musings of a saint and sinner

like a nursing mother

2010-01-28T15:06:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 49:14-16

14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me." 15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! 16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.

Psalm 131

1 My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.

Isaiah 66:13

13 As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.

We often think of mighty images to describe God, and many of these images are used in Scripture. Warrior. King. Deliverer. Savior. Rock. Fortress. They are good images for us. Biblical images.

But sometimes we don’t think about the most tender image used for God in Scripture, the image that compares God to a nursing mother. This is not to say that God is female or anything like that, but God gives to us in our role as mother a way to understand what His love for us is like.

The nursing mother sustains the child from her own body. For anyone who has nursed, you know that for the first 6 months to a year, it is a lifestyle. You start out wondering you’re doing it right. There is sometimes pain…lots of pain…no matter what the La Leche League says. You can’t travel far because feedings are so close together. You have to eat nutritiously and drink lots of water. Other than maybe when you were pregnant, you’ve never been so hungry in your life! Ravenous really, since you are feeding not only yourself, but a little one. You get anxious when the little one goes on a nursing strike and refuses to eat. You cry and wonder what to do when your baby starts teething and cries with pain when trying to nurse. You find yourself on the verge of a breast infection and have to quit whatever you’re doing and head straight to bed. And then there is the time when baby starts getting teeth and she thinks it is extra fun to bite mom and get an exciting reaction! Wow! The pain! It consumes you and it is a sacrifice of yourself like nothing you have ever done before. It is a self-emptying.

And yet, even with all of the suffering that nursing brings, you find exquisite, amazing joy in being able to look down at that little, precious face, peacefully drawing sustenance from you! What a gift to be able to give of yourself in that way! And as you look at that little one, you know in your heart that you would do anything for them. You would do anything to protect them, to watch over them. When they cry, you feel it physically in your own body. When they laugh, your joy is unspeakable. The connection between you and them is palpable.

Not every mother is able to nurse. It is a personal decision and the actual act of nursing isn’t necessarily the point of the illustration that Scripture brings us. After all, in the world of the Old Testament, there was no formula. There weren’t many other options. We can be grateful for the many options a mother and baby have now, for imagine if a mother in ancient Israel had a low milk supply or trouble nursing. Possibly the child would die.

No, the point of the illustration is not that nursing is the only way for a mother to show her love. Rather, the point is that it is a picture of the self-sacrificial love that all mothers have for their little babies. For every mother, your life changes when you have a child. Your free time evaporates. Getting out is a major expedition, requiring the planning and coordination that a business executive must possess. Time with your spouse becomes more challenging. Your interests fade into the background. When people see you in public, they stop noticing you and start noticing your child. Your world revolves around diapers (and you find yourself describing their contents to acquaintances only to realize they aren’t so interested), sleepless nights (you never know you could get by on so little before), and occasional moments of the kind of exquisite joy you didn’t know was possible. It’s all about sacrifice and yet it is worth it all the first time your child kisses your cheek or says “Mommy.”

It reminds me in a small way of what Christ did for us….Philippians 2 says, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

Christ emptied Himself for us, just a nursing mother—or any mother, for that matter—empties herself for her child. The passionate, “mama bear” love that we have for our little ones, the love that is made of self-sacrifice and stick-to-itiveness is the kind of love that God has for us. The word used over and over again for God’s love in the Old Testament is “steadfast love.” Love that holds onto us, no matter how much the going gets tough. If as mothers we would be willing to sacrifice just about anything for our children, how much more is God willing to do for us? For Christ came and poured Himself out so thoroughly for us that He died for us and rose again. Through His steadfast love, we as mothers and as women are freed to love those who are dear to us. And every time we feel the passion of motherly love within our hearts, we can reminded that the way we feel about our child is very much like how God feels about us. Amen.

The Wrestler

2009-04-26T19:18:00.001-07:00

It has been a long time since a movie has given me so much to think about as The Wrestler.

This film is the story of Randy "the Ram" Robinson, a washed-up, has-been wrestler who is now wrestling on the weekends in small venues for small bits of cash, while working in a grocery store during the week days. Randy has mangled his relationship with his only daughter and is virtually unconnected to anybody.

Except for a stripper named Cassidy (or Pam in real life). They have befriended each other and share a genuine affection for each other. The film's parallelism in the portrayal of their two worlds--the strip club stage and the wrestling ring--is impeccable. The violence and nudity are not for everyone, but I for one appreciated that there was nothing leering about the portrayal. Rather, I found myself wincing, recoiling, and mourning the deep loss of humanity each character experienced. For Pam, there is the mangling of God's created intent for her femininity and her beauty as she parades across the stage. For Randy, there is the loss of God's created intent for him as a masculine warrior. Both cheaply sell the deepest aspect of the masculine and feminine soul. The most precious parts of their humanity become a commodity to be bought and sold.

Still, they share a few real moments. Something authentic. They both advance toward it and pull away. The difference between the real and the fake is clear but we as human beings are often drawn toward the familiar, even if it is far worse, even if it is frightening, even if it disfigures who we are meant to be.

Early on in the film, Cassidy looks at Randy's wrestling scars from the mangling he has received in the ring and she begins to quote Isaiah 53, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him and by His stripes we are healed." When he asks her what that is all about, she tells him she has seen the movie The Passion of the Christ and that it is about Jesus taking a beating through the whole movie and not responding to the violence but just taking it. They agree that Jesus is one tough dude, something along the lines of the toughest wrestler of all time.

But I was struck by what this movie told me about our fallenness as human beings. It is so hard in this day and age to explain to people why Jesus had to come. But Randy and Cassidy/Pam show us the reality of fallenness to the depths. They show "we are in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves." They try to move forward and make changes but find themselves reverting to their familiar brokenness.

But here's what really struck me: Randy takes upon himself the violent inclinations of all of his fans...Because that's what wrestling is about: the fallen, violent urges of sinful humanity being poured down onto two people in the ring vicariously. The weight of these violent inclinations is a crushing load, which is why wrestlers get into steroids, have their lives revolve around violence, fail at personal relationships and so on. No human being can carry the weight of all of our violent inclinations just as no woman can carry the heavy weight of our misguided sexual desires. These loads are heavy and too much for anyone to bear. This is why Christ had to come. Our destructive urges, our sins, our fallenness, our bondage must be carried by someone with the capacity to carry them, to be crushed by them and to rise again from beneath that load of death and sin. Jesus Christ is the one who we mangled and crucified. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. In Jesus Christ, we have freedom from all that binds us. Because He carried the weight of our Old Adam fallenness in His body, we are made new...we have become the New Adam. Hallelujah. Amen.

Christ became sin for us

2008-07-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I was watching a past episode of the FX TV show 30 Days. It's a documentary-type show where someone is asked to go and live for 30 days with someone who believes completely differently from them on some issue. This episode was about a Christian farm boy who went to live in the heart of a gay neighborhood in San Francisco. At one point in the episode, the man encountered protesters of the gay lifestyle. They carried their usual hateful signs, but one thing that made me draw in my breath sharply was when one of these protesters shouted, "I love a man and His name is Jesus Christ and His blood is not HIV positive"! Yikes! First of all, it's an incredibly hateful thing to say.

But second of all, didn't this protester COMPLETELY miss the point of what the Gospel is all about? It is not about Jesus dying for us because we were so righteous. Romans 5:8 clearly tells us that Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners. The Gospel is about the Great Exchange. It is about Jesus taking all of our sin and brokenness upon Himself and giving us His righteousness, purity, truth, beauty, and place in God's family in return. It's a terrible deal for Jesus, but a fantastic one for us.

Martin Luther wrote in his Commentary on Galatians:
"And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world. He is not acting in His own Person now. Now He is not the Son of God, born of the Virgin. But He is a sinner, who has and bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and murderer, and who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord. In short, He has and bears all the sins of all men in His body--not in the sense that He has committed them but in the sense that He took these sins, committed by us, upon His own body, in order to make satisfaction for them with His own blood....Christ was not only found among sinners; but of His own free will and by the will of the Father He wanted to be an associate of sinners, having assumed the flesh and blood of those who were sinners and thieves and who were immersed in all sorts of sin. Therefore when the Law found Him among thieves, it condemned and executed Him as a thief.

"This knowledge of Christ and most delightful comfort, that Christ became a curse for us to set us free from the curse of the Law--of this the sophists deprive us when they segregate Christ from sins and from sinners and set Him forth to us only as an example to be imitated...But just as Christ is wrapped up in our flesh and blood, so we must wrap Him and know Him to be wrapped up in our sins, our curse, our death, and everything evil."

So all this goes to say...this protester did not know his Jesus. The real Jesus Christ is in fact HIV positive. And He is in prison for a life term. And He bears the sin of the molester and child murderer. And He carries the weight of the great sin of genocide. And He is broken and abused. How do I know this? Because He has taken all of my sin and brokenness, and not mine alone, but also that of every person who puts their faith in Him. In fact, He has taken it already, once for all, when He died on the cross. We need only believe in His great promises and therefore be set free! When Christ hands over His blessings to us, we become the righteousness of God in Him. Hallelujah! What a great Savior! A Savior who is HIV positive. And a Savior who also carries the ugly hatred of the man protesting gays. As a Casting Crowns song says, "How far is the east from the west? The distance between two scarred hands." Thank you, Jesus!

why is this world so anti-marriage these days?

2008-05-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

So, I've been noticing something that is becoming more and more prevalent as a cultural norm. I know people have been living together for decades and that the Religious Right is always pointing to how the institution of marriage is in decline. But it seems like until recently there was at least some modicum of respect and desirability attached to marriage in popular culture. Lately, however, it seems like all I am hearing (particularly from women on TV) is how marriage ties a person down and how much they like to be alone and single. There is even an embracing of the "goodness" of divorce. While I fully realize that divorce is sometimes necessary due to abuse, neglect or infidelity, it has always seemed to me that divorce is a regrettable, sad event. It is sometimes the lesser of two evils, but I have always felt (particularly living through two divorces in my family) that is brings much sorrow and deep wounds. Where has this blithe, optimistic embrace of divorce in the name of personal autonomy come from? It frightens me even more if children are involved because such an attitude may blind the parents to the ramifications of their decisions.

At the same time, I can't help noticing the similarity between the blithely bitter ruminations of feminists who feel no need for men, and the super spiritualism of Christian young men that I know who seem more concerned with feeling gushy over God than getting married. The value of singleness--even in the Christian community--seems to be elevated over above the great soul refining value of marriage. I Corinthians 7 is often cited in the interest of preserving this so-called spirituality. But it should be remembered that I Corinthians 7's instructions to "stay in the state in which you were when you were called" (married or single) was spoken to people in some sort of crisis, perhaps of persecution. It is specific advice for a specific situation. In general, Biblically, marriage is the norm.

Sadly, in a fallen world there are some who desire marriage and never manage to find a partner. Or who struggle to find one. They should not be put down for this, for they are desiring God's good gift. Certainly they should be ministered to by the Church in their loneliness. Those who desire to marry but cannot find a partner are not the problem. The problem is those who are so desperate to hold on to their singleness at all cost (after all, if they were willing to marry, the problem of those who desire to find a partner might largely be solved). I know that there are some who are called to singleness, but before a person declares that this is their call, they ought to very carefully evaluate their motives for refusing marriage. Is singleness just one more way to not grow up, to stay without commitment, to stay set in one's ways? Or is it a chance to have more time for service? Single people are called to serve their neighbor too--so either way, you don't get out of that. I know some phenomenal single people who want to be married but are using the time in the interval to grow and to focus on serving others faithfully right where they are. This is a beautiful model for singleness--desired or not--and will prepare a person for marriage, if God should provide that good gift.

Marriage is a crucial gift of God to us as human beings because we are all too easily drawn in on ourselves. We are self-centered creatures. And if we are allowed to live alone, without commitment to relationships and without letting someone know us deeply, nakedly, within the context of absolute fidelity and commitment--we will draw ever deeper into ourselves.

God knows we need a lure to pull us out. Hence, falling in love. Falling in love gives us the courage to make a huge, radical commitment to another human being for the rest of our lives. When we marry, the rosy glow over the other person slowly fades--or maybe disperses in a burst--but finally we realize we have married another sinner (as Elisabeth Elliot says, "there is no one else to marry!"). We both must forgive each other. And we both need each other. And so we do as Ephesians 5 tells us and "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Nothing could be more counter-cultural than submitting to each other by putting another's needs at least equal to--if not below--our own. The feminists of the world tell us we are being a doormat and giving up our autonomy (yea to the latter, nay to the former). The super-spiritual tell us that we should just be playing our guitars on a grassy knoll and not messing with messy humans. Christ tells us, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself."

The amazing thing is that in the yielding (which of course does not happen all at once but is a gradual refining process), we find what mere autonomy could never give us. The depth of a love that has been tested by mutual mistakes and mutual forgiveness is to casual relationships as cheap wine is to well-aged wine. God never asks us to sacrifice unless He has something else far better to give in return for the sacrifice.

And so I think parenthood will be. My husband made the wise comment tonight that parenthood is God's way to get the married couple away from "smug married" syndrome into a further reach of caring for their neighbor. I admit to being slower onto the parenting bandwagon than the marriage one. And it is precisely because I love my autonomy. But Christ calls me outside of myself to my neighbor. Who actually happens to be inside me at the moment (but not for long!). Although I sometimes worry about all that I am giving up to be a parent, I am grateful too. I know that the rewards are great when we love our neighbor. And so I eagerly anticipate my neighbor's arrival on September 15.

oh baby!

2008-03-19T08:45:00.001-07:00

I've had some big changes in my life these days. Growing up, I always pictured myself married, always imagined who my future husband would be, always had a romantic heart. As I got older, I started to think about how relationships work and what qualities I wanted my relationship to have. So when my husband and I got married, it was like living the dream. I found a man who embodies the qualities of true love and whom I truly love.

But growing up, having a baby was never a huge part of the plan, if I had to be honest. My Mom was always complaining that I didn't want to play with baby dolls when I was a kid most of the time. I didn't give a lot of thought to how I wanted to parent. I always felt kind of awkward with children, perhaps partly because I had very few friends my own age as a child. As I grew older, I thought that in theory I'd like to have a baby, but later...

My husband is the opposite of me. He grew up wanting to have both a wife and a family. He spent his childhood years glued to the tube watching The Cosby Show and taking lessons from Cliff Huxtable (lately, I've come to realize that The Cosby Show actually is one of the most educational and encouraging tools out there to learn about parenting). He was really focused on the whole family goal and gave a lot of thought to how he wanted his family to be. I think that honestly, he gently nudged me into the whole family thing. When you love someone, the idea of having a baby with them becomes more desirable.

And then there were the strange urges I started to have last year. I would walk through our big house and it would just feel empty to me. It would feel lacking something. And then there is the thought that actually it is a little selfish to not have kids. Having kids calls me out of myself to my neighbor, as my seminary professor Dr. Paulson would teach. Having kids would enlarge my heart, which is all too easily focused just on myself.

