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August 7, 2018 Beloved: This morning’s prayer book wanted me to reflect on vulnerability, and the resistance in me was deep and wide. I kept wanting to modify the topic to humility, as though humility is a virtue while vulnerability is a condition to be borne. Deep in me lies the assumption that vulnerability is a word that I apply to the poor and weak who are systematically vulnerable to many dangers, toils and snares that more privileged people like me easily avoid. Wide is my preference to use the word humility when thinking and speaking of the choice to be smaller rather than larger, quieter rather than louder, to take less instead of more, to give more instead of less.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ~ Philippians 2:5-8 [NRSV] Paul’s hymn, just like my Scottish prayer book, reads as if humble and vulnerable are far closer than my embedded definitions. Vulnerability may be chosen by anyone who calls herself Christ’s own.
~peace & prayers, pastor annette
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July 31, 2018
Beloved: Another whole month of summer to go and the garden I put in has exploded. All I did this year was gourds, tomatoes, zinnias, sunflowers, and herbs. The chickens scratched up all the sunflowers and half the zinnias and gourds but I still have loads of blooms and fat fruit on the vine. I am ever amazed at how much the ground gives back compared to how little effort I put in. Also, the rain. It has rained and rained for days. Scout and Rosie lay in the garage and sigh for all the smells they’re missing. Or maybe they sigh to smell the rain. For now, they’ve passed out from starvation because I haven’t made their breakfast. On other calendars, summer is nearly gone. The lull of a college town summer lasts just long enough to be shocked when they return. “Were there this many students last year?” say all the townies every August. School supplies around here include crayons and cars. So many cars. I once saw a Mercedes delivered to a dorm! I read there will be approximately 43,000 IU students this year and as we know they can go a little crazy when they first arrive. But one blessing is when don’t have to wonder what our job is, pray and watch. We can pray for them like we pray for our own kids: that they’ll be smarter and safer than their own brains invite them to be. I am ever grateful for the Georgia mom who stopped and stayed with my own college kid after a scary car wreck. I don’t even know her name but she is everything to me. Just to be here to pray and watch may mean everything to people the world over, whose darlings have been entrusted to us. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
The struggle to enjoy my house without loving it too much is something of a quandary; a quotidian mystery, Kathleen Norris calls it. The great privilege of having things and the great responsibility to have them rightly. The ease with which we slip into assuming we have earned them, suggesting people with less haven’t worked as hard. The terrible sin of complaining about their upkeep – the time, the money, the energy – as if we are somehow beset with trouble for having a roof that needs replacing.
This world is our poorest teacher when it comes to what we need. Prayer is our only hope. Father Richard writes that the only person who prays well is the person who prays often.* I’m trying and mostly failing to learn not to pray from my belly or my brain, from what my body and my feelings say I need. Mostly they don’t know. Mostly anxiety, fear and boredom are telling them what to say. “You are fine,” the Spirit says, another voice to whom I can choose to listen . . . and believe, should I choose to live by the faith I claim I do. All that we possess is so much less than the spirit of God within and among us even now. Knowing so and living so are nothing like the same. Only living so brings about the greater graces of our faith, namely peace. Peace with our place in the world. Peace in our relationship with others. Peace with our possessions. So easily said, while the practice takes a lifetime. I wish you much courage on this day of our journey. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *Richard Rohr, Simplicity; The Freedom of Letting Go, (Crossroads Publishing: New York, 1991), p. 100. July 17, 2018 For Sarah A. who reminded me that people are waiting patiently to hear what is going on with my chickens.
Would that we might also find the peace that comes with trusting in the One who designed the system in the first place, that we all might eat and drink and sleep in peace.
