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Beloved:
One of my oldest friends has a big birthday next week. The same big birthday I had last February. She sent me a necklace made by her jewelry artist friend. I haven’t decided what to send her. We were barely still teenagers when we met. Between us are four degrees, several jobs, two husbands, five kids. Thirty plus years laced with a multitude of private jokes, sworn secrets, tears and laughs. I wonder why some friendships last and others fade? I wonder if when I’m really old I’ll look back and realize some I thought were best friends weren’t while true best friends were ones I took for granted? I wonder if, some best friends were more an idea I kept alive and constantly decorated in my own mind than a living, breathing relationship of contact and acceptance? I wonder what a statistical analysis of my friendships would reveal: from whom did I seek comfort and help? Who listened? Who checked on me? Who showed up when I was down? Who gave without expectation and forgave without judgement? And to whom was I such a friend as this? Beginning this Sunday, January 25, I’ll preach from Mark’s gospel with the idea of treating it like Jesus’ invitation to make him our best friend. Not a figurative friend - but a practical one. The kind of best friend who shows up, who comforts, who forgives without judgement and corrects with kindness. In chapter one, verses 14-20, Jesus is is on the beach in Galilee where he happens upon some fisherman going about their ordinary lives. I suppose they already had friends when Jesus invites four of them to join his crew. They were changed forever. I look forward to sharing the time with you! And here are the two fifty year olds this past Thanksgiving. Love you Angela!!! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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Beloved:
Her pedigree name is Brown Eyed Susan the Golden Scout but we call her Scout, for Scout Finch. She's eleven months old now and weighs about fifty pounds but she's no more coordinated than she was at six weeks, eight pounds. She's forever crashing into the coffee table and tumbling down the stairs. This morning I found her roaming the woods trailing the forty foot lead that normally has her latched to the garden fence. Hopefully my neighbors missed the sight a fifty year old woman roaming the woods in her moose pajamas! We're all back inside trying to warm up now and I'm thinking about how hard it is to be be a grown up human being too. How everything that broke my heart as a child still does. I saw a dead cat and cried for hours. I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and lost my admiration for adults in general. My own grandpa got cancer. Our next door neighbors' house burned down. A girl in eighth grade died. And while not one such thing can surprise me now I handle them no better. The kid still in me trips and stumbles and feels forever sideways in the world, wanting to bolt but having nowhere else to go. The puppy curls tail to nose and falls asleep. Naps are her single solution to every stressful situation. She relaxes, closes her eyes and sighs the deepest sigh. As if she trusts the universe to right itself or, at least, do without her for just a little while. We are a funny set of characters, we mammals. More alike than feels right to suggest but funny all the same. As it happens Scout's now pacing the room crying pitifully over a deer out front. Within a minute she'll be hysterical and in five more she'll be sound asleep again. I pray the day fills your heart and brings you peace in proper measure. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette Beloved:
I was out of the dentist’s office and at the coffee shop by 9 am where I ran into a recently retired ministry colleague I’ve known twenty years and rarely seen without a coat and tie. Today he’s sporting jeans and the shadow of a beard ~ convincing me that someday I shall excel at retirement! Someday is not this day however. I have devotionals to write, commentaries to read, worship to plan, congregants to call and a dozen other duties I will fail to finish. Seeing it lined up on a page embarrasses me slightly, at the lightness of it all, at the easiness of this life I casually refer to as a calling. I take so few risks and the few I do are to reputation only, neither life nor limb. I go without nothing necessary. My worries and griefs are the most ordinary sort. I’ve chosen the safer, lighter, easier path of pastor-with-only-a-sprinkle-of-prophet-here-and-there-but-only-when-I-feel-extra-brave instead of the prophet/preacher-through-and through-without-a-thought-for-what-hearers-think. When I’m generous with myself I remember that everyone is doing his or her best most of the time and God is graceful with me too even as I am called be my bravest and do my best. All the same, the graduate students at the next table are interested in theology, environmental ethics and liberation science. They are discussing the history of Christian theological appropriation of Charles Darwin. And sadly, or maybe joyfully, my first thought is that I get to retire before them. I pray the new year is treating you kindly. ~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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July 2022
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