Beloved:

      Winter rain outside but so cozy inside because my new furnace  is here.  Four men worked eight and a half hours to install it.  Mine is a sleek gray with navy blue trim, two water heaters and its own wi-fi router.  I can change the settings from my computer or my phone.  I keep going downstairs to stare at it and making up reasons to call my new best friend, the HVAC man.

      Who knew a person could have such tender feelings for her furnace?  Anyone without heat for three weeks in the winter, I expect.  Expressing my excitement to Jack, the HVAC man, he replied, “Oh, I know what you mean.  When I was a kid my mom didn’t have the money to fix our furnace so she bought propane a little at a time to keep a space heater running for us.”  I expect it will be a long time before I take a warm house for granted again. 

      In other news, my sister’s husband passed away Thursday after a long illness.  He’s to be remembered and buried tomorrow.  As I need to be with my family I will not be preaching an Ash Wednesday Service this year.  I’ve listed a couple of other local congregations also having evening services, so please do find another to attend.

      I look forward to worshipping and serving with you this week.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

St. Thomas Lutheran Church ~ 3800 E. 3rd St.
7 PM:  Ash Wednesday Service
(A daytime service will be held at 12:00 Noon.)

Bethel AME ~ 302 N. Rogers St.
6 PM:  Ash Wednesday Bible Study
7:30 PM:  Imposition of Ashes

First United Methodist Church  ~ 219 E. 4th Street
7 PM:  A family-friendly service featuring Taizé music
           and Imposition of Ashes in the sanctuary

Beloved:

       I read once that Winston Churchill worked from his bed every morning until 10 AM.  I wonder if his furnace was shot too?  Our new one is ordered, but until it arrives we keep warm with two space heaters we got on clearance at Rural King.  We move them around the house as needed, but I’m too cozy to take this one to my study and wait for that room to heat up.  So the dogs and I pile on the bed with my coffee, breakfast, books and computer until time to leave for an afternoon of sewing with Global Women’s Gathering.

       Outdoors seems warmer than in, and I don’t like it.  Except for the broken furnace I’d rather have snow than daffodils right now.  The snakes and frogs are going to wake up soon and then be exhausted by June.  With days both warm and short I keep forgetting what month this is, that we haven’t had Spring Break yet.

       I complain as one who struggles, and yet I have no inkling of actual hardship.  A chilly house on a cool day is a crisis for no one.  For someone as steeped in economic and social privilege as me, it’s probably a sin to mention it, except for the sake of calling ourselves out on such privilege.  I wake up every morning in a neighborhood of people as conditioned as I am to confuse inconvenience with crisis, proclivity with necessity.  To be clear, waiting on one’s new furnace is inconvenient.  Having no money to buy a new furnace is a crisis.  Wishing for pretty snow is a proclivity.  Warmer weather is a necessity for people without heat.

       Mine is to buck up, cheerfully, to do my day without complaining in that certain tone which suggests I deserve my furnace sooner rather than later.  If I deserve anything at all, I deserve more opportunities to break up the embedded thinking that keeps me from growing in love and grace.  I need the experiences, uncomfortable as some are, that expose blind spots in my worldview and block me from deeper, more profound community.

       I’m glad to be on this path with the likes of you all.  Also, I have a recipe to share.  My trainer gave it to me in a note about better bread.  I made it yesterday and it’s so good.  Next time I’m going to add a bit more salt and some honey. 

    Did I mention the other kids were immigrants?  That classroom party was to them yet another unfathomable wonder of American public school, along with cafeteria lunch, playground and school nurse.  When my kids explained they’d get a card from every kid in their class they felt it only fitting to write a personal note to each one.  Did I mention English wasn’t their first language?  My kids explained, “Nah, just sign every one and then we can play.”  Their dad explained, “How about you help them write theirs?”  Everyone ended up staying for supper, and as usual my family received so much more than we gave.  

    My kids and my neighbor’s are all grown and scattered now, working or in college.  Some have become U.S. citizens and the others will someday.  I wonder if they remember their first American Valentine's Day and how much they taught me and my kids about privilege:  about a life so safe, so secure, so calm, that education itself has space for something as silly as a classroom party of cards and cupcakes.  

Beloved:

            So, it’s my birthday.  I’m 53, like the bank.  It’s also Garth Brooks’ birthday except he’s older than me.  Also the exact day the Beatles first came to America.  The year I turned 40 my dad died on my birthday.  I didn’t begrudge him it, as he was really sick and I sort of liked the orderliness of him having been my dad for precisely 40 years.  This year some of my kids and a friend from Australia who happened to be in town came over for birthday supper on Sunday.  We had Chinese take-out with Girl Scout cookies for dessert.  It was perfect.  

            I’ve always loved my birthday.  When I was a kid I never once considered I’d still be having them in 2017.  Fifty-three was older than my mom, well beyond the range of my imagination.  Turns out the fifties suit me just fine.  While I can no longer see, hear or remember things like I once did (and I’m almost always hot!), I am also as happy and content as I’ve ever been, as at home in this body, this marriage, this family, this faith, this life, this community, this world.  

            Which is not to say I am growing more tolerant in the babyhood of my old age.  Turns out I’m more impatient with foolishness, greed, salaciousness and incivility now than when I had small children in tow.  Happy and content as I am on the one hand, this is not the world I intend to bequeath to my children’s grandchildren.  As much as healthy forests and clean water, I want them to inherit strong, peaceful, safe communities administered by sensible, decent, wise, compassionate leaders.  My eighties are on the horizon and I’m shooting for my nineties, so I figure I have thirty-five active years left to do my part, with five to ten more on the sideline.  Time to get busy, but not too busy.  It is my birthday after all.   

~peace & prayers,
​
pastor annette