As I sit to write this reflection, Peter is having his final zoom meeting with his class, and the rain outside this morning seems appropriate for the feelings of the day. There’s some relief – it’s not been easy for any of us (though my Spanish is improving – I just learned the word for worm, lombriz). But there’s also grief – it’s hard to say goodbye to friends and a beloved teacher, even when (maybe especially when) you haven’t seen them in person in 2 months.

On the table is a bouquet of lily of the valley cut from our yard. Lily of the Valley are some of my favorite flowers – the way the bright white peeks out amidst all of the deep green, and the sweet smell of the blossoms. I watch for them each spring and I’m glad they are blooming now.

There are some gospel hymns about Jesus as the lily of the valley; I did some research online this morning and learned that the flowers are considered a sign of a return to happiness, or renewal of love. I also learned that they are very fruitful – apparently a single root can grow 50 bulbs. One site claimed that as spring flowers they are a symbol of the second coming. They’re also associated with May Day, and the labor movement. Who knew one flower could mean so many things?

I can remember as a little girl going with my grandmother to my great aunt’s house – the house they both grew up in - to dig up some lily of the valley from the yard to transplant at my grandparents’ new home. I don’t know if it was in connection with any symbolism, or if she just liked them, but now they remind me of her.

I’m grateful for the reminder today – of roots, of nourishing love, of growing things, of new life. And I’m reminded that sometimes it seems to take forever for things to grow – so much happens underground, hidden before we see shoots and leaves and blossoms.

One of my favorite stories from the Frog and Toad books for children is about a garden. Frog gives Toad some flower seeds and tells him that if he plants them, he will soon have a garden. It is hard for Toad to wait. He yells at the seeds to grow. He wonders if they are afraid to grow. He waters them, he reads to them, he plays music for them, he finally falls into an exhausted sleep and wakes up to tiny green plants poking through the soil. Sometimes it seems to take forever for new things to grow.

I’ve had several conversations this week about how much waiting and uncertainty are part of our pandemic experience, and also how this pandemic magnifies issues we had before, as a society and as individuals. My prayer is that even in the waiting, when many things seem hidden or even afraid to grow, good things will be magnified too – the kindnesses we show each other, the wonder of ordinary things like worms in the dirt and lily of the valley peeking through the dark green, the small daily ways we seek shalom.

I was reminded this week of this prayer for growth and of lament from Mechthild of Magdeburg. Mechthild was a Christian mystic who lived in Germany in the 1200s.

Lord, my earthly nature is stood before my eyes

like a barren field

which hath few good plants grown in it.

Alas, sweetest Jesus and Christ,

now send me the sweet rain of thy humanity

and the hot sun of thy living God head

and the gentle dew of the holy Spirit

that I may wail and cry out the aches of my heart.

Amen.

The Unexpected Staircases of Life

It’s been almost exactly five years since our family arrived in Chiapas, Mexico, for ten weeks of our sabbatical during the summer of 2015. Our intent was to study Spanish at a language school in San Cristobal de las Casas, a beautiful colonial town nestled in the mountains.

We arrived on May 10. We remember this because it was Mother’s Day. We didn’t realize this at the time, but Mother’s Day is always on May 10 in Mexico. And Mother’s Day is an even bigger deal in Mexico than it is in the United States. Despite this, however, friends of Mariano and Rosy Avila met us at the airport and welcomed us into their Mother’s Day celebration. They fed us well, gave us our first taste of agua de sandria (watermelon water), and showed us around the airport city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Late in the afternoon, we headed up into the mountains to find the house that we had rented for our time in San Cristobal. It was about an hour away, and I still remember the first glimpse of the city as we pulled around the bend on the mountain road and looked down into the city nestled in the valley below. San Cristobal is a beautiful city.

It quickly became clear, however, that while our hosts traveled frequently to San Cristobal, they were not familiar with the neighborhood where our house was located.

Now—I like to be in control. Especially with unknowns—at least as much as possible. So I had researched fairly thoroughly where this house was. I had printed a map. I had written out directions—in both English and Spanish. I had even downloaded a map onto my smartphone that gave us real-time step by step directions.

