What does this pastor do all day?

This Week’s Diary: What does your pastor do all day? Written with the intention of being transparent to Ascension Lutheran church folks about the rich details of a pastor's life...

·         Invited to attend the free rostered pastor’s retreat at Camp Calumet (Feb. 4-6); bishop is there, the first time ever; but I decided that I needed to be at Ascension to attend to synod business and ALC Administration, among other duties.

·         Worked on two annual synodical reports—the congregational report, which gives worship and attendance statistics and financial data to the synod, and the clergy report, which is more personal, on the life of the parish and the pastor.

·         As Environmental Liaison to the synod, gave the synod Communications director my ideas to make the Go Green portion of the synod website more effective in leadership building for congregational effectiveness

·         Worked on our final report to the Lilly Endowment on our sabbatical grant

·         Continued pastoral outreach to parishioners, with the hope of visiting with parishioners whom I see in passing but haven’t sat down with for a while.

·         Participated in the Interfaith Power and Light board meeting (chaired by Sam Swanson)

·         Taught Confirmation class. We prayed for the safety of Gabriella’s Dad, Steve, working in Somalia and viewed some pictures he sent. We considered the question: between God and human beings, who has power? Is power shared? What does that mean for each of us? We read and talked about Moses’ bargaining with God (Numbers 14), David and Goliath (1 Sam. 17), and revisited Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22). I pointed out how contemporary people find great meaning in these ancient Hebrew texts. As an example, we read and gave our responses to the poem about the senseless tragedies of WWI by poet and soldier Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), with which I’ll close:

·         “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young”

So Abram rose, and clave the word, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,

And builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.

And lo! An Angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him, thy son.

Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,

A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Prayer and Action



Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, by Jan Vermeer
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
1654-1655



Prayer and Action

Last Sunday I preached on the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha has strenuously worked to fix dinner and gets worked up, watching Mary just sit and talk to Jesus, and she's angry at them both. I’ve been there. From the response Sunday morning, others have been, as well. Several parishioners formed a Mary society during coffee hour, challenging one another to “be” Mary five times during the week. I'm very pleased, because several minutes of “being Mary” counts—just listening to, thinking about, being with, Jesus. Stopping doing just to be. I"m trying it myself.

I’ve been Martha, often, and spoke her feelings last Sunday: “I was awake during the night, worried about the dinner I said I’d serve; and here is Jesus, talking about the lilies of the field, and how God loves all creatures, and all…Does God love me? Does anyone (especially Mary and Jesus) actually care about me? Worker as I am…without me, there would be no dinner… Does anybody care?”

I’m pondering this today because several stories in the recent The Lutheran speak about evangelism; what is the best way to “talk about Christ, ” to express our faith? Answer: to be a model of Christ-like love. And how can we be a model of Christ-like love without action?

 Dr. Lisa Dahill writes in “Conversations with Atheists” in that issue of The Lutheran that many atheists reject “...the ways popular culture speaks of God: as, say, a watchful judge, a supernatural being, an old man in the sky or even a projection of our nation pride.”

But I don’t believe in that God, either! I believe in--relish in--the God of love incarnate in all that is.

Seemingly, so does Dahill (and actually many parishioners at Ascension).

Dahill invites us to follow Jesus into the world, rather than call athetists into the church, because Jesus is the DNA “...of all that is (John 1:1-5), the very abundance of life (John 10:10) for us and all creation. And thus what speaks this living Word perhaps most evangelically of all is lives opened up for the life of the world: Christians living this love in prison gardens and at deathbeds, in wetland restoration and after-school arts programs and (with [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer) organized difficult political resistance to evil.” (The Lutheran, August 2013, p. 19)

Wonderful stuff to think about and live. Like the strands of the DNA double helix, which encodes genetic instructions in all known living organisms, wholeness/wellness/salvation depends on weaving together times of reflection and action, prayer and work, returning home to rest, and going out to bring our unique selves and gifts to a beautiful, complex, suffering, glorious world.

Prayer and action: in discovering how they work together, we discover and become ourselves  as followers of the Way of Jesus.

How Clan the Church Better Express Jesus' Radical, Wide Love?

Robin Meyers, author of The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus and United Church of Christ minister at Mayflower United Church of Christ, Oklahoma City for 27 years, spoke at the UCC annual conference meeting this last Saturday in Randolph, VT.

He said:  Contrary to the risk that early Christians took, no one expects  dangerous things to happen at church; Christians are not on anyone’s no fly llist. The church needs to “Go where love calls, serve where love needs” –which is the synod’s motto.  And be leaven in the loaf of society, as was the early church. Here are some of his suggestions based on levels of risk to the church’s status quo. What do you think?

