In Between

Some would even say that it is only in the in-between times that we are free enough form the structures and strictures of ordinary life to hear God’s voice.  (Guthrie: From Pew to Pulpit: A Beginner's Guide to Preaching)

I read this book along with my CLM students, and this sentence really caught my attention.  From that quote, I created a questions for them:  Think about this quote in the context of our current reality as churches and communities living  through a pandemic.  In what ways are we in an in-between time?  Has this enabled the church  or you to hear God more clearly?  How will that impact your ministry as a CLM? How will this  impact your church into the future? Have opportunities for the church’s ministry opened from  the challenges?

For me, it feels as if we are currently in an "in between" time in our churches.  We are still in the pandemic, although we had hoped it was ending.  We are still trying to have some sense of normalcy in our churches, and think there is a part of us that would like to "go back" to the way it used to be.

On World Communion Sunday, we celebrated the Lord's Supper as a church.  We all came to the front of the room and were handed a small goblet-shaped cup with juice and a wafer sealed inside.  It isn't what it used to be, with sweet bread torn from a loaf and dipped into a cup, but there was liturgy, and there were the words "The body and blood of Christ, for you."  We waited until everyone was served, and then ate and drank together.  The people at home, watching on the internet weren't able to have consecrated elements, but did, I hope, feel the community of communion.  

It's better than it was - when we were all at home.  And it's better than the basket of elements at the door that you pick up without the face to face contact of being served and of receiving.  

And in this in-between, I remember why we have communion in the first place.  When we were worshiping from home, I really felt the lack of this meal.  The in between at that time focused my attention more on the need for remembrance together.  

I would love to go back to no masks, and to torn loaves, and to praying together at the altar; however, in this in between, I can be more grateful for what we do have, and for the ways we can come together.

Carried or Sent? Part 2

 This is the second part of a devotional I gave at a meeting last week.

We are living in a pandemic.  I am so ready for that not be the case, but it is.  We are living in a time of fear.  A time of mourning and grief.  A time of anger. We have not been sent here by God, but we have been carried by God.

 

I’m reading a book called The Missional Leader: Equipping your church to reach a changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.  They write, “In the incarnation, we discern that God is always found in what appears to be the most godforsaken of places – the most inauspicious of locations, people, and situations….Over and over again, God meets God’s people with the bright light of the Kingdom in what appears to be the most hopeless and forsaken places.”  Through a prophet, God asks, “Can these dry bones live?” and then God answers the question by sending us Jesus.  The answer is yes.  The dry bones lives because God is with us.

 

God was with the people in exile, and God tells them to live.  Get married, have children, have grandchildren.  Live.  Bring life to where you are. 

 

God is with us in this pandemic, and tell us to live.  To do ministry.  To love each other.  To bring life to where we are.  Here in this place, where God is, we are still the church.  We need new skills, and we need to use gifts differently, but that doesn’t mean we have an excuse to do nothing. 

 

A few years ago, I was part of a committee that was trying to standardize the certified lay minister program in our conference.  We couldn’t envision a way to do it.  But now, I’m teaching a Conference CLM course – all online.  In a way we didn’t – couldn’t have – envisioned.  The students – at least some of them – don’t have the equipment they need, or the internet they need, and yet they are doing this anyway.  They borrow a friend’s computer, they find internet, they show up every month for a 2.5 hour zoom class.  They do the portico lectures, they read the books, they struggle through curriculum, and they write answers to hard questions.  In a land where they didn’t expect to be, they are living life – following God’s call.  And they are telling me that they couldn’t have done this without the class being held online.  They couldn’t have traveled for in person meetings.  This could not have happened before the pandemic.

 

So, I ask you today, in this land where God has carried you, where have you seen God at work?   Where are you or the people in your community, living life in a way no one anticipated before?

Carried or Sent? Part 1

The following two posts are from a devotional I provided for a meeting I had last week.  

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 - Common English Bible

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter from Jerusalem to the few surviving elders among the exiles, to the priests and the prophets, and to all the people Nebuchadnezzar had taken to Babylon from Jerusalem

⁴ The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. ⁷ Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare. 

 

This was the passage we studied in Sunday school last week.  This passage bothered me because of the idea that God sent the Israelites into Exile.  And I wasn’t the only one it bothered, so we were talking about it. 

 

Jeremiah had spent a whole lot of time prior to this passage trying to convince those who lived in Judah to change their ways – they didn’t.  The people to whom this letter is written are now in exile in Babylonia.  One of the things that bothers me about this passage because the idea that God sent them into exile almost seems to remove their guilt in the matter.  So, we were having that discussion.

 

Jeff Taylor is a member of our Sunday school class, and he loves words.  He pointed out that the verb used in the Common English is carried.  “proclaims to all the exiles I have carried from Jerusalem to Babylon.”  God didn’t send them, he carried them.  God went with them.  They were without their land and their freedom, but they were not without God.