So when our host looked at us as we pulled into the city, clearly hoping that we knew where we were supposed to go, I looked back at him for a moment, a little distressed that he didn’t know even the main direction we needed to go, but then quickly pulled out my trusted smartphone app. I started directing him down narrow roads, slowly weaving closer and closer to our intended destination. I was even navigating an incredible maze of one-way streets. I was feeling good about myself—that I had thought of downloading this map app that worked even in Mexico.

We were getting close. Had made our way through downtown and toward one of the surrounding neighborhoods. We were making our way along a long road through a valley neighborhood of homes backed up along some farmland when the app told us to take a sharp left. Our driver slowed and began to make the turn, and then stopped. The road before us rose at a sixty-degree angle and was not a road as much as it was a staircase. Rising up about four hundred feet.

No matter—there were five or six streets farther down that could take us to our destination. Surely we’d be able to drive up one of these. But in each case we were met with a staircase rather than a road. The house we had rented was clearly at the top of this hill/mountain, but there was no way I could find to get there. So much for my app—I was no longer in control.

We didn’t know it at the time, but there are only three ways to drive into this neighborhood. Two from the back side and one from the direction we had come. And to use this last one, you need to take just the right combination of turns starting about a mile back from where we now found ourselves stuck. Thankfully, our host stopped trying to listen to us, asked a couple of people on the street, and soon made his way up this hidden access way.

Other friends of Mariano and Rosy were already at the house waiting there to greet us, wondering what took us so long in getting there, and then quickly filling our cupboards with some essentials to get us started in this new place.

Looking back now five years later, we’re still incredibly grateful for the amazing hospitality these people showed strangers on a Mother’s Day long ago. And we’re reminded that sometimes we think we’re in complete control, have it all figured out and know right where to go, and then we turn a corner in life and are met with a staircase that comes seemingly out of nowhere and makes the way forward suddenly seem incredibly and unexpectedly hard.

The book of Job is a hard and difficult book to make sense of. We’re left in many ways with more questions than answers. In the end, however, after God has declined to explain to Job why all this bad stuff has happened to him and instead essentially tells Job to trust him without knowing the explanation, Job makes an extraordinary statement of faith: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). When those staircases suddenly appear before us in life—especially those we cannot understand or even begin to explain—and the way ahead seems incredibly hard, it’s important to remember that God can indeed do all things, and no purpose of God can be thwarted.

Entering into the Chaos

One of the places I was looking forward to most on our trip to Israel was the Jordan River, the site of Jesus’ baptism. The story of Jesus’ baptism has become an important story in our life together at Boston Square as we seek to be mindful each week of the gift of baptism, as we seek to grow in our awareness of our baptismal identity.

This year I got to preach the story from the gospel of John, where Jesus, having recently been baptized, invites some of John’s curious disciples to ‘come and see,’ to come and spend the day with him. As I worked on the sermon, I tried to imagine the scene – the light sparkling off the water, a warm sunny day, and I was very curious when we were in Israel to see if the scene would be anything like I imagined it. It wasn’t really. We pulled into a parking lot full of buses and you couldn’t see the river. Instead what you saw were people. Crowds of people from all over, dressed in every way imaginable – there were the huge tour groups dressed in matching brown safari vests, there were pilgrims from Eritrea in beautiful white dresses and suits. And doves flying all over the place.

To get to the river you had to go through the crowds, down terraces with benches, to a roped off section of the river, which was also full of people, some being baptized, some dunking themselves, children splashing each other and no clear order about who should go where when. The water was the color of hot chocolate; it was the people who sparkled in it, not the water itself. There were the sounds of splashing and singing and praying and shouting in lots of different languages.

