beneath every grief and fear is the certainty of Jesus’ demolition of death, the promise that we may be crushed, but we are not forsaken . . . perplexed, but not driven to despair.
Depending on the grief, that certainty may live in the far reaches of the heart and mind, making the offhand remark of a good friend a gift they don’t even know they’ve given. Life is sweet and salty, ever turning from one to the other, grief as much a season as joy, as we lean into the end of the song, which is the very hope of our lives and our life together in this faith. I couldn’t be more grateful for you.
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Beloved:
I sit here, wondering to myself if I am past the point in life in which I might hope to be good at this work, or if I am still gathering the experience required to be good at it eventually. I read once that architects generally do their very best work in their sixties and seventies. Maybe the same is true for other professions, including preaching. Maybe it just takes forty years to get the hang of humanity and the scriptures - what James Cone calls the two sources of theology - forty years to see all the way through people, culture and the Bible page in front of us, until we recognize the patterns at play and the meaning therein. If this is the goal, I’m able to locate how far I’ve come and how far I have to go in this work called preaching. As well, I see the constant task is to stay curious, keep reflecting and practice, practice, practice. Which, I suppose is true from craft to craft, building buildings, teaching preschool, playing music or making art. Do any of us create the work we imagined when we first imagined it? Not me. I have sermons in me I can’t preach. I don’t possess the skill set required and won’t without the necessary practice. Does any of this ring true for you too? These are the things on my mind this summer morning as I sit in this quiet office where I’ve spent the last thirty years of my work life. All day I hear the traffic of busy people at work. My mind travels all over the world, where people are working to keep human life fed and moving, thriving and enlivened in so many, many ways. How perfect any given sermon is feels much less important than whether or not I am holding up my part of this essential task - to enliven those around me. It matters to do good work well, I’ve decided again this morning. I pray your heart and hands are busy at the same. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette 
June 28, 2022 My life goes on in endless song Above earth's lamentations, I hear the real, though far-off hymn That hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing, It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? While though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth. And though the darkness 'round me close, Songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm, While to that rock I'm clinging. Since love is lord of heaven and earth How can I keep from singing? When tyrants tremble in their fear And hear their death knell ringing, When friends rejoice both far and near How can I keep from singing? In prison cell and dungeon vile Our thoughts to them are winging, When friends by shame are undefiled How can I keep from singing? Beloved:
Every verse of this hymn speaks to me when my heart feels bruised and broken by the meanness of the world. It comes to me when I am hurting, for the world and for myself. It comes to me again these days in which I feel so terribly betrayed by my country. The recent ruling from the supreme court makes me sad, so very, very sad. Abortion has to be legal, safe and accessible everywhere, else poor women will suffer and die. Children will suffer and die. Not because I say so but because history bears it out. But even that is not what makes me saddest about the recent court decision. I’m saddest of all because in my heart of hearts I believe every human being is born with the God-given right to govern the territory within the borders of their own skin. And now, with this SCOTUS decision, our God-given birthright was annexed from half of the U.S. population. Our bodily autonomy has been taken into custody of the government. It is the stuff of dystopian novels and movies. Except that it’s real, and right now. And very likely to get worse. Some say it won’t apply to people like me and mine, because we are people of privilege, with the means to outmaneuver the ruling. That the poor will pay and suffer most does not make the decision less sad to me, less a terror or an offense to me. I know my job but truthfully, I’m still very much struggling to find my way through. As a Baptist, I’ve often spoken of our spiritual (or soul) autonomy, that connection to God between which no priest or pastor is necessary for commuting grace. I’m not sure there’s any light between spiritual and bodily autonomy. And yet, suddenly into that non-existent space an entire government has forced itself. And the women I talk to all feel violated, to say the least. Assaulted is not too strong a word. Every one of us has been preyed on at one time or another, by someone who believed he had some right to our body. Now an entire government? I don’t always know a good word to share, at least one from my own heart. Hope is all there is to reach for sometimes, the memory and the faith that not everything has been revealed, including our own resilience and faith. Some times require that we sit in the grief and the unknowing for a while, gathering our thoughts, connecting to the spirit which connects us one to another. Until such a time that we are ready to rise. Thank goodness for the songs that come to us while we wait. One blessing is this gentle weather day. I pray you find some joy in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM8mOKfxmWw ~ a very dated music video but a lovely recording of the hymn by Enya.  June 14, 2022
