Pastor Annette's Blog
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"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD . . . NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
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“I store my extra meat in the belly of my brother.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry Beloved: When I asked the Lenten reading group for their favorite quotes, the line above was their uncontested favorite. The woman who spoke most excitedly is also married to the man who called me a few weeks ago to ask about a family in our congregation with whom he might share a freezer full of meat he’d just bought from a nearby farmer. Hearing I had strep throat, the mama in that family brought me chicken stew she’d made with some of the meat they received from the man who called me. While Kimmerer’s quote comes from a story about a Brazilian hunter-gatherer community, it is no less at work among an ordinary faith community here and now. Kimmerer’s writing is beautiful — poetry, one person called it, a rarity on the subject of economics. She contrasts standard capitalism with what she calls a giving economy, one based on abundance instead of scarcity, on the presumption that commodities belong to everyone, change hands according to who needs them most at any given time. Relationships are the primary commodity in a giving economy, relationships rooted in mutuality, care for one another, and the assumption that we each thrive when we all thrive. By her own admission Kimmerer is not an economist. Neither is she a poet like Wendell Berry, whose writing has a similar vibe. She is an indigenous woman, a scientist, a botanist. Insofar as her writing feels like poetry, I wonder if she is touching a longing in us we tried to name in our discussion, the longing to take leave of an economy and way of life driven by competition and consumption and more fully enter a more creative, contented and cooperative way of being? We talked a long time about workplace expectations and the desire to spend more time and energy on soul-sustaining projects and passions. A giving economy offers some relief from that frustration. Even our conversation was consoling, in the community we found around these issues. We have another discussion this coming Sunday afternoon, March 30th at 4 pm, and it’s not too late to pick up the book. $20 and only 100 little pages. You can read it in a sitting or listen to it on libbyapp.com, using your library card. I’m grateful for you all, for your interest and enthusiasm for such matters, especially these days. I am grateful for your good care of one another, your generosity of time, energy and possessions. You are the people of Jesus in this tiny spot of time and space. As we continue our Lenten practice, I pray you are finding time for reflection and study, in whatever shape that takes for you. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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Beloved: The first time I had a pile of mulch dumped on this driveway it took me a week to spread a quarter of it and three hours for my son to spread the rest of it. Now it needs redoing and my son lives in Manhattan, so a man I found on the NextDoor app is coming to measure up my beds and figure out how much to buy. He’s also going to price some extra work for me: pulling two shrub stumps, trimming the others back, and extending my front flower bed. This heavy work isn’t fun for me any more. It takes too long and leaves me sore for days. I’d rather plan and plant, weed and water, stake and prune and harvest. Mostly I just like watching it all grow. I share this tiny, half shady yard with a dozen digging squirrels and a mole or two who, thankfully, are not making dirt volcanoes in my yard like their comrades across the street.
It was good to walk this tiny dot of ground if for no other reason than to remember earth’s twirling traverse around the sun is subject to nothing within the power of men, or women. The sun rises no matter how dark the night, and spring comes no matter how long the winter. The buds and flowers bear witness to the time all healing takes, so much of it unseen and unmeasurable, experienced as absence, grief and pain. An absence to be sat with, for as long as the grieving takes, until one day the light within feels not quite so dark or heavy as it did the last time we poked at it, the hurt not quite so tender. Relieved is an okay way to feel. Glad to be just that much better does not deny the severity of the injury.
