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April 14, 2020 Beloved: I pray this post-Easter greeting finds you well and being gentle with yourself as we enter another week of quarantine. As I write, a squirrel is scrounging through the flower pots on my back deck looking for the nuts they buried there last fall. I’ve cleaned off the dead plants and rearranged the pots so they can’t find what they are looking for. The chickens are yelling about being grounded to their coop for eating my neighbor’s newly laid down grass seed. And the weeping cherry tree I wanted cut down last year has come back like the tree man said it would, proving that the hardest work I do all day is simply leaving something alone. 
In other news, I was over at the church building yesterday to put away things I’d brought home to record Holy Week services. Everything there is quietly fine, and it made me all the more proud of you for how we are thriving through these days. As far as I know, our local households are all healthy. Extended family members, especially the elderly, are constantly on our minds and in our prayers. Friends who live alone need our extra contact. Families with young kids at home have extra duties and no one to spell them, so their patience and strength oblige our prayers as well. Remember that birthdays and anniversaries are printed in the church directory, so send each other greetings through the mail just as you also call to check in. We will continue to pre-record services for now and have two live events as scheduled on Sunday afternoons and on Thursday mornings. Let me or your deacon know if you have a need with which we can help.
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April 7, 2020 ~ Holy Week
Beloved: Ash Wednesday seems far longer than six weeks ago, amen? In the same way Jesus’ disciples had no idea what he was up to when he turned his face toward Jerusalem, we couldn’t have imagined celebrating Easter so isolated from one another. Still, grace we could not have imagined has also bloomed among us. In our physical absence has bloomed intentional connection and a new tenderness that is good for my soul, and yours too I bet. I am profoundly aware of a deep and wide degree of patience and encouragement among family, friends, neighbors and strangers. Easter marks the destruction of the divide between time and eternity – the propulsion of eternal grace into temporal time – so that even while we are separated physically, we can more fully experience our spiritual unity. This is why I love our visits on Life Together Live – the Sunday Zoom meetings at 4 PM. Yes, they are loud and crazy as everyone talks at once and kids show each other their latest artwork, but I still love it! If you haven’t joined in yet, I hope you will next week. My plan is to continue doing church this way until the scientists say it’s safe to gather once again. Your patience, encouragement and good humor these last three weeks are like honey on my heart, and I’ve no doubt we can do it as long as is necessary.* The effort, extra hours and creativity of this part-time church staff to create online worship and church programming humbles me more than I have words to say. I am in technology kindergarten while Rob and Laura Beth guide me with the patience of a thousand preschool teachers. Fan has her eyes everywhere so that nothing essential falls through the cracks. Be sure and take advantage of the extra Holy Week offerings they are delivering each day this week on Facebook and YouTube! Rob has a family Easter activity and Laura Beth a Holy Week Reflection drawn from our usual Good Friday service. And thank you, thank you, thank you for putting your offering in the mail to the church office! More honey on my heart as it makes sure our bills are paid, especially our amazing church staff! An online giving mechanism should be ready for use on Sunday too. Keep in touch. Stay connected to each other, and remember that you are so very dear to me. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *Like honey on my heart is a phrase I learned from Dalia O., who called this week to check on her UBC friends and say she is doing well. Beloved:
As it happens, I’ve begun reading Erik Larson’s new book, The Splendid and the Vile, about the London blitz in the fall of 1940 when London and other parts of England were bombed continuously for months. People who lost their houses lived crowded together in underground shelters without electricity or plumbing – continuously for months. They endured all manner of shortages and hardship – continuously for months. They fully expected to be invaded by a ground army more powerful than their own – continuously for months. Suffice it to say, the book provides both some perspective and some hope. Perspective, in that nothing I endure these days so far qualifies as hardship. I have water, electricity and way too much internet.* My wardrobe is best described as minimalist. Except for my yard clogs a few times a day, I no longer wear shoes. I shower and change from pajamas into clean pajamas once a day. Three times a week I put on make-up and Zoom clothes then change back into my jammies.