Low risk

Form a committee to find out what other churches are doing and join them in mission; adopt a local public school and learn what it needs, and how you can make it better; actively participate in interfaith services and move the host site around to different houses of worship; join other faith communities in responding to hate crimes with public declarations; become a “green” church and an active recycling center

Middle Risk

Form a Sunday School class that is dedicated to reading and discussion the latest in biblical scholarship; form a committee whose responsibility is to bring biblical scholars to the community; add worship services to attract people who don’t like traditional worship; bring local political candidates to church for Town Hall event; give laypeople power to create mission ideas and pursue them without undue interference from the staff.

High Risk

Make changes to the way communion is served and invite poor people; change the use of words: “trust” not “faith”; “these are our sacred stories” to replace “this is the word of God.”; Incorporate more silence, more poetry, less insider language. Establish the church as center for nonviolent change;  practice radical hospitality by welcoming people who test the church’s comfort level  (e.g., ex-convicts and sex-offenders); give money away in the church to those in need; and consider returning to the ancient practice of loaning money at no interest.

As Ascension continues to responsive to the Spirit, which of these are doable at Ascension? Other ideas you may have? Let me know!

    Blessings, Pr. Nancy

Idle Tales that are the Truth!




Three Women, Romare Bearden, 1979.



Happy Easter! What is coming into your imagination that may seem like an idle tale (Luke 24:11), but that if you live it out will bring joy and healing to people or to animals and plants on God's green Earth? Live it! Live your precious life! Below is my Easter sermon. The heart of the universe, love, is abundant, for the taking!

Blessings, Pr. Nancy

Easter

Luke 24:1-12

“But these words seemed like an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

All the gospels tell of the women coming to the tomb; they find it empty; they return to tell the disciples, who do not believe them.

Women through the ages have not been believed. An old wives’ tale… Have you had the experience of saying what you know is hard-earned truth, urgently important, you feel, but you are not taken seriously?

Often it seems that God, or goodness, or truth needs to come in slantwise, through people who are not to be believed at first; as Emily Dickson wrote:

Tell All The Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

Emily Dickinson

The truth must dazzle gradually or every person be blind.

The Bible is a collection of stories (told by human beings and written down in human words) of people who were far from perfect who kept meeting God in unlikely places and people, who kept adjusting their lives, and stumbling over old patterns and breaking through to new life: followers became leaders, women make public dramatic statements of love, people heartbroken by sorrow and the absurdity of death are met with experiences of new life—of Jesus not bound by death but always calling forward to new life. And, they tell their friends of this strange, slant-wise truth. Idle tales…

Therefore, Jesus told parables, and gave us strange sayings.

Are these idle tales?

Reading a contemporary, The Message Bible translation:

Matthew 6:27-33: “Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.

Or these idle tales?

“The first shall be last, and the last first….”

“Become like a child so that you can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

“In as much as you give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, you give it to me…”

“Turn the other cheek, when someone strikes you…”

“If you have two coats, give 1 away…”

“Ask me for living water…”

A cluster of idle tales…

Tell it slant, because otherwise, truth has a hard time coming up against the status quo, the half-lies that we tell ourselves: that to get ahead, we must push other people aside; that our economy must grow at all costs, even at the cost of the earth and its living creatures and other people left behind; that more stuff equals more happiness; that we don’t need to care about the past or the future; that violence brings peace..

These half-lies, which pass for truth because we don’t hear much to counterbalance them; these half-lies pull us toward being less than we can be. God can’t get a word in edgewise, hardly; and God doesn’t compel; God invites us.

What are seemingly idle tales can come to us when we listen to marginal voices: the poor, women, children, and people from other parts of the world, or the other side of town? What idle tales come to your imagination, stories that counterbalance the half-truths…and the status quo? Ways that you can see solutions to the problems you see and feel in the world?

For the women didn’t let the disciples persuade them to stop talking….their news spread throughout the world and is the reason you are here today. They had courage to continue talking.

Through the women’s story, the idle tale, even after Jesus’ horrible death, leading his disciples and friends to despair, God changed the stakes, rebooted, cleaned the disk; created a mysterious new birth, turned death into life; Jesus’ power of love and truth burst through the world, forever; through all barriers, prejudices, political power, cruelty, greed, our own failures to love and to forgive others, and even, perhaps especially ourselves. God always continues to create a world of love and peace for humans and Earth’s creatures. And, the loving power in the universe, needs the story to continue, through you, and me.

When people tell  idle tales about God’s love and justice, you can feel it.

Our Confirmation class—three young people—prayed together last week; one in 6^th grade is studying sustainability and writing on nuclear power; she prayed for North Korea; another student prayed for the Syrian rebels; another prayed that we might continue as a group to study the Bible together…

Idle tales are also actions that seem small: Ripple: “We never know how one small action inspired by love to bring about peace might ripple out and change the world.”