Pastor Bill, before we went down to get into the water, reminded us that in scripture water is often associated with chaos. In the creation story God takes the waters of chaos and makes shalom, the garden, with everyone and everything in right relationship. And in Jesus’ baptism, he entered the chaos, the mess of this world, to be with us and to restore shalom. We were then invited to get into the water (if we wanted to) as a way of saying ‘I am willing to enter into the mess, the chaos, in Jesus’ name, so I can bring shalom, good news to the world.’ Did I mention that you couldn’t see anything in the water? That it was brown? There were steps built under the water for you to wade in, and we couldn’t really reach the bottom…

Some of us are reading the book Liturgy of the Ordinary together, and the first chapter is mostly about baptism, about remembering each day as we wake up in the morning, that we are beloved children of God. As the title suggests, there’s an emphasis on the ordinary. The author quotes Martin Luther who reminded his church folk to consider their baptism as a garment to be worn daily. I’ve been thinking about that as I get dressed in the morning – I’m clothed in Christ. And I’ve been thinking about the chaos of the Jordan River too. Remembering that Jesus is with me in the murky waters of my mind, in the emotional turbulence of another day of online school, in the uncertainties ahead. Jesus is with me in the chaos and invites me to be in it with him, to follow him into the waters each day, remembering that I am clothed in Christ and God’s beloved child.

Mensa Christi

Before Jay and I left for Israel I read this quote from a prayer by St Columba, one of the Celtic Christian Missionaries who traveled and worked in Ireland, Scotland and England: This day is your love gift to me.

I copied it into the journal I took with me on my trip, as a prayer to receive each day, each part of the trip as a gift of love. This day is your love gift to me. When I read it to Jay, who knows I can be a pretty anxious traveler, he asked, “what if something goes wrong? Is that part of the love gift too?” “I think so,” I replied.

And I noticed it this morning as I was paging through that journal in preparation for writing this reflection today. This day is your love gift to me. It was easy to receive each day as a gift in the excitement of our trip – seeing new places, receiving good teaching, eating good food, not being in charge of anything or anyone other than myself....

One of my favorite places we visited was a site called ‘Mensa Christi’ – a place on the shore of the sea of Galilee where there was a large flat rock, like a table (mensa), where Jesus may have met the disciples for breakfast after his resurrection. It’s the place associated with John 21, where Jesus had the difficult conversation with Peter, when he asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” and then said to Peter again, “Follow me.” I was so excited when we visited that I couldn’t resist getting into the water, wanting to be like Peter jumping out of the boat with eagerness to see Jesus!

I have a deep appreciation for Peter – for his bold words and actions and especially for his failures and mistakes. I find Jesus’ love for him and work with him so reassuring. Jesus doesn’t give up on Peter. He keeps calling him, “Follow me.” And I feel a deep connection to this story – it was preached for Jay’s ordination at Boston Square and for my installation at Boston Square too. I tend to connect it to my call to ministry, to hear in it a reminder of Jesus’ grace and how my first calling is to love Jesus, to love his people, to follow Jesus.

But of course it’s not just a story for people called to ordained ministry. Those words, “follow me,” are Jesus’ invitation to each of us. And Jesus invites us over and over, each day, to follow him. In whatever our circumstances, Jesus is inviting us to follow him, to love him and others.

I’m reminded of this of assurance of pardon that we sometimes use in our liturgy at Boston Square: These are words of Jesus. They are strong and true, so believe them: “I have come so you may have life in all its fullness.” “Go in peace; your sins are forgiven.” “Come, each one and follow me.”

In some ways our lives have changed so much since Jay and I traveled to Israel, and in some ways they haven’t changed at all. Each day, whether something goes wrong or not, is a love gift from God. And in each day, Jesus is inviting me to follow him.

Faith

Back when I was in high school, I went on a church service trip to Annville, Kentucky. We mostly worked on painting projects and simple construction tasks for those who were elderly or had some disability that made these tasks difficult for them to do themselves. One day, however, I was selected to help the local youth director with his weekly adventure outing. This week they were going rock climbing.

Having grown up in West Michigan before the days of indoor rock walls, rock climbing was not something with which I had much experience. Everything was new to me, so the middle schoolers we took out that afternoon delighted in showing me all that was needed in properly putting on a harness, getting the belay in place, connecting to the climbing rope.

After a couple of the local youth scampered up the forty-foot cliff we were climbing with little difficulty, it was my turn. I took considerably longer than they had, but with my long legs and long reach, I found I had some natural advantages that, despite my overall lack of strength, still played in my favor.

As I scrambled over the top of the cliff, coming face to face with the scrawny youth who had been belaying me, I said a prayer of thanks that I had not lost my grip on the way up. Was it truly possible that such a small kid could have kept me from falling had I slipped?