I admit I still had/have some misgivings. Would I lose myself in the "mother" identity? Would I be a good mother? Was I maternal enough? Did I have what it takes?

But somehow my husband and I moved forward and took the step of faith. And now we are expecting baby number one in September. I admit to feeling alternately really excited and really freaked out, depending on my mood. But something has happened to me since becoming pregnant. Ordinarily, I am an exceptionally anxious person. I can sometimes obsess over an (often irrational) worry for days or even weeks. But since becoming pregnant, I have suddenly started to realize that I am embarking on a journey, an endeavor that is so much bigger than me that I don't even know where to begin to worry. I am being forced to trust in God, to trust in the One who is outside of myself. This baby in my belly is already calling me outside of myself to my neighbor. I am learning to take it all one day at a time, something I've never been good at. But this is so big that there is no other way to do it, really.

There have been moments already of staggering miraculousness: from the day we found out I was pregnant and just stared at each other in amazement, to the moment we heard the heartbeat of our little one for the first time. There have been moments also of staggering discomfort and earth-boundness. Nausea...wanting to gag at the thought of any food...leg cramps...exhaustion beyond anything I expected...crying EVERY TIME I watch a birth "A Baby Story" on TLC. The humble and miraculous are intertwined. It's a new journey, but I am so far out of my comfort zone I am forced to grow.

And the baby? Amazingly, a love and protectiveness for this little one whom I do not yet know is starting to grow in my heart more each day.

Thank goodness for my husband, who gave me a little push.

On to the journey...

Favorite movies of 2007

2007-12-31T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and as usual I have not yet seen all of the important films released this year, but I thought I would include my list of favorites thus far.

I would venture to say that it was not as exciting a year for film as in recent years. I don't know if the writer's strike had anything to do with it or not. But there were still some wonderful examples of really enjoyable films. So here you go. Ratings are out of 5 stars:

Amazing Grace: Finally, a film about a Christian that is both well done by the standards of the art, and uncompromising in its message. You usually do not get both attributes in the same film. I loved the portrayal of William Wilberforce as someone who was tempted to disappear into a contemplative life but instead was called outside of himself to serve his neighbor. And he was used up for his neighbor. This is the true call of discipleship and it has been something I have thought about often since seeing the film. I also greatly appreciated the beautiful testimony given by John Newton in the film: "There are two things I know: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior." Amen! 4 stars.

The Bourne Ultimatum: Paul Greengrass plus Jason Bourne equals one explosive movie! I enjoyed this one more than the previous two (and I enjoyed them quite a lot). The cream of the crop of thrillers. 5 stars.

Dan in Real Life: With every new part I see him in, my respect for Steve Carrell grows. This guy is great making a fool of himself on The Office, great as a likable geek on The Forty-Year Old Virgin, and great as the sad but relatable romantic lead in this movie. This movie was an incredibly warm-hearted celebration of family life--both its joys and woes. It was also believable and honest. The chemistry between Julliete Binoche and Carrell is unexpectedly rich. And unlike most romantic comedies, the hero does not just make mistakes which we the viewer are expected to accept in the interest of the all-supreme self and its feelings (In the Land of Women, anyone?). Rather, in this film, we do see our main character making mistakes, but we also see him repent and grow. Bravo to one of the best romantic comedies I have ever seen! (For another treat by the writer and director, Peter Hedges, I suggest my favorite movie about Thanksgiving: Pieces of April. That film is one the most redemptive films I have ever seen. And both films are evidence that great films do not have to be depressing, and that films that leave you happy do not have to lack depth.) 5 stars.

Evan Almighty: For all of the jeers tossed at this movie by the press, you'd think it was just horrible. No, it isn't a masterpiece, but I actually found it quite charming...and did I mention I love Steve Carrell? This movie taught some beautiful lessons about the relationship between God and human beings. I love Morgan Freeman's regal and yet approachable portrayal of God. Art benefits me in this way, giving me a greater faith in God's character. My favorite line of the movie: When Evan tells God he cannot build an ark because he has plans and God laughs whole-heartedly (as if to say, "You're so cute!") and says, "Plans? That's a good one! He has plans!" (You've heard the quote...but I bet you never thought that was the way He'd laugh!) 3.5 stars.

Enchanted: Amy Adams rocks my face off. Her portrayal of the princess in this movie took me back to a wonderful place when I was younger and had a more optimistic picture of the world. I adore the innocence of her character. We so rarely see genuine innocence in film anymore. This movie just made me smile. The only part I didn't like was that it kind of fell apart at the end in that the princess ends up with the New York man instead of the man she has pledged her commitment too. Is being worldly wise really better? 3.5 stars.

Knocked Up: This will turn out to be my yearly favorite which is not for kids (or even teenagers, probably). But for grown-ups, this is a wonderful comedy with real heart as two young people who experience an unexpected pregnancy grow into parents. Genuine dialogue, believable scenarios, and an unexpected pro-life perspective. I loved how the characters grew through the course of the movie. And I laughed my head off. 4.5 stars.

The Lives of Others: Ok, I lied. This is another one that is not a film for kids, as there is some sexual content, but an insightful look at the world of Eastern Germany under communism. Humanizing look at a member of the Stasi who is transformed by what he hears on his surveillance headsets. The power of love and art to change people (no matter what Lenin said!). 5 stars.

Paris, Je T'Aime: Delightful film (somewhat reminicient of "Love Actually," but with greater artistic flair and depth), with 20 different stories from 20 diverse directors. My favorites were "Tuilieries" (with Steve Buscemi, directed by the Coen brothers), Bastille (so romantic and beautiful!), "Place des Victoires," "Quartier Latin" (with the fabulous Gena Rowlands), "Place des Fetes" (feels like a full movie with beauty, depth, and tragedy), "Faubourg Saint-Denis" (with Natalie Portman...feels like another full movie, with a surprise twist), and "14Ã¨me Arrondissement" (a beautiful, winsome piece). The only one that I really didn't care for was the vampire one. I suppose it might be romantic to people who like vampire movies, but I found it kinda gross. 4 stars.

Rescue Dawn: I think I remember why I was OBSESSED with Christian Bale in high school...the man is an incredible actor and his commitment to the role is absolute. He actually ate live maggots, slept in the jungle and got leaches on himself that he had to pull off, lost a lot of weight, and bit into a live snake...all to make a movie about surviving escape from a prison camp in Laos during the Vietnam War believable...and boy is it! Great director and ensemble cast too. 4 stars.

Spiderman 3: The best of the Spiderman movies, in my opinion. Amazing special effects, and a compelling story with great relevance to the struggle against sin in the Christian life. I couldn't help repeatedly thinking of Romans 7. 4 stars.

Films that will probably make it on my favorite list (but which I have not yet seen yet):
3:10 to Yuma
Juno
The Kite Runner
Lars and the Real Girl
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Heaven

2007-11-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

This Sunday, I am called to preach on Luke 20:27-38 in my congregation and as I study and pray and try to figure out this confusing passage, I find that I am really at odds with much of the teaching out there about heaven. In this passage, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees, who don't believe in the resurrection. They are trying to come up with arguments to trip Jesus up. So, they come up with a hypothetical situation in which one woman keeps having her husband die, and then remarrying the next brother (in a chain of seven brothers). None produce offspring, so the Sadducees try to prove a case against the resurrection by announcing that it's impossible to discover who is the woman's husband in the resurrection. This is the Biblical equivalent of, "Could God make a rock so big that even He couldn't lift it?" It's a riddle, meant to trip Jesus up and get Him to say there is no resurrection, or to just discredit Himself in some way. Jesus replies that they have missed the point, and that there isn't marrying or giving in marriage in heaven. That isn't the point though...the point is that there is indeed a resurrection, and that that is good news.

Here's the problem that I see: this passage of Scripture is used all too often to preach a mystical Gospel...one in which physical matters fade away while spiritual concerns are elevated. Heaven is seen as a mystical union between spirit beings (us) and God. Almost every thinker/theologian/commentator I read on this passage turned it into something of this nature. And I think that's a big problem. Christians believe in a fleshy (not fleshly) Messiah. We believe in an incarnate God, who walked among us, who put on flesh and bone. We believe in a God who created matter and relationships, for His glory. We believe in a God who created marriage "because it is not good for a man to be alone"--and this was before sin was brought about in the world! Furthermore, we believe in a Jesus who said of marriage, "what God has joined together, let not man separate." If God forbids us to destroy the oneness of marriage, which He has created, then why would He destroy this union? Sure, there are dicey issues to figure out, like what about somebody like Elisabeth Elliot who married 3 wonderful Christian men (she was widowed twice)? But maybe that's the point of Jesus' story: heaven is much more than we can imagine. And marriage may well look different in heaven than it does on earth. But the relationships we build on earth do not just float away. Being in the kingdom of God is so thoroughly relational, and it is brought to fullness and completeness through the koinonia or fellowship we have with other Christians.

The bigger picture here is not to toss out a view of heaven which includes a restored creation, a restored earth. Romans 8 tells us, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (NIV). Note those key words: creation and our bodies. This is talking about something very physical and real. We see that from I Corinthians 15 that the body we will be given will be different from those on earth, like a seed is planted to grow into something more majestic. Who knows, maybe we will be able to stick our hand through people! But the relationality and the fulfillment of all that God intended in His creation of the Garden of Eden seems to me to be certain. In 2 Peter 3, we see that all that is will be destroyed, but then there will be redemption and re-creation, "in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness" (NIV). Heaven is a place where "'the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4, NIV). And so, we are exhorted that when our loved ones who are believers die, we are not to "grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus [at the Second Coming] those who have fallen asleep in him" (I Thessalonians 4:13b-14, NIV). Here we see that part of Jesus' Second Coming includes the restoration of relationship.

The picture of heaven that I hold to is that heaven is God's new creation. He has already given us the New Adam (in Jesus Christ), and He will yet give us the New Garden of Eden, where relationship and life are restored to be as He originally planned them to be--and maybe even better! If marriage and our other relationships look different in heaven than they do on earth, we need to trust that those relationships will be better than they were on earth! We will not be random spirit beings floating around, but relational beings, in unhindered relationship with God and each other. There will be a wholeness to our relationship. Heaven will be like a big party with your family, but without sin. It is being together in relationships, with God at the absolute center of it all.

Lessons on unmerited favor...from a traffic cop!

2007-10-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

So today I was in a BIG HURRY. I had bread to bake for a confirmation illustration, youth program stuff to set up, and a trip to Grand Forks to make to do a hospital visit and some quick shopping. I was racing through one of the small towns on the way to Grand Forks today, and really preoccupied with the busyness of my day. How was I going to fit everything in? Before I knew it, I had hit a lower speed zone and then another...and I was noticing the changing speed limit late. I was about to call one of the church secretaries on my cell phone when I realized that a police car was behind me with flashing lights.

Now. You have to understand. I pride myself on my safe driving. My flawless driving record. I have huge disdain for bad drivers. I really look down my nose on them, to be honest. And I have never been stopped by a traffic cop, since I got my driver's license (almost 10 years of record-free driving). So, I was a little shaken. Which might be why when I stopped the car and put it in what I thought was Park, I really put it in Reverse. As in, heading straight for the traffic cop who was obviously already stopping me for a violation. He honked his horn at me, and I got stopped just in time, vigorously waving my hands to show that it was an accident. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

He told me that I had been going quite significantly over the speed limit, and he had been trying to get me to slow down, but I was still going over. Plus I almost backed into him. I must have looked pretty shaken up...Ok, I was literally shaking, trying to find all my paperwork, and so on. He could have thrown the book at me. I mean, I was really speeding, and I almost ran into his car.

But instead, he was merciful. He saw I was shaken up. When I was getting my paperwork out of the glove compartment and trying to sift through it to find my registration, he said, "Looks like you're like everybody else, with lots of papers in there." And then he pointed out my registration for me, which I was having trouble finding. He took my license and registration, saying, "I'll run these. Why don't you try to find your insurance card while I'm doing that?" Thank goodness. It took me several minutes to find it, in my nervousness. I was sure I was getting a ticket. Maybe even a really, really big ticket, given what I'd done. And I deserved it too. But then he came back and said, "No citation today, just a warning. Buckle up and slow down." He was so nice about it. I couldn't believe it! What a picture of unmerited favor...or grace! The policeman who stopped me for a violation actually ministered to me! Who would have thought it?

Reminds me of what Jesus did for me...

Finding pure joy with no apologies

2007-09-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going through a time in my life when I am trying to open my heart to joy. I think that in the past, due to a lot of change and pain in my life, I have closed my heart to joy all too often. Sometimes I felt guilty for feeling it, like it was my responsibility to be serious all the time. Sometimes I felt afraid of feeling it, because it could be taken away. But now I am starting to think about C.S. Lewis' phrase, "Surprised by Joy" and his belief that in the joy that we get at the deep down root of things, we experiencing something of the transcendent, something of God...something of our longing for heaven.

Some of the places I've found joy may seem to have absolutely nothing to do with God...but at the same time, I find myself thinking that joy wherever we find it is God's joy, just as truth wherever we find it is God's truth. So...I have been relishing the pure beauty of the deepening gold of the wheat fields...the drying and withering of the sunflowers fields...the gentle roll of the North Dakota hills...the answer in adult education from someone who "got the point"...the pleasure of service to others...and the pleasure of reading...and the deep down pleasure of a good "chick flick" when the music swells and the hero and heroine finally find each other (think "Bridget Jones" or "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"--or "The Wedding Date" when the secondary hero finds forgiveness for the heroine). Ahhh...satisfying...I think of just buying the "Dancing with the Stars" exercise video and finding pure, unadulterated joy in learning the steps for the paso doble (which is always my favorite dance on the show...it's so strong and powerful and in character). I think of the anticipation of my favorite shows starting on TV again...And the joy of watching the Food Network...The joy of a clean house. And all of it makes me say, "Thank you, God. I am so glad to be alive."

Pure joy...no apologies...

Even if pain is more familiar, in my experience...I am opening myself to this...

Hallelujah...

Never make fun of North Dakota!

2007-09-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been living in North Dakota for almost three months now...and I continue to stand in respect of it. People here are hard workers and they know how to care for each other. One thing that has irritated me greatly since deciding to move here is the comments that people would make about it. "North Dakota? Isn't that the middle of nowhere?" or "North Dakota...aren't you going to fall off the face of the earth" or "North Dakota: nothing happens there!" and the like. There is an undercutting disdain for places like this where there are is more land than buildings...and you can see for miles...and the population is scant. People frequently say that nothing happens in North Dakota (despite the fact that I've felt more integrated in the social community than I did in the city).

