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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November 28, 2023
Beloved: And just like that, Christmas time is upon us. As you plan your own festivities, I hope you will include some local parents and grandparents who can use a little extra help making this season extra merry and bright for their kids. They come to us by way of IU Health Positive Link, an organization serving neighbors who are living with HIV/AIDS. You can see more information about Positive Link below. Last year we provided Christmas to 11 kids, and this year they’ve invited us to take twenty-six. I have every confidence we can meet the need. As you can see from the list provided, their Christmas wishes are not extravagant. Simply choose a child, or two, or a family; go shopping and deliver the wrapped and labeled gifts to UBC no later than Sunday morning, December 17th. If you prefer not to wrap them, deliver them no later than Friday, December 15th (even better would be by 4:00 PM Monday, December 11), and we will make sure they get wrapped and labeled for you. Other ways to help:
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette Positive Link’s Client Holiday Gift Assistance Program ~ Gifts of Grace ~ is an annual holiday gift drive that links community member gift donations to individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Bloomington and the surrounding counties. Positive Link provides social services for those living with HIV including linkage to medical care, social support, medication assistance and adherence tools, food and nutritional needs, housing and utility assistance, advocacy, mental health and substance use counseling and referrals, PrEP and PEP Services as well as Primary Care for our clients. Eighty percent of our clients (and their affected families) live on or at Indiana's poverty level.
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November 14, 2023
Beloved: To be at peace and full of joy in a world on fire . . . is easier to believe some days than others. I forced myself to look at the war photos to which American newspapers will only refer, pictures too ghastly by the standards of such privileged readers. Then I went for a walk and remembered some words by that ancient letter writer named Paul, a Roman-Jewish-Christian who got into trouble for suggesting that Gentile Christians were in all ways equal to his Jewish-Christian siblings, entitled to worship, eat and hang out with them as equal bearers of the Holy Spirit. Big trouble. For an idea people were not ready to hear. Privileged people like himself, that is. In one letter he profiles his own privilege. He highlights his birthplace and birthright, his lineage and education, his professional advance and moral acuity. None have more reason to boast in their privilege than me, Paul says, and then the shocker, I regard it all as loss . . . as excrement in order to gain Christ.* Yep, excrement – again, a translation mindful of readers’ tender sensibilities. My Greek professor translated it as dog*#%t, a stronger excrement expletive. Privilege is that stench clinging to our shoes, compared to the sweetness of moving through this world in the faith and with the eyes of Jesus. Awful as these pictures are, what they reveal is the humanity of the other. The video of Shifa Hospital in Gaza – a father carrying his lifeless toddler on his shoulder, rubbing his little back, petting his hair as if about to put him down for a nap – took my breath away. As well it should, if I mean it when I pray to be the body of Christ in this time and place. As people with the capacity to recognize what is happening before our eyes, we see a slaughter being perpetrated and condoned by the most powerful and privileged constituents of humanity against the weakest, including children. It is indecent, to say the least. At worst, it is unapologetic evil conducted in broad daylight. We are not free to look away nor pretend this nightmare has nothing to do with us. As human beings - it has to do with us. As believers in Jesus - it has to do with us.
I am grateful to be about the work with the likes of you these days. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *Philippians 3:2-16 Email President Biden ~ https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ Email Indiana Representative Erin Houchin ~ https://houchin.house.gov/contact Email Indiana Senator Todd Young ~ https://www.young.senate.gov/contact Email Indiana Senator Mike Braun ~ https://www.braun.senate.gov/contact/ Donate to Doctors Without Borders, a medical agency at work in Gaza, or one of the many other humanitarian agencies doing work with war victims around the world. November 7, 2023
Beloved: How to keep a tender heart without being overwhelmed in times like these? Times so full of violence and grief, in the world and in our own lives. And what does it mean to be overwhelmed, exactly? To be incapacitated? To be of no use? Or, to feel feelings we would rather not feel: feelings like helplessness, frustration and rage at the shamelessness of humanity? These are the thoughts that turned over and over as I walked the dog this morning, and the hardly profound conclusion to which I came is that all I can do is accept that which I cannot change, help others when and where I can, be as gentle with myself as possible and endure my own suffering with all the courage and patience I can muster. Oh, and pray until my knees are sore, of course. Again, hardly profound. But comforting in its own way. This world is far too big and broken for my skill set. Just like when I broke my arm so many years ago. The doctor set it and then prescribed in no uncertain terms, “These bones need to be very, very still, so bedrest with your elbow higher than your heart and your hand higher than your elbow.” For ten days I lay propped in my bed by a mountain of pillows, watching cooking shows and sleeping. Healing this world’s brokenness will be as spiritual as mine was corporal. It will begin with a stillness in the human heart that allows the detritus of our hate and fear of one another to be carried off and replaced by the mercy, justice and humility that enable us to live and let others live ~ together in peace. A stillness that makes space for the deep loneliness inside of some people to be comforted with kindness instead of tranquilized with addiction that inevitably leads to shame.* How such a transformation of the heart might happen for humanity, I have no idea. But as a gathered community of faith, it seems well within our reach, should we choose to pursue it. I do not believe we were born to suffer, friends, but rather that we were born to find the joy that is possible in a suffering world, through the Christ who came and died and rose, freeing us from the hate and fear which has besieged this world from the time humanity first walked upon it. We must want it. We must seek it, this joy I mean. I pray we will want and seek it together in this time and place. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette * From a recent op-ed about Matthew Perry’s description of how loneliness was at the core of his own addiction. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/addiction-loneliness-matthew-perry.html |
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
April 2025
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