While Reverend Niebuhr titled his poem The Irony of American History, it rings with the lyrics of Advent. Hope, faith, and love are the essential skill set for life in the spirit. Without them we have only the promises and powers of this world to sustain us, a known recipe for calamity.
Advent invites us to reset heart and mind to what we believe deep down: that all we see and hear is not all there is to see and hear; that God is at work in the world right now, visible and audible to whoever will watch and listen. Where justice, kindness, and humility are thriving, God is there. Where peace persists in the midst of violence, where the hungry are fed, the prisoner set free, and the poor regarded with dignity, God is there. Where hatred fails and love thrives, where truth prevails in the face of duplicity, and evil dies by its own sword, God is there. Abide in me, Jesus tells us. The task, always, is to pray. Put heart and head, body and soul outside this world’s reach as often as we can for as long as we can, practicing the watching and the hearing so necessary for this life. I pray you are made strong in hope, faith, and love this Advent season. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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November 27, 2018 Beloved: I can see seven squirrels’ nests in the treetops out my study window, but only in the winter. Each is about half-bushel size, made of leaves and sticks. Watching the little fellows go in and out, I got interested in their lifestyle and learned a couple of things. A family of squirrels is a dray, and an unrelated group of squirrels is a scurry. A scurry of squirrels is about the most fun thing to say ever. Seven nests is no indication of how many drays or scurries might live in these woods, since the nests aren’t homes, just motels. A squirrel naps in whatever nest has room when she’s tired. The interior is tiny. A big nest has room for two squirrels at most. They rest here and there as needed and then go back to work. Apparently, they aren’t especially social and don’t care whom they sleep with, which I suppose is both convenient and a little lonely. But I still have so many questions! How many nests are really out there and do they ever run out of room? Who decides it’s time to build another? And, who cleans the rooms? Who does all that motel maintenance? Is there some bushy-tailed siding & roofing specialist out there, keeping all those nests warmer, safer, drier? On the one paw, that’s just silly. On the other -- the nest closest to my window has been there for at least two years. Someone must be maintaining it, some genius engineer whose buildings stay put when every other leaf in the woods blows down. For all my questions, one thing I know for sure. Of all the things invented by a human, none surpasses the perfection of the window. ~ peace & prayers, pastor Annette Picture I took at my daughter’s house -- Elvis & Lando watching the world   November 20, 2018
Beloved: Thanksgiving. The week I only work Tuesday and Saturday. Today it takes all my energy to stay in my chair and still I fail, running down to the kitchen to check on bread dough rising or turkey thawing. I’ve been getting my house ready for weeks and almost made it. The powder room is half wallpapered and I’ve no living room curtains, but who cares? My kids are home. The pantry is jammed. The rooms are clean-ish, and the first wave of out-of-town company is en route. Family. Home. Food. To be so rich overwhelms my heart and mind sometimes. People I know live without enough of one, the other, or all three. By choice or default, such poverty is so extra sharp this season I wonder if it’s cruel for me to speak of such things. At the very least I can resist claiming them as blessings. I have been especially lucky. I have the opportunity to be extra generous. The space between is where faithfulness is chosen. (Luke 12:48) So, much love to your house this season. I pray you have enough of all you need. If you have extra, I pray you also find the space to be generous. ~ Peace & prayers, pastor annette November 13, 2018
