One life

I have been teaching childbirth classes at a crisis pregnancy center here in RI.

It has been a little bit slow to start. For my first couple of series of classes I had one or two young mothers who would skip one or two of the classes. Some nights I would show up and no one would be there at all.

But we kept trying. The center's coordinator and I sat down and made a schedule for the classes for the whole year so now she can fit clients in according to due dates. People are starting to show up. Clients are coming in with their boyfriends or husbands.

I feel humbled and grateful that I can help these women prepare for their births. Some of them are confused and scared and I can reassure them that for at least this aspect of parenting, they can be prepared. And I help the dads, too. If the boyfriends or husbands show up, I teach them what to do to support their women during labor. I honor them for being a part of it. We are setting the stage for them to be active participants as parents and I tell you, you can see transformation happen before your very eyes. This is a miracle of God's grace.

Lots of times we get women who want to keep their babies and are looking for some support. But sometimes women who were planning abortions come to the center and change their minds. Sometimes those women end up in my class.

'Why do women who are planning an abortion come to the center in the first place?' I asked the coordinator.

She answered simply, 'The Lord brings them here.'

Which tells me that even in the midst of the chaos of fear, they are open, ever so slightly, to whisperings of God.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

My new boyfriend

It has been developing slowly, but I am pretty convinced that my 3 1/2 pound rabbit, Theo, has fallen in love with me.

Lately, when I am lying on my bed, reading, he will jump up and come over for a snuggle. He takes his turn getting scratched, then returns the favor by licking my hand. If I try and pat him at that point, he actually gets mad and shoos my hand away.

Last night, I came home late. I crawled into bed in the dark and all of a sudden realized that Theo was bouncing around on the bed. I was laughing my head off, especially when he started walking across my sleeping husband.

Sigh. I am in love.

A collect for those who need continuing care

Today I pray for those who are battling chronic illness:

Look with mercy, O God our Father, on all persons who have become ill, weak, distressed, or isolated. Provide for them homes of dignity and peace; give them understanding helpers, and the willingness to accept help; and increase their faith and their assurance of your love. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

BCP

confidential to P+

Mat 25:32	Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
Mat 25:33	and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.
Mat 25:34	Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
Mat 25:35	for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
Mat 25:36	I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'
Mat 25:37	Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink?
Mat 25:38	And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?
Mat 25:39	And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'
Mat 25:40	And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

Why I love church, reason # 345

This week I have been in a blue funk. My oldest kid is still in Maine with his friends and I have been caught by surprise at how incomplete the household has felt. Also, one of my friends has been gravely ill and I visited him last week... and while that in itself is a good thing, I always feel frustrated by how much I haven't done. How much I can't do. How much this whole thing is in God's hands.

Yesterday I drove to Fall River for a drumming class and found, to my dismay, that even that wasn't enough to pull my from my depression. I got in the car to come home and cried, for no reason at all. Just because.

Today, I got up early, hoping to bring my sick friend with me to Grace, but he called to say he was too sick to go. I promised to say prayers for him.

When I got to church, I shared with friends that I was feeling punky. Then I noticed a young woman looking a little lost. I asked if it was her first time and she said, in broken English, that yes, it was. It turned out she is a South Korean exchange student visiting for the first time. I was flying solo today, so I asked her to join me.

Later, I was on the healing prayer team during communion. It was amazing to be praying for my fellow congregants. Truly, it feels like a privilege.

And then, after everyone had drifted back to their pews, I turned to my prayer partner and told her that my friend was ill and needed prayers. And suddenly, without warning, I started crying and said

"I feel like I have been a shitty friend to him."

At which point, the complexity of all my feelings around my friend's health crisis came to the surface.

So her prayers were for my friend, AND for me.

I got some prayers, said some prayers, made a new friend, and got to take communion with Jesus, all in one morning.

I love church.

What if?

What if you lived life as a ministry? What if you chose your work to be of service to God? What would it look like?

Many readers of this blog are, in fact, God's workers. You have dedicated your life to ministry in an official capacity, going to work for the Big Guy in churches large and small. Some of you are community ministers, too. Ministering to the poor, the disadvantaged, the indigent or mentally ill.

