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 |
  July 25, 2023
Beloved: The other side says Trans kids are God’s kids. It stayed up longer than I thought it would — one month and a day — before someone stole it and bent the posts, rendering them useless. That surely took some effort! The same day our sign was vandalized, a local person shared a post from our Facebook page to his. The post was about our past seminary intern who is a trans woman. The comments were unkind to say the least, and he mentioned that our sign had led him to post about our church. It might well be a coincidence, but I’m inclined to think not. I’ve filed a police report and let our seminary intern know, so the necessary safety precautions can be taken. There is nothing new about people’s prejudice toward children. Today is Emmett Till’s birthday. He’d be 82, maybe a grandpa now. Instead, he died when he was only fourteen years and one month old, after being abducted, tortured and lynched. He was a child! A child whose existence was so great a threat to the people around him, that even the suggestion that he speak for himself was too much for them to bear. Horrific violence was the outcome. Adults beat a child nearly to death and then hung him. And the similarity of that poor child’s experience to the experience of trans kids in our world today cannot be overstated. Not when a six-foot swatch of vinyl in a church yard suggesting they are God’s own is so offensive the very posts holding it in place must themselves be twisted and destroyed. The following is cut and pasted from a study on the mental health of transgender and nonbinary youth: Transgender and nonbinary (TNB) youths are disproportionately burdened by poor mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation and attempts. These disparities are likely owing to high levels of social rejection, such as a lack of support from parents and bullying, and increased stigma and discrimination experienced by TNB youths. They have good reason to be afraid and depressed. Fourteen trans people have been murdered so far in 2023 and trans people are over four times more likely than cis gender people to be victims of other violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault. But guess what else is true (again the mental health study noted above). Those statistics change dramatically and for the better when trans kids have a supportive adult in their lives: a teacher, doctor, coach — and maybe even the church they drive past on their way to school. They may never come in our door, but they might see that sign and for just a moment believe there are people somewhere who believe they belong as much to God and as much to this world as every other kid. So I’ll get another sign, probably a bigger one. I’ve got lots of steel t-posts, and I expect Tate, the young man who pounded those first posts into the ground, will happily pound another set for me too. And if the new sign gets stolen, I’ll just get another, and another and another and another after that. I don’t have anything better to spend money on, if that’s what it takes to keep telling the truth to the kids in this community: God loves you exactly as you are. I pray we know it for ourselves as well. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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July 18, 2023 Beloved, How to Catch a Mole is positively the loveliest of books: a mashup of Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, with a voice all his own. It’s available at the local library (downtown and southwest branch) and at https://bookshop.org/. It’s worth the $16 to me just to pick it up and read a page when I need to see words strung perfectly together in the way that resettles me in this world and inside my own skin. Last night’s storm was harder on Birdy than me. She slept in my armpit, when she slept. When she didn’t, she dragged baby clothes from the guest room and shoes from my closet. She drank all of her water and then didn’t wake me up to go outside, because it was too scary of course, so I got to scrub the carpet first thing this morning. Once we went for a walk and she realized the world is still as it should be, she settled down and is snoring by my chair. As the vet likes to remind me as he snugs and loves on her, she’s just a baby. My yard may struggle to grow grass but the mushrooms are magnificent, great big speckled white umbrellas beneath which I keep expecting to see a toad, like a story in a children’s book. Also smaller but by-no-means-little, rosy-pink ones, a brown cone one at least 4 inches tall, and whole crops of wispy gray ones in my flower beds that wither as soon as sunlight touches them. This is me doing my best neither to hurry nor to dawdle, to give the proper effort to the work at hand, as Wendell Berry wrote, so as to do the work as well as I can do it. And also, not to miss the splendor of this moment by being in some other. I don’t want to miss this summer, this rain, these flowers, the hummingbirds or the mouse that died of unknown causes by my barberry bush. They amount to Life bursting through the rush and worry of these days, the assurance of the Creator’s power still doing business in the universe. I simply do not want to miss it, and the only way I know to partake is to go slowly enough to pay attention. I pray you find room enough in this day to see and hear something of the million little things to remind you that Life is still in business and there is great cause for hope. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette July 11, 2023 Beloved: My middle kid and only son turns twenty-eight today. We’ll go out for Korean BBQ tonight, as is his usual request. He’s a good son, anxious to make his mama’s life easier if he can. He came over to move two really heavy things for me yesterday. And brought bread dough with instructions for how to bake it. I remember him and a neighbor kid when they were six or seven, with a cereal bowl full of sugar, picking blackberries off the vine. The easiest pie I ever made. Once when I did make pie he licked his plate and told me I was a really good cooker, one of my favorite compliments ever. All three of my kids are grown and making their own way. The pandemic scuppered the launch of two of them just as they were finishing education programs. But they have struggled hard in the right direction: to make a life, not just get a job. I couldn’t be more proud of all of them for that, and just a little proud of me — for my smaller part in their becoming. What a privilege to witness another human being grow from infancy to adulthood, to see the wonder of creation happening right before my eyes, watching them get bigger, stronger, smarter, while I did my best to keep the refrigerator full. The point is far less about my parenting or about my awesome kids, and far more about the gift of being present to the perfection of this day and every day I’ve been given to be present with these people, and so many other people too. The absolute miracle it is to know and be known by others, to be loved by them, cared for by them, to be in their good thoughts and memories. Tapping into that deep and wide truth of this life sustains me when all else fails. However lonely we may feel at times, we are not alone so long as someone somewhere loves us.  A not-so-recent picture of me and mine. Do try to get outside in this beautiful day, knowing that you are loved beyond measure by the One who made you and by those in whose good thoughts you remain.
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette July 5, 2023 Beloved: A man young enough to be my son moved in across the street, meaning I am no longer the newest resident in my little pocket of the neighborhood. I invited him to our 4th of July dinner* but he had another invitation, I suppose. I hope I can be as welcoming to him as the others have been to me in the last half-year. People with dogs get to know each other quickest. I remember the dogs’ names better than their owners’. Carson, Jewels, Alexander the Great, ChiChi, Pongo, Rolf, Cora, and Buck belong to people whose names I know. But I’ve completely forgotten the human names attached to Sophie, Olive, Sage, D.O.G. and the German Shepherd that my dog, Birdy, is so intimidated by she pretends not to see him.  I found another knitter in our patch of neighbors, and a quilter too. I’ve heard there is a book club as well, but haven’t gotten the deets** on that yet, but will. My closest next door neighbor and I share gardening interests almost daily. The deer eat her cucumbers and my sunflowers, keeping us on a mostly failed campaign to send them elsewhere. Today I have to break the news about a mole on its way from my flowerbed to hers.
All of which is to say neighbor took on new meaning for me when I was the new one, the outsider welcomed in, the one accepted by people who were intentional about including me. I’ve come with personal baggage and not a single person has asked to see it. They’ve simply welcomed me as I am, no questions asked, apart from what I need to get settled into my new situation. My experience with my neighbors has turned out to be entirely positive. To the one, they are intentionally decent human beings, good people even, watching out for one another and pitching in as needed. Whether we are spiritual kin is less relevant to me than whether we are ethically, morally related to one another, literally bearing one another's burdens for the sake of everyone’s well being and happiness. We need not label it Christian gospel for it to be so. We need not call ourselves church to do right by one another and by the community in which we live. I’m not so naive that I don’t realize our personal privilege provides the time and opportunity for such extended care for one another, opportunity not afforded to every neighborhood everywhere. But what we do with what we have at any given moment is what God cares about, I think. I hope. As you go about your day, I pray you have a good opportunity to welcome and include someone into your own realm of care — in word or deed as God allows. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette ** Deets = details. I am trying to stay up on modern slang. *Oven BBQ Ribs ~ these take 4 hours, so plan accordingly. Ingredients & Supplies
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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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