Beloved:

    The puppy weighs more than 50 pounds now. Her legs are twice as tall as her torso so she has no idea what her body can and cannot do.  She just leaped over the back of my chair and bounced across my lap before doing a few skidding laps around the living room banging her head as she dove under the coffee table. All because a deer stepped out of the woods across the street.  She stands there, giant ears over her tiny face, staring coolly at us, as if she has no idea what is causing all the commotion in my house.

    I suppose it's fair payback for Scout chasing her fawn the other day.  The doe also ate up another stand of hosta but I doubt she'll call us even.  The puppy either for that matter since only humans care anything at all about what's fair.  Naturally I care most when it's my tranquility and hosta that get ruined. Her baby doesn't even cross my mind.

    As kids my siblings and I drove our mother crazy with our demands for fairness.  We protested the amount of icing on each other's cupcakes with the moral righteousness of union organizers.  We all share nicely now but at least for me, the mantra of childhood, "Hey, that's not fair!" didn't disappear.  It went underground and comes into light as a sometimes sensation of loss, neglect or mistreatment.  But like my child self I lose no sleep when the sweeter treat comes to me.

    Once again, the task of faith is letting go.  In Christ we already have all we need ~ grace, confidence, a purpose, and one another.  Believing this we discover the freedom of having nothing to lose and the profound contentment of letting go of what we can joyfully do without.   

~peace and prayers,
Pastor Annette

Our Global Women church picnic was practically perfect in every way.  Friends from Sri Lanka, Taiwan and China attended with their kids and parents.  The food was plentiful.  Grown ups played corn hole while kids chased chickens and collected eggs.  Huge thanks to Julia Bebeau, Heidi Daugherty, Joyce Cookman​, Sarah Haas ​and Lisa Williams for putting the evening together.  We are looking forward to another great year of making friends, having fun and practicing English.       

I ache to share the love of Jesus with people yet to discover it. At the same time I ache to do it respectfully and with integrity.  Never shadowing other intentions in the pretense of friendship or service but always to say what I’m doing and do what I am saying.  That is, to make real friends with people by sharing time and space, to learn each others' ​lives and receive as much as I give.  So no debts exist between us; debts of gratitude, agreement nor allegiance.      

Every level of our Global Women ministry is open to inspection.  We make plain why we do it - God has called us to serve the world and to welcome the strangers in our midst. At the same time our Tuesday program isn’t religious. We do not preach, pray or ask personal spiritual questions.  Friends are always welcome but never expected to attend worship or other church activities.  How lucky that what God calls us to do is also so easy and so much fun.  

I suspect it’s more Providential than lucky.  I expect what we love most and what we do best is providentially engineered toward the slice of God’s will to which we are called. In​ this case cooking, crafts, coffee, conversation, chickens, and picnics  take on holy purpose. At once genuine friendship and authentic ministry, happily together and separate from one another.

​All I know for sure is that Sunday afternoon was about the best picnic ever and made me really grateful for the work we’ve been given in this time and place. 

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

Our phones buzzed at 3:40 am with flash flood warnings.  The 50 pound puppy was shoved against me in bed, trembling and crying.  She took to barking at the thunder but the storm carried on.   We all slept a little later and woke to find the world even more gorgeous than usual ~ all sparkling grass and dripping trees.  Both girls are on the deck staring and sniffing the new wind.  The baby one is chasing leaves that fell into their wading pool.

Overused as it is, storms in the night remains the perfect metaphor for spiritual estrangement, the sensation of utter aloneness in the universe. Of helplessness against powers so much bigger and stronger.  Of fear.  

The young in faith tremble in the night having too few perfect mornings to remember and keep them sleeping.  They don’t yet know that every storm that comes also goes.  Trees break and the earth recovers.  The sun must rise.  Life will not be stalled indefinitely.   

In the same new day t​he young and old in faith awake together.  And in faith together we carry on, sure as the storm and the sun which rises after. 

I pray this sparkling day gives new faith to us all. 

~ peace & prayers, pastor annette

August 26, 2014

Beloved:
  
     Her pedigree name is Brown Eyed Susan the Golden Scout but mostly we just call Bad Girl!  So far today she has pooped in the neighbor's yard and chased a walker. So my husband chased her making this morning a no good, very bad morning.  Lucky for her the pound isn't open this early.  

     Our first golden retriever was a puppy for 18 months.  Our second for 3 years.  At six months, Scout has at least twelve to twenty-four months of puppy left in her, which means we do too.  720 more mornings like this one?   We are deep in the work of establishing who is going to be master of her universe. Every day she wakes up in a body that is bigger, faster, stronger with a bark deeper and louder than the day before.  She takes this new self out for a test run and all our work on come, sit, stay is meaningless, the sound of her master's voice forgotten.     

     I asked Carl if he was still mad at her. "No," he said, "I just hate her."  She looks penitent but mostly I think she's exhausted from the drama. Overgrown puppies like her really have only one saving grace ~ that cuddly soft cuteness to which some part of our human self is irresistibly drawn.*  Scout has another, pedigree.  We know what kind of adult dog she will be; obedient, submissive, gentle, controlled, loyal, helpful, patient, and loving.  But only if we do our part every day for a few hundred more days.      

     Raising puppies to dogs is faster and easier than raising children to adults.  Raising children to adults is faster and easier than raising believers to disciples.  Eighty years may not be enough to master Christ’s example of self-control, submission, selflessness, discipline, obedience, humility, fearlessness, faithfulness, and joy. Always joy.        

     Were it not for the saving grace of our Master’s compassion, where would we be?  Left to ourselves to make a life, what sort of life would we make?  Big messes and terrorizing the neighbors for a start.  Heaven only knows what else.      

      I pray the day began better for you.  If not, may you find the lesson in it.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette

*Not every human. See previous husband comment.