** I have more than enough to eat as the kitchen works over-time and nobody eats out ever. And the housekeeper is but a memory, so we all have plenty of extra chores to do as well. We are not suffering. This is not hardship. At least not yet. Hope is found in the reality that unlike a city bombed incessantly, we can protect ourselves and one another. This virus is more persistent and more patient than any human army. We will defeat it by being more persistent and patient still. The most faithful and the most care-full we can be is to do the only thing the scientists know to tell us now: stay home, stay separated from each other, wash our hands often and for twenty seconds at a time. Staying home can feel like doing nothing, but it is everything that matters now. In terms of faith, remember Jesus speaking to his disciples in John 15: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The lives we lay down now are not these mortal bodies but the lives of busyness and everyday activity. Jesus never promised what shape this obedience might take. We probably didn’t imagine it would be homeschooling or pre-recorded worship services. But here we are, invited to this obedience all the same. I pray that whatever shape sequestering has taken for you today, you can find some joy therein. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette * I now know way too much about America’s big cat community. ** Zoom clothes are outfits that are professional from the waist up, pajamas from the waist down. Two church projects you can help with this week:
Stone Belt Arc Needs Your Help! Looking for ways to help out your community while social distancing? Visit http://ow.ly/qZnA50yQb0c VIRTUAL BUDDIES We are in need of volunteers who are willing to be Virtual Buddies. If you are interested in connecting with someone on video conference or via phone call, please contact: Rev. Sarah McKenney at smckenney@stonebelt.org. OTHER NEEDS Stone Belt needs gift cards to grocery stores, healthy snacks, hygienic supplies, board games, DVDs (movies & television), craft supplies, video game consoles, etc. And we have a handy drop-off box located near the entrance at Stone Belt, 2815 E Tenth Street in Bloomington. You can also have things mailed. And there is a donation button on the link above. Donate & become part of the Stone Belt Buddies Brigade today! Does good faith demand first mention of the crisis or am I allowed to begin with my garden full of blue birds, bluer and fuller than I remember either ever being before? My brain has ceased its spinning and finally I can sleep, now it’s my arms that ache with needing something necessary to do. stay and wait . . . be still and know . . . . like the bluebirds, I suppose. March 24, 2020
Beloved: Every morning I wake up and I wonder for a moment if I dreamed it. Nope. We really are all staying put and doing our lives the best we can from inside our respective houses. Once I’m up, the day goes by faster than I expect, possibly because I’m not homeschooling little kids. I do some work, cook some food, take the dogs in/out fourteen times, read, sew and wash my hands. I also try to get outside, if only in my yard, where spring is positively exploding. I pray the days are settling into a kind of rhythm for you and yours and that you are able to connect with friends and family elsewhere via what technology you have. I got a real letter with a stamp from my seven-year-old niece, which means I’ve got correspondence piling up. A treat unto itself! Don’t forget to check on one another and to pray for those who are sick. I miss you oodles and look forward to staying in touch as we are able. See below for news about online church events and changes regarding the state-wide order to stay home issued on March 23rd. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
The church building will not be open on Sunday mornings, but people with wi-fi-enabled devices can access the church wi-fi from the parking lot and are welcome to do so. Life Together Live ~ Twice a week Pastor Annette will host live church gatherings online. Zoom meetings are easy-peasy, and you don’t have to sign up for anything to participate. Just contact our church administrator (ubc3740@gmail.com) to receive the appropriate link. Pass the Peace of Christ ~ Welcome * Conversation * Reading * Prayer Sunday Afternoons, 4-4:45 PM Bible Chat ~ * Prayer & Discussion of the Coming Sunday’s Bible Text Thursday mornings, 11AM-12PM The Lenten Reading Group will also meet on the previously arranged dates, at these slightly adjusted times. March 29th, 5:15~6:30 pm April 5th, 5:15~6:30 pm April 14th, 6:30~7:45 pm P.S. It’s not too late to join. E-mail the church office at ubc3740@gmail.com for an online copy of the text, The Journals of John Woolman, and start reading! * Continue checking your e-mail and/or the church website (ubcbloomington.org) regularly for updates about church programming and church family news. * Please e-mail or call the church with your own family news and to let us know if you are ill or need help. March 17, 2020
