to my back, I’ve spent much of the last four days on the couch. I didn’t even go to church this morning which is never a good thing for my mental and spiritual health. During the past four days, I have maintained some semblance of sanity by sleeping a lot and reading a lot.

In fact I read four books over three days, four young adult books (I’ll always be a teacher in my heart—I’ll always be looking for the next great novel that will inspire my kids). The four books were Unwind by Neal Shusterman, Matched by Ally Condie, Delirium by Lauren Oliver and A Year without Autumn by Liz Kessler.

A Year without Autumn is the story of a girl who manages to travel backward and forward through time thanks a supernatural elevator. It’s a pretty typical coming of age story, how we grow apart from our friends, but it is also a story about fate. How much of our lives is predetermined? Can we change the future?

The other three novels could all be classified as dystopian novels. Dystopian novels present a view of a future that has gone awry. They can be post-apocoalyptic novels like Stephen King’s The Stand, or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. They can be visions of a future where democracy has failed and various dictators or dictatorial groups rule. Think Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Dystopian novels for teenagers are all the rage right now in the same way that a few years ago, it seemed no books could be published that didn’t have a vampire or werewolf in it.

Two of the novels I just read, Matched and Delirium deal specifically with love. Matched presents a world where your every move is predicted by a computer and a computer decides who you will marry. Again, it asks the question how much control do we have over our lives.

Delirium presents a world where love is considered a disease and, upon turning eighteen, people are cured of this disease through brain surgery. Children are taught that Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale. Love can kill. Parts of the Bible are rewritten and, it seems, that any mention of Jesus—as one would expect—has been completely erased.

The plot of the novel follows a girl, weeks away from her “cure,” as she falls in love.

In this Sunday’s gospel reading Matthew 22:34-46, Jesus is once again tested by those pesky Pharisees. “Which commandment is the greatest?” they ask him. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” he tells them and then follows that with, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

In her sermon today (which I had to read since I wasn’t there in person), Pastor Debbie touches upon the fact that words like “love” and “heart” are so used and overused and sometimes wrongly used that they have lost the force and the power that Jesus intended them to have when he used them with the Pharisees.

Pastor Debbie points out that Jesus doesn’t ask you to love. He demands it.

These are the two greatest commandments, beautiful in their simplicity and frightful in what they require. No matter what we do in life, if we have any questions as to whether or not we are doing the right thing, we only have to refer back to love. But at the same time, we also don’t have a choice as to when we can follow these commandments. God expects us to follow them at all times, not just when it’s convenient for us.

In that way, love becomes a powerful and dangerous thing, because doing the right thing is not always the popular thing, it’s not always the most comfortable thing. It requires us to be more than we think we can be, more than we want to be. It requires us to be action oriented. People who love do not do so passively.

It is why so many dystopian novels focus on love, focus on squashing it, or controlling it. In Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a dystopian dictatorship is destroyed simply by stating the word love.

That is the love that Jesus talks about, something so powerful it can change the universe.

A Dream Deferred

This past Friday, I walked outside during one of my planning periods to get better 3G reception on my Kindle, but it was so nice out that even after I downloaded the material I wanted, instead of going back inside, I sat on a bench in front of the school and read.

The sky was bright blue and the air had a touch of autumn in it. It was so peaceful reading out there, so perfect, that I wondered why it had taken me 12 years to step outside, why it had taken me 12 years to realize that the outside world didn’t disappear when I stepped foot in my classroom.

Sometimes I’m just blind.

Sometimes I’m stubborn.

I was eighteen before I tried a strawberry, because how could anything with so many seeds be any good. Low and behold it was wonderful.

Sometimes I’m afraid.

I didn’t learn how to swim until I was sixteen.

Sometimes I wonder what all three: blindness, stubbornness and fear have kept me from all these years.

This past Tuesday at seminary, my professor made an allusion to Langston Hughes’ poem "A Dream Deferred." It’s one of my favorite poems and as soon as I heard the words “raisin in the sun,” Tuesday night, I was googling the poem, pulling it up during class.

Here are the words that move me most: “What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?/… Or does it explode?”

How many dreams have I deferred in life without even realizing it? How many dreams have I passed on the street and never made eye contact with? How many dreams have I run from? How many dreams have I thrown away because they couldn’t possibly be for me? What has happened to those dreams? Where did they go?

Of course as soon as I reread the poem the other night, I thought about the priesthood, about seminary, how not going to seminary fulltime makes me feel like I’m deferring a dream, and much like in the poem, I worry about what such a deferment will do to me, spiritually.

I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks about Langston Hughes and Steve Jobs. Who would have thought those two names would ever be used in the same sentence? But they were both visionaries and both hungry for what mattered in life.

Again, I go back to Steve Jobs’ Stanford speech. He says, in reference to finding work you love, “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

What is our purpose in life? It’s an important question, one posed, I’m sure, centuries and millennia before Rick Warren turned it into a book.

What is our purpose? What is it that God wants us to do with our lives? What gifts has He given us? How will we make use of those gifts? These are the great questions of anyone’s life and I would add one more to that.

I think finding our purpose in life is the easy part. It’s the joy-filled part. It’s the thing that gets us up in the morning. The hard part is fulfilling that purpose. The hard part is living the dream even when it seems the world is conspiring to tear it from our grasp.

How do we hold on?

Before the crucifixion, the disciples knew exactly what their purpose in life was. They had been fishermen, some of them, but Jesus had set them on a new path. They were followers. They went where he went. They ate what he ate. They slept where he slept.

But then Jesus died.

In his book Beautiful Outlaw, John Eldredge describes a scene from the Bible that I was unfamiliar with. It is from John 21:1-14. Jesus is dead. Seven of the disciples are out fishing when a man appears on the shore and asks them if they’ve caught anything. When they declare they haven’t, he tells them “cast the net to the right side of the boat.” Immediately, they have so many fish, they can't even haul them into the boat.

They suddenly realize that the man on the shore is Jesus and when Peter makes that realization, instead of waiting to turn the boat around and head back to shore, he jumps into the sea and starts swimming to Jesus even though they are more than a football field away.

Eldredge points out that though the Bible does not say what happened the moment Peter reached the shore, he expects that Peter and Jesus engaged in a long embrace.

I said in an earlier blog that our life journey is to seek out what God intends for us and then not to let go even when the seas get rough.

In fact, we need to be more like Peter. Peter thought he had lost the one thing he cared about more than anything else in the world, but when he found it again, he didn’t wait, he leapt in and used every bit of his will and determination to bring him to Jesus. And then he grabbed hold of Jesus and didn’t let go.

God is the one constant in our lives, the One who forever lives and loves. He is unchanging. And it is to Him that we need to reach for when our dreams seem just out of reach.