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  July 10, 2018
Beloved: One day of rain last week made all that’s green get greener. The corn in Unionville is well higher than knee high. My son is just back from a year in Asia and snapchatting Southern Indiana for his worldly friends. They say this place looks like every schoolbook photo of America: the fields and hills and skies, the barns with animals and trucks. Talking about the American South in his book The Character of Virtue, Stanley Hauerwas calls it a mythical land constituted by a storied geography. By mythical he doesn’t mean that that favored South doesn’t exist but, rather, that the story that constitutes the geography doesn’t quite fit the facts. While he was speaking specifically of the South, his words ring true for any given land or set of people.* We are determined to think the best of ourselves at all times, to nimbly rinse away what truth might otherwise leave a stain. Church is no exception. Our history crawls with facts flushed from our telling of it. We remember persecution against the Church far better than the persecution we inflicted. We recall missionary zeal more fondly than the conquest and colonialism that traveled on those same boats, all delivered in the name of Christ Almighty. Amber waves of grain are not all there is to see in an Indiana summer. Poor people here are really poor, many of them drug-addicted and homeless too. The same sun and rain that draws corn skyward makes their long outdoor days even longer, hotter and more miserable. I see them in the grocery store, pushing a cart with things pretending they will buy, hoping to cool off a minute. They summer too, here in our Midwest town. May we not forget them. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette * Stanley Hauerwas, The Character of Virtue, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), p. 100 July 3, 2018
Beloved: I stayed home all day yesterday. ALL DAY! I emptied my pantry, wiped down the shelves and put everything back in the most orderly arrangement. I moved on to the baking supplies cabinet and drawer. My laundry room is newly organized and the garden is weeded and tidy too. Also shipshape. I prepped lots of healthy food — a task which I procrastinate endlessly over and then glory in for the next two weeks. I suspect this industry was prompted by my current sermon series from Exodus, chapter 20, namely verse 17 which says, you shall not covet your daughter’s new house. We organized her kitchen first and moved on to bedrooms, basement, etc. It would be fun to move into a new house, said the insane voice inside my head. To which my sane self quickly replied, Oooorrrrr, you could go do something about the one you already have . . . you know, the one that resembles a thrift store half-price sale? In fact I love my thrift store half-price sale of a house. Just the other day an overnight guest said, “Your house is really lived in,” which is my favorite compliment. We were babysitting two extra dogs for a total of three golden retrievers and one black lab. I have ten baby chicks on the screened-in porch. My son and his girlfriend were there and my husband too. Everyone was tripping over everyone trying to get coffee and breakfast. Oh, and my kitchen fridge is out — so we run in and out from the garage to collect our milk and meat. I’ve yet to get flowers into porch pots this spring, and now the spring is gone. I’ve taken so long to weed one flowerbed I’ve decided just to mow it. These days I am consumed with thoughts of home. Of people stranded everywhere, whose one hope in all the world is to be half as home as me. One tenth as home as me. I cannot bear to listen to the news, to hear another person debate what must be done about terrified, broken families begging us for safety. As if we don’t have enough to share. I read again this morning Jesus’ story from Matthew 25, when the people are so confused about when they might have seen Jesus in need and refused Him. Jesus told them: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” I have this vision of a little brown child behind a fence begging for her mama — but really she is Jesus in disguise, begging us to recognize Him and to turn from our wicked ways. He isn’t being deceptive since He outright told us she is Him. And the longer this drags on the greater is His mercy towards us – giving us yet another day to do what we know good and well He means for us to do. We shall surely pay for the wickedness of letting children live in cages and turning away strangers while at the same time calling ourselves God’s own. Matthew 25 portends eternal punishment, which the world has seen before, the falling of empires that thought themselves too big to fall. And we who so relish the comforts of a home that we refuse to share will not be left untouched. On move-in day my daughter and I joked about not opening half the boxes to see how long she could do without the contents. A really long time, we concluded. The fact is, until we all decide to do more than joke and then dodge the question, we’d better hope the Lord keeps giving us another day to change our minds. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  June 26, 2018
Beloved: Since April 17th, the same two boy bluebirds have pecked and pooped on every window in my house. As I provide their room and board I can only think they are saying thank-you, but I am sick to death of them both. Seems like they’d have sore necks by now but they treat it like a full-time job. Morning, noon and evening, the racket is like a kid’s shoe in the dryer. Cleaning up the mess is going to take a power washer and a mask. Asher the handyman will likely up his price for that particular day of fun. The four bluebird houses at the edge of my backyard have rarely been vacant for the last ten years but this harassment is new. Are they visiting or complaining? I wonder. I’ve scouted their neighborhood but found nothing out of sorts, no evidence of crime or vandalism to their houses. No fox dens set too close. I figure it’s just two neighbor boys with not enough to do. Making messes is kids’ work and I did invite them over, after all. Every earthly joy has its messy edge, I suppose, to make us grateful for the beauty and faithful in good work. My windows need washing anyway, which might be the bluebirds’ point all along.
