A year ago following cataract surgery, I set alarms on my phone to remind me to apply my eye drops at regular intervals. I used Jackson Browne’s song, Doctor My Eyes as my eye-drop alarm so that I would immediately know what the alarm meant.
Since that surgery, my vision has improved in more ways than just giving me the ability to drive at night again. As social media explodes with outcries in the wake Continue reading
When I told my friends I was moving from the Heartland to the barrier islands (to help a dying church), half asked what I had done to earn a call to Paradise, and the rest warned me that this was risky (or ill-advised) because the barrier islands were a place where at any time a hurricane could devastate an entire community. I disregarded their concerns, but one persistent friend whispered to me as we said goodbye, “whatever you do, don’t live near the water.”
Stories of hurricanes were the first stories I heard when I arrived. How Charley had come that August and stayed a full week, only to be followed by Frances and Ivan. But how it was Jeanne, the 4th and last that year who changed the lives of folks in this Paradise for years.
The stories came out in bits and pieces, like the debris the people picked up for months after their electricity finally returned.
I remember it was so dark. Even in the day. Dark grey. All the time. For days.
I remember seeing 3 small boats, still tied to a dock — a dock that had left the shore. The dock and the boats were floating down the river like a family taking a walk.
A man’s voice from the back, one who rarely speaks, offered:
I remember the storms were relentless. Just about the time one subsided, the next one hit. We lost power for 9 days, got it back for two, then lost it for another 14.
I saw photos of the fellowship hall soon after I arrived; the heaps of sheet rock littering the floor; the dim light making the wreckage look like a sleeping giant. I asked about the sanctuary. Nell said, “I walked in to set up communion and the sanctuary was one big lake.” She motioned at the pews. “A lake. Right here.”
The memory is still strong enough that the stories are whispered– staccato-sentences spoken nervously as if the memory alone might summon a squall.
*****
The water always wins. I heard this many times. And I wondered: how do we reckon this truth against John’s account that…
16 When evening came, Jesus’ disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.19 When they had rowed about three or four miles,[d] they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, “It is I;[e] do not be afraid.” 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. (John 6)
I thought of Jesus, walking toward his quaking disciples, clinging to the sides of the boat. I wondered if the darkness prevented them from realizing who he was. I wondered how close they had been to the land, or if their arrival there so soon after Jesus said, Do Not Be Afraid was part of the miracle. I wondered.
I thought of Matthew’s account of the resurrection. How there had been an earthquake as Jesus gave up his spirit. And of the centurion’s whispered account, that “surely this was the Son of God.”
*****
I thought about Noah and my struggle to understand the very concept that God would cause such a flood. And I thought of the flood stories from various traditions and the scientific evidence that indeed, a huge flood had devastated the world even then.
I tried to suppress the nagging question, but it wouldn’t be stilled. Rising up repeatedly like the fish I see jumping from the deep to check the weather above, it flipped through my mind: Does God / control / the weather / or not?
I thought about the farmers praying for rain. And the mosaic of people in New Orleans praying that the rain would stop.
I thought of the fire raging for weeks now in the cascade mountains, and the roads closed, and the people evacuated, and the beloved village of Holden threatened next, the 500+ firefighters working 24/7 and hanging onto hope that maybe the wind will cease, or maybe– it will rain.
And the question continued to tumble like clothes in a dryer, Does God / control / the weather / or not?
I remember the calm. It was so quiet when it finally ended that I was afraid to speak.
I remember the telephone poles, snapped like toothpicks, lying everywhere. All over the roads.
When the causeways opened, and I came home, there was a mattress from a baby’s crib on my front lawn. I never did see the crib.
*****
I thought about the people I’ve served now for more than two years. They live in a constant state of preparation. They keep huge bottles of water on hand. And generators. And astronaut food. And ice.
Some will not drink anything without a full glass of ice.
They stockpile provisions in the same way that the folks in the Midwest fill their garages with tire chains and sand bags and rock salt.
I think of Job, the classic example of bad things happening to a good man. And how his friends tried to explain away his grief as punishment for something he must have done to offend God. And how they were wrong.
And again, I thought of Jesus. Jesus, changing water into wine, for the wedding would not have been a wedding without it. Jesus, touching the untouchable, giving sight to the blind with his spit, giving freedom to the woman at the well. And forgiving the unforgiveable.
Jesus, waking in the storm–to still it. Jesus, walking on the water–to save.
I asked the children, what do you remember?
“My dad putting up the hurricane shutters; they had alligators on them.”
We had 3 first days of school because every time we started, we’d have to stay home for a week then start again!
I asked them, where is God in a hurricane? Hadley, not yet in middle school answered first, “Right there with you”, she said, motioning to the space next to me on the floor.