It is true that there are not a lot of gourmet restaurants around here...there isn't fun nightlife for the most part...there are times when I get lonely missing my friends...and times when the vast amount of land between cities seems unending. But...there is one crucial reason why NONE of us have the right to make fun of North Dakota--or places like it: North Dakota dares to be bare and empty and vast and populated scantly so that the rest of our country can be supplied with food and resources. Where do city people think they get their groceries in their trendy markets from? There would be food for fancy restaurants in the cities if it were not for the efforts of farmers in the rural areas. There would be no resources for cities without North Dakota and other places like it. Farmers and people who live here lay down their lives for the sake of others. They're very brave people, putting the livelihood of their families at risk so that others can live. They never know when a weather disaster will destroy their crop. And yet they go on. They persevere. We ought to tip our hat to them, not make fun of them.

That's my sermon for today. Amen.

Sticking to you like glue

2007-07-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

(Based on the Bible reading from Ruth 1)

Was there ever a time when you felt forsaken by God? Perhaps a great tragedy had occurred and you were angry at God, wondering why He had taken a family member or friend from you. Perhaps you felt that He did not care about you anymore. Or perhaps you were struggling with a physical or emotional ailment that simply refused to get better, despite your visits to doctors, counselors, and pastors. The heavens remained silent. Or maybe, contrary to all reason, all of a sudden you could not feel God’s presence like before. No great event had happened…you just felt dry, bland, alone, alienated.

If there was ever someone who could understand the feeling of being forsaken by God, it was the woman we read about in our first reading, Naomi. A famine forced her and her husband, Elimelech, out of the country of Israel into the foreign land of Moab. It must have been hard to be so far from home, but Naomi made the best of it. She saw to it that her two sons found wives among the Moabite women. “Bloom where you’re planted” seemed to be Naomi’s motto. But then tragedy struck. Not only did Naomi have to leave her homeland because of the famine, she also lost her husband and two sons. Scripture does not explain to us why the three of them died. I find myself wondering if an epidemic hit, given the fact that nearly an entire family was taken out. Regardless, Naomi, and her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah (not to be confused with Oprah!) survived. Naomi’s grief knew no limits.

The only good thing was when Naomi heard that there was food again in Israel, so she decided to return home. Naomi must have been a good woman, because we see that her daughters-in-law are desperate not to leave her. And we see this again in Naomi’s consideration for her daughters-in-law’s wellbeing. In case they were only trying to observe good manners and protocol, she gives them her blessing to return to their homes. “You’re still young,” she says. “You can still make something of your lives. I have nothing to offer you…go home to your family. You’ll find other husbands. Just forget me and this whole lousy fiasco we have had together.”

In the midst of trying to convince Ruth and Orpah to go back home to their families, Naomi says something very powerful, something that perhaps all of us can relate to at one time or another. She says, “It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!” (vs.13, NIV). You see, Naomi has a very strong belief in God’s Sovereignty. She believes that God is in charge of the universe and deeply involved with what happens to human beings. This is why she blames the death of her husband and sons on God. In some sense, Naomi is right. Nothing in the world can happen without God causing it…or at least allowing it. God is the King of the universe, so even the devil must get permission from Him before causing something to happen on earth. We see an example of this in the book of Job where the devil tries to prove Job’s faith is not real and is only dependent on his wealth and circumstances, but he must get permission from God to test Job. So, Naomi was right to believe that God was deeply involved in the events of her life, and that nothing could happen without His allowing it.

And we can also commend her for speaking honestly of her feeling of being forsaken by God. How many of us are afraid to say that we don’t feel God’s presence, that we are going through a dark night of the soul? We are often afraid of being condemned by our church community--or even by God--for saying this. But in the Jewish faith of the Old Testament, people frequently expressed frustration and anger with God. Their relationship with God was passionate, and so all of the ups and downs of emotion that would be part of a human relationship were also part of the people’s relationship with God. This kind of relationship reminds me of a line in a famous song by the band, U2, “With or without you…I can’t live, with or without you.” We have all had times when we felt we couldn’t live with God, given what He was asking of us, given the amount of suffering He was allowing in our lives. But at the same time, we are drawn back in by those times when we realize yet again that we cannot live without Him either! As Peter said in his confession of faith, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” There are many times in my life when I have been tempted to walk away from faith…it can be so darn hard to be a Christian! But then I think, “But where would I go? This is the only place I can go…into the arms of Jesus.” Indeed, Naomi knew what it means to say to God, “I can’t live with or without You.”

So, we have commended Naomi for her recognition that God is the King of universe, and without Him, nothing can happen. And we have also commended her for her honesty about the life of faith. But we can also criticize Naomi a little bit. You see, although she believed correctly that God is absolutely sovereign over the universe, she had a short-sighted view of His work. In the Old Testament, there was a word that was used to kind of summarize God’s essence. In Hebrew, this word is chesed, the lovingkindness or all-enduring faithfulness of God. Another way to explain this chesed would be to say that our God “uses His powers for good.” We see this in verses in the New Testament as well. For example in Romans 8:28, we hear the promise, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV). This means, that God is always at work for good for those who are believers. And in the cross, we see the ultimate expression of God’s heart. We see that God is willing to give up all of Himself for us, for our benefit. If this is true, then we can know that He does not whimsically put us through suffering for no reason. We may not know the reason this side of heaven, but there is one. Now, Naomi did not know about the cross, but surely as a Jewish believer she knew of the underlying trait to God’s character, His chesed, His faithfulness and lovingkindness. And so, she would have done well to look ahead in faith to what God might do in her life. But she stayed stuck in the hopelessness of the present. As a widow—and one without sons at that!—she would have been the poorest of the poor, since women in the Bible were dependent on men to support them. She had nowhere to turn, and everything ahead looked dark, broken, and full of suffering. She didn’t dare to believe that God was about to do something marvelous, something miraculous, in her life. To be fair, most of us would do the same. We humans are very prone to fixate on our present difficult circumstances, and very slow to trust in God to bring about good in the future.

But the great thing about our God is that He doesn’t wait for us to come to Him in perfect faith. Because we are sinful, we are always laden with doubts, fears, and anxieties. We get stuck in our terrible present. Our faith is often very small. God, however, is not dependent on us having great faith—and we give thanks for that! You see, while Naomi was stuck in her pain and depression, God was at work behind the scenes bringing about something good in her life. Imagine Him smiling to Himself and wanting to say to Naomi, “Just you wait and see what I am going to do!”

God’s redemptive work in Naomi’s life started with Ruth. Although Naomi tries to convince her daughters-in-law to leave her, one of them is bound and determined to stay. That woman is Ruth. She gives a really heart-felt speech, declaring her absolute loyalty to Naomi. She says, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me” (vv. 16-17, NIV). The irony of it all is that it takes a foreigner, a person who is not of the nation of Israel to have faith for a Jewish believer. According to Deuteronomy 23:3, Moabites (which Ruth was) were not allowed to “enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation.” Ruth was not only a foreigner, she was considered unclean, and yet she is the one who dares to have faith in the God of Israel. It is so often true that God uses “the least of these,” the unexpected person, to do His work. Paul talked about this principle in the New Testament. If you can, turn to I Corinthians 1:26-31 in your pew Bibles (page 1041).

1 Corinthians 1
1:26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.
1:27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
1:28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are,
1:29 so that no one may boast before him.
1:30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
1:31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let those who boast boast in the Lord."
Today's New International Version

Ruth is a picture of God using the unlikely person to accomplish His purposes. Not only does she express faith in the God of Israel, I believe that she becomes a picture to Naomi of God’s faithful, loving presence. She is a picture of God’s ability to stand by people despite their faithlessness. She pictures God’s stubborn love for people who doubt Him. She pictures a God who doesn’t give up on people, even if they give Him reason to.

Some of you may wish to go home today and finish reading the book of Ruth. It is only 4 chapters. We don’t get it very often in our lectionary, but it is a powerful testament to the faithfulness of God with a broken woman. You see, God ends up bringing Ruth to marry a man named Boaz, who is a relative of Naomi’s husband. Boaz is a wealthy land-owner, a man of influence, and he is kind towards Naomi and Ruth. He provides food for them, even before he marries Ruth. When Ruth and Boaz marry, a son is born and this baby, Obed, is the balm to Naomi’s sorrows. When tragedy struck in the land of Moab, she had thought that she would never have family again. But God provided her a daughter-in-law, a man to provide for them, and a baby to continue the line of the family. Even more amazing, this child was to become one in the line of David, a line which would eventually give birth to the Messiah, Jesus! Do you think Naomi could have imagined any of that when she was stuck in Moab, mourning the loss of her husband and two sons? Of course she could not! Because she could not imagine it for herself, God sent her Ruth, who had faith, and pictured His loving, abiding presence with stubborn, broken, doubting people.

For those of us today, there is a message of good news. God is present with you in your suffering, sticking by you even when you doubt Him, even when you fear Him. Maybe He has brought a “Ruth” into your life to show you a picture of His faithful love for you. Even if you do not have such a person, you have God’s Word. Listen to His promise to you found in I Corinthians 2:9, “However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived-- these things God has prepared for those who love him.’” We may not know how God’s purpose for us will happen—perhaps we will see the reason in this life, or perhaps in heaven—but we can trust that God’s purpose is good. And we can trust that God will stick by us with complete faithfulness and love, just as Ruth stuck by Naomi. Amen.

--This is my sermon from July 22, 2007

living in North Dakota

2007-07-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have posted. In the past year, I finished my final year of seminary. It was a busy and hectic year. But I am finally done! In the last month, my fellow preacher hubby and I moved to North Dakota where we are now doing ministry together. I have decided that heaven must be something like North Dakota. I can walk up town and hear myself think. There is often no noise at all, or maybe just the sound of someone mowing their lawn. Another thing about North Dakota is that there are not too many trees. The land is bare and plain, like a beautiful woman who does not need to wear make-up, but just appears fresh-faced and radiant every morning. There is also community in North Dakota. Most people are their own bosses, and as such, they have time to stop and chat a few moments when you meet them on the street.

At any rate, I will do my best to post from time time on this blog and give voice to the wonderful world I am discovering here.

Favorite films of 2006

2007-01-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

First, a caveat: I obviously did not see ALL of the films released in 2006. I did see a lot of them. I'm not an official critic of any kind, just a movie lover. So here are my favorite films of 2006--and why.

United 93: Without a doubt, the best film of the year. This movie changed my outlook on the world. I was awed by the fact that there are still people in such a pleasure-driven country as our own who are willing to lay their lives on the line for something bigger than themselves. The terrorists are also portrayed fairly, instead of in caricatures. The intensity of this movie is spell-binding. It left me in tears. A truly fitting tribute to the the heroes of United flight 93.

Caché: This French film (starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) was released in 2005, but came to limited release in the USA in 2006. The movie is rather slow-moving, and may be a difficult viewing experience for the American viewer who is accustomed to fast-moving plots, car chases, and breathy love scenes. But this movie will repay you richly if you track with it. It is a stunning examination of the human problem of sin and guilt. (For more on this, be sure to watch the interview with the director, Michael Haneke. It was this discussion that really opened the film up for me. There are English subtitles for this interview.) The basic premise of this suspense film is that a husband and wife begin receiving videotapes of surveillance that is being done on their home. Later, they receive troubling drawings, and evidence that the sender knows them and is terrorizing them. Slowly, the mystery unfolds. For Georges, the main character, the past begins to open up. He recalls something he did as a child...and despite all the psychological excuses he could make for that behavior, he still feels guilty. It is as profound and real an examination of original sin (which Christians believe we are born with--rather than evil society bequeathing it to us) as I have seen in cinema.

Tsotsi: You don't have to watch movies for long to notice that it's hard to find an authentically redemptive story line. There are either glib happy endings or cynical/empty endings. This movie earned its Oscar for Best Foreign Language film last year by giving us the hard world of Johannesburg, South Africa and showing us what it looks like when grace breaks through in the form of a child. In this film, a hardened gang leader steals a car that just happens to have a baby in the back seat. Through a series of events, he decides to care for the baby, and compassion begins to break through his hardened soul. He begins to feel what it is to love someone. However, his expressions of love are just as crude and uninformed as you would expect a murderer, thief, and robber's to be. He brandishes a weapon and forces a neighbor woman to feed the child. His attempts to care for the child's needs are clumsy at best. But this child slowly begins to change him. He even begins to feel compassion for the child's parents. The ending is stunning.

Akeelah and the Bee: This movie dares you to be all you can be. It was truly inspiring. And a breakout performance by Keke Palmer. A great movie for families (as well as grown-ups).

Thank You for Smoking: And thank you, Hollywood, for beginning to give us innovative comedies, instead of formulaic works. This movie is creative, snarky as all get out, doggone funny, and even a bit convicting. A clever satire and great work by Aaron Eckhart, particularly. Revealing insights about the power of argument.

Mission Impossible 3: Even for people who can't stand Tom Cruise, how can you fail to enjoy a movie this intense and entertaining? The stunts are fabulous (and he does most of them himself), the love story sucks you in, the theme is addictive. The first two movies were good, but I'm of the opinion that the third one's the charm.

X-Men: The Last Stand: Again, not an artsy film, but who's to say going to the movies isn't to have fun? X-Men is all about telling a great story, and doing it with fabulous stunts. On top of that, it always leaves you with a little something to think about.

Friends with Money: I really loved the cast of this movie, as well as the subject matter: what is it to be poor while having friends with money. It delved into other issues that women characters face in a really honest and authentic way, too. Strong performances by all and good dialogue.

The Devil Wears Prada: Finally, a movie that far exceeds the book! It's fun, soapy entertainment with great performances by Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.

Prairie Home Companion: When my husband and I were living in Illinois last year, we greatly missed Minnesota (though we loved the people in Illinois!). Going to the movie theatre to see this movie was a big deal for us. We hungrily ate up every Minnesota reference and the panorama of the Fitzgerald Theatre and Mickey's Diner. Good music, and a movie with a real feel for the radio show.

Borat: Ok, please please please take me seriously on this: if you are at all offended by crude humor, this is not the movie for you. And it is DEFINATELY NOT for children or the immature. But if you are willing to set judgment aside for a couple of hours and see a really good satire that pokes fun straight at everybody who watches it, this is a fantastic comedy. It's probably a better comedy than Thank You for Smoking but I put it further down on the list due to the crude factor. Sacha Baron Cohen pushes every possible limit he can in the interest of satire. His blatant prejudices will make you uncomfortable (as will the unbelievably long nude wrestling scene...that one was too much for me). However, he is not at all the most ignorant person in the movie. He intersperses real interactions with people who think he really is Borat the journalist with staged episodes. He leaves you wondering which are which. In one telling episode involving two college frat boys, Borat comes out looking like the smartest person in the room (a scary thought!). Some of his methods may not be the best, but getting people to look at their uncomfortable prejudices and unfortunately recognize themselves in the movie is reason enough to watch it.