Clean up of Bartlett Brook, behind our church; with UVM students; over four years, we took out a washing machine, a truck, and countless bags of sand, and won an award from Burlington for the most trash collected on Clean-Up Day

His name was Nathan Johnson.

He was a canner - he collected cans in Burlington.  He would collect, and talk to people all over the town and college.  He lived alone and very simply.  After he died he left money to his church, 1st Methodist of Burlington, to help homeless and needy men.  I think it was $25,000..

Five ministers in Burlington got together and wanted to help, in an organized way, the people who came to their churches asking for help.  So, they decided to collect money from those five churches, added Nathan's money, and started JUMP. (Joint Urban Ministry Project)   It was in 1st Methodist for a year or two and then went to 1st Congregational for the next 24 years. And the rest is history.

The great, most important idle tale is that God raises Jesus from the dead each day,  in you, strengthening you to be a Protest-ant, against all that creates disharmony and demeans people or that degrades them and Earth’s creatures. Strengthening you to embrace life, here on earth, and eternally.

God seeks to restore harmony and wholeness (the meaning of “salvation”) through you and me, and Ascension, and the world-wide church, and all people. Because “God is the unconditional lover of all creation,” (­The Underground Church, p. 99)

For the earliest representations of Jesus in the first 1,000 years (on walls and tombs and in churches) were not of Jesus suffering on the cross, but rather of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the new ruler on the throne instead of Caesar, and of Paradise Restored.

You and I are alive to celebrate and enjoy God’s love and life given in so many ways.

Do you think you can take the idle tale of the women, that Jesus’ love is alive, now and always, and try it out, trust in your ability to love, and courageously give your imagination, your faith (trust), your love to it?  If you answer yes, your answer will bring you sorrow and joy, freedom and risk, adventure and meaning; and your answer will continue to tell the greatest story ever told, through your very own, precious, life.

Amen

Thoughts on Good Friday and Violence

Georges Rouault, Head of Christ, c. 1937

The Cleveland Museum of Art

 Why have Christians through the ages used the word Good for the terrible events of Good Friday? Perhaps because the meaning of the day is revelatory because it shatters all old conceptions of God, of God as angry or vengeful, by showing a vulnerable, and therefore compassionate God.

This day is Good, and here I would argue with some Christians in love in order to say that Jesus did not come into the world only to die. If we believe as some Christians, including the great theologian Anselm and many other have believed and still do believe, that God demanded blood sacrifice through Christ in order to come again into a right relationship with humans (because God enforces strict justice, and humans have sinned, and God demands a retributive payment) we then believe in a wrathful, angry God. That is not the God revealed by Jesus on the cross; if we worship that God, this Friday would not be good. That God would be made in our image, because in the world we know, we are asked to acquiesce to the lie that violence is necessary to conquer violence, where supposedly good violence is used to try to redeem from bad violence; but that is the world of calculation and suffering, repeated time and again, an endless cycle of destruction.

This Friday is good not because of violence but despite violence. Jesus was betrayed into a terrible violent death by a system of domination that feared the attractive goodness of his preaching and teaching of peace and goodness and healing, his passionate preaching and living from a foundation of love and justice. He succumbed to the violence of domination and control; Jesus only responded with suffering love. Which makes that possible for all of us. That makes this Friday Good, even though still it would seem that all was lost, that God’s self was defeated by human evil.

This Friday is Good finally because of the Resurrection. In resurrecting Jesus, God’s self, we know that God’s power of love and justice, seemingly vulnerable, is stronger than any power on earth.

(I've benefitted from reading Rene Gerard's The Scapegoat and, building on Gerard, Mark S. Heim's Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross.

Preparation for Holy Week and Healing the World



Add Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, Albrecht Dürer, 1511. Web Gallery of Artcaption



As we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week, it’s an auspicious time to ask, “What is really important?” What makes life full and meaningful? What was so central for Jesus that he was willing to offer up his life?

Two answers have filled my heart and mind lately: First, the love (grace) of God, showered in life, the universe, and the Way of loving discipleship. Second, the God-given responsibility given to each disciple to repair the human and nonhuman (earthly) community.

Pope Francis has stirred people throughout the world with his call for addressing the needs of the poor and the needs of creation. (The two are always closely related, as the poor suffer most immediately from environmental degradation.)

Jesus’ called for simplicity (“if you have two coats, give one away”), care for the poor (“if you give to the least of these, you give to me”), and love of creation (“look at the lilies”).

Let us hope that the church heeds this call; I’m very moved that Ascension has discerned (through Task Team 2) the same areas in which God calls us to continue and grow: poverty (both physical and spiritual), care for the Earth, and fellowship with the most vulnerable (children, youth, the elderly).