 

What difference does that make?  What is the difference between sent and carried?

 

In 2011, our older son, Grant, was a senior in high school.  Our younger son, Josh, was a freshman.  All through their lives, Josh had been dragged – uh, invited – to events that involved Grant – track meets, band concerts – whatever Grant was involved in, we, his parents, attended, and Josh went with us.  On this day in 2011, Josh was the one who was playing in the band concert.  Grant really wanted to go to a basketball game at Cabell Midland High School – on the other side of the county.  We told him he had to go and support Josh, at least for the first part of the concert, and then he could go the game.

 

He grudgingly did so, and then left to drive to Ona once he was finally released by his mean parents.  Not much later than that, my husband, Steve, got a phone call from Grant.  Grant had been pulled over for speeding, and the Barboursville police officer made him call us.  Grant had been driving 96 miles an hour.

 

In the city of Barboursville, when you get a ticket for driving 96 miles an hour, you can’t just pay the fine.  You have to go to court.  So, when the time came, Steve and I drove Grant – he was no longer driving at this point - to court in the Senior Center in Barboursville.  Its rows and rows of chairs, with a table up front, at which are seated the judge and a police officer.  When it is your turn, you approach the table and have a seat for the hearing.  When Grant’s time came, he went up front, and we went with him.  We all sat at the table to talk to the judge and police officer.

 

After it was over, and we were walking back to the car, Grant said, “I didn’t know you were going to come with me to the front.” It was a statement of thanksgiving.  In a time of fear, anxiety, and shame, he was not alone.

 

We didn’t send Grant to court after his ticket.  We carried him there.

A year in a Pandemic time

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the declaration of a global pandemic (a redundant description - pandemics are global by definition).  March 23 will mark the one year anniversary of when our office staff started working from home.  We went back to the office (with precautions we are still observing) a couple of months later, but knowing a year has passed has me remembering what the pandemic was like at the beginning.

It was a time of stress - of unknowing.  Something what would seem impossible one week would be the reality the next week.  It was a time of grief.  I grieved the things we lost - traveling, eating out, being with people, worshiping and studying together, going to conferences, watching Josh graduate.  I grieved the loss of who we were. 

It was a time of anxiety.  What was going to happen? Grocery stores were empty. The stock market plunged. People lost jobs.  Schools closed.  Everything happened so quickly and without any real predictability.  Who knew what would happen next?  No one could predict it.

I found that I couldn’t watch the news.  I physically could not stay in the room if the TV was broadcasting news.  My anxiety would shoot up, and I would have to get up, and leave.  I love to make cards, but I couldn’t sit down and make them.  There wasn’t enough leftover concentration or creativity for them.  I realized one day that I couldn’t pray - and I felt like I should be praying.  Couldn’t. The day I realized that I sat down and made a few simple cards, and it felt like prayer. 

Our office staff worked out a schedule so that one of us would go to the office each day.  On my days to go in, I noticed that there were many fewer cars on the road than usual.  There weren’t traffic jams and there were many fewer accidents.  The road to work felt eerie and strange, and I almost felt like I shouldn’t be out driving (even though we are considered an essential business). 

We hadn’t been in our office space very long when March came along.  We had been using it as a place of hospitality - three or four meetings or gatherings held there already - and when I went to work, by myself, in the days we were working from home, the office felt empty.  Quiet.  And so sad. Lonely.

The day after I started working from home, Steve started doing the same thing.  We set our office up in the family room (the back of the room was already an office space) and worked together. It was good to be together.  On Fridays we would go out, pick up lunch, and eat it in the car. 

There were daily zoom meetings, texts, and phone calls to try to stay connected as an office.  I didn’t feel as if I was getting as much done - I compared it to driving a car with a wagon wheel.  But I was busy all the time. 

We stopped worshiping at church and started attending online services.  The first time I watched one of the services, I cried.  Now it seems normal, and I don’t give it a second thought.

We tried to stay away from family. We went out every Saturday to get groceries for Mom so she wouldn’t have to (we still are).  We dropped off the groceries and tried to keep our distance.  The first meal we had together was on Mother’s Day - we brought in food and ate while socially distanced. 

Once the state parks opened back up, Steve and I started making day trips. We were very careful, eating in the car or outside, taking walks.  It felt wonderful to get away from the house.  In June, we took our first overnight trip to Canaan Valley.  We spent two nights at the resort, and took several long walks.  We did eat breakfast and dinner in the restaurant, and it was a little bit nerve wracking.  In July, we traveled to Alabama to help Josh move to Nevada. We drove across the country - over 20 states - and didn’t eat inside a restaurant one time.  It was a different way to travel.  In September, we spent a week at Caswell Beach - a much more empty place than our usual Myrtle Beach.  We cooked in the condo about half the time and picked up meals to eat in the condo the other half of the week.  An enjoyable but different kind of vacation.