*****
Now that I’ve been here two years, you who called this place home long before I arrived are helping me understand that the two camps of friends I left behind were both right.
I remember that the fire station put on its sign, even before we had the electricity back, “It’s Still Paradise.”
Melbourne Beach is a place where people went 3 full weeks with no ice and only canned food, living on their lawns because they couldn’t breathe in their homes, and feeding their babies spoonfuls of peanut butter because the storms sucker-punched this island and had them on their knees where they groped along in the dark until one by one they found one another.
I remember sharing a can opener up and down the block because the electric ones didn’t work.
I remember a man who had lost his dog. He was devastated. Everyone was looking for the dog. Finally, a guy spotted the pup in Turkey Creek, which was flooded and filled with alligator, to save the dog. And he did.
I remember trying to get the tarps on the roof of the church and we just couldn’t do it. A man showed up and with very little effort, in no time at all, he had them all in place. Then he was gone. No one got his name. We never saw him again.
I remember that whoever came by when we had food, we fed. And people walking the streets day and night looking for ways they could help one another. We hauled trash and carried bricks and washed laundry for weeks.
It took forever before I got over being able to go to a gas station and have them actually have gas. I kept looking for the bags covering the pumps.
I ignored my friend’s advice. My home is a condo right on the ocean. Everything metal rusts in time and a fine film of salt covers my counters, my car, my skin. And, the sound of the waves can still my anxious mind in minutes. A walk where the water meets the sand centers my soul in a way I can’t fully understand. I stop to sip my coffee and watch the sunrise on the water and again, I imagine Jesus.
Jesus walking on the water, salt spray stinging his face, he comes, stilling the storm.
The waves hit my legs and I turn toward home thinking of these resilient people who live near water. It is a choice of bravery and faith: we will not be afraid. They know the importance of hope, even in paradise. And together, we hold onto the words of promise that are far greater than any doubt:
“And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
–Matthew 28:21
Holding onto good. That was the song in my mind as I tried to sleep last night; my sheets pulled from the corners of my bed this morning, a testimony to the state of my unrest.
Holding onto good. It’s a phrase from a song by the same name by the rising band, Delta Rae. Their music is beautiful and raw; their band includes siblings who are not strangers to trauma and heartache who, like so many artists, have channeled those losses into music for the greater good.
Holding onto good: It’s one of many refrains in my brain as I try to process the events in our country and hold onto the good center of who I am and what I am called to do:
Act for justice, Love tenderly, Serve one another, Walk humbly with God.
Those commands form the refrain from the hymn We Are Called, the song we are singing at the end of our 5 worship services each Saturday & Sunday for the next 3 weeks at Advent Lutheran Church here in Melbourne, Florida. When we get to this refrain, the gathered voices gain momentum and strength. It is as if they too need the reminder of who we are and what we are to do in this challenging time.
Hold onto good. Act for justice. Love tenderly.
It’s what I’m trying to do, despite the news coverage about the uprising in cities I love
across this country I love
for reasons I respect
about tragedies I lament.
Bob Dylan sang to me this morning as I sipped my coffee and considered the changing shoreline out my rain-speckled window; my Christmas lights reflected on the glass. The times they are a’changin, was his ironic refrain, as I considered the images of protests that fed my unrest. A friend, currently a juror in a disheartening murder trial said that it might as well be 1964 all over again. I poured another cup of coffee, noting on my grocery list that I needed:
Bread
Milk
Honey
In the background, Dylan cried, “Come writers and critics who prophesy with your pen …”
And I thought, yes, I ought to write about … oh my. Where to begin. Hold onto good, pastor. It is why you were ordained. To enable others to…
Another refrain interrupted my thoughts: We are called to act for justice.
Come on, pastor. The people need a word of hope. A word of peace. A word of truth.
I felt inept.
Humor. I need humor. I rapidly typed in a favorite source and watched Jon Stewart, the master of humor in the face of pain. Jon Stewart, a Jewish man whose family immigrated from Poland, whose parents divorced, who was subjected to antisemitic bullying as a child, and whose ironic commentaries remind me not to take myself too seriously. Jon Stewart, who observes with his wry smile: “Religion. Giving People Hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
He calls me back, to hold onto good. Don’t let your passion kill your humor, I say to me. You are called to speak a word of peace. Of hope. Of truth that sets us free.
Now a song from the Broadway version of The Lion King marches into my mind: “… Into the water. Into the truth. In your reflection…He lives in you.”
Ah, yes. Remember who you are.
Last night, a small group of us gathered in a candelit sanctuary near the ocean in the church in which I serve as the Associate Pastor to a newly merged congregation. Advent Lutheran is one church with a large staff and two locations that is struggling to figure out how to do all there is to do with the resources we have. It is a church filled with both chaos and hope.