I will look for you this Saturday (3/23), Mud Morning (9:30 am to 11 am), when we will envision more specifically God’s future for Ascension. This is an important part of our long-range planning! Bring potluck pastries, and wear your books, because we will go for a meditative walk in the woods afterward. Childcare provided by Rachel Valliere.

Blessings to each of you as we enter into Holy Week together.
Pr. Nancy



A detail of Rembrandt's monumental painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son 

 Last Sunday we read the beautiful story of the Prodigal Son/Forgiving Father (Luke 11-32). A great contemporary description of the love of God and the joy of God's welcome for everyone (imperfect yet wonderful as each human being is) is last week's segment of Krista Tippett's "On Being" podcast.
http://www.onbeing.org/program/father-greg-boyle-on-the-calling-of-delight/5053
Fr. Boyle's joy in welcoming Los Angeles teens whose lives have been broken (in society's terms) is stronger because he believes that they help him more than he helps them. Very inspiring.

Lent is a time to look at ourselves clear-eyed, to slow down (difficult) and rest in the daily awareness of the presence of love in our lives. To look at the sun rise, to hear a bird, to count how many people welcomed us in the past days. To take note of those parts of suffering humanity and creation that we may be called to help heal.

On March 23 from 9:30 am to 11:00 am, we will host

MUD SEASON MORNING Sunday, March 23^rd at 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., with childcare

The purpose of the gathering is to create an opportunity for the congregation to discuss and affirm the results of the Task Teams, which addressed the questions, “Whom do we serve in our community?” and “How do we at ALC bond and communicate as a community?” We desire that the outcome of our time together will be a shared commitment as we move forward in “Claiming Our Ministry.” Refreshments: coffee and potluck pastries

How wide is our embrace of one another and of people in our community?
Come, and participate in this exciting conversation at this point of oppenness to God in our life at Ascension.

Lent 4 How is Love (aka God) calling us to be ministers to the community, to hurting people?

Hello! Come to Ascension this Sunday t(March 10) to find out (talk about) how God is calling us to minister to people in the community. Love promotes action!

Also, at the same time, Lent is a time to slow down and reflect and just discover God in nature, friendships, and whatever feeds our souls. Here is my sermon of last week to help us "feed our roots" (souls).

Lent 3 2013

Luke 13:1-9

God’s Grace in Suffering: The Parable of the Fig Tree



A beautiful fig tree leaf with fruit



For four days this week I thought that the hero/heroine of this story is the fig tree.

How many of you have seen fig trees? Leaf is from Mousa and Kris’s sun room in Essex.

Googled, fossils founds 12, 00 years ago, close to Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Even before wheat was cultivated, people in drier climates Middle East, Mediterranean cultivated figs; the fruit is delicious and nutritious, and the trees provide shade in dry desert climates and habitat for birds. In Genesis, Adam and Eve had fig trees!~

I’ve seen and loved large, towering fig trees in Italy; so large they don’t I’m sure need much manure; the figs droop and drop down, walking under then the delicious fruit smell wafts through the air.

I’ve also seen and stopped by fig trees, in Brooklyn, planted by people yearning for their homeland (Palestine, Italy), scrawny in about this much dirt and apartment building on one side and sidewalk on the other. Barely making leaves, rarely fruit.

A fig tree needs care, burlap over them in winter (for those I’ve seen in New Jersey) and fertilizer, from animals or maybe Jake’s liquid fertilizer from his worm bin, poured on the soil to nourish the roots, which, by the way, are extensive and deep to keep the tree alive in droughts and difficult environments.

This fig tree that the owner sees is barren, little seems to be happening, the juice of life has gone out.

A person living in Dismas of Vermont, which has residential programs to help ex-prisoners make the transition from prison to the community and a life of harmony and fruitfulness, wrote:

“Have you ever had a period in your life when indecision, confusion, dissatisfaction with your current position in life, and an overall feeling of helplessness had consumed you? Thrown up your hands and proclaimed “no mas”? It’s a veritable cornucopia of negative feelings and emotions that can be defeated only with help, and lots of it. A great support system, where people understand situations of this nature and will help someone start anew without judgment, a nurturing environment [that is Dismas House]”.

Or is the main character the owner, who says the truth, doesn’t mince words, and strips away denial: “You have no fruit.” Or, you are a goat, when I was hungry you did not feed me, thirsty, you did not give me drink, naked and you did not clothe me.”

And continues, unless you change and grow into who I meant you to be, into your full potential, you will feel that you have missed out, and it will gnaw at you, and you will become cynical, envious of others who seem to have it  better or have more; you will be biter and sad and judgmental.

And if the owner really gets going, he or she may say “you will never bear fruit again, your life is over; you are not of use to anyone; you are lost. You may as well curse life and die.”