Best Movies I haven't seen yet: Little Miss Sunshine, The Last King of Scotland, The Good German, Children of Men

the urge to create

2006-12-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

My creative mind has gotten so dull in seminary. Unfortunately, seminary tends to be a place that focuses on the mind to the exclusion of wonder, art, or childlike faith. Art is viewed with some acceptance as long as one can cognitively express why it is important. But the other two are all too often scoffed at. I had a professor in seminary who dared to tell me that the faith of my childhood was not something to be scoffed at, but the kind of thing that people carry into life and death...the kind of thing that sustains people in the worst of circumstances. It is substantive and real. And so I have been encouraged that just because something is simple, it does not make it untrue. And just because something is complex, does not make it true. I dare to hold on to the faith of my childhood, and believe that the God I knew as a child is the same God that I know now, the God found in Jesus Christ who intimately cares about His children.

But what of creativity? I saw Cate Blanchett on the Charlie Rose show yesterday, and felt a sense of yearning when I heard her speak eloquently of the craft of acting. I spent time this week commiserating with college friends, and remembering the good old days when I felt that anything was possible, when art was alive and pulsing, when I used to sit up late at night and talk about writing. I remember my writing classes and the long hours I used to spend discussing writing and literature with my English professors. I remember how much time they poured into nurturing me. Now, I feel domesticated when it comes to the arts...I have nothing stirring me into greater creativity. I am mediocre. A spectator, as Kierkegaard would say. I miss writing so desperately, but I wonder if I still have anything to say. Words seem so old, so overused. It's all been said before. What can I possibly bring to the table that is new? But even in our digitized, cynical, loss-of-innocence, wonder-less world, artists still are sometimes capable of capturing out hearts. Sometimes they can still change us. And maybe sometimes all they can do is soften our heart to hear something that is true, something that we would not have otherwise heard.

Back to Kierkegaard. He criticized people that were spectators instead of getting out in the world and daring to make brave decisions. I am not a spectator when it comes to ministry, but I am sad to say that I have certainly been acting like one when it comes to art. Of course, there is good reason for this. An overload of classes tends to be an inspiration killer for creative writing. But so often, my gut reaction to life is to spectate instead of create art. To watch the glowing screen instead of putting new ideas, poetry, characters on paper. And yet, as I spectate, I am dissatisfied because there's an inner yearning to create.

I am starting to think that writing is like anything else though (including weight loss, faith, giving up booze, etc.): it's about impossible to do without a supportive community!

Some righteous indignation

2006-12-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

Iranian President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. On Monday, he held an international conference devoted to falsifying this tragic event in history. He stacked the deck in his favor, inviting only those with a bias for falsification, and not including any legitimate scholars. Annie Applebaum of the Washington Post reported on Sunday, "Unfortunately, Iran is serious--or at least Iran's president...is deadly serious: Holocaust denial is his personal passion, not just a way of taunting Israel, and it's based on his personal interpretation of history....Questioning the reality of the Holocaust has long been another means of questioning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, which was created by the United Nations in response to the Holocaust, and which has incorporated Holocaust history into its national identity."

Here's my response to all of this: There is more evidence of every kind for the Holocaust than for almost any other event in history. There are films made by Nazis, documents, branded people, concentration camps. There are thousands of testimonials of all different kinds of people who suffered through it. There is the professed purpose of Adolf Hitler to wipe out the Jewish race in the "final solution." In fact, there is more evidence for the Holocaust than there is for the country of Iran. Or for Ahmadinejad as its president. Heck, there's more evidence for the Holocaust than for the existence of Ahmadinejad. Obviously then, he never existed. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

The Shipping News

2006-10-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Quoyle has a past. He knows that his father perenially rejected him, that he almost let him drown as a method of teaching him to swim. He knows that his father sent him one more message of rejection as his parting words before both parents took their own lives. He knows that his marriage to a woman named Petal has resulted in the continuing cycle of rejection. The only good thing in his life is his rather troubled daughter, Bunny.

And yet, Quoyle always believed (even as a child) that if his real, long-lost relatives could find him, they would love him and he would suddenly be accepted. It is his only hope. When Petal is killed in a car crash, just after his parents' death, Quoyle is uniquely open to a change. His Aunt Agnis takes Quoyle and Bunny to the land of their family, Newfoundland. Quoyle begins to succeed as a newspaper reporter. He, Bunny, and Agnis move into the old Quoyle house. It is dark. The house has been lashed down for years, and the cords holding it to the ground, firm from the dangerous wind, sing mournfully at night. The sound symbolizes the dark ghosts of this family's past. Quoyle discovers that the roots of darkness in his past stretch far further than he had guessed. Tragic, ugly family secrets are revealed. Murder. Incest. Mutilation. His relatives were not nice people; they were pirates and vicious ones at that. And now this man, who has rejected everything about himself is brought to a crisis of identity. If evil and darkness is even in his blood, his family, what good can he find? He despairs.

And then two miracles occur. The dark, sin-haunted house is swept apart and out to sea in a storm. With it goes its power to intimidate and lurk with evil. In the same storm, the body of a drowned man in the community is recovered. It seems a curse has been associated with all of the men in his family. They are cursed to die at sea, and he fulfills the same ugly spell. And then, at his wake, he sits up and starts sputtering water! He is alive! The curse is broken.

At the end of the movie, Quoyle says, "There are still so many things I don't know. If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind [referencing a supersitious practice], and if a drowned man can awaken, then I believe a broken man can heal." This is a story of death and resurrection. It is a story of Quoyle finally being able to look into the depth of the darkness of his past, his identity and seeing its filthiness, ugliness, brokenness. And having looked the worst things he fears in the eye, he has also seen miracles. He has seen that curses can be broken. He has seen that new life can come. He doesn't know how he will experience healing. But having seen miracles, he now has faith in something perhaps beyond himself, something with the power to heal.

This film gave me hope and it showed me that we can be given a new identity from that of our past. As a Christian, I believe that this is exactly what Jesus Christ does for me.

mel gibson

2006-10-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

He gets it. Mel Gibson is half nuts, fully aware of his sinful nature, confused, messy....and redeemed. We rarely get to see a Christian so honest about the rawness of his sinful nature. We hear him apologize and try to make things right while still being mystified by the sin that lives within him. Mel Gibson may be broken, but he gets it. He knows he needs grace.

This is something alcoholics "get" better than most people (once they become self-aware). Alcoholics are able to admit that they can't fix themselves...that they are in trouble. And the reality is, they're no different than the rest of us. The rest of us are in trouble...in a mess...unable to fix ourselves...mystifyingly broken...terribly rebellious. We just hide it under a nicer exterior.

The problem that I see with our never-ending "niceness" is that it blinds us to our need for a Savior. We can't bear to look our rebellious hearts "in the eye." We are terrified of what we would find there if we did.

That's why Mel Gibson's courage in doing that can inspire us. Only when we see our basic human problem can we see our need for grace.

an ode to female friendship

2006-10-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

During my single years, I spent most of my time wanting to be in the company of interesting men. That was my goal. Spend time with men and land me a boyfriend. I hate to admit it, but I think I looked at women quite often as the competition. They were what was standing between me and a man. Not that I didn't have some female friends that I really valued, but I had a hard time avoiding that sense of competitiveness. I thought that the ultimate relationship that would give me everything I needed was to be found in a man.

And I'll definately hand it to men. Having a man in my life has been a phenomenal, enriching, life-defining experience. I love my husband's "otherness," his manliness. I love the attraction between us. I love the way we balance out and fill each other in. I love our conversations, our time together and all that we share.

But ever since I have been in a stable, committed relationship, I have begun to realize that a man is no substitute for girlfriends! There's just something about the relatability between women friends that is necessary in each woman's life. A woman friend understands that she doesn't have to fix your problem...in fact, she may fix it just by listening. She understands that women process by talking...verbally trying ideas on for size, so she doesn't assume what you say is the final word on the subject. She instantly "gets" the stressfulness of mood swings and monthly cycles and the like. She is someone to giggle with, eat chocolate with, and definately go shopping with. She likes to talk about relationships, and to dissect them down to the nth degree (do you know ANY guys that do that???...but why don't they? it's so interesting!). She is your fellow comrade in rolling your eyes at your men (lovingly, of course!). Women aren't perfect friends, of course. But they're indispensible. They're needed. They refresh the spirit. And if I had my single days to do over again, I would try to remember that a man can never do the total job of filling my cup. It takes lots of varied relationships to do that...and one of the most key relationships is me and my girlfriends.

Bondage to sin/Freedom to live

2006-09-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

I used to think I could obliterate the bad things I could do to this world, and just make a positive impact. And while I still believe that to an extent I can limit the bad and do some good, I have come to realize that I will harm this world, like it or not. It's not an excuse for escapism, but sometimes it makes me feel that way.

My car's exhaust fumes are damaging the environment. Collectively, mine and those around me may lead to a catastrophic world for my great, great, great grandchildren.

My theology may come out a bit messed up (as a human, am I really going to get it all right?). As a result, some people might go astray. I can try to get the main things right, but still, I will say some things wrong.

And as a woman, I face the greatest sense of responsibility to my future children. I will carry them each in my womb, my body for 9 months. I approach this with a sense of terror. What if I eat or drink something that harms them? What if I take a medicine that harms them? What if scientific research comes out 20 years after their birth and it shows me that something I did while pregnant caused them harm...that it was my fault? They will be connected to me for life...utterly dependent on me in a way that makes me quite uncomfortable. It is beautiful, but it is also terrifying.

And when our children are born, my husband and I will mess them up, in one way or another. I used to blame my parents so much for every mistake they made. Now I am feeling a bit more charitable towards them. After all, could they really help making some mistakes? None of us know a single person who escaped being somewhat messed up by his or her parents. Not one. If they tell you they escaped this, they are lying. They may have been parented better or worse, but there is still something broken that clings to them. I hate that that is true. I want to be a perfect parent, but I know that I cannot be.

Emmanuel Levinas writes, "There is a fear for all that my existing--despite its intentional and conscious innocence--can accompish violence and murder." Not just what I do or don't do. My existing. That's a pretty terrifying thought. It says that I am capable of the most evil things that have ever been done. I hasten to run away from realizing that if a human has done it, I could do it. And even worse, there is the realization that I can't help adding to the sin and brokenness in this world. My complicity in evil is terrifying. I want to believe that I am good.

I am left with nothing. I am as dead. I can do nothing to make myself good or righteous. I can do nothing to deserve a better eternity than this life. I am bound and cannot free myself. "Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin?" (Romans 7:24, NLT).

I obviously cannot solve my own problem. I cannot solve the world's problems. A blind woman cannot lead the blind. Is there anything to be done that I may be rescued, that my world may be rescued? If anything is to happen, it cannot come from me or my fellow sinners. All we do is make things worse.

And then Jesus Christ steps in and interrupts our world. He is perfect God and perfect Man. He can fix things, because for once here is a human being who is not part of the problem. Here is a human being who never sinned. Here is a human being truly willing to love His neighbor...and to lay down His life for us. Our penalty for doing nothing to make this world better was death...and He took it for us. Death for us is now not a terrifying prospect, but rather the gateway to life. He let us kill Him so we could see that finally we do not welcome the good, but actively seek to undo it. He walked into the midst of our evil and took the full brunt of it. Because He walked through it and came back to life, we can see that He is the Master of it. And He will walk through it for each of us. He declares that our relationship with God is restored. We used to spend our energy justifying how wonderful we were and how much we deserved God's favor (if a God even existed). Now, we have been freed to love our neighbor, to stop worrying about ourselves so much.

And yet, the old condemnation still steals in. We are still mortals. We still mess up this world. We still worry that our personal tally sheets (good deeds vs. bad) will come up unbalanced. We still have to be reminded that God is for us, despite the fact that our tally sheet will be unbalanced. We need to hear the Word that gives us confidence to venture into this world and try, knowing that though we will fail, we are forgiven. We are freed. We are loved.

There is an old, old image from John Bunyan's classic, Pilgrim's Progress, that I think still applies. When Christian comes to the cross on the hill, he is carrying a monumentally heavy backpack full of his sins and failures. They weigh him down and make him a hunchback. But at the cross, his backpack is falls off. He is given a bright white robe and suddenly he can walk freely and lightly along the path of life.

This is a great image describing the moment God brought us to the cross and saved each of us. We were freed from our sins. But I also think that very often later we freed sinners try to put things back into our backpacks. We start thinking our salvation depends on us... or that Jesus's death for us only applies to past sins and not the present or future...and so we try to carry the weight of our own sins. This will do nothing other than make us hunchbacks, staring into our own navel all over again. We need to be reminded that Jesus has taken our backpack away, enabling us to look our neighbor in the eye and love him or her. We will fail--of course--but when we do we can know that Jesus is carrying the backpack for us so that we can go back and look our neighbor in the eye again. We need to be reminded of this...and I hope this post has done that for you.

bumper sticker hippie

2006-09-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was almost bashed in by a car bearing the bumper stickers, "Veterans for Peace," "John Kerry," and other liberal pithy-isms. The white-haired hippie inside the car dashed into the bank parking lot rapidly and then--with great exasperation--honked his horn wildly at me as if I were to blame for pulling out of my parking space slowly and entering his path. I wonder if he intuitively knew I voted for Bush...or was he just driven to violence over the fact that there was no peace in the world?

just a student again?

2006-09-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

The past 15 months have really changed my life. I am struggling with how to articulate this to friends. I am coming back the same person...and yet not the same person. Then again, maybe I am underestimating the fact that they have experienced the same sort of thing (especially those of them that have been away on internships too).

In the past 15 months...
...I have worked as a chaplain on a mental health floor
...I have had to deal with the fall-out from a vicious, violent crime in the community I served
...I have been present when a woman died in her hospital bed
...I have conducted over a half-dozen funerals
...I have preached countless sermons and taught countless classes
...I have faced the growing seriousness of my father's illnesss, wondering at times if he would die soon
...I have started a new ministry of spritual gifts discovery at a congregation
...I have started a young adult Bible study...and seen people really grow through it
...I have gotten married to a man I can't believe I didn't realize sooner was so perfect for me
..I have been known to some people ONLY as married (i.e., they haven't known me at all as a single person)
...I have become firmly convinced that I'm called to be a pastor
...I have had a standing ovation at my internship reception

So...that now makes me a married woman in ministry...pretty crazy...Prrety different from when I was here last, struggling to find my wings...Wondering if I could truly be either of those things. Will people expect me to be the same? Will I fall into the rut of doubting myself because they expect it? I hope not.

The thing that sustains me though is my peers...these people who have gone through the wringer too...the many hoops to jump through...the battle. Some of them are a bit battle weary. Some are doing great. But all in all, we can encourage each other.

Ending internship

2006-08-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

It has certainly been too long since I've updated. The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of closure, packing, and stress. During one particularly rough few days, I wondered if my Dad would have to have quite risky surgery (he didn't). I wondered if I would even make it to my final Sunday service and reception at my internship site. Then the car broke down and I thought my clutch was going out (it wasn't).