Beloved: The roof below my window is dusted with snow and the leaves are down. On sunny days I can see junked cars on the ridge beyond our house. Today it’s cloudy, so there’s no sparkle through the trees. From this sweet perch in this warm house, it would be a sorry choice to complain about one’s life. Still, I feel extra weary lately, craving flannel, tea and bed. Given half a chance I believe I could sleep a week. I’m not sleep-deprived or sick. I’ve nothing particular to avoid at work or home. Honestly, I think I’m overwhelmed with news. Depressing news. Hateful news. Trouble and division and doomsday kind of news. Information overload of the wrong sort of information. Then my Bible time is in the prophets, who are hardly better. They’re mad about everything! But then this morning’s Richard Rohr reading proposed a different slant on things. Regarding difficult situations, e.g. my current gloominess, ask yourself, is this problem something that I truly cannot alter or is it caused by something I am choosing? It’s true I cannot much alter the state of world affairs. But I need not choose hopelessness, either in attitude or behavior. How I feel need not be how I act. What I fear need not drive me to my bed. Jesus talked endlessly about the choice to see or not to see, concluding that blind people are those who refuse to see (see John 9). To that end, I’ve decided to change the day by changing what I look at. No News November is my plan. Or maybe, No National News November. Instead, I’m going to live locally, as locally as possible. Keep head, heart and hands to the most immediate moments and to the life within them. My darling girl almost home from college and old people at the grocery store. Downtown dogs on leashes and the FedEx man at my door. Woodpeckers in the trees out back and dog videos on YouTube. What news they bring will be the news I choose, then see if the news doesn’t fill me up like some grand Thanksgiving feast, instead of wearing me down to nubbins. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I pray a perfect one for you and yours. Don’t forget our annual Potluck Thanksgiving meal this Sunday, following the worship service. Also, please note that the November Church Council meeting has been moved from this Sunday, November 18, to the following Sunday, the 25th. We hope to see you for both important events! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  November 6, 2018
Beloved: We’re burying spring bulbs today, those of us who gather for Global Women, along the sidewalks and in the beds where they will sleep all winter. The ones the squirrel and moles don’t eat will return the favor in every shade of yellow. Just in time for Easter, which comes late next year. Because Global Women’s Gathering isn’t a religious program doesn’t mean it isn’t holy. Friendship, family, food and nature are our constant themes, each of which is sacred. Micro-diplomacy, better known as hospitality, is our chosen strategy for peace. Besides, it’s prettier, calmer, more fun, and it tastes so much better! Every time you pass a stranger is a moment to cross a border. To reach out in kindness. To smile. To bless someone’s child with your eyes and attitude. To offer help if it looks like help is needed. Or pray. We can always pray. Praying, seems to me, will have us carry ourselves through this world like the people God hopes for us to be. I love you. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  October 29, 2018
Beloved: Love one another, Jesus said. It’s everything. It begins at home and then it goes next door. I pray much love and peace for our precious neighbors at Congregation Beth Shalom in the wake of this weekend’s terror attack at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. My idea is to hang this banner on the bridge between our parking lots and fill it with notes of sympathy and love. If you can’t get by to write a note yourself, email one to me and I’ll write it on the banner for you. There are sharpies in the porch mailbox. Like you, my heart is broken for our neighbors and how they must be suffering. How do they explain such terror to their children, alongside such empty promises and lies from leadership too compromised to lead? A banner seems slightly absurd in the shadow of such atrocity. But friendship isn’t. Neighborliness and hospitality aren’t. Solidarity, kindness and partnership in the work of justice are not. These tiny acts of human decency are all we have for debilitating hate. In the meantime, do not fail to pray for peace with each and every breath. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
Everything important takes practice. And the best at anything are people willing to fail and learn from their mistakes. Being awesome isn’t the same life goal as doing something well, any more than following Jesus is the same as being like him. Following Jesus is a daily choice to live each day a certain way, less an accomplishment than a direction and a pace, a willful pulling of one’s focus to the holy in each and every moment.