Or is the main character the Gardener? “Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest…for your souls.” It’s OK to be barren now, for a time; yes to have lost your creativity and not know what to do. It may seem like death…but..wait.

The Lenten study book’s [Falling Upwards: Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life] author Fr. Richard Rohr may speak the words of the Gardener: There are two halve of life, roughly divided by middle age. The first is outer focused, a career, a family, a worldly identity, building a container.

The second is an inner journey, an inner task to find the essence of the container, which is the soul.

And, speaking like a caring Gardener, there is no avoiding, in the change from the first to the second half, experiences that feel like death, failure suffering, loss, breakdown, powerlessness, barrenness.

Why? Because life itself knows cycles; winter and sinner; death that nourishes life. The Gardener says sometimes this is called the Dark Night of the Soul (which is a territory entered by people and perhaps even now the church); where the outer fruits (success in life; hundreds of people filling church pews) is no more; but there is deeper growth, and that takes time and nourishment; time to take in manure; to see that waiting yields insight like shoots that rise from ashes; that God is not a venture capitalist, focused on growth and profit and appealing new products for spiritual consumption but is rather a Gardener, attuned to the natural cycles of life and to what is underground and to the vulnerable, and who knows how to nourish roots.

The Gardener says “You don’t have to white knuckle solutions to the feeling experience of barrenness, of grief, aloneness, smallness, and  fear of (evidence of) the real problems that rightly scare you: church decline, violence, greed, hunger, diminishment of my beautiful forests and rivers and streams…

Behold, I make all things new, even you;

In order to bear fruit, you need friends, people who say they love you, and time, and not panic; God’s time is different, and isn’t about to cut you off at the knees.

Can you  accept the idea that you are not doing fabulous things. Bearenness is needed in order to usher in a deeper reality; it happens again and again throughout Lent and life.

We are like the ex-prisoner, needing a nurturing environment and people who love and are not judgmental; we are the hero and heroine who need to go through suffering to deepen spiritually, as in the 12-steps we are powerless.

What do you need that nourishes you? It’s not us ourselves that makes this happen; barennness helps us realize we need to wait…and rely on God in our need.

One parishioner spoke about her year of grief; going down deeply spiritually, trusting God and friends; and seeing nature as giving her insight…

To stand like that fig tree and be cared for isn’t so bad; is it possible that the owner is the super-ego,, demanding that we bear external fruit that is different from the purpose God wants to give us?

“Dark Night of the Church”—essay in the Christian Century, Rev. Tony Robinson, applied St. John of the Cross’ famous dark night imagery to the church: “ God at work wrenching our alluring memories of social prominence and significance from our minds, ripping dreams of fame and fortune from our imaginations?” Moving beyond the container to the essence.

God creates the Dark Night to strengthen faith in God, to realize our fundamental union with God in love. Sociological studies reveal a church in decline: conflict, aging, lack of young adults; church history rooms filled with trophies from the church’s softball team are rarely visited; the church in Europe and America has lost its social prominence.

Theological reality is different: Strength and life come from trust in God, not ourselves. What does God have to say about this, about us, we are asking in this time of envisioning, of long range planning? Could it be that the most important thing to do is wait and trust and be fed by God? That, contrary to the panicked need for answers or even an out, there is time enough to grow in depth of faith in God? Truly liberated from union with God in love will we be delighted in God’s good time by the fruits we will bear?  

Blessings, Pr. Nancy

We are now in Advent, a time of watching and waiting for the birth of Christ in our hearts and world.

I find myself slowing down; I want to stop and consider the sky, whether blue or grey, and the evergreens against the sky, now swaying with the breeze, and then sometimes blanketed with the pure white snow.

I’m inclined, thus, to do less, and feel, and write, and read, and pray, more.

I’m asking now, What can this New England winter season and the church year season of Advent teach us about ourselves, nature, the life of the spirit? How can the (now cold) waters of the lake baptize our life in winter Advent?

Can our instinct to slow down unfetter contemplative noticing of inexpressible longings for hoped-for birth?

Although Advent thoughts and feelings may be inward, soul-directed, they can never be private. I am sure of that. They deserve to be shared.

Hoping for the birth of Jesus Christ in the world and in our hearts is attendant on freedom (Mary’s “Yes”) and communal longing. A Messiah was long hoped for.

What do you long and hope for? What/who longs and hopes for your attention and care?  

Blessings in Advent, Nancy

Interim Alaska Report

We just returned from the Kenai Penninsula very concerned about climate change's effects on the animals and Native Americans and world climate as well as filled with the beauty of the area.
 
I have not had time to work on my blog but have many photos, which I will post soon. 
For now, please see this recent article from the Burlington Free Press, which expresses quite accurately what we have seen and thought about.
 
I continue on Saturday into the Inside Passages for the contemplative kayaking trip through August 19.
 