Lately I have been grappling with what it means to live a life of service. I have been inviting God to take me up on my offer to be of service to him. I don't know yet, what it looks like, but I know that there are already things I am doing that feel like ministry.

My kids, for example, are perhaps the greatest ministry of all for me. And my childbirth classes. The Lectio group at church. For the last couple of weeks, pinch hitting for my rector at the bible study. Serving dinner to my friends at the soup kitchen. Praying the office.

Living a life of service changes you, I think. The other day, I heard that one of my son's schoolmates was caught smoking pot. In another life, my first concern would be fear for my son. Worry that HE would somehow get involved with this kid and his drugs. And that fear was there, of course. But my first thought was that this kid needs an adult desperately. He needs healing. He is a deeply troubled kid. I am praying for him. And maybe, at some point I will be given an opportunity to talk with him. I pray for the Holy Spirit to help me be of service to this boy. In the mean time, I had a word with my son and we talked about why drugs are a very bad choice. It was a great conversation.

What if we all lived a life of ministry?

What would the world look like?

What would our lives look like?

It's not just me

That shifty thing seems to be catchy.

My brother lost his job this week. After 13 years, he was given two weeks' notice during a major restructuring. It wasn't just him. Every employee was laid off. The entire staff was given the pink slip.

Today in the paper I read that the electric monopoly here in RI wants to raise their rates by 21%.

Gas is $4.10 a gallon.

My oil bill was $900 to fill the tank last time and that was before the price of oil spiked.

Holy Shit. Moving to Vietnam is starting to look like a reasonable option. Anyone want to join me?

In other news, we are reading the book of Acts in our bible study and I am being reminded why it is one of my favorite books of the bible. I love the story of the Simon the magician and of Peter, who really mans up in this book. No more bumbling goofus. Nope, he is one tough cookie by this point.

Reading Acts with my friends at church is a sure fire way to keep me from being swallowed by fear. That and reading the daily office.

Here is today's psalm:

Psalm 142 Voce mea ad Domine

1	I cry to the LORD with my voice; * to the LORD I make loud supplication.
2	I pour out my complaint before him * and tell him all my trouble.
3	When my spirit languishes within me, you know my path; * in the way wherein I walk they have hidden a trap for me.
4	I look to my right hand and find no one who knows me; * I have no place to flee to, and no one cares for me.
5	I cry out to you, O LORD; * I say, "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living."
6	Listen to my cry for help, for I have been brought very low; * save me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me.
7	Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your Name; * when you have dealt bountifully with me, the righteous will gather around me.

The airline conspiracy

They won.

$300 in fees. Hours on the phone. Endless attempts at being patient with people who clearly could care less about any of it.

No trip to Newfoundland.

So, I finally get credit for our air miles. I transfered, at considerable non-refundable expense, some of my parent's miles so we would have enough for the flights to Canada. And then I call to make the reservations and there is exactly one flight to St. Johns available for the entire month of August, which flies out of Boston, via Toronto. We would land in St. Johns at 3am. But the single available return flight is 13 days later... which is impossible for us. In other words, Air Canada, United's nefarious demon-possessed partner in crime, has blacked out the entire summer for air miles users. And because Air Canada is run by the government, they don't have to play by any rules at all. They ARE the rules.

1 flight. For the entire month.

I give up.

I now have 100K miles which we are unable to use. I called my folks to tell them the bad news on Saturday.

Dad called me back this morning with a counter proposal. We think we are going to drive to Nova Scotia and hang out together at the halfway point for a week.

Airlines (all of them) be damned.

It's grim out there

I was reading a CNN.com article about what is going on in Zimbabwe. Things are deteriorating. Violence escalating.

And then, I got to this-

Watch people run in fear »

That is so bad it is almost funny.

I didn't watch. Instead, I wondered who came up with that tag for the video? And what kind of a world do we live in, anyway?


Lord, help me keep my eyes on you today.

The breaking point

was when I sat on the phone for over an hour this morning talking to a 'supervisor' in the United Airlines Mileage Plus call center in Manila, trying, for the 5th or 6th time, to get my air miles credited from our trip to Vietnam.

After 3 months of phone calls, letters, emails, more phone calls, I actually broke down and started crying on the phone.