Beloved, How grateful am I for our life together with our gay, lesbian and transgender brothers, sisters and friends in the faith. They are so much a part of our regular cycle of worship, service and fellowship and, because they never, ever complain, I am prone to forget about the daily mistreatment they experience in the world. The slights, the comments, the hatefulness and the outright threats against their existence, like I read about yesterday. A preacher whose name does not bear repeating has gained some social media traction for saying the worst possible things and suggesting his comments only repeat the words of Jesus. An easily provable lie. If his words weren’t so dangerous, I’d ignore him altogether. But he is getting a hearing online, and the LGBTQIA community must not be the only ones standing up to him. His ministry colleagues and fellow believers must be at the front, defending them against such threat and terror. To that end, here is the letter I have written and will send. Dear Pastor ~, Your church website speaks plainly of your desire to share the gospel with the world. That you present it there in so many languages is a ministry unto itself. I am so grateful for it, trusting that we are one church with one mission: to share the love of God with our neighbors, knowing — as Jesus teaches in Luke 10 — all the world is our neighborhood. This is why I am writing to you now. Having just watched the section of the June 5th sermon by Preacher ~ in which he claimed that Jesus blessed the trial and execution of gay and lesbian people for what he labeled “the sin of abomination,” I cannot keep from sharing my concerns regarding both the errancy of such biblical interpretation and the danger of such preaching. While I am by no means the final authority on all biblical matters, I am beyond certain that the Gospels contain no such words from the mouth of Jesus. Other biblical references to pederasty (translated homosexuality after 1946) may or may not be debatable, depending on one’s biblical perspective; but whether Jesus ever spoke of it is not. He simply didn’t, and to claim otherwise is, simply, a lie. It occurs to me that your preacher might be young in the work and prone to the excite-ment of the pulpit. If so, he might never imagine someone taking his words literally, and yet such things happen all the time. Like it or not, the preacher’s voice speaks for God to many a hearer. People could be hurt or worse, should someone take his voice as Divine permission to kill someone. What a tragedy it would be for a preacher’s call and enthusiasm to drown in the blood spilled on account of his words. While the temptation to argue the scriptures or theology is strong, my soul’s desire in writing is to speak up on behalf of the gay and transgender human beings who are dear to me and those around the world who feel genuinely terrorized by Christian preachers calling for their cold-blooded, state-sponsored execution. Such preaching is neither biblical nor Christian. Such preaching drives people further from the gospel, not closer, and the great shame of it all is that Jesus never, ever said anything of the sort. I pray you might take my letter in the Spirit with which I have composed it. May we all be firm in the truth of His great sacrifice on our behalf. peace & prayers, pastor annette June 7, 2022 Beloved: My garden is in, mostly. I want to plant some bean seeds, but the ground is still too wet. They come up quickly so I’m not worried yet. Also some mammoth sunflowers, which I’ve planted every year and never gotten no more than a stalk or two, because the chickens always scratched them up and ate them. But the chickens have retired to an Owen County barnyard, so my hope is renewed. We took out three enormous redbuds and paid a nice man to build a sturdy fence around a raised bed garden. Before the plants were in the dirt, at least one raccoon scaled the fence and left my beautiful new garden looking like a frat house lawn after Little Five. At Tractor Supply a nice man named David sold me everything I need and explained exactly how to install the electric cable that will encourage the raccoons to go elsewhere for their nocturnal calamity. I haven’t installed it yet but absolutely must, as my pepper and tomato plants have baby blooms on them already. Nothing feeds my deep self like growing food and flowers. We’ll use every tomato and make all the basil into pesto, but I doubt we’ll eat more than a picking or two of green beans. The rest I’ll leave in paper bags by the mailboxes for the neighbors. The same for cucumbers, which I’ll also be sick of by the end of summer. Garden math blows my mind every single season: how one bean seed makes dozens of green beans, each bean containing another half dozen seeds. And squash! Good Lord, one squash seed becomes hundreds more seeds just like itself. A tomato seed makes thousands. You’d think my garden bed would be full of new vegetable starts each spring, instead of weeds upon weeds upon weeds. How I wish I loved to weed the way I love to prune and stake and fuss over my vegetables. It’s one reason I’m transitioning to raised beds, that and for conserving water. In raised beds I’ll use rainwater almost exclusively, which I am excited about. Of course, if my family depended upon this garden to survive, we’d all starve by Christ-mas time. We survive on the backbreaking labor of people we will never meet. My few minutes a day bent over my little plants is a good reminder to be grateful for them. All the same, June, July and August have to be the best time of the year to live and eat in the corn belt of this country. Watermelon, corn, tomatoes, beans, peaches, berries and all the rest – get yourself to Farmers Market as often as you can this summer and be grateful for the bounty of the earth.  