I wish it were more profound than this, than simply practice, practice, practice; that in the practice of this faith, this faith’s gifts are found. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  October 16, 2018
Beloved: A man named Dave is coming to my house today to measure for new window blinds. I’m also waiting for word on a child’s funeral arrangements later in the week. That such triviality and tragedy share space in my brain appalls me. To live deliberately in such space is the constant work of faith. To receive both the trivial and the terrible without explanation. To give space to pain while living through the ordinary. To sit without an answer to the screaming WHY? To remember that life is all one thing . . . . Joy and heartbreak flow in the one and only stream. Eternity. We don’t get one without the other And God is God is God is God is God. No matter how we feel right now. God will be God, today. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette October 9, 2018
Beloved: This week's devotional comes from Reverend Anthony Pompa, Dean and Rector of Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I’m grateful to Susan Harrington for sharing it at the very moment I needed this exact word. peace & prayers, pastor annette Burden or Blessing I am mindful that if you are fortunate enough to belong to a church community, you may be unaware of just how powerful you are. I say this in complete mindfulness of the great divide that has arisen in our secular lives. I feel if we are not careful, we may find ourselves giving our power over to the evil and sinfulness that our Baptismal Covenant calls us to resist and repent from. What evil? The evil of a tribalism that is calculated and strategic to separate us from one another by ideology, opinion, race, class, and economics. This same strategic use of tribalism invites us not to see one another innocently as different, but as a shameful enemy who must be defeated. Why sinful? It is sinful in that when we fall into the patterns of seeing one another as an enemy over the opinions and ideology we may hold, we fail to see one another the way God would have us, as children of God sharing a future of hope and goodness that has literally been born out of sacrifice. Be careful folk. Be careful. I said earlier that we are fortunate if we belong to a community of faith because we will, I pray, hold our bond together as children of God over and against the evils of tribalism our society is now seduced by. It means we can be together in love, in life, in mission, in hope, in service defined by Christ and not primarily driven by ideology or political persuasion. It does not mean we are without our convictions, but it does mean we put the way of love first, and live together as holy people, even in the midst of our differences. It means when we bump into one another’s sensibilities we can walk the extra mile to reach out in love to one another to dialogue, to pray, and to gain understanding, and to be open to being convicted by our faith and transformed by it. It means we can even change our minds and more importantly our hearts. It takes every ounce of power to live this way. The way of Love. It is in our current climate a swim against the stream. It takes power! . . . . . In a Celtic worldview, we are invited to see ourselves as part of a carefully woven pattern of relationships that breathe with all of God’s creation. (All of it). Carefully woven with the stars in the sky, the air that moves, the trees in the fields, the streams as they flow. Carefully woven with the sun that warms us, the moon that lights our dark nights, the animals in the field, our brothers and sisters of this race we call human. Together we are knit and together we breathe the life air that is the gift of our very existence. We, the human ones, have a choice in our place in the weave. We can bring with us Burden or we can bring with us Blessing. Let us bring blessing. The phrase civic duty has been rolling around in my head for a few days and I realized I don’t have a precise definition attached to it. So I looked it up and, turns out, I’ve mentally mingled civic duty and civic responsibility. They are close but not the same. Duties are legally enforceable and vary with each state. Paying taxes and obeying laws are civic duties. Responsibilities are necessary for civil society, but not legally enforceable. Serving on juries, voting, volunteering in the community, helping our neighbors are civic responsibilities.  Which naturally got me to thinking about Christian duties and responsibilities and the slightly jolting thought that neither word necessarily applies. Kingdom citizenship is chosen, not inborn. Jesus chose us, one and all, but we choose him back in becoming his disciples. The daily choice to do as Christ is freely accepted or declined. The grace of God persists when we are true to him, and when we are not. It’s not grace but justice hanging in the balance.
Insofar as life in Christ includes either duty or responsibility, I’ve no doubt it has to do with justice. Like two margins on a page, bringing the contours of life this side of heaven into line with the kingdom life Jesus described over and over again. A life where people live at peace not through strength of law, but by the law of love. By the law of love, all people are regarded fairly and with kindness. For the sake of love, all people are helped to live in safety and in peace. By the law of love, enough to eat and a decent place to live are simply human rights. And so much more, of course. Human dignity and safety . . . equality and respect . . . . We might call them duty and responsibility or, simply, the ordinary ways of life among those who choose to follow Christ. ~ 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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December 2018
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