Vermont Water Reflections 2

Vermont Water Reflections 2

This past week brought new reflections, experiences, and friendships.

First, I sat next to the La Platte River, now a sanctuary, with parking behind the Zen Monastery in Shelburne. I had bushwhacked through a field and woods (discovering a spot where the grass was laid low, I assume by deer resting) to spend some time sitting along the stream. A bridge crosses over the river, with the information about the endangered fish, the Stonecat. But it takes some persistence to actually sit by the stream. I watched two dragon flies cavort above the stream in the sunshine and relaxed.

Several days later, I spent a full day at the home of parishioners, who had kindly given me permission (and a key) to spend time at their home whenever I wish to do so, while they spend the summer back in Minnesota. In the mountains outside Bristol, one hears no traffic noise. What a blessing to have a day in silence, broken only by birds. I read on Lutheran Spirituality, Duane Elgin’s The Elegant Universe, and The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation (Mark Hathaway and Leonardo Boff), napped and prayed about Ascension, my friends, and family.

I took a walk down the road to a small stream with a little water fall. Such microcosms exist in nature; we only need to spend time, stoop down, and look. How beautiful.

And, finally, days later, I went on an all-day lake shore walk, where a new geologic map of Vermont was unveiled by walk leader Dr. Walter Poulman:

In the past week I've also spent several hours sitting and gazing at the lake, at Oakledge Park, including an afternoon where the wind blew and the energy seemed electric, another hour spent in the morning, early, with no one about, sitting on rocks. What quiet and solace we have all around us!

Last Monday, I began five days of sailing lessons. I knew little and ended learning about sailing directions (close-hauled, close reach, etc.), sides to the boat (starboard and port), etc. (of course, Jake could have taught me all this, too!).

Perhaps more important than the actual sailing lessons were reflections on the connections between sailing and the life of the church. The boat as the church is an ancient symbol; in meditations on this, first I saw myself as the skipper and Ascension parishioners as the crew (with the Holy Spirit as the wind), but that only lasted an hour or so: Ascension is a big boat, and I am only a beginning sailor! I felt frightened, but then I felt calmed when I saw Ascension (parishioners and pastor) as the crew, the Holy Spirit as wind, Christ as the skipper, and God as the sea (someone suggested that God could also be the person who fixes the boat when it malfunctions!).

We are kept sailing by the grace of God through Christ, upholding, leading, guiding, giving movement and beauty to our lives. And we are all in the boat, with all our foibles, contradictions, hopes, inadequacies, and idiosyncrasies, all still loved and knit together, and saved by Christ.

What does it mean to be saved by Christ?

My reading and understanding have continued with the wonderful book I Am/No Self: A Christian Commentary on the Heart Sūtra. Professors of Religion John and Linda Keenan, retired from Middlebury College, focus on John’s Gospel, the most mystical and symbolic of the Gospels. (This is of course where our sabbatical story of the Samaritan woman at the well is found, in chapter 4).

They write: “Perhaps we can envisage this Spirit as the living waters that flow from the innermost womb of our Christ being, of our hearts and minds identified and one with the Christ who is one with the Father.” (p. 157)

And “…the meaning of this gospel remains suspended and inaccessible to analysis. As such, however, it may liberate us—through constant prayer and meditation on our oneness with Christ—to abandon all our previously cherished views and to ratchet down our faith claims, not to lessen their significance, but to increase it!” (p. 123)

With the focus on our oneness with Christ, developed through prayer and meditation, I was further helped in my understanding of living water by the following from Water: Its Spiritual Significance:

“The fluidity of water and its constantly purifying aspect—the closer to the source it is, whether it be a spring, melted snow or rain, the purer it is—is a reflection of the soul’s ability to purify and renew itself. In spiritual terms this purification of the soul can only take place through the constant and sincere remembrance of God through prayer and meditation. As mentioned in the Introduction, proximity to water can open up our souls to Divine grace thereby aiding us in this remembrance.” (Emma Clark, “The Role and Significance of Water in the Islamic Garden,” p. 70)

Water makes life possible, both physically and spiritually, felt by humans through time. As we look into its depths and freshness, we see our own depths, and life, where we may find God.

But we don’t seem to treat water as reflecting our souls, or as life-bearer.

The one-hour presentation by Lutheran theologian and ethicist Larry Rasmussen, given at Gustavus Adolphus College summarizes beautifully all these issues (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcp56IvCwf4).

In one hour he gives facts about the world’s water crisis, which has occurred between 1950 and 2000, due to industrialization and world-wide consumption. The Earth’s water supply always remains the same; but only 1 percent of the world water is fresh. But one billion people lack fresh water to drink and climate change is making water sources more vulnerable. There is a precipitous decline in fresh water species—between 1970 and 2005, 35 percent of 458 fresh water species declined. And, remarkably, the US water footprint is largest in the world: it takes 766 gallons to produce a tea shirt; 2,867 for jeans; 15,000 for each couple pounds of burger beef. There is much we can do (watch the video to find out!).