Lent bridges winter and springtime for this reason, carrying our prayer and worship from hopelessness to joy. The light and air, the life below and above ground are telling the wonder of God at work within us too, bringing us back to life too. I pray this season allows you time for reflection on the healing you are experiencing these days. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette March 11, 2025
Beloved: Daylight Savings Time has me feeling jet lagged despite having been nowhere. That said, I am loving this springtime weather. I’ve tulips and daffodils pushing through the dirt, and this evening will allow daylight enough to walk the dog and clean off a flower bed. The mere thought of planting something makes me giddy, knowing full well it is ages too early* even to consider so fanciful an idea. So I sit outside on my porch swing, noting to myself for the thousandth time how lucky I am to have a comfortable, safe house to come home to every day. Lucky, fortunate, privileged . . . any word but blessed, for if I choose the word blessed as in I am blessed to have this comfortable, safe house, am I not also saying those without a house are not as blessed as me? I’m not willing to say that - since I’ve done nothing to deserve more blessing than my neighbors. I certainly do not work harder than most of them, especially those toiling and trying to raise kids on $10-$15 an hour employment, people who can’t find anything in this town to rent for less than $1000 a month. I work and go home. They work and go to their second job. If I get sick, I don’t lose pay. If my car breaks down I work from home or call an Uber. But the slightest crisis (car trouble, sick kid, work injury) may equal disaster for a neighbor who is a hair’s breadth from homelessness every minute of every day. So no, I cannot think of my home as a blessing, grateful as I am for it. The writer Nancy Mairs says in one of her books that the way to love a house is to care for it. She might have said clean it but since I hardly ever clean anything but dishes and laundry, I choose to say she said care for it, which I am fairly rigorous about. I have the HVAC guy in twice a year and keep my beds weeded and watered. My garage is organized and so are my closets, mostly. Always, always, always gratefully knowing that simple housing like mine is a luxury beyond the imagination of so many people in our community, even more the world over. None of which is to say I am not blessed, that we are not blessed. But rather, let us reserve the word for the things that cannot be bought with the currencies of this world, money, education, social status or power. Blessings are those things available to everyone for free and originating in the Divine – like hope and love, friendship and connection, gentleness and courage, springtime, sunshine, and birdsong . . . all of them abundant, and within reach for everyone, everywhere. I pray the day is kind to you in every way. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette *No planting outdoors before Mother’s Day, no matter how pretty it looks at the store was my mother’s rule. *A Recipe - Yummy & Quick Stove Top Chicken Breast
“...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” ~ Benjamin Franklin, The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” ~ Will Rogers March 4, 2025 Beloved: It’s March 4th and I just completed my January? (nope!), February? (nope!) goals of 1.) delivering my documents to the accountant who does my taxes and 2.) sorting, shredding, filing, digitizing, reorganizing all the paper I accumulated in 2024. Is it fun? Not especially. Is it ever so satisfying? Hands down, without a doubt, absolutely yes! I keep less than a tenth of the paper in that file box and empty my shredder bucket at least twice. The accountant will give me back a blue bound set of tax returns I’ll file in a banker box on a closet shelf and I’m done for another year. Home Ec probably isn’t taught in high school anymore but if it was and if I taught it, a unit on managing household paperwork would be included under the heading LifeLong Skills For Stuff Everybody Has To Deal With. Of course, household paperwork is hardly the only unit to fit under that heading, just the one on my mind as I drove over to the accountant’s office this morning. I’m also working on Ash Wednesday, and plans for Lent, the spiritual preparatory season for Holy Week and Easter. Lent is not spiritual business as usual, but rather a time of deeper, more honest reflection, of sorting through our hearts and minds for what belongs and what does not, what is serving the faith we claim and what is not. A time of clarifying our desires and our intentions in light of Christ. A time of confession and repentance, of renewal and recommitment to the morals and values of this faith. I don’t teach Home Economics but I am a pastor, keeper of the spiritual life together of a set of believers in this time and place. A privilege that still startles me when I see it clearly. For Lent this year, I have a few bits and pieces to offer that you might find useful. I’ll keep adding them here as I find them, rather than send multiple emails. For the first, I’ve chosen a tiny book for us to read together - The Serviceberry, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.* Let me hear from you if you plan to read it so we can set up times for discussion. Watch for more Lenten devotional material to be added to the our Home Page. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette After compiling the devotional materials list, I feel inspired to create my own Lenten music playlist - on Spotify where I listen to music - which I will post soon.  Feb 25, 2025
