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June 24, 2020
Beloved: Already this morning I’ve been to the doctor for a check-up and to Walmart for a long list of things like eye drops and laundry soap. From the store and doctor’s office, I came to work and have been here ever since, except to go out for lunch. I’ve not actually left the house in two days and "out for lunch" was to the kitchen and back. So goes the summer in semi-quarantine. We don’t eat out but we do get carry-out from restaurants. We don’t have our normal gatherings but we had a picnic at a park for my sister’s birthday, our lawn chairs the appropriate distance apart. My garden is bigger since I have no travel plans, thus no worries about wasted food. I have home life figured out, but what of church? As congregations begin to reconvene for worship, we too are thinking, praying, talking our way to a new way of holding life together, together. I am so grateful for your thoughtful response to the deacons’ survey and want to share four conclusions I have drawn from what you told us. If and where I have missed the mark, I count on you to correct me. The strongest message I received from the survey responses is that you want everyone to be as safe as possible. Secondly, you very much want to be together in person when such safety is possible. Third, clarity is important to you — you want to know exactly how gatherings will work before deciding to attend. Fourth, you want an online worship option to continue for people unable to attend in-person worship gatherings. Succinctly, I understand you to say these are your priorities, though not necessarily in this order:
As your pastor, let me say this: if we have to wait a year, two years, three years to gather like we used to, we will wait. We will wait patiently, joyfully and gratefully for the experience of waiting, as others who have also waited. People of faith have always waited through times of unknowing, discomfort and fear. So can we. So will we. In the meantime, we will find ways to gather that will be new, that may be strange and, possibly, that we end up loving. But all these new ways absolutely deny this disease the contact it requires to infect other people. On my watch we shall not aid the enemy. To that end, while we still have no definite plans to gather in-person for Sunday morning worship, on Sunday July 5th at 4 PM I’ll be in a lawn chair in the church parking lot, wearing my mask and some bug spray, to host Life Together Live. You, your lawn chair and your mask are invited to join me. We will park in the lower back lot and sit up near the front porch in the shady area, 6 feet apart of course. We won’t hug or shake hands. We won’t provide refreshments. We won’t have a sound system, so we will have to talk loudly to one another. We’ll only stay an hour or so. If it rains, we’ll take our chairs into the sanctuary and follow the same seating and masking procedures. Only the upstairs bathroom will be available, with disinfectant wipes for everyone to use on surfaces after every use. I’ve been thinking about things this way lately: I would be terribly sad if our building burned to the ground; but wouldn’t it also be terribly exciting to build a whole new building from scratch, a building built to fit our life together, rather than a life together organized to fit our building? I choose to imagine this pandemic as our chance to build a church program that fits our life together, both now and post-pandemic, and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but you all. Just one more word: you have been awesome givers through the first months of the year. As of the end of May, we are ever so slightly behind budget, about 5%, and I wanted to bring it to your attention so as to get it caught up before we have a problem. No doubt everyone is busy with so many things. It’s easy-peasy to give your offering online now at ubcbloomington.org/ give. You can also mail it to the church, and counters will get it taken care of quickly. Thanks so much! ~peace & prayers, pastor annette PS – Don’t forget our plans for participating in MCUM’s safe, socially-distanced annual “Each One Feed One” food drive, as shared by our awesome MCUM donations coordinator. It will take place this coming weekend, Saturday, June 27, and Sunday, June 28. This year, due to COVID-19, people in different neighborhoods across town have been recruited to volunteer their homes as drop-off sites for donations. Two UBC-ers' homes will be drop-off sites for church folks and their neighborhoods, and you can just leave items outside their homes in specific spots described in a detailed e-mail. Each month MCUM distributes over 7,000 pounds of food to more than 200 families. Now, their food pantry has been hit hard by the pandemic and they have experienced an increase in demand. They are hoping to raise 12,000 pounds of food through this food drive. If you aren't able to donate directly to this food drive, please remember that there are lots of different ways to help out right now, including donating to MCUM through their website or through the church; or you could send a donation to our coordinator or one of the UBC staff, and they will shop for the items for you.