We will not be able to fly to Canada this summer to see my parents if the miles don't get credited because we can't afford the $3200 it will cost to fly to Newfoundland. At this point, even if they DO credit the miles, it is looking unlikely that we will get them in time to get flights.

The worst thing is that the people they have manning the phones in Manila are like talking to a computer. Absolutely NO sense that you are dealing with a human being.

So there I was, an hour into the call, bawling my brains out, and the guy on the other end of the phone just kept repeating the same thing over and over again. 'We will send an email to Rapid City. No we can't call them. No we can't expedite this. No we have no record that you ever called."

I hate United Airlines.


edited to add:

I didn't work in call centers for 10 years for nothing. I found the back door toll number to the office in Rapid City, SD and called to speak to a nice woman who was able to fix the problem in less than 10 minutes. 3 months and 10 minutes later. Sigh.

For Father's day

In tenth grade, when I was in the midst of a miserable year at public high school, I had to get up at 6:00 to catch a bus at 6:30.

Almost every morning my father made me breakfast. My favorite was a bagel with cream cheese and red onion and a cup of black coffee.

Thanks, Dad. I have never forgotten that.

A vestige of my past life

During spiritual direction, I said that I somehow got the idea that the farther we are along our Christian path, the less likely we are to experience emotional pain and suffering. In other words, as we grow less attached to the world around us, and more attached to God, we should hurt less.

Where, dear reader, did I get this idea? There is nothing in the scriptures that promises that. In fact, it is basically the opposite. 'Pick up your cross daily' is not a promise that being a Christian will be a walk in the park.

And for me, it goes further. Somewhere in my head, I began to equate pain and suffering (especially emotional pain) with....sin.

I realize that when I am in pain, when I am suffering, I start looking around for a sin to blame. (And unlike Job, I usually can find something!) I have an underlying belief that I am inevitably the cause of my own suffering, through some sin or other. Not only that, I realize that I have a sense of shame around pain. I want to hide my pain because it is shameful.

Is this my past, new age, theology rearing it's ugly head? Is this the whole 'you draw this energy to yourself' stuff?

I remember when my friend Steve died of a drug overdose several years ago. I was devastated. But I knew that he was with God... off to a better place. I felt like I wasn't 'spiritual' enough if I was experiencing this much pain over his death. Thank God for the priest at the funeral, who preached on Jesus crying with Mary and Martha at Lazarus' grave. I suddenly felt permission to cry, to grieve.

I sometimes try to connect my suffering to that of Jesus, but if I have this underlying idea that I don't have the right to feel pain, it becomes a hollow gesture.

After rereading Job, I realize that I may never understand suffering, but that is ok, too. In the end, Job realized that he would never get it, either.

I need to pray about this.

Acts 5

Regular readers know that for the last couple of years, I have been facilitating a Lectio Divina group at my church on Sundays before the service.

I tell you, it has been an incredible gift. Every week we get together and read the gospel lesson for the day, and then prayerfully invite God to speak to us through it. And every week something extraordinary happens. The Holy Spirit shows up and we all more or less sit in awe and thanksgiving at the miracle of God's love.

I am finding that Lectio has impacted me in other ways... specifically in my ability to grapple with difficult passages in the bible.

Today, for example, at bible study, we were reading Acts 5. This is a brutal chapter about Ananias and his wife Sapphira dropping dead when it is discovered that they withheld on their donation to the Christian community. (I joked that this should be our Stewardship scripture passage this year... but my priest said no, darn it.)

It is a challenging passage, to be sure. But after a couple of years of regular Lectio, I have learned to resist the temptation to judge a scripture, and instead, let it speak to me. Engage with it. Grapple with it, yes, but in an open minded way. When I do this, crazy stuff can happen.

I always approach bible stories from the perspective that God is Love. That means that in stories where God appears to behave badly, I assume that I am not getting the whole picture. In the case of Ananias, though, it doesn't ever say that God struck him down. Nor does it say that Peter cursed him and he died. It simply states that when Ananias was confronted with the fact that he was holding back from God, he died.

I can put myself in his place. I know that there have been moments in my life when I was confronted with the contrast between Jesus' sacrifice and my own shittiness. Last year on Good Friday I spent the whole three hour service in such a state of distress that by the time I got to the confession with my parish priest, I was beside myself.