Beloved - Pictured here is one of a dozen supplies hauls that landed on the porches at church and my house since last Tuesday’s post about the extremely low supply of pantry stock at the Severe Weather Emergency Shelter. Hundreds of protein bars, dozens of pairs of socks and gloves, blankets, first aid . . . you did not hesitate. Most packages came anonymously, so here is my only place to say thank you for your faithful generosity toward the precious people served by it. When the shelter leadership team heard about the list, they asked for it and have added additional items so if you still want to help, there is plenty of need left. Here is the link, and remember, you need not purchase these exact items nor buy from Amazon. Anything similar is perfectly fine. Items can be mailed to or dropped off at UBC, address below, or to my address. In other news, there is the news: political and economic, foreign and domestic, all of which seems so profoundly personal and no small test of faith for people seeking to render unto Caesar and God, respectively and appropriately. It’s Jesus’ separation-of-church-and-state lesson to some powerful religious men hoping to trap him into saying something treasonous, enabling them to be rid of him and the trouble he made. That trouble, of course, amounted to poor and marginalized people waking up to their own belovedness, their own value, their own humanity, and their unwillingness to be regarded as less than deserving of the human decency and dignity Jesus’ love had awakened in themselves and one another. Brought to life and light, such love cannot be put to death again, no matter the hopes and wishes of people hoping to hang onto and expand their power over others. Herein is the gospel of Christ, of course. So, I am yet hopeful, in spite of what are sure to be evil days ahead. Days for which we will one day erect memorials, lest we forget the victims of the injustices and crimes committed in these years, and memorials to those who acted with great courage in these days to resist and interfere with that injustice and the commission of those crimes. I am hopeful that the living memories of so many people around the world will be awakened to do the good they know to do for love of neighbor and for love of common decency in the world where we all must live. However discouraged I might be in a moment, the hope in me is confirmed by the likes of you when I send out a simple list of needs for the neediest among us. Someone just texted to arrange a meet-up for another hundred pairs of socks! We will get through these years. How the least of us and the most at risk get through them is up to people reading here, people who claim the fearless love and power of Christ to do right in a world where wrong becomes more legal every day. May we all have the wisdom to know our part and the courage to speak and act in faith these days. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette B-SWERS Wish List Link ~ https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/KBMKVLCFK3O9?ref_=wl_share University Baptist Church * 3740 E. 3rd Street * Bloomington, IN * 47401 Feb 18, 2025
Beloved ~ Sometimes I drop an ice cube. Sometimes Birdy comes in with wet paws. Sometimes she decides not to swallow her last lap of water and just dribbles it across the kitchen floor. However the floor got wet, nothing ruins my cozy vibe more than stepping in water in my sock feet. I hate it! And I have to change immediately, even if the wet ones are clean. I hang them in the laundry room and start over. Birdy has snowy paws every time she comes inside right now; sometimes she even has little ice nuggets between her toe pads. And she only goes outside for a few minutes a few times a day. Our neighbors without housing stay outdoors all day and sometimes all night too, which is why one volunteer task on the check-in shift at the Bloomington Severe Weather Shelter is asking every guest if they need dry socks and trading them for the wet ones they’ve worn for hours, sometimes days. We go through lots of socks! And I’ve seen a lot of frostbite this winter, frostbite contracted over years of living outdoors and some of it not so very old. One man has lost several fingers, but mostly it’s