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June 16, 2020 Beloved: I filled the feeders, watered the porch plants, pruned the tomatoes, and hung laundry on the line. I washed our patio table and took the dogs twice their usual number of times. Finally, I gathered up all my work things and carried them out to the patio so I can at least pretend to get some work done today. Seventy degrees and no humidity has it feeling like Michigan in August, and every fiber of my being wants to be outside. Except for maternity leaves, I haven’t spent so much time at home since I was a child. Most days I never leave the house. I have put gas in my car twice since the end of March. We still don’t eat out or shop for more than essentials and things we need to garden. In the last three weeks or so we’ve had more people coming and going from the house, the kids and their friends mostly. We have no summer travel plans except to bring the youngest home from college, there and back again. I miss my previous routine but I also don’t. I miss being with people in person. I don’t miss the traffic. I miss eating out. I don’t miss the higher bills on our credit card. I miss being at the church through the week and on Sundays, swapping stories with our church administrator. I will definitely miss working on the same patio table with my husband on a glorious summer day like this. If I know anything at all, I know this season will not last forever. For all we can and cannot do to hasten a good outcome, we can choose to be present to each day’s gift and lessons in the meantime. What have you noticed and learned in these days of quarantine, about yourself and about the world?
time rather than be present to the movement of time.
Early morning to mid-morning. Noon to late afternoon. Each time has its own feel and even its own light. I find a certain little pinch of joy in recognizing this. The ebb and flow of noise inside and outside the house that I have only discovered staying home day after day is a gift of quarantine I didn’t anticipate and hope I don’t forget. Sometimes I get the urge to check out, to binge-watch TV reruns or play solitaire on my phone for thirty minutes at a go. That’s boredom, not contentment. Time to go outside. Even a nap is time better spent. Of course, there is also the news — always urging me to DO SOMETHING! This world’s need compared to my life energy is so vast, I am overwhelmed before I can begin. I find being present to the moment helps there too, centering me in the reality of what one person can do: a lot, in fact. One person can attend a protest. One person can read and learn and discover the racism within their own thinking. One can write letters. One person can encourage. One person can confront, with love, the misunderstandings they come upon. All these things feel doable when I am present to the moment and to the eternal quality of time. As you go about your day, I pray you find joy in the empty spaces. June 2, 2020
Beloved: Another black man was murdered in police custody last week in Minneapolis. His name was Mr. Floyd. Peaceful protests have been infiltrated by rabble-rousers turning cities upside down with violence and vandalism. Meanwhile, I can’t stop wondering if it’s a sin to keep my seat in this quiet room with a sweet breeze coming through the window, where all I hear is birdsong, road noise, and a sighing dog. Shouldn’t I be doing something in the wake of such violence and tragedy? How can praying possibly be enough? Would one more set of marching feet make any difference anywhere? I keep thinking about John Woolman, that 18th century Quaker forever working on his own heart; when he was divinely led to speak, he hardly spoke to more than a handful at a time, usually just one or two other people. After thirty years or so, not a Quaker in North America still owned or traded slaves. Systemic change is called for in every corner of our culture: economic, social, political and otherwise. Today, if possible, laws allowing excessive force by the state must change. But as Woolman knew, the fundamental change required happens in the human heart and begins with my own: the painful, painful work of tweezing out the shards and splinters of my own attitudes about this thing called race. Race – itself a made-up notion to reinforce the attitudes that allow me to maintain my place in the deep disparity between white, brown, and black people groups. Prayer and conversations with people also willing to do the work is all I know to do, and it’s the hardest work there is, it seems. It contains less space for speaking than for listening. It requires trust not easily found and/or maintained. I do pray God’s blessing on the brave ones marching peacefully in the streets, and for God’s protection. And I pray for the courage to pray that human hearts might also change in the days to come. Take care. May 26, 2020