While I was still contemplating the likely pain of such a scenario, the director came over and declared that the two of us were switching places. It was this kid’s turn to climb—and I was the one going to belay him. Since being the one belaying means that you’re responsible to hold the climber from falling to the ground if he or she were to lose their grip, I thought this was a terrible idea. You don’t know who you’re asking, I thought—I have no upper body strength whatsoever… In all of grade school, I recorded a total of one chin up. One. Even though we were tested on them every year. And I think that one was a fluke.

Belaying actually isn’t as hard as it sounds. The rope is wound through the harness in such a way that it doesn’t take much strength at all—you just need to be sure to be holding it in such a way that the natural physics locks up the rope if there’s a sudden tug. The challenge is taking in the rope at just the right amount so that the climber is free to maneuver unencumbered but won’t fall too far if he or she were to slip. You want some slack in the rope, but not too much.

Since we were belaying from the top, I was positioned in such a way that I was staring down over the cliff edge at the climber down below. The climbing rope was wound through a clip in my harness and my harness in turn was tied to a thick tree behind me. In theory, if the climber below me were to fall, my harness tied to the tree would keep me from falling over the cliff edge and I, holding onto the climbing rope wound through the clip in my harness, would keep the climber below me from falling.

What the director didn’t tell me, however, was that he intentionally left some slack in the rope that connected me to the tree behind me. As the climber below me was halfway up the cliff, the director called out to him and suddenly the climber let go and started to fall. My eyes went wide. My heart raced. I pulled back on the rope and held onto it with all my puny might. The slack in the climbing rope quickly went taut and suddenly I found myself skidding along the top of the cliff and over the edge. In a flash, I tried to find somewhere to brace my feet, but there was no real estate left. I thought for a moment of trying to launch myself off the top of the cliff into the top of a tree whose nearest branches were about five feet in front of me. I closed my eyes while getting ready to spring—and came to an abrupt halt, dangling half off the edge of the cliff.

I heard a bit of a laugh behind me. I turned around, and there was another youth standing there. The climbing rope I had been holding onto went through a clip on his harness and he was tied to the same tree I was. He was belaying behind me as an added precaution—in case I let go.

The director came running up. He seemed surprised that I had held onto the rope despite seemingly being launched off the edge of the cliff. “Hey—good job,” he said. “Most people let go.” I’m not sure it ever occurred to me to let go—it certainly wasn’t nobility that had caused me to keep holding on. “But that’s what faith is like,” he continued. “Holding on…even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around you and you’re flying off a cliff.”

Then it occurred to me that everyone else had been in on this act. Apparently, it was some sort of initiation that all the new guys went through. An intense, sort of life-and-death faith lesson. The climber below me grabbed back onto the cliff face and started climbing again as if nothing had happened.

I’m not sure it was the wisest way to teach about faith, but it’s a lesson that’s never left me. And it strikes me that it’s particularly appropriate for today. Faith is holding on, even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around us. And I might take it even one step further—it’s also continuing to support one another, even when it feels like we ourselves are being launched off a cliff.

Birds, Flowers, and a Song

Last weekend we had finally caught our breaths enough to spend some time showing our kids our pictures from our trip to Israel. They’d seen a few we’d sent each day, and some of the ones we’ve included in the blog, but this time we showed them all 300 of them. They (mostly) looked and engaged with interest, and one of their questions was “why are there so many pictures of flowers and birds?” And it’s true -if you ever end up sitting through all of our photos, you’ll notice this too. We, and especially me, took a lot of pictures of flowers and birds.

I’m not the gardener or the birder in the family (that’s Jay), but I found myself paying attention to the flowers and birds we were seeing in Israel. And we saw them everywhere – not only in nature (there were doves all over the place at the site of Jesus’ baptism!) but in art too. On churches and ancient Roman floors and carved into pillars and stones for synagogues, were flowers and birds. No wonder they came to Jesus’ mind as he was preaching: 

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life . . . look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them . . . See how the flowers of the field grow . . . if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?