In all of it, I have tried to pray instead of worry. Sometimes I have done this more successfully than other times. I'm human. I fret and get grouchy and tired. I'm so glad that God keeps taking me back anyway, despite the fact that I don't deserve it.

And now comes that final year of seminary...I am eager to go back and see old friends. I am excited to make our new apartment a home. I definately welcome the multitude of coffee shops on every corner! But...I will definately miss this place, this church. It's a place where I was changed, where I grew and started to really take on the mantle of pastoral leadership. It will be strange not to be here on Sunday mornings. It will be strange to no longer be responsible for the people here. I will probably wake up one morning and realize I hadn't checked in with so-and-so lately...and THEN remember that it isn't my responsibility anymore. Because I poured my whole heart into this place, it's wierd to pull it back. You don't stop caring just because you leave.

And yet, the journey continues. The journey of a pastor is kind of always one of coming and leaving. Saying hello and saying goodbye. Bittersweet moments. But we do it because we can't do anything else.

Schultze gets the blues

2006-08-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

In a filmmaking style similar to that of Everything is Illuminated or even Napolean Dynamite, this German film shows us low-key, everyday scenes in the life of newly retired miner, Schultze, as he begins to discover the zest of life after a long period of monotony. The camera shots are usually done from a single angle, giving us a sense of actually being present at the scene. The filmmakers don't seem to feel the need to keep everything moving 90 miles an hour to keep us entertained. Instead, they show us the beauty (and understated humor) of the kinds of scenes we live in day-by-day.

Schultze appears mildly depressed after he is "given an early retirement" from his job. He goes about a stodgy routine that never seems to change, always fulfilling the role that is expected of him, including dutifully playing polka music, just as his father did. Until one evening, he hears Louisiana jazz music on the radio. He is intrigued...drawn in...he teaches himself to play the one song that he heard. He loves it. He can't stop playing it. The love of the jazz leads him to learn to cook jambalaya in a very amusing scene. It leads him to go to America...making a boat trip down the Louisiana delta lands. And as he does, this once stodgy miner begins to really live life for perhaps the first time.

Many movies have carried the theme of "seize the day," but sometimes in very unhealthy ways. For example, Rent showed us its version in gratuitous sexual perversions and drug addiction. No matter where pleasure led (even to death through AIDS or to causing someone else harm), it was held up as the highest virtue. Responsibility of any kind was spurned; this was the ultimate "me generation" movie/play. Another disappointing rendition of the carpe deim theme was in the well-acted (but depressing) The Hours. In this film, seizing the day included even suicide...The philosophy here was that the ultimate fulfillment was in having power over your own life. To which, I replied, "That's it???" Even one of my favorite films, Dead Poets Society, riffed a bit off of that theme. All of these films are a bit disappointing because of their fundamental self-centeredness (particularly the first two). But Schultze inspired me in a different way. It showed a man living life to the full by enjoying creation...having new, socially constructive experiences...meeting new people. It is a carpe diem that implies getting out of your narrow view of the world and learning about other cultures. It is also a carpe diem that encourages us to do the thing that brings our heart joy. There is a difference between quick thrills (Rent) and legitimate joy (Schultze)....What brings us joy may break people's preconceived notions of us, but it will ultimately make our heart larger, more open to others, more fully aware of our world. It won't be joy at others' expense. And that's a carpe diem I can get excited about!

are we facing judgment?

2006-07-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah 5:15-17—“‘O Israel, I will bring a distant nation against you,’ says the LORD. ‘It is a mighty nation, an ancient nation, a people whose language you do not know, whose speech you cannot understand. Their weapons are deadly; their warriors are mighty. They will eat your harvests and your children’s bread, your flocks of sheep and your herds of cattle. Yes, they will eat your grapes and figs. And they will destroy your fortified cities, which you think are so safe” (NLT, emphasis mine).

Jeremiah 6:24-25--“We have heard reports about the enemy, and we are weak with fright. Fear and pain have gripped us, like that of a woman about to give birth. Don’t go out to the fields! Don’t travel the roads! The enemy is everywhere, and they are ready to kill. We are terrorized at every turn.”

I found an excerpt from Crossings Newsletter (http://www.crossings.org) on the first anniversary of 9/11 particularly relevant. The writer says, "But if God does bless America, then He can do the opposite....[E]ven though the [9/11] attack is not proof of God's disfavor against the USA, we would be guilty of the broadest obtuseness and biblical ignorance if we did not at least ask ourselves whether God may have specific cause to be against us." To that, I say, Amen! I think that in our culture, we are all to quick to think that God is only behind the nice things that happen, like romances and kittens. But from time to time, God may be out to terrify us. God may be out to destroy us in order to save us.

In Jeremiah 7:3-15, the people of Judah say that they think they will be safe from judgment because they have the Temple in their midst. Do we think the same thing about our luxury, our democratic system, our social programs, our strong military? Are we trusting in those and forgetting about justice, mercy, and walking humbly with our God?

And so, when hard times come (and hopefully even before!), we must--we must--at least ask the question: is God trying to get through to me? To my nation? What sin might He be asking us to turn away from? The question will be most helpful when we ask it of ourselves first, instead of pointing the finger at "all the wicked people" who are causing the judgment. The best prophets (in my opinion) were the ones who confessed their own sin first.

fear vs. faith

2006-07-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Walter Brueggemann writes about Isaiah’s challenges to trust God in the midst of situations of risk. We live in a time today when national security is one of the top things on people’s minds. We fear Islamic extremists, terror to our troops in Iraq, North Korean missiles. If we think too long and hard about any of these threats, we can easily start shaking in our boots, just as King Ahaz did when he faced similar threats (Isaiah 7). History (of a nation or of an individual) teaches us that we people do dumb, shortsighted things when we are afraid. For Israel, this was seeking foolish alliances with other world powers, like Assyria (2 Kings 16:7-8). Brueggemann writes, “[F]oreign policy must begin at a different point, namely, reliance on Yahweh [the LORD].” But what does that look like? In Isaiah 37, King Hezekiah faces intimidation from a foreign power, just as Ahaz did, but his response is totally different. He is afraid, but he takes that fear to the LORD. Because he starts with God, his decisions are wise and careful. They are informed by faith instead of fear.

Foreign policy isn’t the only area in which we need to resist fear and turn to faith, however. In Isaiah 38, we see King Hezekiah face a deathly illness and respond again with prayer. Today, we face many things that leave us shaking in our boots, ready to reach out to anything to trust in but God. A father with cancer. Unemployment. A car breaking down. Wondering if you are making any difference at work. Wondering if you will be single forever. Wondering if you will always struggle to make ends meet. We are tempted to buckle under the pressure and trust in someone or something else, other than God. Settling for an ungodly dating relationship. The faithless fear that we will not survive the death of a loved one. Anger that gives us the illusion of control. Unwise financial investments. And so on. We need to be challenged to trust in God alone--with no substitutes. Trusting in God does not mean that we will always escape hard times, but it does mean that God will always be with us “even in the valley of the shadow of death.” We trust God that that whatever He sends our way, He will enable us to deal with. And He will use it all for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28).

the world torn apart

2006-07-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a tough run in our world these days. Nuclear dangers in North Korea. Fierce fighting in the Middle East. Recently, I have been convicted that we human beings would far rather fight that sit down and listen to each other. (I was convicted because I realize how quick I am to fight!) During VBS this week, one of my 6th grade students said something that I thought was awfully insightful, "The whole world is like a little brother and sister, fighting back and forth." Isn't that true? Have we ever grown up? I guess sin stunts our growth. But what it comes down to is what James wrote in his New Testament letter: "What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn't it the whole army of evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous for what others have, and you can't possess it, so you fight and quarrel to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don't have what you want is that you don't ask God for it. And even when you do ask, you don't get it because your whole motive is wrong – you want only what will give you pleasure" (4:1-3, NLT)

Our entire world would be a whole lot better off if people gave each other the benefit of the doubt, and listened--really heard--what the other was saying. And yet, I know that this was the purpose of the United Nations...and it hasn't succeeded too well. The UN seems stymied in buearcracy and ineffectiveness. What was to be a mass of nations, gathered together with the goal of world piece is all too often a mass of confusion and nothingness.

If the UN--our best hope for peace in this world--has failed, where will we turn? There is only one place to turn and that is to the One who make all things new. It may not be on our time frame, but we sinful human beings should realize in times such as these that our best efforts at peace have failed. Our best efforts at making ourselves safe through astronomical spending on a military have failed. Our best efforts at spreading democracy around the world so often fail. America is a great country, one that I am unutterably proud to be a part of, but it will never bring new life to dead people. People (such as us!) who are dead in sin and self-interest. People who are thirsty for power and corruption. People who care nothing for their neighbor. People--dictators--who rule over and crush their nation. Only Christ can bring resurrection from this morass of death. We hope for what we do not yet see, believing that it will come, in God's time. Without Him, we have no hope at all.

humbled

2006-06-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

We have a young man in our church who is profoundly autistic. His hands and limbs don't work as they should. He can barely talk. I think one of the very few words (perhaps the only one) he can say is "Bye", but he makes the most of it! He often rocks back and forth and rhythmically hums. We might say that nothing in his body really works as it should.

Recently, he has been given a keyboard on which he can communicate better than through his mouth. However, it is still arduous labor for him to write ANYTHING on that keyboard. He struggles for a long time before he gets something out.

We are at camp and he is joining us this week. During campfire, I was asking the kids to tell me about God Sightings. At one point, this young man attempted to share a thought. He only got a "J" out though, so I said I would come back to him. It was not until the end of campfire that he got his whole thought out.

Would you like to know what he wrote?

It wasn't "Life sucks."

It wasn't "I hate my body."

It wasn't "I'm frustrated."

This is what he wrote: "Jesus is good."

When his mother read it to us, tears sprang into my eyes. If this young man whose body does not work, who has to struggle in agony to convey a single, simple thought is not complaining but saying that Jesus is good, then I am humbled. I complain daily about so many less significant things than he deals constantly. This young man taught me last night that God is good even when life is difficult. Simple faith. Not elaborated or complicated. Just "Jesus is good."

Thank you, Lord.

No more babysitting!

2006-06-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Here's something else I have been thinking about: I am increasingly frustrated by the way mainline churches (and I can't just pick on Lutherans here) keep their parishoners "in their place." I call it "glorified babysitting." Was the way of the old ministers with their emphasis on visitation really the best way? It is still the expectation of churchgoers...especially the old folk. They feel that the pastor should preach, lead worship, and be chaplain to them. The pastor should do lots of visitation and make them feel good while doing it.

Now, I know that to a certain extent pastors ought to mingle with the people and make them feel good because that helps people to realize that you care about them. And when people feel cared about, they don't feel that they are a "project" for you. They are loved and that's why you speak the Word to them, because it is good for them and because you love them. Also, some pastors are more geared towards individual interaction, and so the pulpit is a difficult place for them. Perhaps they speak the Word better in small groups, counseling sessions, and home visits.

However, I think that sometimes all this pastoral care can become babysitting. And sometimes people never grow up. When I was growing up in the fundamentalist church, perhaps it was my limited perspective as a child, but I saw the pastor as first and foremost a preacher. He was there to teach us about the Bible, but in such a way that he made us hungry for the Word ourselves. He was there to fuel our faith, not to have faith for us. I didn't think that a good pastor did a lot of visitation. I thought a good pastor preached the Word. I didn't necessarily expect that a pastor would be at the hospital if I had a surgery or broken leg. He might be there, he might not. Christian friends probably would be though. And if I had an illness, I could come to church and have the elders lay hands on me (as it talks about in James). But I had a responsibility to study the Bible and grow as a Christian, beyond Sunday mornings.

We mainline preachers have got to stop babysitting people. We've got to start realizing that our job is to empower the saints, to make them hungry and thirsty for God and for the Word. Our goal is to "work ourselves out of a job" in a way. Only then will our churches stop depending on the pastor to tell them what to believe and start growing in maturity themselves.

Now that is tough. I'm leading a young adult Bible study right now. I know I will soon be gone and no longer able to lead the group. So I want them to lead sessions from time to time, in order to be used to it. One of the members of the group wants to go so far as to have everyone take turns leading. And the group actually WANTS to! They are growing...and taking ownership of their faith! Yay! But...gulp! Don't they need me anymore? It feels good to be needed. It feels good to be the spiritual "expert." It certainly means I have to let go of my pride and my need to be needed. But if I do that, they will grow and they will benefit. If I do that, I will be able to see that God used me to bring them together and to launch this searching the Scriptures for themselves. And that is a miracle and an awesome thing. It is a far better thing than me having to dominate all the time.

Ephesians 4: 11 He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, 13 until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.

Hebrews 5: 11 There is so much more we would like to say about this. But you don't seem to listen, so it's hard to make you understand. 12 You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things a beginner must learn about the Scriptures. F28 You are like babies who drink only milk and cannot eat solid food. 13 And a person who is living on milk isn't very far along in the Christian life and doesn't know much about doing what is right. 14 Solid food is for those who are mature, who have trained themselves to recognize the difference between right and wrong and then do what is right.

I Peter 2: 2 You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord's kindness

movie raves

2006-06-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Here are some fantastic movies, some of which didn't get a lot of press, which deserve to be noticed and "talked up."

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson light up the screen in this less-than-perfect family. Harrelson's character struggles with his wife's success in the literary field (his success at music has escaped him), but she shows him agape love, always trying to understand where he is coming from. She is gracious and kind, resourceful and clever...and when necessary, tough. It brings Proverbs 31 to mind. The movie is also a stylistic treat, full of witty dialogue and jingles.

Shopgirl: Why was this movie not raved over, talked up, and given Oscars? It is as uncomfortably honest as a real romance is. I can't say that I "liked" the film...Many parts of it hurt to watch. It is awkward and unconventional. But I thought to myself, what I am seeing here is real. And because it is real, it is genuinely funny. In the relationship between Ray and Mirabelle, you cringe and think, This should not be happening. And so you should. It shouldn't feel right because it isn't. And Jeremy is right for Mirabelle, but he isn't perfect and they may or may not live happily ever after. He may have learned a thing or two, but he is still Jeremy...he is still wierd and flawed and a bit self-absorbed. The music, while swelling at times, somehow does not overwhelm the film. I had to ask myself why this was. And I think it is because the music and the acting are telling us the same story. If we were to isolate one from the other, we would get the same emotional story from either one. The music only enhances what we are already seeing on the screen. But the biggest rave should go to Claire Danes. This is a woman who can really act. So much goes on on her face without her saying a word. That ability to convey emotion without being rescued by (the easy way out), words, is the rarest gift in Hollywood. She is amazing...