Last summer’s beautiful, loaded black cherry tomato plants. We didn’t get a single tomato before the raccoons ripped them out of the ground and dragged them across the yard It is the silence of the world that’s real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our facetious statements about our purposes, our businesses and our noise; these are the illusions.” ~ T.Merton, No Man Is An Island May 24, 2022 Beloved: It was so good just to sit and listen. I heard a dozen different preachers,* some of them twice, along with good liturgy and music. And plenty of silence too, in and out of worship. I wore a mask nearly all the time, which has its own silencing effect and, like everyone I know, I’m tired. Tired enough that the opportunity not to talk was a blessing all its own. The great silence behind and below all facetious human noise is where God is, Merton says, and unless we go there, all we know and say of God is conjecture, hearsay at best. The almond tree puts forth her fruit in silence, he notes, and the silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. Silence is one of my summer spiritual intentions. Not just a still voice but inner stillness too. A quieting of the heart and mind with the hope of tuning in to the trees and clouds. I’m thinking I’ll especially try to practice while I work the flowerbeds, where there are weeds as tall as toddlers. Silence save for the ripping sound as roots let go of earth. This room is mostly quiet now but for the snoring dogs and ticking clock. Far off I hear a squawky bird. If I can settle my brain I’m at risk of falling asleep. But this summer I’m choosing not to mind or judge myself, but rather let the silence lead. So if you see me sleeping in my flowerbed, not to worry, I’m fine. I’m right where the Lord would have me on a summer day. *Last week I attended the Festival of Homiletics in Denver Colorado. In case you are interested in who preached: https://festivalofhomiletics.com/.
May 3, 2022
Beloved: All day I’ve been thinking about mothers: young mothers, poor mothers, pregnant mothers, overwhelmed, overworked, barely getting by mothers who love their kids as much as any mother anywhere. Mothers who want their kids to have enough of everything necessary and some of what makes childhood wonderful. Mothers who would love to not be afraid, to just enjoy their kids for a whole day without being terrified about the future. Somehow, that reminded me of the mama duck who nested in our flower bed two consecutive springs several years ago. The first year, her babies were born and one day just waddled off. The second year, she came back -- but things didn't go well at all. I wrote about it at the time. You can use the Archive list on the right-hand side of this page to find May 10, 2016. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple
digging up their hateful saplings. I finally had all three trees removed to make a raised bed garden in that space. Meanwhile, the lilac bush has come into her own and is exploding with these dark violet flowers, thus Shug’s comment from The Color Purple. You only have to glance at her to see how hard that purple lilac bush is working to be noticed.
I wonder what I miss simply for being too busy with lesser things, lesser than the ways God is trying to please me as I hurry through a day. What joy or encouragement might I have received? What new burst of hope or awareness of the Holy Spirit in our midst? Even now I feel the pinch of needing to finish writing and move on to other things. Why? Why not sit with this thought for as long as this thought might sit with me? What better thing have I to do than consider what God is doing here and now, in and through this time and place? Surely I am better for it . . . and better to those around me; kinder and more attentive; more patient and good humored. We are a funny bunch, amen? Wanting deeper faith . . . immediately. Knowing all the while that deeper faith flows slowly and into the stillest of waters. Springtime has so many gifts to offer. Take the time to gather yours. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette April 19, 2022
Beloved: What a beautiful weekend of High Holy Days’ worship and fellowship. So many thanks to Rob, the choir, and Fan for leading us through the Good Friday service, as well as to the Fellowship Committee for their beautiful work on Sunday’s Easter Feast. It’s my favorite church season by far. I also love these weeks after Easter when the Church works her way back toward the Ordinary Time of worship, fellowship, and service in our life together. This spring feels especially and wonderfully ordinary as we approach our one-year anniversary of post-pandemic in-person worship for nearly a year! (Yes, I remember the winter set-back . . . but let me be excited!) I am looking forward to adding more programming back into our schedule as we move into summer and next fall. For now, I have the week off preaching, and I’m using the study time to read Thomas Merton’s No Man Is An Island. So far I’m finding something to love on every page, like these thoughts:
In the meantime of this day, may the Risen Christ be ever close to you as you live out his calling in this place and time. ~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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