Our trip to Israel wasn’t what we thought it would be, and it was hard to have it cut short, to not see things I’d been looking forward to seeing. But I’m so grateful for the time we did have, and I can’t really imagine living in this time without the gift of that time first. I’m still trying to pay attention to the birds and the flowers now that we’re back, to delight in them and receive them  as reminders of Jesus’ words about not worrying, but trusting God’s loving care.

For the past several weeks the song ‘Always Good’ by Andrew Peterson has been running through my mind. The chorus includes these words: You’re always good, always good.  Somehow this sorrow is shaping my heart like it should. And you’re always good, always good.... Will you help us to trust your intentions for us are still good?

It’s a cold dreary morning as I sit to write this. Things have already not gone as I planned or hoped - we’ve had a lot of yelling and tears and it’s not even time for morning recess yet. And a bird is singing, there’s a daffodil blooming near the window – reminders that God is good, and God is taking care of us, and God is using this time to shape us to be more and more like Jesus.

God's Love When Hugs Are Not Allowed

Every week we’ve been having church online, I’ve been posting the prerecorded sermon on youtube and then linking it to the church website and posting it on Facebook—both the Boston Square Facebook page and the Boston Square Facebook group.

This week when I went to post the sermon on Facebook, I noticed that the banner photo on the top of the Boston Square group page had gone missing. Not having much time at the moment but also not wanting to leave it blank, I quickly searched through the photos that had previously been posted by members and looked for one that had a number of Boston Square folks in it. I found one, without too much trouble, of many of us gathered together around the dumpster in back of church—with piles of trash all around us. It’s a picture we take almost every spring—the “after” shot of all of us picking up trash in the neighborhood.

As I posted it, I reflected briefly on what has become a lovely springtime tradition at Boston Square. We don’t invest that much into it and it doesn’t require too much of our time or effort—and yet it makes a real difference and we’ve even had neighbors send cards to the church in appreciation. I lamented the fact that we probably wouldn’t be picking up trash this year—though I did wonder for a bit if we could still pick up trash in a socially-distanced manner (one person per side of street, taking turns dropping off trash bags at the dumpster…and why is it that the trash piling up on the sides of Kalamazoo Ave doesn’t seem to be abating while everyone is staying at home?!?). And I had a pang of loss as I smiled at seeing familiar faces and missed our gatherings together.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that Facebook alerts group members that the photo has been updated. And that means that a number of Boston Square folks saw the photo of us together. And there was a wave of group lament—yearning for the day when we can gather together and hug one another again.

Technology has been a real blessing in the midst of this time of social-distancing. Our kids have been able to connect with cousins over Zoom in ways they otherwise would have needed to wait until summer to be able to do. We’ve had people from all over the United States and all over the world join us for worship on Sunday morning. And yet, one thing technology has not been able to do is replace hugs. Hugging our loved ones far away. Hugging our loved ones living just down the street. Hugging friends—even those we normally would never even hug.

I had one friend who spent last week creating what his family called the “Hug-able”—a sheet of plastic that could be taped around the doorframes of the front door of a house. They had cut four holes in the sheet and taped garbage bags over the holes—two going in one direction and two in the other so that one person could stand on one side of the sheet and another on the other and they could each put their arms in the holes with the garbage bags and reach out and hug the other—with plastic separating them the whole way like some sort of grown-up version of those devices they have in the NICU that allow parents to reach in and touch and hold their premature babies without risking contamination. I’m pretty sure my friend’s contraption doesn’t meet CDC guidelines—but when they brought it to his mother-in-law’s house and recorded her reaction in being able to hug her daughter and her grandchildren again for the first time in a month, it was absolutely profound and beautiful.

As part of the recording my friend made, his wife, moments before hugging her mother, noted that her desire to hug and hold her loved one—her mother—was just a small microcosm of what God’s love for us is like. God’s desire to hug and to hold us. After this whole coronavirus crisis is over, I don’t think I’ll ever read the Parable of the Lost Son quite the same again. Envisioning God as the father, constantly looking out the window, over the fence, down the road, yearning…yearning…yearning to be able to hug us again. Longing for the day we will come into his embrace. So deeply desiring to hold us and never let us go. That is God’s love for us.