gray ruined skin on fingers and toes, hands and feet. Which is why shelter volunteers are forever on the hunt for cheap or free warm adult size socks. On nights after snowy or rainy days, volunteers easily give away a dozen or more pairs. Not just socks, of course; we are once again in the midst of more than a week of very cold temperatures with rain and snow too. Our usual food bank sources are extremely low on stock and B-SWERS’ own snack supply pantry is almost bare. I’ve added the list of things below that are desperately needed, should you want to help. Connection and care. In the daily transactions of our lives, connection and care are what we most want for ourselves and what we most want to give one another. Socks and snacks, time and attention. Seeing and being seen as human beings who want to be safe and loved, neither afraid nor mistreated, neglected nor invisible. As you navigate the winter outside your door, I pray you make time for good self-care alongside good care and connection with your neighbors who are hoping for our kindness. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette B-SWERS Wish List ~ I have created an Amazon Wish List here. If you don’t shop at Amazon, no worries. Most items are available at other stores, and similar items are perfectly acceptable. You can drop them off on my porch or at church; or if you’re using Amazon, ship directly to UBC, 3740 E. 3rd Street, Bloomington, IN 47401. https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/KBMKVLCFK3O9?ref_=wl_share  Beloved ~
I have to go stick some of my bamboo plant stakes in the ground in case we get the two inches of snow predicted for today. Last time they cleared the neighborhood, snow plows gouged five gallons’ worth of lawn soil alongside my driveway. They’ll fix it come springtime, but I’d rather they not make it worse now. In other outdoor (wildlife) news, two does have taken to resting on the cedar needle carpet behind my house. They lay there for hours – sleeping, I suppose. I like that they find this place safe enough to let down their guard. Birdy has started a digging project in one corner of my front flowerbed. I’ll let it go for now, but come good weather she and I will have a come-to-Jesus meeting about it. The seed catalogs have started arriving; my favorite is this one, a family iris farm in Oregon. I’ll cut this year’s up for collaging while waiting to see what last year’s order is going to do in my yard this spring. A friend and I ordered sixteen phenomenal lavender plants between us ~ I hope to fill my tiny side bed with purple flowers, bees and butterflies. I might put one or two at church as well. In some ways this is the best gardening time of year, me cozy on the couch with coffee and catalogs, pretending my tiny yard could look like pictures in a magazine. On these wintery indoor gardening afternoons, money is no object and no labor is required. The season proceeds with a perfect balance of sun and rain, but no munching bugs or thieving raccoons. Certainly no tunnel-digging voles or moles! Tomato bottom rot is not a thing and weeds decline to sprout. But soon enough I’ll need to order mulch, and find some young adults in need of spending money willing to spread it for me. I’ll pick up my annuals and some new hostas to fill in the bare spots, and my regular flat of herbs and vegetables from my favorite farmers’ market vendor. (The picture above is from their farm.) The squirrels and bugs and raccoons will take their share and I’ll have the same stingy heart I’ve had for thirty-plus years. I’ll neglect the weeding, then catch it up in a day and be sore for the whole next week. My water bill will be ridiculous and Birdy will probably still dig where she’s not supposed to. But there will be days when the hummingbirds are thick and the irises explode with color; when the lavender positively buzzes like a factory at full tilt and brushing by them fills the air with perfume; when I cut a fistful of basil to add to my supper and bite into a tomato no magazine spread can ever match. For all of the work and all the money and for however great a difference between my yard and the picture in the catalog, I still choose what’s real. Therein is the sight and sound and smell and feel of the miracle of God’s goodness to me, three steps from my front door and rising from the most ordinary dirt found anywhere. I am deep down grateful for another season to kneel and put my hands to it. ~peace and prayers, pastor annette Feb 4, 2025