We gathered for the service known as Holden Evening Prayer; a service as filled with mystery and beauty as anything I’ve experienced in this world.
I knelt near the altar as Deb Gum, a gifted harpist, filled the space with the celestial sound of peace. I sat, mesmerized, as Henry and Charlotte, high school siblings from a nearby Roman Catholic church led us in song. I spoke, reading the words of Isaiah 40: Comfort, Comfort my people — the words pouring forth from a place within my soul that even I did not know I could access.
And I sang, together with the dozen or so witnesses who gathered, our voices an eerie combination of command and plea to the God in whom we trust:
…Love that fills the night with wonder,
love that warms the weary soul,
love that bursts all chains asunder,
set us free and make us whole.
Oh that all those who are weary and heavy-burdened had been there.
Holding onto good. This is what it means to be a pastor and to be called to serve God’s people, especially in troubled times. To hold onto good, the goodness of the Lord, that others might be encouraged to do so as well. To remember and remind that the Word of God beckons us to an elusive place of peace that we rarely experience in this world.
It is not easy. Sometimes I wonder if those we serve understand this: just because we are called to be faithful and to hold onto good does not mean it is always easy to do so. The crushing chaos of this world troubles our hearts and clouds our consciences too.
And yet, we are called. And so are you. We are called to act for justice, in times that are changing, and to hold onto good. For God does indeed live … in us.
Please join us: in sacred gatherings around this United States.
Please come. In the presence of the living God, let us Hold onto Good, together.
Holden Evening Prayer / Thursday, December 11th and 18th / 6:00 p.m. (Harp music begins at 5:30)
Advent Lutheran Church / Grace Campus / 1805 Oak
Melbourne Beach, Florida
Sunday services: 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
(a meal begins on Sundays at 5:00, prior to worship —
freewill offerings appreciated but not required)
Today I spent hours organizing my words. In Gmail alone, I created folders and tags and placed nearly 21,000 emails in their respective cyber-spaces. It was daunting.
I need to continue. I sense a shift taking place within me, within the church I serve, and even, within increasingly larger circles of people with whom I interact or who I observe from a distance. It is as if we are collectively saying, Enough. We will figure this out. We will reach toward each other. We will find ways to live in peace.
It’s like clouds shifting gently in the sky, giving way to beauty that calls you by name.
This growing sense of community and hope is so strong that I feel called to prepare so that I might use my words to function within it as well as possible; it is a privilege and a joy to be called to find and proclaim Good News in a time when people seem to especially long for it. It’s a time in which I’m increasingly aware of the power of words and the ability they have to change the world by the ripples they create.
It was an unexpected reward then today, when I found some of Chase’s writing from his Sophomore year of high school. As he begins his Sophomore year at Ohio Wesleyan, it seems fitting to invite you into the rewarding experience of reading some of his words in one of his earliest poems. I just might get it written on one of my walls now that I live by the sea where the clouds change as often as the waves. I don’t know how he could’ve described them any more completely. Savor it; perhaps even read it aloud as I did. I dare you not to smile.
If I Were A Cloud
I would wander but I already do
I’d have another excuse to gaze at you
I’d spit rain and absorb evaporation
I’d turn into a dragon by means of imagination
I would be mammoth
and I would cast shadows
I would stand still with time and discuss box scores
I would be fluffy and probably pale
and over your beautiful face cast a veil
and amidst all this I think I’d find time
to gaze at the ground and wish it were mine.
to wish, to lust, to want to be free
to swim with the fishes and you in the sea!
–by Chase Montana Smith, 9/6/2010
Image by expertinfantry via Flickr
Thoughts rolling in my head like clothes in a dryer this morning as I watch the coverage saying that finally Osama Bin Laden has been killed by U.S. Navy Seals. I read back in my journal the night that President Bush announced we were going to war: “how many lives will be lost? how many years will this take? how safe will we be afterward…really? Lord have mercy.”
I wonder as I watch the coverage: is this normal? is this true? When have we ever seen such detailed coverage of a military operation? Maps of the route of the helicopters? Graphic photos of the kill site with reporters trying to guess what the blood spatters suggest? I don’t remember learning how to discern such things when I was working on my Journalism degree. Huh.