Beloved: Last week’s news cycle included some silly chatter on the subject of opening churches. Silly because opening churches is, as all church people know, a redundant term, along with the term church people. The Church has not closed since the wind of Pentecost first blew through them two thousand years ago and is as alive, if not more so today, as it has been in my lifetime. You are taking care of each other with renewed intention and deeper generosity. Our worship is collaboratively and thoughtfully planned. Organizational tasks are dutifully managed. Our building is shuttered and our gatherings are virtual and our life together carries on, suspended by the same grace, faith and joy that has carried the people of God forever. I am not grateful for a pandemic. But I am grateful to be in this place at this time with the community of which I am part. I am grateful for the moments when fear and frustration leave me alone to enjoy an ordinary Indiana springtime. I am grateful for your faith, your generosity and your good humor. I am grateful for the sense of purpose you put to your lives right now, your determination to be kind and patient with one another and with yourselves. I am grateful for your good sense to look to science for the necessary information and to God for the necessary wisdom to act according to our faith. I am grateful that faith found me, for the way that faith has kept me and is keeping me now when so much else seems so uncertain. I am grateful for your prayers and for your kind care toward me. Whatever tomorrow brings, I am grateful that we shall face it like the church always has, together and with hearts alive in faith. May 19, 2020 Beloved: So much rain today. But also beautiful. Lots of business at my backyard bird feeders: finches, cardinals, bluebirds, cowbirds, nuthatch, chickadees, woodpeckers, and hummingbirds. A pair of squirrels do all the deck rails and floor clean-up every day, burying the corn kernels in my flowerpots like treasures. The forest seems to draw closer to the house as the leaves fill in the space between branches. The time saved getting ready for work, driving to work, doing errands that didn’t need doing leaves time for watching the bird feeders in the morning and walking to the mailbox at lunchtime if I want. After the first two weeks of pandemic I learned to leave my desk at a decent hour and marvel at the time saved by not having to pack up, lock up, drive home and unpack, change clothes and figure out supper. Now I just walk down the stairs and the evening begins. Someone is always cooking something, so there’s nearly always yummy stuff in the fridge. Does quarantine have rough spots and lonely places? Of course. But I’m finding it easier and easier to recognize the joy embedded in the rough and lonely spaces of pandemic quarantine. And I find that joy by choosing to be altogether in one place: heart, mind, body, soul, and strength.
I pray the day finds you abiding in your place of quarantine in joy, with oodles of grace to go around.
May 12, 2020
Beloved: For a much-needed biblical perspective on the news and the state of our nation, I recom-mend this Op-Ed piece from the NY Times two days ago. May God’s people find our voice and feet in the ways of justice here and now. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette PS - Please remember that this is the time of the month when we donate to Monroe County United Ministries (MCUM), to help those in need in our community. Due to job losses and illness caused by COVID-19, the number of people in need is greater than ever. While we are meeting virtually, we encourage folks to make financial donations to MCUM in place of our normal monthly MCUM drive. If you can do so, please consider donating online by going to this web address: https://mcum.org/donate/. Another way to donate is to register for Miles for MCUM at https://mcum.org/milesformcum/. For this, you choose an indoor or outdoor activity during the week of May 18-24 and can line up sponsors who will pay an outright amount or per mile. For more information, please go to the Miles for MCUM website linked. May 5, 2020
Beloved: This morning I remarked how strange it is to think that everyone we know is also at home nearly all the time, and my son respectfully disagreed. “What’s strange,” he said, “is that we think it’s strange. Most people in history spent plenty of time staying at home to avoid disease and plagues. It was business as usual until about fifty years ago.”* I remember the nurse at the pediatrician’s office squirting a tube of purple juice into our mouths, and my mother telling us how kids who got polio had to live inside iron boxes so they could breathe. I also remember the giant, itchy scab we got on our arms from our smallpox vaccines.