Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

Hosea 1:2-10 Colossians 2:6-15 Psalm 85 Luke 11: 1-13 (16-19) After my mother died when I was 13, I struggled with my faith for years. Her death set off a series of outcomes—most importantly my father’s ongoing struggle with mental illness and anger/violence—that threatened on a daily basis to submerge me. I am thinking of this today because I have been talking with a new friend about the violence she experienced in her own home. She is young and angry. The idea of forgiveness, much less of actually making it through to the next day, seems completely impossible. As her friend, I have to be present where she is, to recognize that whatever journey she takes to heal, it can’t be rushed. I have to let her know it is OK to be right where she is, and I realize those are the most loving words I can offer her now. Last week I told her that what I admired about her was that she wasn’t trying to pretend that the ugliness, the darkness, wasn’t ugly or dark. In a way, though the story in Hosea see...

Amos 8:1-12 Psalm 52 Colossians 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42 This year, I was a member of the Relay for Life committee for Stevens County, helping to organize the American Cancer Society's largest local fundraiser of the year. Each year, businesses, groups of friends, and other organizations sponsor teams of people who collectively walk a total of 12 hours along a path lit by luminaries baring the names of those who have died from or survived cancer. For years I've been organizing the UMM team. Each year, I purchase luminaries for all of my loved ones who have died of cancer: my mother, my uncle Elias, my aunt Sophia, my cousin Chris; and for all those who survived: my cousin Meredith, my godfather, several friends and students. Each year, I have walked after dark, surprised when I turn a corner on the path or happen to glance down and notice a family member's name suddenly visible among the hundreds of luminaries. I should be used to this by now, but each year, I am moved by the ...

From today's epistle: "We always thank God...when we pray for you...we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with knowledge of God's will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray that in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please God in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to God's glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience... Today, I feel enveloped in this prayer, as if St. Paul and Timothy wrote it for me. And I am lifting my friends up in the same prayer, fully grateful for their love for me, for all I am learning from them--most importantly, "endurance and patience." Yes, I am learning endurance and patience from the most unlikely teachers, or, perhaps, the most likely: old friends, new friends, my garden, and an old printing press. I have always been in love with gardening. My family ha...

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Galatians 5: 1, 13-25 Luke 9: 51-62 Chariots Today’s story from 2 Kings is the story that inspired the hymn “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Elijah is taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot; there is nothing left after of his body on earth. I learned this song in elementary school music class, and I didn’t realize it was a religious song at the time. We learned it as part of a unit on African-American music, but our teacher, as far as I can remember, didn’t explain the historical significance of the song. I distinctly remember daydreaming at one point while singing, thinking of the Greek sun god Helios with his chariot, dragging the sun across the sky, and the powerful but hard-to-control horses at the lead. I knew we didn’t pray to this god anymore, and yet sometimes on the walk down our long driveway to catch the school bus, I swear I could see him. I liked the idea that there was a being who struggled with this task day after day just for us: to giv...