Beloved: What does good faith require in the midst of a global pandemic? Such questions are not on every person’s mind right now but hopefully on ours. How do we do faith? How do we do church? Faith first: each one praying for peace and discernment in the midst of fear and of too much information is first every day, but especially in times of trouble. Before we can make good plans we must be able to think and act in peace instead of fear, in the terms of our faith instead of news cycle overload. My own morning prayers are backlit by another Southern Indiana springtime, glorious and yet so ordinary. Lilac buds are on and daffodils in the woods are opening. My three-year-old hens are meeting the egg quotas of a much younger flock. A pair of house finches on my window sill, not two feet from my face, are discussing something earnestly, where to find their lunch maybe. All this springtime business-as-usual reminds me I have a choice: to tune my heart to their tempo, ground myself in the goodness and the grace of springtime bursting forth in this time and place, or give in to anxiety over a hundred things that haven’t happened yet. How do we do faith in these troubling times? By being here now. By doing what needs doing here and now. Which answers the second question too: how do we do church in these troubling times? Be here, now. Do what needs doing here, now. The latest best reports from the Center for Disease Control predict no decline in transmission until an effective vaccine is delivered, several months from now. Therefore, to that end our Life Together as we’ve known it will be different for awhile. We won’t meet in a large group for Sunday morning worship for many weeks most likely. Until then the necessary precautions against transmission simply must stay in place, and we will do our part as church. If communities and countries everywhere will exercise the necessary patience and endurance, the number of people who get sick will be kept low enough that everyone gets good care. But we cannot confuse low transmission with eradication, so the need for endurance cannot be overstated. It turns out that the very constructs of our faith are what this crisis most demands: patience, courage and endurance. To that end, I am thinking prayerfully and carefully about what our life together shall look like in the coming weeks as we forgo our usual meetings and meals together. The two things we shall not give up are staying connected to one another and serving our community through the crisis. How they shall take shape largely depends on how God leads each of us, but I will have some more organized suggestions soon. For now, here’s what I have to share:
This is the time for which we pray to be faithful, friends, when we don’t have to figure out what to give up for Lent, but how to bear through the weeks of Lent with confidence that the God who brought us this far isn’t going to leave us now. Keep the faith. Reach out to somebody else today in grace and service. And for heaven’s sake, go outside so as not to miss the glory of this beautiful early spring day. March 10, 2020
Beloved: Like everyone else, I’m following the news about the coronavirus epidemic. Like my colleagues, I’m thinking about the appropriate ministry response and responsibility in the midst of the crisis. Some pastors wear surgical gloves to serve communion. South Korean churches have cancelled services altogether and are posting sermons online instead. Reading the public health information available right now and revisiting our own mission statement,* I’ve concluded that for the time being, the UBC response plan shall be:
~peace & prayers, pastor annette * UBC exists to share the gospel message of the love and grace of Jesus Christ with our community and the world through worship, service, and discipleship.
All the news is noise and chaos, but not one thing told is new. When I shift my gaze just slightly, I see winter passing swiftly as a thought. The forest outside of my house is full of singing birds now. They land on my deck flowerpots to pick through last year’s leftovers, choosing twigs for their new nests. I save up bits of yarn to leave them and hunt for later when I look up in the trees. Once I saw a strip of dried-up duct tape woven to look like silver brickwork.
The seasons turn and I feel older; older and deeply beholden to the One who allows me another turning of the light. Another Holy Season to reconsider what to keep and what to let go. I’m letting go of worry, especially about whether I am getting enough done, which is actually just cover for “do other people think I am getting enough done?” — which is actually cover for my insecurity and doubt. I’m keeping joy -- the joy of having work that matters, that I enjoy doing, with awesome people who are not in fact judging me. I am keeping that joy by working enough but not exhausting myself or others. I am keeping the joy by resting, by eating kindly, moving kindly and seeking the beauty only found in a southern Indiana late winter season. Keeping joy when I am so tempted to worry and fret is a fundamental exercise of faith for me, and I suspect for others too. If you haven’t come upon a particular Lenten practice yet, I invite you join me in it. “I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.” ― Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent February 25, 2020 Beloved: I appreciate my friend and colleague John Vanderzee for posting this perfect introduction to Lent. I especially love the phrase “a great departure” for describing the spiritual intention of the season. Here are some other devotional ideas for spiritual practice this Lenten season. I look forward to your feedback and conversation as we walk and worship together through the coming days.