** His kindly reminder helped me to relax further into the human normalcy of this season and to be grateful for what progress has been made. I’d rather enjoy going out to eat or to visit with my sisters. But not at the risk of someone else’s childhood. It turns out kids can contract COVID-19. At first doctors believed otherwise. I can definitely do this for someone else’s kids, as can most everyone I know. It’s what human beings have always done, remember. And, reading our text for this week I realize it’s a perfect opportunity to practice what our Bible preaches in John 14 — abiding. About to take leave of his disciples, Jesus explains he’s going to his Father to prepare a place for them where they will abide with himself and the Father. The disciples are more upset about his leaving than glad about his promise to return and take them with him. In time they come to embrace the promise and the faith therein. That faith that comes with abiding ... it’s another word for “staying put.” It’s by staying put that we learn to stay put faithfully, but by enjoying this life of ours — no matter what the days are made of — that we learn to enjoy this life. Circular to be sure, just like life within eternity — endless and complete at once, even as we live it. As you are staying put these days, what are you discovering about yourself and life together that you never knew before? I’d love to hear your insights. In the meantime, ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *If you’re needing something new to watch and can stream programming, check out the miniseries John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. **Children are still vaccinated against polio but not smallpox. April 28, 2020. Day 43 of Quarantine Beloved: Given how I trash-talked him last Tuesday, it seems fitting Otto get top billing today. In respect of other people’s sensitivity I’ll not post a picture of the corpse, but never have I been so glad to see a dead chipmunk on my garage floor, laid out as a sacrifice upon an altar. Until he died two years ago, I had no idea how much time and effort our previous cat Simba devoted to patrolling and protecting my flowerbeds from chipmunks. Since his death, they have invaded and destroyed not just planting, but even the underground structure of my beds. For his part, Otto acts as if nothing interesting has happened, but I’m planning some extra treats for later, sprinkled near the chipmunk corpse to convey my gratitude and hope that he will go hunting again, maybe start a real collection.
The world today is ruled by a virus, one cell of which can make a human being deathly ill. Our disrespect of its dominance will destroy life and civilization as we’ve known it for generations. So, for now we will respect it by staying home, washing our hands, and learning ever deeper levels of patience with one another, confident that life will not be like this forever, because soon enough science will do what modern science has done every time a disease proposed to lord it over us. Soon enough scientists will bring forth the science to shelve this virus in the same vault as smallpox, polio, and diphtheria. When and where there are breakouts, science will descend the way Otto descends on a chipmunk in my flowerbed.
And in the meantime, we will keep diligence, faith, and good humor – knowing that the God who made us sustains us now and keeps Their promise to keep us close no matter what the future holds. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
Three weeks ago I paid a handyman to wash my windows, some of which have not been done in years. After I paid him he loaded his truck and was not possibly out of the neighborhood yet when a robin arrived on my bedroom window sill to admire his big fat self. Every day since, he has circled the house from sunup to sunset, body slamming and head-butting all my windows, flecking them with bird poop. I may hate him, but he is my teacher just the same, I’ve decided. He’s come to inform me, in no uncertain terms, that the spiritual discipline I profess is no thicker in me than the dust upon my windows.
I’m hardly the first to discover that it doesn’t take famine or a war to test a person’s faith. A bird on a windowsill can show us what we most believe. Abuse the cat. Kill the bird. Hate the bird. After forty-plus years of attempting to pray, these are my automatic responses when I’m annoyed. Not threatened, friends — annoyed. And while the temptation is strong to continue the response by embellishing or expanding upon my own spiritual inadequacy, things are hard enough right now. Instead, I choose to use this pretty little bird (I’m sorry I body shamed you and called you a big fat bird. You are positively lovely!) to remind me that our good intentions matter, and change takes as long as it takes. Otto seems no worse for wear even though I snapped at him. I did not, in fact, kill the bird and I can practice not hating him, even if I can’t control all my thoughts. And all that bird poop means the handyman will always have more work to do, so economically it’s a win as well. Do you also find yourself less patient with yourself these days? Is one little thing bugging you lots more than it should? Lots of stressors we can’t see push at us these days, and it’s tempting to believe we should be doing better than we are. These are not easy times — not by any measure. But we can thrive by being as gentle with ourselves as we hope others will be with us. May your home be surrounded by peace and prayers today. ~ much love, 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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June 2020
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