Let's imagine that Ananias and his wife were actually around when Jesus got executed. Let's imagine that they truly loved God... that they understood the power of Jesus' death and resurrection. But somehow, in the midst of their lives, they lost their connection to God just long enough to let petty fear get into their hearts. Fear of economic loss. Fear of the instability that happens when you give up everything. And that fear caused them to hold back on their donation, just as it does for me, sometimes.

When Peter confronts Ananias, in the blazing moment of realization, I can imagine being so grief stricken as to simply

die.

The Jews believed that when you encountered God, the energy was so great you couldn't survive it. You were annihilated on the spot. Is it possible that Ananias and Sapphira saw God in that moment? That, perhaps, it was not only the moment of their deaths, but also the moment of their redemption? I pray for his and Sapphira's souls that that was true.

In Lectio Divina, we invite God to speak to us through the scriptures. We open ourselves to how the scripture relates to our own lives. Today, I began to think about ways that I have been letting fear creep in and distract me from God.

Maybe this story speaks something totally different for you. That is the beauty of this living word, this gift from God.

Act 5:1	Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.
Act 5:2	With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.
Act 5:3	Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?
Act 5:4	Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Act 5:5	When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
Act 5:6	Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
Act 5:7	About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
Act 5:8	Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?” “Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”
Act 5:9	Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”
Act 5:10	At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

Shifty

Things are changing. My folks left. My kids will be out of school next week. I am planning to put the beach bag together with spf 8000 and an umbrella to go with my sand chair.

I have been feeling a little like I am standing on shifting sand. Nothing seems very stable, even though everything really IS pretty stable.

Do you ever find yourself having a hard time getting things done?

And you know what? My eyesight is getting worse and I think it gave me a stomach ache while I was trying to do some paperwork today. Is that possible?

Cold and gray and shifty.

Today I am missing Vietnam

My parents are heading back to Canada on Sunday and I am sad that they are leaving. Our trip to Vietnam in February really changed the dynamic of our relationship, I think. We are much closer after having experienced that together.

One of my favorite blogs is Vietnamese God. Always there are stunning photos of the country I miss so much.

Sigh.

Way closing

I have been reading a book on discernment by Parker Palmer, a Quaker, called Let Your Life Speak.

I am doing this because a friend has asked me to be on her 'discernment team' and it is required reading by the diocese of RI.

I have gotten to a chapter that I am getting something out of. When Way Closes.

There is, evidently, a Quaker expression, 'way opens' when God means for you to go in a certain direction and the way opens before you. I have certainly had this happen in the past. It happened when I stumbled on Bell Street Chapel, my UU church. And again with Grace Church, my current, Episcopalian, church.

But the author says that there is another variation on this... when a door closes firmly behind you before the next door has opened.

This, too, is something I have experienced. I left Bell Street when I knew it was time to close that door, even though my next step was far from clear. I had no clue what denomination I was going to be. No clue what church I was going to join. No sense of direction at all.... except that the Unitarian Universalists were NOT it.

Lately I have felt way closing behind me and am totally unsure of the the way forward. I have basically stopped doing my kitchen tools business. I am thinking that sales is NOT my way. So far I haven't completely abandoned it... keeping my toe in the water just in case the inspiration hits me and I want to resume my business. But the truth is, I feel the door closing and it is a little scary because I don't have the next thing lined up. I have absolutely no idea, in fact, what the next thing might be.

Here's where I stand:

I love my church.
I love to play my drum.
I love teaching.
I love learning.
I need to make some money. (not too much...)

Lord, I am asking you to nudge me, ever so slightly, in the direction you wish for me to go.

Sometimes my feelings get hurt

I am still a sensitive high school kid under this pulled together exterior. Sometimes the cool kids don't invite me to the party and I want to go in the girl's room and cry about it.

But damn it.

As a Christian, I think I am supposed to grow out of that. I am supposed to worry about what I can do for God. What I can do for others. Not what others may or may not think of me.

Sigh.

It is hard to break a lifetime of habits.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

My friend Emily fell in love with Jimmy Santiago Baca's poetry, and as is her custom when such things happen, she wrote him to tell him about it.