I started a mask factory, using a pattern a crated from a mask Mom bought me whose fit I liked.  I now have a mask drawer, I’ve made so many.

I checked (and still check) daily infection rates in our state, the Rt values across the country (they’ve stopped measuring that now).  Now I watch vaccination rates.

I celebrated when Mom was able to get an appointment for a vaccination, and I drove her through yucky weather to get her second shot.  Steve and I were able to get appointments for vaccinations a week ago - our second shots are on Good Friday.  There is a wonderful relief to the vaccination.  I see hope as I watch people around me receive the vaccination, and watch infection rates drop.  I hope that soon we will be able to go to a movie without worry that we will catch a virus that will kill us.

Someone on TV the other day said that during this “Great Pause” we have stopped living.  For Steve and me, that isn’t true.  We haven’t lived the same as before, but we have found a way to enjoy life while doing different things than we used to.  We enjoyed picnics outside and walks through the woods, take-out and car travel.  As we enter post-emergency Covid times, we’ll keep some of those habits, I imagine.

Perspectives: Advent at Home

 

This was our advent candle at home last month.  I missed Advent in Church, but we can worship anywhere, can't we?  That said, I miss the community of worship.

The New "I Love You"

I've been nagging my husband, pretty much daily, to wash his hands and to not touch his face.  The nagging has no real connection to the fact that he is doing those things (or not doing them, as the case may be) with my reminders, but still I feel a need to remind.

One day, I texted him to "wash his hands and not touch his faced."  He is working in his office again, so I reminded him.  Then I said, "I say these things because I love you.  These are the new I Love you words.  So now, when we end a text, he might say, "Wash your hands" and I respond "Don't touch your face."  

I love you.

I've also noticed how I end emails differently than I used to.  Invariably, I will write, "Stay safe" or "Stay well."  That isn't usual for me, but it is the new "I love you."

And don't get me started about wearing masks.  For me, wearing a mask is one of the ways we love each other through this pandemic.  Wear a mask.  It says "I love you."  

We need love in this world.  Say it.  Show it.  Do it.

Where Have I Been?

Where have I been?

My usual pattern for posting in the last couple of years is to post four days a week, with the Thursday post being an image.  There have been times when I have taken a break from posting, and, obviously, this time has been one of them.  

Sometimes breaks are planned - I might step back for a week while I am on vacation, or for a time when I feel that I need a break.  But this break was unplanned, and stemmed directly from the pandemic.  That isn't to say I've been sick - I have not been.  I am fine, and I'm grateful the rest of my family and friends are well, also.  

However, this has been a time of high anxiety.  I'm sure you have felt it as I have.  There is a break from normalcy, as we learn words that we didn't know before - or maybe that didn't exist before.  Words like social distancing and safer at home.  I have cycled between anxiety, grief, and peace.  I'm blessed that most often I feel peace, but grief or anxiety can rise up when I don't expect them to.  And I imagine the same is true for you.

I've stepped back from a few things.  I can feel anxiety rise as I watch the news, so I don't.  I check in so that I will know what is happening in the world, but I cannot watch the death toll rise or the dire predictions of what was or is to come.  I am responsibly connected, but not listening otherwise.  That was an intentional decision.  An unintentional decision is that it is harder to be creative.  I love cardmaking.  At first, I couldn't do it at all.  Now I can - gratefully and joyfully - but not as often.  The blog - another creative outlet - sat quiet.  I haven't been writing or posting.  I felt no draw to do so.  I felt guilty about that, because I thought I should be, but I haven't.  

I've also noticed that spiritual practices, such as prayer or devotionals, have not been happening.  I wrote in a Facebook post one day that I couldn't pray.  No words for prayer.  The day I posted that was the first day I sat down and made a card (which felt great, and even prayerful).  

Also, I haven't been able to set goals.  I have an organized mind, and lists of goals made me feel calmer - organized - less anxious.  But the pages I set aside for goal-setting in my journal have been purposefully - intentionally - blank for April and May.  I've been very busy, but haven't set goals.

Why am I telling you all of this?

I hope that you have been kind to yourself in this time of high anxiety and grief.  I hope you realize that what you are feeling - whatever it is - is a normal reaction to a very not-normal time in our world.  

That said, while the pandemic is still here, and we are in grief over the continued racial tensions (seems like such a small word for such a big thing) in our country, the body and mind learn to adjust.  I can pray again.  I hope to spend some time making cards today.  And I'm setting a goal of posting on the blog in June.  It will probably be three times a week, and we'll see where that goes.

Take care and be well.