Beloved ~ Every morning I walk through my little house, clicking on grow lights and opening the curtains and every evening I do the same only in reverse, marking the passage of another day in the list of days that constitute a life. Yesterday I tidied up and took care of my baby grandson. I worked on my taxes and went to an appointment with my lawyer to sign all my estate documents.** After my therapy appointment I made supper and washed the dishes. For the rest of the evening I cut fabric scraps into 3” squares for a new quilt I’m starting. My favorite days are the ordinary ones, filled with the ordinary activities of work and home, caring for others and myself. Days absent of drama, trauma, violence or new grief in my tribe and neighborhood. And yet, I don’t want to entirely remove myself from a world where others are suffering or afraid. I feel deeply called to share the kindness and joy of Jesus’ love with them, and to work for justice on their behalf, insofar as I am able. Sharing life together with them is as essential to my own wholeness as caring for myself and my own kids and grandkids. Then I pick up the paper (my phone) and watch a video article of a family returning to their home in northern Gaza after 16 months as refugees in the south. The head of family was a 21-year-old university student and several children she was caring for, siblings, nieces and nephews. They had to pay all their money for transportation and still walked the last 10 kilometers (6 miles) carrying their luggage. Over 6 hours of walking, to find their home and neighborhood demolished. Their father was waiting on them. Looking over her neighborhood, the student said, “I want to live somewhere colorful again, far from the color of rubble and the smell of blood.” And my heart aches with the distance between our two realities, the calamity and the calm, between her normal and mine. Short of giving money I cannot think of a single thing I can do to make her life more colorful. Yet, it matters that I think of her and that she knows others wish her joy, and peace and safety and comfort. While I cannot be of much effect in Gaza these days, closer opportunities abound. The world’s deep hunger is here and now, in my own community and neighborhood, and somehow in the mystery of the universe I believe it matters in Gaza what I do in my own neighborhood. It matters in the realm of God that faithful people everywhere are exercising their calling, their vocation, on behalf of the hungering world. It matters to all the hungering people that all the helping people are doing the best we can with what we have. And it matters, most of all, to remember that the division between the hungry and the helping peoples is not absolute. Not by any means. The young woman in the news story has been head of household in very difficult circumstances for months. She’s the helper, even as her whole family is so desperately hungry for safety and justice. God knows I’ve been a puddle of neediness for the better part of three years now, which is why I am content on days that are positively boring and ordinary. I suppose this is enough for an ordinary Tuesday. I pray you get outside and feel this gentle air, see if your daffodils are popping through yet. Offer kindness if you're able. Take some if it’s offered. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette *Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 1973. p.95 **I cannot encourage you strongly enough to get your end of life decisions made and notarized, for your own peace of mind and for the loved ones who need to know your wishes. Everyone’s needs are different and your attorney will help you figure out what’s best for you. My particular set of estate planning documents consists of:
Jan 28, 2025 Beloved ~ Until the test came back negative for both strains, the urgent care doctor was confident I had the flu. Then she peered down my throat with her pointy flashlight and said, “Uh, oh.” I haven’t had strep throat since my tonsillectomy twenty-plus years ago but it’s as awful as I remember. Popsicles and jello, ramen chicken noodles and advil. But mostly I just slept and slept and slept, for the better part of three days. Then I woke up and have stayed awake in the daylight since, feeling the twin miracles of cheap antibiotics and a salaried job which allows me time to heal, along with the ever present, ever pesky sense that I should get more done since I am home anyway. I think if I were dying of a terminal disease, on a good day I could still feel guilty about dirty dishes in the sink, when I want not to care about dirty dishes under any condition any day! I want to always choose the life giving, joyful task of the moment and do that with a free heart and mind. Sometimes that’s washing dishes, leaving my kitchen all sparkly clean. More often it's playing with my grandkids or cutting out a new quilt, knitting, reading, laughing with my friend on the phone. But I don’t always choose those tasks, or I don’t choose them joyfully, as if I don’t deserve to be joyful unless the dishes are done and the floors are swept. I could blame it on how I was raised, since I was most certainly raised to work first, play later. But I am old now, far too old to blame anyone but myself for hanging on to toxic notions I might have long ago forgone. I’ve no such expectation of others but rather hope they take all the time that healing takes, to rest without