Dr. Rasmussen ends with a quote from retired Congregationalist minister John Ames, of Gilead, Iowa, the central figure in the wonderful novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, a memory that leads Ames to his beautiful reflection on baptism and water:

“You and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler. The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare. When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the pastor lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair. It did look like a birth or resurrection. For us the water just heightens the touch of the pastor's hand on the sweet bones of the head, sort of like making an electrical connection. I've always loved to baptize people, though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”

Let’s all of us whoop and dance because of the miracle of water!

Nancy

Water Reflections from Vermont

Water Reflections from Vermont

I now sit every day next to a stream, river, or the lake. I watch, and listen and pray. I seek God’s living water, Jesus Christ, in actual Vermont water.

Two weeks ago, with a friend, I walked Potash Brook, for two hours. (To prepare, I met with Teage O’Connor, who teaches Eastwoods Natural History at UVM and knows Potash Brook, which flows through Eastwoods, then behind my house, and then about 2 miles further into Lake Champlain at Red Rock Point). Teague had laid out three two-hour walks for me, penciling into my journal the walks’ ends and beginnings, especially where to choose to follow the brook under Interstate 89 and Route 7 (or alternatively walk over land). 

My friend and I entered the Brook beyond the Swift Street power lines. In sneakers, we navigated boulders, mud, quiet sun lit patches, and thigh-deep water, always meandering slowly. Birds and the sound of interstate traffic mingled with our reflections: “This is wonderful; we used to play in streams for hours as children; why aren’t more people, especially children, in the water?”  

 We followed the tracks of a raccoon, distinguishing its marks with a ruled track finder. The little animal had walked along the banks, into and out of the water. We watched iridescent dragon flies. Mid-point we stopped for fifteen minutes just to watch the reflections of trees and sun, silently. A beautiful day, ending at Klinger’s Bakery parking lot, with a feeling of gratitude for family and friends, for all the love I’ve received in life.  

[photo of Potash Brook]

Then last week, I drove to Richmond on a friend’s advice and sat at the Winooski River for an hour, deep in ferns. I wrote:

“Light shimmering, birds skimming, blue and green light,a cloud, gentle breeze, summer (the beauty of water)”

The Richmond Rivershore Natural Area, where I sat, not far from the historic Round Church, is “distinguished by Ostrich Fern and canopy of silver maple,” and is a rare river floodplain forest. I perched my little canvas chair “lean” in ferns on the riverbank and watched. After about one-half hour, a Green Heron suddenly landed on the dead branch above; at first I had trouble distinguishing it from a kind of living stick with a topknot; then I saw its yellow eye, or, rather, its eye saw me, and rotated and glinted; with the sun on it, I felt small, beneath a direct, unpitying, almost unnatural gaze.

Yesterday morning  I finished reading Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault’s book The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart. I reflected on how important what I now term “in between spaces” are in our lives. I’ve had them, as hopefully everyone who reads this blog has: for me they include sabbatical, Italian vacations, time in nature, meditation, being with a beloved, reading, reverie, worship. These moments of deep repose, where we are open enough to become closer to our deepest selves, can occur when we are caught up in something, when we may feel like we are no more than playing. They can occur as we lose ourselves, when we pay full attention.

Consider Mary Oliver’s poem: “It doesn’t have to be/The blue iris, it could be/Weeds in a vacant lot, or a few/Small stones; just/Pay attention, then patch/A few words together and don’t try/ to make them elaborate, this isn’t/ a contest but the doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak.”—Mary Oliver

I long to pay attention and to hear.

Yesterday was my third Vermont water outing. This time I drove south.

After enjoying the Otter Creek waterfall at Vergennes [photo], I drove up Sand Road and hiked to the bluff at Kingsland Bay State park. (“Lake Champlain’s cobble beaches, cliffs, limestone cedar bluffs and rich oak-hardwood forests are the main features at this 1.5-mile lakeshore preserve. Marine fossils have been found in some of the shoreline bedrock. There is a deer yard and a number of rare plants, including autumn coralroot, golden corydalis, blue field madder and veiny meadow rue [from Places to Walk, Paddle and Explore in Vermont, The Nature Conservancy, 50^th anniversary edition]."

I waited for the sounds of the lawn mower on the grounds of historic (1790) Hawley House to subside as I hiked to the endpoint through the woods. I watched the lake through the trees on the shoreline cliff for an hour. I wanted to pay attention, as in Mary Oliver’s poem.