A Prairie Home Companion: As a newcomer to the culture of white/Scandinavian Minnesotans, it has taken me a while to catch on to the ENORMOUS phenomenon that is Garrison Keillor, but as I have slowly done so, I have just fallen in love with his gentle, understated storytelling and love of the eccentric. He is what you would get if the Coen brothers were gentle and quiet. This movie lets us in to the world that seems to constantly tumble around in his head: a word of characters, folksy music, self-deprecating humor, sometimes (mildly) bawdy jokes, and speech that is fundamentally concerned with the story. This is not a one-plot driven movie...it is a celebration of stories plural. Keillor speaks not with propositions and positions, but with stories. It is his dialect, his language. And I adore it. Not only that, but in this movie you find out that Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, and John C. Reilly can really sing!

Peace

2006-06-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

I just read Chasing Daylight by Eugene O'Kelly. He was a CEO when he was diagnosed with advanced, inoperable brain cancer. He was given about three months to live. In the time that remained, he chose to be very intentional about embracing life and showing his family and friends what they meant to him. He embraced what was happening to him, instead of running away from it. The book gave me some peace about what is happening to my Dad. It gave me some peace about my own mortality too. And a sense of how to embrace the moment.

what they don't tell you...

2006-05-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my trip to see my dad. My dad who is very sick. My dad who may live for a few years...or maybe just a few months. It doesn't make sense to suggest either possibility, because my dad is such a powerful figure. He is tall and strong. He enters a room and fills it up with his presence. He is opinionated and outspoken. We've had our ups and downs, Dad and I, but right now our relationship is pretty darn good. And I can't imagine the world without him.

Now that I've returned, everyone is asking me how it went. And I can see in their expectant eyes what they want to hear, "Oh, it was lovely and wonderful and such a beautiful experience to be with my father." But that's not the truth. I don't want to tell them the truth because it hurts too much. But I hate to lie.

You know when I was growing up, I thought it would exciting and romantic to experience a Great Tragedy. You know, Wuthering Heights style. The fantastic heights and lows of emotions. The joy! The sorrow! I read all those old Gothic novels, wrote such stories myself.

But what they don't tell you about are the clammy nights when you can't sleep because you heart is pounding too fast. They don't tell you about the anxiety attacks or the sense of terror that overcomes you. The wondering whether you can lose him and survive...and the persistent fear that you might not be able to...or that if you did, the surviving would be a horrible kind of life. But above all, they don't tell you about the confusion and bewilderment. The horrible ache. The wondering inside as you ask, "What should I say? What should I do? I have NO idea!" And because of this bewilderment, you feel more alone than you have ever felt in your life. Your parents are twin pillars, holding up who you are. If one of them falls, perhaps you will always walk with a limp.

During the week while we were there, I found myself unable to pray very much. If I prayed, I thought it would mean I had to admit the horror of what I was feeling...when I was trying with all my might to push it away with both hands. When you get together with God, after all, you have to be honest, don't you? And I also had no strength to say all of the great, super-spiritual things that I figured a person of faith should say. I was utterly sapped. It only occurred to me later that God wouldn't have minded too much if I just chatted with Him about what I had seen on TV that day. He wasn't asking me to be strong...He was just asking to hold me...just as I am...even if, for survival's sake, I needed to be trivial for a while. I'm trying to talk to God just as I am now. It's still tough, but it's comforting to think that He's ok with where I am right now.

Loss

2006-04-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

It's hard to lay your heart bare on the internet. Maybe it's not even desirable to do so, but I do find myself holding out, attempting to put on a mask...maybe it's inevitable to a point. After all, this isn't just a journal. Other people will read it.

But here's the bare truth. My dad is very, very sick. Cancer. He had it three years ago, and had a stem cell transplant. The cancer went into remission. Now it has returned in full fury. The first time he had cancer, I felt distant from him. My parents had divorced when I was young. There were hard feelings. My dad and I had some distance between us. I felt that I should feel more at the time.

So I went to be with him for the summer. It was a blisteringly hot three months in Arizona. I found a job at a local megachurch and became low man on the totem pole, zeroxing things and putting out mailings in the office. I also worked as a teacher's assistant at the local school. I got by. And I got to know my dad, like I hadn't before. I started to see his sense of humor beneath remarks that I had just seen as offensive before. There was a lot more of the tongue in cheek to my dad than I had known. I saw his ability to love...and his sometimes inability to know how to express it. I saw his inventiveness...and intelligence. And I came to really love my dad. That was the summer it all changed for me. And then the cancer went away and we had the years in between. I got engaged and he was able to come to the wedding.

But this year, he started having health problems. There started being indicators that the cancer was back, but no absolute evidence. Until February. Then it was for sure. I recently found out that the doctors had told my dad that he had six months to live if he did nothing in the way of treatment. He chose to fight it. They put him on experimental medication, which (as I understand it) is reserved for really serious cases. The medicine is so experimental that it is just out of the lab...only one other human being had been on it when Dad went on it. Anything could happen...a miracle...or death...or something in between.

And the truth is...I am terrified. He is too young...I want him to see his grandchildren. I have only really known my dad for a few years and I want him to stick around. I want to know him better. But I feel as if we are at the top of a hill and starting to go downhill. How long his journey downhill will be, I don't know.

We are traveling to see him in a week. A great American road trip, my husband and I. My husband barely knows him...our romance was quick and purposeful and didn't leave the time for long, involved ties built with family members. We will camp on our way there and back. We will look at the countryside. We will think of how precious life is. I will probably cry. I will have the space to feel the depths of what is happening. I will have space to "get into the deep, beautiful melancholy of all that has happened" (Elizabethtown, 2005).

Melancholy can be beautiful when you realize that loss means you have really lived and loved. But the truth is, you always kind of wish it could be different. Couldn't you live and love without losing?

Dan Brown

2006-04-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

I object to Dan Brown's writing much for the same reason as I did the Left Behind series: bad writing, one-dimensional characters, uninspired dialogue...yechhh...

Here's someone who apparently agrees with me...

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

Put down the Da Vinci Code....slowly now...let me see your hands...ok...now pick up Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout...there, that's much better, isn't it?:-)

a note to my readers

2006-04-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

I want to say how grateful I am for each one of you who take the time to visit my blog and read what I have shared. I love writing this blog, but without people to read it, it would be pretty pointless. In addition to being a creative outlet for me, I want this blog to be thought-stimulating place. I hope to write to Christians and to those who are not Christians. Some of the entries will be more relevant to the former and some to the latter. In the interest of being relevant and being a blogger in community, I invite your feedback on what I write. I treasure your comments, so please interact with what I've written...it makes it so much more fun!

a challenge to faith

2006-04-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've posted...due to a crisis in the office here. April 2, Pastor was away and I was covering services. I arrived in the office to discover that my laptop had been stolen overnight. That was highly troubling but I had no idea that things were yet to get much, much worse. Over the course of this past week, we were "hit" by burglaries almost every night. In this time of preparation for Holy Week, our computers and DVD were taken. We arrive in the morning to see empty spaces where our computers were. The thieves went through my desk in my office too (I know this because a small amount of cash was missing). We have taken security precautions, but they have not helped a lot. We look to the future and wonder when it will end. We suspect it is drug-related. But we don't know for sure. It has been difficult getting a newsletter and bulletins printed in the office.

And there are other things of turmoil, brokenness, and sickness that are occuring in the people and families of our church. Not the least of which is my dad's depth of sickness with cancer. My heart aches with all of this. During worship on Sunday, we sang "Lead me to Calvary" and I thought how Calvary was anywhere but where I wanted to be. And yet it seemed precisely where I was being put...where we are all being put here. Now I will be honest. When things like this happen, it can be very hard to believe in God. Why isn't He stoppig this? This is His church, after all. But like Peter I say, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." There is nowhere else to turn. "Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You."

And yet...there are benefits of not having a computer. We have a couple of quite old ones left in the office that I can check email on. But in my office, there is quiet. Space on my desk. I am forced to think carefully instead of hyperactively. There is a restfulness that starts to be felt when there is no machine calling my name (of course, there is always the cell phone). Yesterday, I spent the afternoon browsing bookstores and libraries and soaking up the fresh air.

Where this all will end, I do not know.

Sometimes I feel like a failure

2006-03-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

The past week and this week as well have been horrendous weeks. Unbelievably busy, with no entire day off either week. I have been stressed to the point of tears. I did get some time at home in the afternoon yesterday and then this morning I decided not to come in to the church until 11 AM...after all, all I needed to do was plan my confirmation lesson and briefly run over the Lenten service for tonight.

But when I came through the door, our usually good-humored secretary was in a state. I've never seen her so upset. She jabbed her index finger right at me when I came in the door and I knew I was in trouble. And with good reason. I had promised to give her my sermon title and the revisions to the bulletin by this morning...and in the stress of things I had promptly forgotten. Somehow our office list of phone numbers was M.I.A. so she was unable to get in touch with me. And without the information she needed, she was unable to print the bulletin (her task for the morning).

I was tremendously disappointed in myself for treating her time so lightly. I've worked in a support position in a church office before and I know how utterly frustrating it is when people give you information at the last minute.

I really did understand why she was upset. It must have been really frustrating for her this morning. Consequently, I have walked away all day feeling like a slack-off...a poor employee...I've been trying overly hard to please everybody here today. I'm so upset at myself.

It's at times like these that I wonder why I can't give myself the freedom to just be human and make mistakes. Of course what I did was wrong, but why can't I admit that and leave it at that....it's like I am inwardly compelled to be perfect...and any failure at all just levels me.

Clearly, I still have some things to learn about God's grace...

what's love, anyway?

2006-03-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

I can't help it.

The heart will do what it wills.

We just couldn't stop ourselves.

All of these are sometimes heard as statements that reflect our ultimate cultural idea of what love is. Love is a passionate feeling that compels you. And sure...it usually starts out that way. We fall hopelessly in love with the splendid attributes (and perhaps splendid behind?) of our beloved. All the world is spring. Our heart sings. We will be happy forever!

But then you get married. And your husband throws his socks on the floor...repeatedly. Or your wife doesn't get all dressed up anymore. Everyday life sets in. And you think back to the days when you were single and everything was an exciting discovery. You might wonder, what have I gotten myself into?

But it is at this time (when your feelings are challenged with reality) that love really has the opportunity to set in. Our culture tells us that you know you're in love when you feel it. But I would contend that real love starts when you have moments when you don't feel it. In those everyday moments, the most precious parts of love can develop. I think the most beautiful aspects of love that I have seen have been also shot through with pain and reality. One spouse caring for the other who has Alzheimers. Spouses who love even when they are tired and weary. Growing old and wrinkly together.

And the good news is...when the feelings go...they will return again. I married, fully expecting days when I "wouldn't feel it." It's still newlywed time, so those days aren't too frequent...in fact, when it happens, it doesn't tend to last more than a few hours. But I know that times will come that are difficult and trying. I know times will come when I will be tempted. I know times will come when I will be frustrated. The good news is that this does not mean the end of love. Rather, it means the beginning of its maturing. And if I hang in there, the feelings will return...perhaps with greater depth and richness than the whispy, perfumy springtime of love.

My battle with Lent

2006-03-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

In theory, I see Lent as a phenomenal time to exercise self-discipline, grow, work on chipping off some of my rough edges, and do all those good Christian things that I intend to do all year.

But.

That's in theory. When it comes down to it, I find myself revisiting a past that is filled with anxiety about whether or not I have performed well enough for God. Have I done enough for Him to accept me? I think it probably comes partly from being a child of divorce and remarriage and divorce. That messes with your sense of self in all kinds of ways. It would be convenient to blame all of my trouble with God on fundamentalism (and I'm sure some extreme aspects of fundamentalism contributed), but the reality is there were many factors that contributed to my skewed view of the world and of God.

When I got into my teenage years, I was at the height of obsessive needs to be the perfect Christian. My mental image of God was Him up there with a big stick, ready to whap me one if I didn't perform well enough, if I wasn't a good enough Christian. If you had asked me, I would have said that salvation was by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. But that didn't change my feelings about God, feelings that I never quite matched up to His standard (which of course none of us do, but the truth is that He loves us anyway and sent Christ to restore us to Him in spite of our mess-ups and brokenness). So, during my late teen years, I decided to try hard, to try as hard as I could to be the perfect, submitted to God Christian. I threw away everything I deemed "not pure" (once a person starts obsessing, imagine how much stuff that can be!). I tried to confess every sin, every stray "impure thought." I tried to "hear God's voice" (but I often just heard echoes of my own self-condemning thoughts).

Later, when I read about Martin Luther and how he had been that way too...trying to be the perfect monk and please God in every way, I paid attention. I thought, "This guy knows what I'm going through." But then Luther actually read the Bible instead of taking only the word of the religious authorities of the time. And he read a verse that changed his life. It said, "The righteous will live by faith." In other words, our righteousness or goodness does not come from our good works, but from having faith that God will give us righteousness, stamp us with it, though we do not deserve it. And all this is because of Christ's gift of His life for us. He bridges the gap between what we deserve for our failures and sins and God's desire to be merciful to us.

So...Luther's discovery changed his life. He started letting go of the many ceremonial works that the Church required when he found that many of them were not required in Scripture. He found freedom. And although I knew that salvation was by grace through faith in Christ alone, somehow in seeing this man who had struggled as I had find the message for the first time enabled me to find it as if for the first time. Grace broke out in my soul...maybe not all at once, but in bursts again and again. It was freeing me from my obsessiveness. Freeing me to know that I no longer need to do "one more thing" because Christ has already done all for me.

And then Lent comes around. And as much as the Lutheran Church does not look at it as a time of making ourselves acceptable for salvation, but instead as a time of deepening character and opening our hearts to repentence...still, I find myself hearing in it the old emotional messages of "do one more thing." Maybe I'm just lazy and self-consumed...I suppose that's part of it...but another big part of my resistence to Lent is the desire not to let go of the good news to which I hold for dear life. Maybe someday I will be able to see Lent for what it is supposed to be...but until that time, my participation in the acts of denial it calls for is minimal at best.

This year, instead, I have found myself resonating with the wilderness theme. Lent is not just a time for self-denial, but it is a time for facing up to facts about our human condition of sin and suffering. And so, as some of my deepest brokenness has started to now emerge with the help of a skilled counselor, I am choosing to walk into the wilderness of that pain and just let it be what it is. To face up to it, and by being honest about it, seek to let God heal it.

To me, that is perhaps the spirit of Lent...even if I am not abstaining from desserts or red meat.

how to talk to a liberal?

2006-03-01T23:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a conservative. I'm of the ilk who is predominately pro-Bush (while still acknowledging he is human and makes mistakes just like the rest of us). I see some benefit in the war in Iraq. I'm against abortion. I think that the appointment of two conservative judges to the Supreme Court is a good break that many Christians have been praying for for a long time. I think it will save many innocent lives. I think homosexual marriage is a bad idea, but I don't hate homosexuals. I believe in keeping government programs to a minimum. I happen to like the fact that the President prays, though he is sometimes a bit too dualistic and sometimes identifies America's agenda too much with God's agenda. I think the Gospel should lead to the church ministering to social needs, but I don't believe that social justice equals the Gospel.