pastor annette February 18, 2020
Beloved: As some remodeling work finishes up at my house, here are some things I’ve learned. In the 1990s, it was apparently a thing to install a giant Jacuzzi bathtub then build the house around it. Uninstalling involves sawing the tub into pieces to carry to the dumpster. If you give a floor guy some Girl Scout cookies he’ll help you catch a mouse. I am more afraid of mousetraps than mice, and I needed to catch one who moved into my Honda Fit. The floor guy was super great about setting the trap, twice. If your husband says he only wants to pick out one thing in the project, don’t be surprised if it turns out to be a high tech toilet he will program to welcome you upon approach. My cat likes to sit in the new bathtub – but only when it’s empty. When he isn’t told the contractor filled the tub to test the stopper, he ends up really angry for the rest of the day. People love to be fed. Snacks, breakfast, something for the road. If you ask them if they want something, they almost always say, “Oh, I’m fine.” But if you take them something you’ve already made, they are glad to have it. My egg sandwiches are big favorites now. Despite internet advice to the contrary, warm water with vinegar and much scrubbing will not remove grout from the face of your tile. Call the tile man to come back and remove it surgically with his tile scalpel. I promise everyone will be happier for it. Like everything else in life, remodeling projects demand patience and flexibility. Some things don’t turn out as you imagined and some things turn out better than you could have. Treating everyone involved as though they are doing their best makes each day and the whole project proceed more efficiently. Having workers in one’s home is another shape hospitality can take. I pray you know the joy of hospitality this week. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette February 11, 2020
Beloved: In an ongoing discussion with my nurse practitioner about post-menopausal health, we’ve talked a lot about diet and nutrition. Apparently grandmother bodies prefer holding onto weight we once shed more easily. “Protein in the morning,” she emphasized, “every single morning.” Based on a separate conversation, I added two cups of crushed oyster shells to my hens’ feed, and egg production doubled within days. Turns out that, while they are still laying, my girls are not spring chickens either. Their systems also need a dietary boost, calcium in this case. So, as much as I prefer toast or cereal with fruit, protein in the morning it is. I scramble, fry, and boil it, depending on the day. This morning I made egg sliders with ham, cheese, and leftover rolls from the freezer. The recipe works for both my doctor and the SNAP budget experiment I’ve been doing lately.* I recently heard a different doctor say that the healthiest food we can eat either was pulled off a tree, grew in the ground, or had a mother (a description I especially love to use when talking to kids about eating healthy). The problem is, of course, that the healthiest food is also the most expensive. While poor diet is only one factor in health outcomes, poverty has repeatedly been correlated with poor health outcomes such as obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes — all of which are directly connected to diet. Sadly, wealth is definitely better for your health, a reality that as a society we have chosen for ourselves and our poorer neighbors. We’ve done so by supporting the subsidy of one crop pretty much to the exclusion of all others. Do you know it? Indiana is famous for it. 40% of everything sold in a supermarket contains it, including plastic packaging, soaps, and detergents. It’s eaten by most of the meat we eat. It fuels the trucks that drive our groceries to the store. It’s corn. High fructose corn syrup. Hydrogenated Corn Oil. Polylactic acid. Ethanol. And so many other names. I’ve no beef with corn whatsoever, though almost all beef is corn-fed and shot full of antibiotics — to deal with cattle’s digestive intolerance of corn. I was raised on and love the taste of summer corn as much as the next Hoosier. My beef is with a culture prioritizing corporate profit over human health when we could choose otherwise. With our dollars and our votes, we could choose to subsidize a biodiverse food industry, an industry of food pulled off a tree, growing in the ground, having a mother. We could choose healthy people over outrageous profits, not only for ourselves but for all our neighbors too. No doubt it’s a challenge, but certainly not undoable. The very beginning for me has been to eat more thoughtfully, more intentionally. And also to read. Last week I mentioned and here quoted The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Another older text that is important to me is The Journal of John Woolman, an 18th-century Quaker who lived deeply conscious of the economics of his faith and how others were affected by his choices. I am considering it for our Lenten reading group. I pray the day is kind to you in every way. ~peace & prayers with much love, pastor annette *local organic eggs are sometimes available for free at Mother Hubbard’s cupboard but likely too expensive on a SNAP budget. |
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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