sleeping, lay on the couch watch sewing tutorials, even if they no longer have a fever, even if their throat is no longer on fire. Healing has some not-as-sick-as-I-was-but-not-yet-entirely-well days and we are allowed to rest on those days too. I do wonder if we aren’t most susceptible to relapse when we don’t, when we jump up and attack the day out of the anxiety of failing to fulfill our duty. But here’s the thing, being sick is not a failure. Being sick is not a failure! Intellectually, I know being sick is not a failure but practically, I still struggle, behaving as if my To-Do List is more critical than everyone else’s. This takes a degree of arrogance I suppose and, of course, arrogance finds root in the soil of fear. If, when learning to work, I picked up the notion that working makes me worthy of the good things in this world, this life - didn’t I naturally also learn that not working = not worthy? If I learned that I only deserve what I earn and produce, be it money, community or reputation, what happens to me if I can no longer work, even for four or five days? When fever and pain subside enough to allow conscious thought, I get anxious, maybe even snappish to those around who only want to help. I don’t feel well enough to work nor sick enough to stay down. Unlearning toxic messaging isn’t easy, but it’s doable, for those committed to healing body, mind and spirit. A doctor told me once that the only difference in how old people and young people heal is time. The older we are, the longer healing takes but healing does take for everyone willing to put in the time. I pray this day finds you on mend in whatever ways you are hoping for. ~ peace & prayers   Jan 21, 2025
Beloved ~ Cold as a well digger’s lunch box is how my father-in-law described weather like today. The predicted high temperature is 9 degrees, with a windchill of -9 overnight. Cold enough to freeze everything in the well digger’s lunchbox, I should think. All of the city shelters for our unhoused neighbors are over capacity but turning away no one, making up pallets on floors wherever there’s space so that everyone who wants to can sleep indoors. At the Severe Winter Emergency Shelter where several of us volunteer, guests come in cold to the bone. We trade their wet socks for dry ones, stuff their pockets with hand warmers, wrap them in blankets and keep the coffee and hot chocolate flowing. As one volunteer said, everyone is medically fragile in this weather. It is such a privilege to be part of this life-saving project and I’m really proud of how our church has stepped up to volunteer and to provide supplies these past weeks. The cold is expected to last throughout most of February, so we have lots of days left this season. Consider getting involved in some way.* As another pastor and I were debriefing a recent shift at the shelter, we got to talking about the spiritual nature of the work, things God is showing me, as she described it. The most significant for me lately is that when we are dead center in the will of Christ, serving the least of these with what we have, even then we do not have the luxury of everything being easy, going smoothly, coming out perfectly. Instead, the work of the kingdom in this world is messy, imperfect, frustrating, exhausting, crazy, hilarious, sad, fun, sometimes scary, and usually horrifically underfunded. I am not sure I believed otherwise before working at the shelter, but the insight does somehow feel new to me. Knowing we are doing God’s will doesn’t make God’s will any easier to do in a world so resistant to it. The work would be profoundly easier with some community funding - with some paid staff and a permanent location. Then again, it would lack the generosity, good will, humility and courage of this set of volunteers who are willingly trading their personal time, effort and energy to provide such hands-on tender care to neighbors whose life situations are profoundly different from their own. And that would be a big loss - or at least, a very different kind of work in our midst. My point, I suppose, is that the Spirit is most definitely in the mix on the nights the severe weather shelter happens. It’s better than any tv show or movie, if that’s how you spend your evenings. I never wonder what God is doing in the world these days, because I see it every shift I work. Please keep yourselves and everyone around safe in this weather. Let your church know if you need help. Peace & Prayers, annette, pastor, preacher, neighbor, mama, grandma, quilter, knitter, dallier, reader, friend, gardener ~ in no particular order *Some particular BSWERS needs right now: travel size hand lotion - something like this any size winter coats, especially larger mens’ sizes women’s warm pants, size 4 or 6. Cough drops - big bags of individually wrapped Travel size tissue packs |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works. Archives
March 2025
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