Beloved ~

      Sunday was as beautiful a church day as I can remember.  Undeterred by heat and not a few bugs, you gathered joyfully in celebration of Emily’s baptism.  Special thanks to Carl Briggs for making all the meal details work so perfectly.  Thanks to Erika for the beautiful photography.  See her Facebook page for more. 

     The blessings of a long pastorate are too easily taken for granted I think.  Emily and her ​brother, here reading the blessing at his sister’s baptism, are two more congregants whose births, dedications and baptisms I’ve been allowed to share.  Observing how much faster we humans grow physically and mentally ​than we grow spiritually never ceases to amaze me.  The

​   Also this: several asked for last week’s Wednesday Night Supper recipe (Green Chicken Enchilada Casserole).  If you found it too hot, it’s because I used jalapeños instead of poblanos.  Half the number of poblanos suggested here and I think you’ll love it.  Or use a sautéed onion instead for almost no heat at all.

              In the smallest of ways I’m learning new things about violence.  I could predict coyotes want to kill my chickens.  I would not have predicted a slaughter nor the post-trauma to my flock.  I hardly got any eggs last week, teaching me that the food chain itself is interrupted by violence.  If fear has such measurable effect so low in the food chain, what havoc must it be wreaking at the human level?  What scientific, artistic, and social discoveries go unmade because the people we need to make those discoveries are instead overwhelmed by the fear and trauma of past violence?  To what degree has civilization been interrupted by residual harm to the survivors of child abuse, of violent crime, of racism, sexism or war?  Thinking about that makes me even more sad and heartsick. 
            One other thing which I already knew but was glad to learn again is that I have pretty awesome kids.  I pray this day has a bright side for you as well.  Do take care. 

Beloved:

      As long as I’ve been paying attention, it seems like Christian duty has basically been explained as a matter of figuring out God’s will and then doing it without complaining.  In theory, it isn’t complicated.  Real life is something else entirely.  The inclination of lingering long in the figuring-out stage is strong in me.  Anything to stall that first step into actual commitment.

      Then I read a line by Makoto Fujimura, in which he equates goodness with the beauty of God.  Quite honestly, it blew me away.  I was stopped still by the thought of Christian duty, or God’s will, as adding beauty to the world.  So proposed, the figuring-it-out stage is a mere pause between one joyful project and the next.  If making a pie and delivering flowers count as Christian duty I’m all in, starting now.  Daisy backpacks for school kids and new houses for immigrants?  Yes, please!

      Food:  that beauty we can smell and taste.  Art:  that ancient human endeavor to reveal the truth that lies just beyond our seeing and hearing.  In music and stories, paintings and movies, sculpture and dance, science and even athletics, in glimpses of light and snatches of sound the goodness of God is ministered to us by artists and apprentices alike, all of them revealing the beauty set loose among us by the Creator of it – not merely for our pleasure but for our salvation, which was and remains God’s will for humanity.  In Christ we have been saved, rescued, from The Worst humans do to one another.  From misery.  From evil.  From death.  From lives lived only and ever tuned to the sight and sound of trauma or grief.  The world needs little help picking up that melody. 
 
     We follow Jesus when we add the beautiful, whenever and wherever we find it lacking.  And no addition is too small to count as faithful.  Smiles count.  Opening doors for strangers counts.  So do money in a beggar’s cup and a kind response to insult.  It’s not so very complicated after all.  I pray this rainy day finds you busy adding beauty wherever you find yourself. 

Beloved:

Our church was host to some guests for a week or so last month.  I’d seen them slipping by along the west border of the property.  After a few days, I stopped the young woman and asked to speak to her.  She and her fiancé were camping up the hill on our property, beneath the tree grove.  “I have a couple of little waitressing jobs,” she said; “we can’t go to a homeless camp because we are really, really trying to stay sober.”  She was no older than my own daughter, so naturally all my mommy impulses kicked in.  We agreed they could stay as long as there was no trouble.  They should check the picnic table by the back door for notes and coffee. 

She seemed relieved and the plan worked beautifully .  .  .  for one day.  They picked up coffee and she asked to come in and send an email.  Then for days the coffee sat and got cold.  I worried about them.  I stopped in at her restaurants.  I imagined terrible things.  After several more days I called the police to walk up the hill with me and check on their campsite.  They were gone, leaving their tent, a forlorn banjo, a half-empty whiskey bottle and some clothes.  “More than they could carry, I expect,” said one of the officers.  Then I got really sad.  I figured talking to me probably spooked them.  I worried he’d hurt her.  In any case, they clearly weren’t coming back.  The police took down their names and promised to call if they learned anything.  It’s been two weeks and they haven’t called. 

Yesterday on the porch at Kroger I saw another pair that looked like them.  They were repacking their threadbare backpack to accommodate the two forties** they had just bought.  I intended to go speak to them but at the last second my heart just wasn’t in it, so I passed them by.  I prayed for them instead.  I prayed for them, for the two I’m still missing and all the others, the great migration of baby adults adrift among us.  Somehow they’ve lost their way in this way of life we call normal.  For them, for whatever reason, it does not come so easily or fit so well.  It is so very, very easy to judge them or not to see them at all.  Seeing them is hard and not a little hurtful.  They aren’t particularly truthful, but I don’t much blame them for that.  I doubt they’ve found folks like me particularly trustworthy.  If true, that is definitely the saddest part of the whole story. 

At least once a day I think about the two we hosted and wonder where they are.  I imagine their real parents, who must be out of their minds with worry.  I wish I could call them and say, “I saw your kids two weeks ago and they were mostly okay.”  I keep hoping that email was to her daddy saying, “Please come get me,” and he did.  All I know to do is love the kids in front of me, whoever they are, as best I can and watch for others who might need a friend, even if just for a day. 

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette
 
**  A forty is a 40 oz.  bottle of malt liquor that only costs about $3.