He wrote back.

Thus began a long and fruitful correspondence. He had started a foundation to bring literacy programs to prisons. She helped edit an anthology of prisoner's writing. She even invited me to write a crit of one of the pieces. My mother, a poet herself, wrote one too.

In all the time Emily has talked about Baca, I never read any of his work. I read the interviews she emailed me. I visited his site. I checked out his bio. But somehow I never read a poem or story.

So when Emily arranged for Baca to come to RI for a series of readings and workshops, I decided to go check him out myself.

I arrived at the reading at AS220 late. I was coming from a meeting and slipped in the back of the room and sat on the floor.

Jimmy read 3 poems and told stories between them. He is a great story teller. His poems are stories, too, drawing you deeply into the emotional core of what he is talking about. He read one, El Gato, about a man who saw hope and love and need in his infant daughter and at that moment turned from a life of violence and despair. I was breathless hearing this poem. The hope of the world is contained in this poem.

Afterwards, Emily invited me to join them for a late supper and I almost didn't go, but at the last minute, said yes.

I sat next to Jimmy and spent the next hour or so listening to him telling stories about his life. Emily laughed afterwards about the look on my face as I listened. I don't know what I looked like, but I know how I felt. I hung on every word. All I kept thinking was, this guy is a miracle. This guy's life is a miracle. God has pulled him from the abyss and I am sitting here, in a restaurant in Providence, witnessing a miracle of God's love.

What is the miracle? If you read Jimmy's bio, you learn that his life was shit. Prison, drugs, a completely dysfunctional family. It was bad. Like, so bad you can't imagine how anyone can drag themselves out of it, bad. Hearing him talk about his past was bizarre. The stories made my hair stand on end... and yet, there he was, this beautiful spirit. This big LOVE. This man who wants to help people who are desperate. This crazy-talented writer.

I think only God can pull off a transformation like that. I felt like I was sitting next to a miracle and it made me want to fall to my knees in gratitude.

I cried in the car on the way home. I thanked God in my prayers. I spent the next day in a fog.

At dinner, I told Jimmy that I think there are sometimes defining moments of transformation in our lives. That if we live a life open to them, these moments can change us forever.

There have been a few of these for me.

In every case, I suspected that something big was happening, but I didn't know exactly what. I suspected these moments had meaning far beyond what I could discern. That they were signs of some huge shift.

Now I add one more:

The night I had dinner with Jimmy Santiago Baca.

The spirit of Pentecost

Oh, boy, do the Episcopalians know how to put on a show! What a great scene at Grace church today.

First, it was packed. I'd say easily 250 to 300 folks in the pews. We had 6 baptisms, 3 dove kites flying around, 20 people reading the gospel in all different languages, and, yes, African drumming. Sidy, Lisa, Lucia and I played after the collect and after the gospel reading. Later, we played out on the sidewalk during the party at coffee hour.

For me, Pentecost is a personal favorite. My kids were baptized two years ago on Pentecost. I had the second part of my own baptism on that day. And I am just a sucker for the whole Holy Spirit descending to earth thing.

Perhaps the best part of the day, for me though, was at 5:30. I was early for my drumming class, having brought Noah to youth group. So I laid down in the very last pew and just stared up at the ceiling. I said a quiet prayer of thanks for the fact that my step mother took communion today. And for the wonderful experience of playing with my teacher in my church. After today, I think he understands more about me, because church is such a big part of who I am.

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of the Spirit in the church. I pray that we are worthy to receive you. I pray that we shine the light of your love into the darkness of this world.

Amen.

I will miss

the Wednesday evening Eucharist at Grace church.

It is winding down for the season in a couple of weeks. We don't know whether it will resume in the fall, but I pray that it does. It has become an important part of our week. And as much as some days I would love to sit in the chancel alone with my thoughts and meditations, I am mostly thrilled that my children and husband come with me each week to worship and celebrate.

It is a beautiful service. The whole thing takes place in candlelight. We sit in the choir boxes, facing each other. There is a lot of singing. The prayers of the people, even, are sung by the congregation. It is often deeply moving.

I am going to miss it over the summer. I hope it will continue in September.