Does God’s design for the human family include LGBTQ brothers and sisters? Yes. In our life together – so long as I am pastor – our testimony will be yes.
Do the same biblical teachings of monogamy and fidelity, mutual submission, kindness, and Christ-centered love still apply? Yes. Must we talk about this all the time? Yes. All the time it’s time to say that for love of each and every human being Jesus came and died and rose. And whenever church voices rise with exception to the gospel, the truth must raise its voice accordingly, Jesus made no exceptions. (Acts 10) The challenge, as always, is to persist in love with those who see things differently. For the sister who visited and needed to explain how we are failing to be truthful with them, all I know to do is be graceful but insist, here I stand, I can do no other. Do we all have room to grow in being more like Christ? The loudest YES! of all. Who doesn’t struggle with fear, addiction, jealousy or sloth? With envy, greed, prejudice or lust? Who could be more generous with money, time and talent? More brave in speaking up for justice? More consistent in prayer? More attentive to the needy in our midst? All of us know less than we don’t. Lording over those with whom we disagree can come to no good end and, besides, it undercuts the very gospel that we preach. Grace, then, must always be our fallback position. Tell the truth as best we can, leaving as much grace as possible in our wake. I pray you find yourself full of grace and truth and courage in these days. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette Beloved:
I’m home for three nights before heading back to the airport, this time for a big Baptist meeting in Texas. I’m trying to look forward to it, but I’d rather be here getting ready for Vacation Bible School – because local church is what I love: people worshipping, eating, praying and working together for the love of Jesus in our lives . . . for our longing to love others well. This is my home. You are my home. An unknowing bystander to a big Baptist meeting may suspect we’ve gathered to compare buildings, budgets and batting averages (preaching scores). I wish we talked about the thousand little faithworks of our precious people. I’d tell how lovely it was to go on vacation and know you’d manage everything beautifully without me. How when I drove up to church my first day back, a teenager was already here laying mulch in the church flower beds. How last week’s email is full of plans for helping one member move and carrying meals to another. How the kitchen is scrubbed clean and restored after the recent rodent invasion. How downstairs is full of half-made paper palm trees for VBS. And how a neighbor dropped by in need of groceries and I found the deacon pantry full as usual. This is church and I couldn’t be happier, prouder or more content to be in it with the likes of you! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette Beloved:
I had a wonderful week in Washington, D.C. I’ve decided it’s my favorite big city. All my preacher friends at the conference are Canadian, and it was wonderful showing them around the monuments and museums. With approximately one thousand other clergy members, I gratefully participated in the Reclaiming Jesus procession and candlelight street vigil. Read about it here: http://www.reclaimingjesus.org/. I’ll leave again this coming Sunday evening for a family vacation at the beach, be back for a few days and then gone a few more for Baptist meetings in Texas. Then back to stay for VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL!!!!! ~ and the whole month of July. I know you want to know what’s coming up in preaching – and you have homework! For months I’ve been saying (preaching) that when (the apostle) John writes one thing he means at least three more. We’ll come back to him later in the summer, but for the next few weeks we’re traveling from Egypt to nowhere in particular, considering Ten Words for Free People. Not just any ten words. Ten particular words. You’ve also heard them called the ten commandments, and you’ve probably heard them preached before, a time or two. I mean for us (thus the homework) to think about them as they have to do with our topic for the year: justice. In preparation and for context, please read Genesis 37 through Exodus 20. In other news - the church kitchen will be closed for the next week, so please plan accordingly. Tomorrow’s Wednesday Night Supper will happen upstairs, picnic-style, with not much clean-up. If you can come around 5:30 to help set up, all the better! Remember we’ll have immigration attorney Christie Popp as a guest speaker to tell us about local impact of recent immigration policies and how people of faith are responding. I look forward to seeing you soon! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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August 2018
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