But I spend a lot of time with liberals. My denomination (the ELCA) is made up of primarily liberal clergy--although a lot of the people in the pews are conservative (unless we are talking about St. Paul, MN!). And in their eyes, there is fear. They frequently make doomsday predictions that would put Tim LaHaye to shame. They declare the President "Hitler." They make him into almost an Antichrist figure.

I don't know how to talk to them. Occasionally, I open up and remind them that there is a conservative in their midst who is still a thinking person (wonder of wonders!). And they try to be courteous, but they always sink back into their gloomy view of the nation in light of the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Ann Coulter has her take on how to talk to liberals, but (although in my most frustrated moments, a little bit of sarcastic humor can defuse things!) I don't like the idea of just insulting people we disagree with (Coulter's favorite option!). There's got to be a better way.

But I feel like such an oddball, sitting amongst these liberals and not feeling an impending sense of doom as they do! I don't see a bleak future because of President Bush. I don't agree with everything he ever did, but....c'mon, as I reminded one woman with fear deep in her eyes...God is still on the throne! Even if liberals do think Bush is the most corrupt man on the planet (which I think is ridiculous), God is still in charge. I wouldn't want a religion where I thought the President was more powerful than God. God will prevail at the end of the day. That's what faith is all about...believing in One beyond yourself, stronger than yourself, wiser than yourself. I think liberals need a little dose of faith.

But then, I needed that myself during the Clinton years!

ash wednesday

2006-03-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

There's no question about it. I am a little bit weird. Ever since I entered the Lutheran church, Ash Wednesday has been one of my favorite days in the church year. Maybe it has to do with coming to the Lutheran church when I was going through a profound depression as a teenager. Maybe it has to do with the sign of the cross on our foreheads that links us Christians together as we go back into the world. Maybe it has to do with using a physical sign to convey a truth.

But I suspect that the main reason I am so attracted to this day is its honesty. You know, we walk through our lives, making small talk and speaking platitudes, talking about the weather and the White Sox, but when it comes down to it, there are very few moments that are fundamentally, deeply honest.

We feel this inner drive to be nice and sweet and look on the bright side. And sometimes that is really good. After all, being positive helps us in many ways. But at least once in a while, we need to get serious and admit our frailty, our pain, our neediness.

I think sometimes we cover up our pain thinking that God will not love us if we reveal who we truly are underneath the shiny paint. So--like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden--we hide, hide from the voice of God, from the nearness of God. We dare not let Him get too close.

That's why Ash Wednesday is such a breath of fresh air. It is maybe the one day in the whole year when we can get honest with ourselves and with God. It is the one day in the year when we can say, "I am a sinner and I am going to die." Those are the two things that are hardest to admit. But when we admit them, as Jesus said, "the truth will set us free." Admitting our brokenness means God can finally get in there to work some healing. And the first step of healing is knowing that despite every disgusting, ugly, despicable thing about us, God loves us. We may be dust, but we are dust that God loves. God can do amazing things with dust. He after all formed the first people from dust. And when we die and become dust again, He is able to raise us and make us new all over again.

In 2 Corinthians 5:20-21, Paul begs us, "We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." He then goes on to tell us that God made Christ sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. In other words, Christ wants to heal you, but in order for that to happen, you have to admit you have a problem. You have to admit the truth of Ash Wednesday: "I am a sinner and I'm going to die." Only then does Christ reach in and say, "Alright...finally you admit it. Now I will take that brokenness from you and give you all that is mine." Think of it like a marriage: When you get married, you move in and bring all of your separate stuff together. What is the husband's is now the wife's. What is the wife's is now the husband's. That's how it is with Christ. What is yours is sin, brokenness, death, the power of the devil. That is Christ's now. What is Christ's is God's righteousness, healing, and resurrection...and that is now yours.

Christians are people who have faced up to the fact that we have a problem...sin and death. And we are people who know Christ will one day do away with all of that and make everything new. But in the meantime, we have many trials and pains. Ash Wednesday is about that too. It is deciding that instead of walking away from your pain, you are going to walk through it. The people of Israel had to go through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land. Jesus had to go through the 40 days of temptation in the wilderness before His ministry. Paul and the apostles had to go through tremendous trials in their ministry. And yet, with them, we look honestly at the worst this world has to throw at us...we face up to it...and then we say with faith, "This is not all there is!" With Paul, we say, "(We are) sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything." For in Christ, we have everything.

music

2006-02-27T12:56:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to the Rescue Mission in the city. I was to speak there because our church was sponsoring a service and a meal. And our worship band was there playing gospel and praise songs. After the service, I attempted to make some small talk with some of the ladies there, but ran out of things to say. So I decided to go "jam" with the band. It's been so long since I've hung out with musicians, but it was the most fun I've had in a while. One of the guitarists was playing a lot of bluegrass...he said that he used to make fun of it until he came to times of pain in his own life...and then he knew what all of the songs were talking about. That's my experience of country music, bluegrass, and folk too...I may not know a lot of the music (I've only been into it for about 5 years), but what I know I love....because it speaks so sympathetically of the sorrows we all face. And it paints a real picture of all of the other things that we experience...the joys too. Music can truly heal the soul. It makes us not feel alone anymore.

Last night made me wish that I could sing in a country or bluegrass band for real. I love the harmonies, the words, the music. If I could fulfill a dream not for any other reason than the pure pleasure in doing it, that would be it.

sharing burdens

2006-02-23T09:40:00.001-08:00

This has been a tough week for both my husband and I, for various individual reasons. I am discovering something about marriage. That verse that says the husband and wife will become one...it's not joking around. Suddenly, our individual sorrows...and joys...are felt by the other one as if these were their own. Suddenly, we long to "fix" the source of pain. Suddenly, we are in deep communion with each other's souls.

And when we are the suffering one, we know that we no longer face our sorrow and burdens alone.

The two shall become one.

strengthening the faith muscle

2006-02-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

Ouch....It's painful...I don't want to exert myself. I'm a couch potato Christian, comfortable and cozy. I want everything handed to me on a silver platter. Ask me to face up to trials and pain and things that make me unsteady? I don't want to. Isn't God supposed to make my life smooth and easy? Don't I deserve it by now...after all the pain and trials I've been through?

You know when I feel most afraid? When money is unstable, questionable, unable to be trusted in. I like to trust in what I can see, hold on to it with all of my might.

Is money my god? I'm not rich...how could it be?

And yet I find myself freaking out when it isn't a sure thing.

So...maybe I idolize money.

Maybe God is training me...like weight-lifting...giving me more to lift so that my faith muscle gets stronger.

The strain comes when I have to trust Him for no other reason than He said so.

Trust Him to provide. Trust Him that no matter what happens, He will be by my side.

Suddenly being a couch potato doesn't cut it.

crushed spirits

2006-02-22T09:40:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been seeing all too many examples of people that I know and care about being steamrolled over by the goal-oriented..... These driven folks are well-meaning, but they put the task over the priority of the people again and again, while saying that their goal is to minister to the people. They crush the spirits of people who have ideas for ministry because the ideas do not conform to their plan. And I am seeing this at more than one church, with more than one Christian.

Why am I so shaken up by this? Because I am exactly the sort of person who could easily fall into such a trap. I am an introvert...and a stubborn, goal-oriented one at that. I see what I want done, how I want it done, and it better get done that way! I'm going to make an impact in this world and that's that! Sometimes I ignore people when they talk because I have my mind on the latest project. I forget to be "fully present." I forget that I am not the only one whom God has gifted...He gifted them too!

Crushed spirits are the work of the devil. And as I see from the outside what the effect of steamrolling over people is, I am shaken up. I want no part in it. I want to honor the gifts of God in others, not just myself.

May I never crush God's work in someone while I think I'm on my way to my own.

gentlemen

2006-02-21T09:40:00.001-08:00

You meet an interesting cast of characters when your car breaks down.

This weekend, I planned perfectly for a trip to Iowa to see my friends from Camp perform a life of Christ Mime...it's at least an hour-long production...really good stuff...I had so been looking forward to it. And this was the only time they would be close enough to me (even 3 and 1/2 hours at that!) for me to be able to justify going. I emailed a good friend from Chicago and she agreed to go with me. We rearranged our schedules (which, for me, included rearranging preaching schedules), packed a survival kit, and even took the newer of the two cars (hers) so as to avoid car trouble.

It was the coldest day of the year. 2 degrees, with a wind chill far below 0. Ouch.

We were only a half hour down the road when another driver on the road got us to roll down our window. "You have a flat tire," they hollered. That was about 3:15 in the afternoon.

Sigh. We really didn't have time for this. We kept driving on it, hoping to get to a gas station.

No such luck. It started smoking. Another driver stopped to assist us. My friend, Johnna, called Geico's road side service. A towtruck who could change our tire was only about 5 minutes away. He showed up, with a pick-up truck already on his towtruck. But that was fine. He would just change our tire and we would limp down the road till we got somewhere that could give us a new tire or patch us up.

We waited.

He motioned for us to roll down our window. "We might have a problem," he said. Apparently, the last time Johnna had had her tires rotated, they had torqued the caps on the lug nuts so hard that they became warped, making the tires impossible to remove with ordinary tools. We would have to be towed to a shop.

The tow truck driver dumped the pickup he was carrying and was all ready to tow us into town to the nearby Farm and Fleet. We hopped in the tow truck. But before we did, we made sure we were to leave the car running. We were. We shut the door.

Oops. We had locked Johnna's keys in the running car. Happily, our kind tow truck man could get back in. (What couldn't he do???)

Farm and Fleet was full up. They were the only shop open in town. So the tow truck driver took us to a shop owned by his brother. I don't think it was an official shop. But he said he would take a look at the tire...which they quickly determined was shot and that we needed a new one.

"Take a seat in our waiting room, girls," they said. Waiting room? We didn't see one...there were a couple of lawn chairs by the heater, so we sat down....

...and quickly noticed that a man was balanced up on a ledge, trying to fix the heater. The blower wasn't working. They were afraid it would blow up! Finally, it got started up and the owner of the shop yelled out, "Praise the Lord!" But then they were afraid that carbon monoxide had entered the air. So they all stood in a line facing the heater..."It'll sting your eyes if there's carbon monoxide," they said. Apparently, there wasn't.

We waited for about an hour and a half...thinking someone had gone to town to get our tire. They hadn't. Finally, we all piled into a truck...it wasn't owned by any one connected with the shop. It was just the neighbor's truck. We thought we were just going to make a quick couple of stops. It turned into a whole string of errands....the owner of the shop had a sick kid, so we had to stop at drug stores to get medicine for him...only they kept closing just as we would come to them.

Finally at 6:30, I said, "you know, we really need to get going," and they finally realized they had kept us a while. (Maybe we're just too much fun?) By 7:30, they got us out of there.

And yet...odd as it might seem...we had an awful lot of fun with those guys....just country guys with some chivalry left in their blood, taking care of "the girls" (as they called us). They carried the tire for us, cleaned their icky shop bathroom for us, and treated us with respect. They seemed to genuinely enjoy each other. One of the men actually talked like a duck...like Donald Duck...but the owner of the shop treated him with the utmost respect and kindness...no making fun...and it was clear that the man with the funny voice was very smart when it came to cars....he seemed to know everything about them. You know, it's not often that you meet a group of guys that treat you with respect. And especially car guys who don't act like you're stupid.

We learned a lot of things this weekend. But one thing we learned was that there are some gentlemen left in this world.

When you can't do it

2006-02-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

Relationships are not clear-cut things. We moralize about them, cast rules about them, form generalities about them...but when it comes down to it...what do we really know?

The imprecise nature of relationships...their confusing way of taking a new turn just when you think you know their path...of slipping through your fingers just when you think you have a grasp on them...

Have you ever had a relationship in which you really didn't know what to do next? It seems as if no matter which way you turn, you will do the wrong thing. This can be in all kinds of relationships: parents, kids, churchgoers, coworkers, siblings, love interests, spouses. But no matter who we're talking about here...you feel blocked in. You say to yourself, "There's no way out."

On those days when you don't know what to do...when you are blocked in from behind and before...you find that you truly are "in bondage to sin and cannot free yourself." You find that the other person in the relationship is as well. There are ropes tangled around your limbs. You can't move. You can't fix it. You can't save it. It's all messed up.

And in that moment is when you know you need to hear the absolution..."I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." And as the sign of the cross is made over you, you know that Jesus has taken all of your failures into Himself. He has become sin for you. He has carried it all in His body. And He has made you (wonder of wonders!) the righteousness of God. It's the great exchange. The unlikely marriage in which Jesus takes all of our brokenness and gives us all of His righteousness and goodness.

And when Jesus gives you all of this, you know that you can face whatever the future may hold in this relationship. You can face it confident, knowing that you are not the miserable failure...rather, you are "in Christ." That is your identity now.

And Christ has unlimited resources to draw on.

Why postmodernism doesn't work

2006-02-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in a real state. Feeling empty. Uninterested in God or helping others. Lonely. Depressed. As if I were uncommitted to anything else in this world.

I told my husband, "I feel like I don't care about much of anything. I'm just focused on myself."

He said, "No, you're not," and proceeded to go down the list of things I had demonstrated caring in, things I am invested in.

Our culture tells us, "Follow your heart. Be true to yourself." And when it comes to religion, it is the same. We are told, "Everyone has their own truth. Follow your own truth. It may not be true to me, but if it's true to you...great!"

But there's a problem with that. Reality is not always equal to our personal inner experience. All kinds of things can muddle reality and truth: our current mood, our life experiences, our upbringing. Even our faults can monkey with our perception of reality. Or, to use a Christian word, our sins muddle our perception of reality.

If I had gone by my reality alone on my day of depression, logically, I should just go ahead and die. After all, I was worthless. (Not that I was suicidal, of course.)

What I needed was an external word, coming from outside myself, an external word that told me what was true when I could not see it for myself.

That is what the Word of God does as I see it. And it is why I believe postmodernism is in error...if we rely on our perceptions alone, we may get ourselves in real trouble. Thank God that there is a corrective, and that truth is not determined by me.

Internet scrapbooking

2006-02-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

Recently a fellow pastor brought up the fine church lady tradition of quilting...Getting together in community with other church women to make handmade treasures which would then be given to those in need. The pastor remarked that after the current senior citizen generation, this tradition may well die off. One woman suggested that scrapbooking groups would take the place of quilting. My pastor friend said, "But it isn't the same. Scrapbooking is about creating a shrine to yourself. It's fundamentally self-centered."

I don't know if I have ever thought of scrapbooking that way before...I can't say I completely agree with her. After all, wonderful family memories can be preserved through scrapbooking. It can be a way for us to reflect God's image in us by being creative and making something beautiful. It even can be a gift for someone else as was the case this past fall: it was the senior pastor's 10-year anniversary in our congregation and the church secretary created a GORGEOUS book of memories for him, using her gifts of scrapbooking and rubber stamping.

