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 |
 February 21, 2023
Beloved: Lent begins tomorrow. Though not practiced in my Baptist childhood home, I knew all about it. The Catholic kids across the street gave up candy and afternoon television. They always ate fish on Fridays. Obviously I didn’t know all about it. Lent lasts forty days, tomorrow until Easter (April 9th), minus the Sundays, the little Easters. Lent is a spiritual practice of self-denial with the intention of opening space within our lives for reflection on Jesus’ great sacrifice on our behalf. I see now how candy and cartoons are a useful catechism for the practice of self-denial. My childhood friends were daily aware of the vows they had taken, even if they were not much changed in spirit. Truth be told, spiritual change in my own life comes in the smallest of increments. I can only see it looking back. I can sometimes realize it in a swell of hope or a boost of courage. We practice at Lent what we ought to practice all the time – a daily life more dependent on Jesus than on whatever fix we reach for when we itch to fill some empty space within our hearts and minds. I am learning to sit in pain without fighting it, without constantly trying to undo or fix it. But just to sit with it and believe Jesus sits here with me. It’s awful. I don’t like it. Great is the temptation to fill the space in a hundred different ways. A good deal of the pain is the uncertainty of what will happen tomorrow, next month, a year from now. None of which is knowable today. Yet today we must sit with the worry of it, learning to keep heart and mind and soul within the confines of today. We are given the strength to manage what comes between sunrise and sunset today – but no more. I fail constantly, because this is really, really hard, and in comparison I am very, very weak. I suppose Lent teaches us one essential truth – that our need of Jesus is as essential to our humanity as drawing breath and sleeping. We cannot do this life alone, on our own strength – no matter how much or with what distractions we may fortify ourselves against the truth that we are weak and He is strong. I invite you to let the truth be the truth with which you and I sit this Lenten season, checking our desire for distraction, doing our best to stay put and see what Jesus will do within and among us. I am grateful to be on the way, practicing the faith with you all. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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 February 14, 2023
Beloved: Remember making your mailboxes for elementary school Valentine’s Day parties? Shoeboxes or paper bags, depending on the patience of the teacher for the classroom chaos involved in giving 8-year-olds access to that much glue and glitter. The boys were done in seven minutes and I never had time to finish mine. Teachers got their rooms cleaned up just in time for the party a few days later when we got jacked up on juice and cupcakes while tearing into all those tiny valentines. That was 50 years ago! I bet school kids do much more serious things with their time now, learn to keyboard and code probably. All the same, the idea of a little community writing friendship notes to one another strikes me as a useful use of an afternoon, celebrating with a snack. I positively love snacks. I also love Love ~ with all of the kindness, justice, humility, generosity, patience and grace therein. Love as the ecosystem of a community, spoken or unspoken, that desires and nurtures the safety and well-being of everyone within the community, classroom, congregation, workplace or family. What a useful use of Valentine’s Day ~ signing little notes of lovingkindness to those around us, in whatever form such notes might take. Who knows, you might just make someone’s day. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette February 8, 2023
Beloved: On our walk around the neighborhood this morning, Birdy turned into our driveway on her own. She knows her way home now, which is no small thing to know. When I finished college and wasn’t sure my parents would be cool having me back while I attended seminary, my mom said, “Your home is wherever I am,” and they bought me a desk.* Two years later I got married; thirty-four years went by and life has changed again. I can find the driveway on my own but I am completely adrift. Everything but my books and sewing things are unpacked. My body eats and sleeps here, but my heart and mind are feral and skittish, always giving the slip to this new reality, lest I lose something that I suspect is already lost. I know what my mother meant, but I’m not sure she knew all she said. None of us is completely at home here, however much we may trust this world to do right by us all our lives. But our life in the God, the Creator, the One who holds all things together, is holding us, always and in this moment. We are at home in that Belovedness, however adrift we feel in this world, and in our own troubles. For me there is much practice involved in re-membering myself to this reality, in rooting myself in this truth which tells me where my home is, which driveway is mine, if you will. I must sleep. I must journal. I must pray. I must walk. And most of all – I must assume in my deepest self that God has got this situation in hand, because I most certainly do not. My situation is not peculiar to human experience. People everywhere are suffering and/or struggling, doing our best when our best is not nearly enough to get by. And yet, somehow we are. With the smallest of means and the help of good friends, somehow we get by and better. We believe in spite of any cause to give up. Don’t give up. And I won’t either. We will push and we will hold fast and one day we will know what we cannot possibly see now – that God was in this with us all along. And then we shall rejoice. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *My parents lived in Louisville Kentucky, where I also went to seminary at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. |
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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