Facebook comments sing praises to God, to the military, to construction workers who continue to work at Ground Zero. I remember visiting my friend Margaret at the Episcopal seminary a couple of miles from Ground Zero in the spring of 2002. She was still shaking. I thought it would help if she talked to me about her experiences that day. She couldn’t. We went to Trinity church next to Ground Zero and I looked at all the memorabilia people had posted about their loved ones as they wept and cried in that place. Ordinary supplies for the workers were still on tables: shaving gel and disposable razors; granola bars and gator aid; chapstick. Blankets and pillows had been in every pew she said, so that workers and grievers alike could sleep. The first thing I saw on the wall surrounding Ground Zero when we emerged from the subway was graffiti with the words from my favorite bible verse, Matthew 28:11 “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-burdened…”
I exchange emails with my friend whose husband served in Iraq while I was their pastor. Together they enlightened me on the faith dimensions of serving in the military. In her email she said, “It was a delayed reaction for me. The full implications of what it means to so many people didn’t hit me until this morning. I found myself shouting and hell-yea’ing to the news reports on the way to work. It is because of what that man did and the resulting events set into motion that my husband went to Iraq, came home with demons, and wears the names of four fallen Marines engraved on a steel bracelet on his wrist. My elation, joy, relief, whatever you want to call it is more for him than anything else.”
I realize now how I’ve changed in these ten years. I pray every time people I love are in a public place — the more public and city-centric, the more I pray. I watch people more carefully when I am shopping, naturally looking for actions that suggest I should duck. I know where Exits are. I occasionally study the faces of people who trigger my fight or flight response, in case I have to describe them to the police. I am no longer shocked when I hear of shootings, though I continue to mourn.
Today the United States, with most of the world, is celebrating. It is hard for me personally to rejoice, though I am glad Bin Laden is dead. I pray this is the end, but something tells me it isn’t. I pray most of all it is the beginning of something new that is guided by our Creator, by whatever name you know him.
I often pray in this way using the words below, lyrics from a song written by a friend, now pastor, who I’ve known since he was 8 years old. We were once in a play together: The Gospel According to The Angel Julius. He played Jesus. I played the woman with the questions, a prophetic role for me. I cannot rejoice today, though I feel a cautious sense of peace. I still have questions. And still I pray.
God Bless
Words and music by Tim Jahn
My nation is one among so many in my world
my race is not the only race
so brother, you ask me if I’l stand against evil
well, evil has more than one face
So I pray (Let us pray to the Lord)
God bless America
United we stand
But don’t just bless my country
bless the whole land
God Bless Asia
and Africa, too
and if you’ve been suffering
may God bless you
God bless the homeless
of every creed
whether it’s shelter
or a country you need
God Bless the nations
ravaged by war
when noone remembers
what it’s all for
(Oh say can you see)
If that piece of cloth is gonna stand for justice in this world
if that piece of cloth is gonna stand for peace
well that piece of cloth can not stand on its own
cause everyone has to believe
in peace (let us pray to the Lord)
God bless the hungry everywhere
teach us to take only what is our share
God bless the workers
who made all your clothes
cause what they’ve been going through
God only knows
God bless the sick ones
and God bless the weak
show them it’s healing
not vengeance you seek
God bless the users
and God bless the used
cause while they’re still out there
we still can get through
I pray (let us pray to the Lord)
God bless the victims
the women and men
don’t let their anger make them victims again
God bless the angry, riddled by hate
show them forgiveness, love and faith
God bless our neighbors
God bless our friends
God bless our enemies
until it all ends
If Bumper Stickers contain truth no matter how limited, exaggerated, or simplified, today I would make one that reads: Melancholy Descends.
Melancholy is like Sad’s Shadow. It sneaks up on you and covers your light. You can walk around and it follows you. It makes you feel like you’ve got this darkness attached at your heel and you can’t get rid of it no matter how hard you try to shake it off.
It leaves when its darn good and ready.
You might say that, like a shadow, the way to get rid of it is to shut off all the lights and go into hiding. But that sort of lets it win because while Melancholy might leave, it leaves the door open on its way out to its far more dangerous sister, Despair.
Melancholy woke me up this morning. Actually I think it met me in my epic dream and then joined me in reality when I stood up.
I do things to try to lose it. I think happy thoughts. I drink another cup of coffee. I take out the trash and pretend my Melancholy is in with the greasy paper towel and broken toothpick holder. I turn on the radio and invite myself out into the life in the world. I remember conversations I had yesterday when people told me of prayers answered and failures defeated. I put a smile in my voice.
But it remains.
I guess the best thing I can say about Melancholy is it does seem to have a short attention span. As do I. But I also am much more stubborn.
So the game is: if I consistently refuse to give Melancholy much attention, it moves on. It will return, I know, but every time I bore it silly with my refusal to give it my time, I win a another round. And while it is off finding another player, I am keeping score.
And in the time it took to write this post, Miss Melancholy must have been bored to tears, because it appears I won that round too.
Point me. Here comes the sun.