But while I don't quite see scrapbooking in such black and white terms as my pastor friend did, I do see her point. Our culture is a culture to self. You have only to see the many vapid blogs, MySpace entries, etc. to see our worship of ourselves. Then there are the folks who change their Instant Messaging screen names multiple time a day (I used to do this constantly, hoping someone would notice me, pay attention to me) (not that everyone who does this is selfish, but many are). My emotions, my experience, the world revolving around me. We are internet scrapbookers, creating monuments to ourselves. We are bored silly and we think more emphasis on ourselves will cure our boredom and fill our void inside.

And I have to ask myself...am I the same way? The answer is, "of course!" I do, after all, belong to two online forums and I have two blogs. Sometimes I use these communication avenues to say something meaningful (I hope I do that here) or to minister to others. Or to be creative. But sometimes, I am focused on enshrining self. And enshrining self will never provide the fulfillment I am hoping for.

What will provide that fulfillment? Well, Jesus gave us two commands that I think were good ones: Love God and love your neighbor. Through reconciling us to God in His death and resurrection, Jesus has taken care of the first one for us. The second one is our job. Fulfillment in life does not come from self-love primarily (although a healthy self-esteem and knowing oneself is certainly important). Fulfillment comes from loving your neighbor. It comes from laying down some of your own desires for the other. Giving things up, though, only means that you gain. The servant of all shall be first. Dying means living. Losing means gaining.

I'm not talking about doormat Christianity. But I am talking about realizing that there's a world out there that needs self-sacrificial love more than it needs food and water.

Maybe it really is that simple after all: Love thy neighbor.

when the shining examples of leadership...aren't

2006-01-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

In the past week, two situations regarding faculty at my seminary have exploded. Both faculty members had a positive impact on me. One taught me that it is important to live out our mission as the church. It's easy to forget the active nature of faith when you're Lutheran. She just came out as a lesbian, having left her husband and immediately started a gay relationship with a woman, bringing her kids into the mess. I wrote her what I thought was an intelligent, loving email. I just got her reply...she dismissed what I said as "graceless." She said she thought that person "once I matured more" I would see God's grace as she does. She ignored the impact I had told her her decisions would have on her kids. She said it was good for them to see God's grace in this way. She suggested I had not bothered to consider other perspectives...how would she know? I certainly have...but after a while, you have to stop asking questions and decide what you believe. You have to call a spade a spade, as my Mom likes to say. I am deeply troubled, almost brought to tears. In this relativistic society, we dare no longer call ANYTHING sin...We dare not challenge each other. It's live and let live, even in the church. Not that we should pry in each other's business all the time, but c'mon...there are key decisions of life that occur and in these, should we not have some voice to each other, if we are truly community?

Sometimes I just feel like giving up, trying to live in a church that increasingly is pushing a more and more touchy-feely agenda. God help us.

And then, THE most key professor to me in my time at seminary is currently the subject of an extensive rumor mill at seminary...there are all kinds of things he is said to have done, mostly in relation to him losing his temper in inappropriate ways. Even the leadership acknowledges that something is going on, although they won't say what yet. I find it hard to believe he did one of the things he is said to have done...it shakes my image of him. But at the same time, I cannot bear to see him go. He makes the place bearable for me. His theology is so sound. His pastoral ability is unmatched. It's hard to see your heroes have warts.

I put so much trust in my leaders. I look for good heroes and I perhaps almost idolize them...once they've earned my trust. But now I feel that trust is broken. It shakes me up. I have no good resolution for that. It just shakes me up.

And to think I may one day be someone's "spiritual hero," as a pastor...and won't I fumble the ball, too?

An Officer and a Gentleman

2006-01-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

I just saw An Officer and a Gentleman. This is an oldie but a goody, starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger. There is definately some harsh content, in terms of language and sexuality, so it is not for kids. But it has a profound message, so if you are one who can see beyond those elements, I would highly recommend it.

In the story, Zack (Gere) is a young man with a checkered past. His mother committed suicide when he was about 12. His father is in the Navy, but is an irresponsible father, constantly carousing with prostitutes, even getting his son to join in on some of his escapades. This continues when Zack gets to young adulthood. Somehow, he musters up the energy and courage to imagine himself into a better life, though. He joins the Navy, in the hope of becoming an officer and flying jets. He is immediately subjected to the humiliations that come with training. Sgt. Foley, who trains him and the other new recruits, is a foul-mouthed, tough soldier who will do everything ("fair and unfair") to test the mettle of the new recruits. Zach starts out with an attitude problem, pretty much just caring about himself, a defense mechanism which he has developed through life.

Then Zack meets Paula (Winger), a young woman who works in a nearby factory. Paula gives him something to look forward to...seeing her. He actually begins to fall in love with her...and he has never had a real relationship of love with a woman before. The local women have a reputation for tricking the officer candidates by any means necessary to get them to marry them...a ticket out of poverty and a boring life...and into an exciting life overseas. Paula's best friend attempts to trick Zack's best friend, telling him she is pregnant...with disastrous results that bring back Zack's past all over again. Paula cannot bring herself to do this to Zack, although she is tempted when he begins to pull away from her. But she realizes that if she tries to trick him, the love will not be real. She will have him for real or not at all.

Meanwhile, Zack continues to face the harsh endurance test of training. Many times he is brought to the end of himself and brought face to face with the question of who he really is. Is he a quitter...or a man who stick with things through the long haul? Is he in this just for himself...or can he start to care about others? Is he an officer...or a wannabe? But ultimately, the question is: will he be defined by his past? Or will he be able to see himself as something more, someone overcoming all of that?

I saw this theme of identity as relating to us as Christians. We each probably have something from our past...maybe before the Lord, maybe while we were young or immature...maybe abuse of someone in power over us...something that haunts us and tries to tell us that we're a nobody. We have a challenge before us...and it's every bit as tough as Zack's physical and mental ordeal to become a Navy officer...the challenge is to truly BELIEVE that in Christ, we are someone made new. We are no longer defined by the past. Although it is a part of our life...we are someone who is made new. We have a new identity in Christ...the issue is whether we will seize upon it...and live up to it.

The closing of the movie ends with Zack moving on with his life and seizing his new identity. It's an exhilerating moment...and the movie ends with the song, "Love, lift us up where we belong." That isn't just an inspirational thought. Where do human beings belong? As overcomers...rising above the brokenness of the first Adam, to the new life of the new Adam. For us as Christians, the love that heals us and sets us free (as Paula's did for Zack...enabling him to believe in himself) is the love of Christ...and the love of spouses who see us with the eyes of love (mine does for me)...or Christian friends who believe in us and encourage us...you know who it is for you...But God uses them all to "lift us up where we belong."

it hurts to be human

2006-01-03T07:18:00.000-08:00

You know, there are so many times that though I am a Christian, all of the belief in the world can't settle the angst in my soul. Maybe if I were a better follower of Christ, I would have more peace, but I suspect that every human being feels this way sometimes. I regret things, overanalyze things, and sometimes (worst of all) feel this steady uneasiness in the pit of my stomach...the kind of unease that I cannot quite put my finger on. And I wonder what I am feeling and why.

Maybe it is the accumulated total of the pain of being human. The pain of natural disasters assaulting our earth. The pain of having three parishoners die in the past month and seeing their gray bodies lying in the death bed, the coffin. The pain of struggling with my own inner battles. The pain of knowing love is a risk....and loss and death is inevitable. There is no question about it. It hurts to be human.

I am preparing a confirmation lesson about Jesus, the center of our faith. As I study up for it, I find myself finding hard to push through to His relevance in the dank battles I so often face...and then it hits me...if to be human is to know pain, then Jesus knows exactly what I'm talking about. Didn't He struggle in the desert with temptation? Didn't He struggle so intensely in Gethsamane that He sweat drops of blood? Didn't He weep at the tomb of Lazarus, his friend? Didn't He die on a cross, suffering one of the most intense and abusive forms of execution that human beings have devised? And yet...He didn't have to do any of this. He did it for me, for you...because He chose to...

i saw love today...

2005-12-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

...in the form of a devoted elderly husband, Bob. His wife, Ruth, is way gone into dementia and advanced Alzheimers. And yet he visits her constantly, never deserting her, despite the fact that she cannot give back to him anymore. His longtime family friend, a retired woman has stood by the couple as the wife deteriorated through the years. The pastor and I went to visit Ruth on her birthday today, hand-delivering her birthday card, though she can no longer recognize anyone or understand what is being said to her. As I entered the room, I saw the retired woman stroking Ruth's face, touching her with the greatest love and senstivity and comforting...treating her as a human being. My eyes all but welled up with tears. But even more I felt those tears coming as I saw how Bob looked at Ruth...seeing in her perhaps the joys of past years...feeling in his heart the great sorrow of losing her daily, little-by-little. And yet, he too stood beside her, stroking her face, massaging her temples, loving and cherishing her..."til death us do part." And I thought of how feeble my own love sometimes is, in comparison with such devotion. Don't get me wrong...I have no illusions that Bob feels happy or romantic about his situation. It is probably a daily grief, a dull ache, something unfulfilling and empty inside. But Bob...and his friend...know what real love means...it is love poured out for the good of another, regardless of whether one gets something in return. It is standing by someone, even when they are weak, unattractive, unable to do anything for themselves anymore. It is sacrificial. And nothing in this world is more beautiful...I hope that--despite the pain--he knows that.

i thank God for unanswered prayers...

2005-12-06T07:11:00.000-08:00

This morning I was at a Bible study and we were talking about prayer...and I got to reflecting on the many prayers I used to make...particularly for some particular fellow to fancy me...and how many of them would have been stupid, bad matches. Sometimes the fellows were just not mature emotionally or spiritually or relationally. Sometimes they were mature enough, but just a wrong personality combination with me (so hard to see when you're mooning after one...!). Not that I know the reason why God said no to all of my requests. Some of them were nice, decent guys. But sometimes I think it is nothing short of miraculous that God finally did set me up with a man who was mature, a good communicator, intelligent, my equal (not above or below me), and strong in commitment. I mean, there were so many times when I was willing to settle for less, so if it were left up to me, I probably would have less. I can't make sense of why I found the man that I did. It seems to be a stroke of grace and that alone.

It reminds me of a song by Garth Brooks called "Unanswered Prayers." In the song he talks about how long and hard he prayed for God to give him a relationship with one particular girl ("And if he'd only grant this wish I wished back then...I'd never ask for anything again"). They date, but it doesn't last...then, years later, he runs into her at an outing with his wife...and he realizes how rich he is in what God has given him. That's just how I feel, although I remember listening to that song after a terrible break-up and not believing it could be true. But it is...

"Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
Some of god’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
She wasn’t quite the angel that I remembered in my dreams
And I could tell that time had changed me
In her eyes too it seemed
We tried to talk about the old days
There wasn’t much we could recall
I guess the lord knows what he’s doin’ after all.
And as she walked away and I looked at my wife
And then and there I thanked the good Lord
For the gifts in my life."

a word about shame

2005-12-06T05:11:00.000-08:00

I had a revelation last night. You know, sometimes it can be so hard to overcome issues of shame and low self-esteem because we just feel we are not worth it. We truly believe we are lousy. But it occured to me last night that shame towards ourselves is a sin against our neighbor, i.e., against other people. The reason? Because when we have shame toward ourselves, it gets in the way of a vital, giving relationship with others. It blocks the give and take of equals. It makes us harder to love others. So, if you cannot say no to the shaming lies for your own sake, maybe it will help to do it for your neighbor's sake. Give them a "you" that is whole and believing the truth.

beginning

2005-11-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

I have had this website for some time now. I also have a blog in which I talk with peers about struggles and joys of preparing for Christian ministry, specifically in the Lutheran church. But I need a place in which I can write more personal reflections...reflections about the reality of being a person who is at the same time old and new...someone who carries the baggage of this "bag of bones," this "body of death" (as the Apostle Paul calls it), while at the same time looking forward to heaven, to freedom, to life...and even now tasting the firstfruits of this life through the spirit...

Hence, the title of this blog.

My aim is that it at least be honest...not hopeless, because after all, I have Christ...and not sappy because after all, I still war with the world, flesh, and devil every day...So let these writings be honest and real...

love love love

2005-11-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

I've had the luck to find a husband who means the word "love" when he says it, but as I look around at my friends, TV, and my own life, I find that not everyone in a dating relationship means the same thing when they say, "I love you."

I think our culture, in general, has eroded the meaning of the word.

But, really, it means this self-sacrificial giving of yourself for the sake of the other. It means a firm commitment to them. It means me apologizing when I hurt my husband. It means him going down the stairs to the basement with a baseball bat, when we thought someone was breaking into the house (rather than making me go). It means letting our speech be constructive. It means determining not to let each other go, no matter what.

But when a past boyfriend told me he loved me after just a month and a half or so, when he suggested marriage in numerous ways, and then backed away and broke up with me after six months together...what did all of that really mean? I know he didn't mean, "I want to get in your pants." He wasn't that kind of guy (although I know that's what a lot of guys mean when they say it). But I wonder why he would throw out a word like that without meaning it to the depth of his being, without meaning it with firm commitment. He had character, he was a high-quality person, he was even a Christian. I think he even thought he meant it when he first said it. But he couldn't have if...it must have all been about feelings, which come and go. I guess I tossed the word out rather naively. I did mean it. But I didn't demand of him that he mean it before I got my heart all too involved. Perhaps I didn't respect myself enough? Perhaps I thought I might lose him?

But that was the reason that when my husband and I started dating, we discussed what we would mean by the "L" word. We would not mean "will you marry me?" we agreed, but something rather close. We would mean that we had a pretty serious commitment to a future together. We would mean that we were seriously moving in the direction of marriage. We agreed not to just toss the word out on the whim of feeling. This led to a seriousness of commitment in our relationship, a purposefulness and honesty which I think many are afraid to pursue in relationships today (I had been afraid of it in the past!). We all feel we have to do this dance back and forth. I suppose that makes sense before you say the "L" word...I mean, you have to figure out if this is the person you want to be with. But your word should be your word...if you aren't sure, don't say it. With my husband, I was lucky enough to be dating someone who was already a good friend, so we felt more able to be honest with each other. I wonder, is there a way for our generation to be more up front without scaring each other away?

I hate seeing my friends going through this confusing dance. It used to be the case that when a gentleman took to courting a lady, there were certain rules. I can appreciate that young people have more freedom now to marry who they will, but at the same time, I sometimes think we have no rules to follow. It's so darn tough...pursue this much, pull back this much...sometimes it seems like you need a math class to calculate it all out. So, I'm not advocating pushing yourself on someone, or assuming that you are God's will for their life...but I am advocating a whole lot more honesty, straightforwardness, and commitment. I'm part of this generation that struggles so much with commitment...but I think it's time we found our backbone, time we stood for something, time we gave of ourselves in real, self-sacrificial love. You have only to meet some couple that has been married for 50 years and is still smiling to know how wonderful this can be.