Luther’s definition of worship came to mind. “Our dear Lord himself may speak to us through his holy Word and we respond to him through prayer and praise.” Again, I felt deep respose and a deep sense of God's love.

The Bible teaches that the Word (God's voice) is (speaks to us) in all things (John 1:3;  Colossians 1:15-16). Do we pay due attention?

Before I turn to Findhorn and Iona, a reference to the UNESCO World Heritage site Petra, Jordan [photo], where the ancient Nabateans built a canyon city right on the Silk trade Route, with ancient water courses carved along the canyon walls.
Susan and I rode camels! and Michael, Susan and I enjoyed the whole-day walk. We visited an ancient church that is being carefully cleaned (beautiful mosaics in the floor)

The 1st century baptismal pool in this ancient church in the Petra valley was the site of our brief noonday service on the 39th anniversary of my ordination. [photo below]

A note on the Holy Land that I think is important to mention: a moving and informative document is the 2009 Kairos Palestinian document, written by major Christian groups: "A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering" (a PDF file is available on line)

We left the Middle East and flew to Scotland, taking the train to the sustainable community Findhorn, (now I am with my sister and friend Eileen) where we met with Michael Shaw, who created the Living Water machine there (much like the living water sewage treatment plant on the I-89 exit). He and his organization Biomatrix are dedicated to treating sewage water to create healthy communities and cities around the world. [photo] Michael lived and worked in Burlington, along with John Todd of UVM (Sandy Short actually worked for them). Mr. Shaw helped to start the Charlotte Ten Stones co-housing community, but now he lives full-time at Findhorn.

I appreciated that he asked about Simon Awad, the director of the Environmental Education Center in Beit Jala, with whom we had met, because I encouraged him to try to help them with their school sewage. I hope he is able to do so! Being in the living water "machine" is like being in a greenhouse; it purifies all the Findhorn sewage; out comes water pure enough to irrigate with (not yet pure enough to drink).

After several days, we traveled by train, two ferries, and bus to Iona: "For centuries pilgrims have travelled to the isle of Iona in search of the sacred, inspired by the example of St Columba, a 6th century Irish monk who founded a monastery there, and whose influence is felt to the present day. Many modern-day pilgrims and seekers are also drawn to the island through the work of the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian community acting for justice and peace, the rebuilding of the common life and the renewal of worship." (from Around a Thin Place: An Iona Pilgrimage Guide).

On an all-day pilgrimage, on the beach where St. Columba landed, we were asked to take one stone and throw it in the sea, representing what we wanted to give up this year; another stone to take home with us representing what we wanted to keep. [photo]

We learned that the monks of St. Colomba would set off in their hide boats, called coracles, and wherever the tide took them, they would minister for the rest of their lives! This became a problem for the monastery (how did you know whom you could count on to be there?). Hmmm.... Freedom in Christ!

On the pilgrimage around the island, at the ancient marble quarry, the guide said that it takes much pressure to produce marble, the Abbey altar is marble; ages ago worshipers took chunks of marble from the altar to protect themselves against drowning. Are we aware that under pressure we produce beauty? Also, the green veins are irregularities; God can use our irregular parts!

I was very moved by the pilgrimage; prayers and prayerful realizations came to me.

In the dining room of our Argyll hotel these moving notices were posted: “To reach the heart of Iona is to find something eternal—fresh visions and new courage for every place where love or duty or pain may call us.”

And, "The Argyll Hotel is situated on an island in one of the last great refuges of nature in Western Europe. Therefore, we are stewards…”

We took a half-day excursion by boat to the island of Staffa and Fingel’s cave; people went on their knees as soon as they saw the puffins, which were cautious but not afraid of humans. [photo]

To conclude, a few quotes from books I have been reading:

Duane Elgin, The Living Universe: “Our supreme test is to grow consciously into this new world [of planetary destruction and global communications] and learn to live in balance with the Earth, in peace with one another, and in gratitude with the living universe.”

The Jesus Manifesto, “What is Christ doing through me…through us? And how is he doing it? We live by God’s indwelling life through the power of the Spirit.”

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue: “You can search far and in hungry places for love. It is a great consolation to know that there is a wellspring of love within you. If you trust that this wellspring is there, you will then be able to invite it to awaken. The following exercise could help develop awareness of this capacity. When you have moments of your own or spaces in your time, just focus on the well at the root of your soul. Imagine that nourishing stream of belonging, ease, peace, and delight. Feel, with your visual imagination, the refreshing waters of that well gradually flowing up through the arid earth of the neglected side of your heart. It is helpful to imagine this particularly before you sleep. Then during the night you will be in a constant flow of enrichment and belonging. You will find that when you awake at dawn, there will be a lovely, quiet happiness in your spirit.”

Blessings to you all, Pr. Nancy