Eight years ago I made a paper collage icon of the biblical Martha, using cut-up pieces of old Sunday School lithographs. I modernized her, imagined her as a clergywoman (or my experience as a clergywoman) and so, in addition to wearing her very proper clerical collar, she was also holding a baby in one hand and a toilet plunger in the other. She was surrounded by all the women who encouraged her over the years – and one who was very grumpy about the whole thing and really thought that only men should be pastors. Ask any clergywoman you know, and she will concur with the experience.
And so the Matron Saints (h/t to my friend Michelle Bartel, who came up with the title) were born. I made twelve, and each was a woman in a Bible story whom I admired or thought a lot about and who represented an issue in the world, the nation, or my life. Creating them helped me get through the first Trump administration.
I made notecards and sold some and then let them be. But the time has come for them to be dusted off. So this post is really a bit of a shameless plug, because not only am I selling cards again ($30 for a pack of 12 Matron Saints, or $3 per card, plus shipping if you’re not local) but I also made calendars and they are, much to my surprise, selling like hotcakes ($25, plus shipping.)
If you want to know more about this project, click on the “matron saints” tab above, and on its drop-down menu. If you’d like to order some, reply to this and then I’ll follow up.
In the meantime, be well, and be blessed, and don’t give up hope.
I’ve been on a tree kick lately, art-wise. I think they’re birches, but they may be aspens. They’re not exactly accurate.
I was inspired to make my own trees (paper collage) after seeing the beautiful liturgical banners my friend Nanette created of birches – or aspen – after our clergy group met at Rocky Mountain National Park, where the dining room is decorated with images of aspen (probably not birches.)
To be honest, usually my art reflects something that’s going on inside, so as I’m currently working on my fourth tree picture, I’ve wondered why trees are speaking to me right now, beyond the inspiration from my friend.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of reading The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben. He opened my eyes to a world I had never known and I was struck by the way trees not only live in community, but thrive in community. As Tim Flannery writes in the foreward, “…the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today…. The reason trees share food and communicate is that they need each other. It takes a forest to create a microclimate suitable for tree growth and sustenance. So it’s not surprising that isolated trees have far shorter lives than those living connected together in forests.”
Then I understood my current fascination with trees. Community is not only fun, and wanted, it is utterly essential for our thriving. I write this three days after the presidential election, at a time when my communities, my circles, are feeling as though they have been clear cut. Devastation. Death. Disregard. All in the name of profit or greed or power. A tree cares about none of those things. I would say a tree is amoral, except that we assign moral value to community and trees are communal beings.
The other thing that struck me about trees is that they have muscle memory of a sorts, wood memory. We see it in the rings they make after they have died or we have chopped them down. We can tell what sort of year it was by the width of the ring – a year of growth, maybe, or a year of drought or some other calamity.
If you cut us in half, right above the belly-button, you won’t see rings. But we carry muscle memory, and gray hairs, and wrinkles in our brow that won’t go away. We carry bags under our eyes, and extra flesh around our middle after indulging in necessary comfort food and drink. We carry stressed-out hearts, and headaches that won’t go away, and are not all that surprised when our blood pressure, like our weight or our bad cholesterol, goes up and up.
Well, then, what are we to do. A sentence, not a question, because I’m not sure anyone is really in a place to answer that yet, and I have a sinking suspicion that any answer would be premature. So for now, I will be like a tree. I will give thanks for my many communities, and however I can, be a resource, a friend, a helpmeet to all those. I hope that my community grows larger, like a forest that is untamed.
If you can, in the next few days, go wander among the trees for a bit. Breathe deeply. Listen to them. Smell their mid-autumn scent. Kick up their leaves. Be inspired. Be like a tree, and take care of your forest.
When my husband and I got married nineteen years ago, one of the people on both of our invitee lists was a woman named Georgia, whom we’d both known before we knew each other. Georgia was the quintessential church lady. She would be 101 now if she was still with us, and was of that generation of women who (mostly) stayed home to raise the kids, volunteered out the wazoo, and never wore pants. That’s a tremendous generalization, of course, but you get the picture.
She was on the search committee for the first church I served. The first time I came to interview, because I was moving from the beautiful produce aisles of California to the iffy ones of the midwest, I asked if I could visit a grocery store. She looked at me for all of three seconds like I had two heads, but then said yes, and arranged a visit to the local Jewel Osco.
She was also the person who made the communion bread every month, except it was more like sweet pie crust than it was bread. I asked her once how she got to do that, and she said, “Well, when Chick C. was chair of the deacons he wasn’t married yet, and the wife of the deacons chair always made the communion bread, so I said I’d make and I never stopped.” At that point Chick C. and his wife had been married about fifty years. I didn’t question Georgia any more.
Anyway, when we got married she gave us a Waterford cookie jar which had not been on our gift registry but which delighted me. I never would have thought to register for such an elegant, impractical thing, but I loved it and love it still, though it now holds coffee pods and not cookies.
Reception after my ordination with my mom and dad in the receiving line.
October 3 is the thirtieth anniversary of my ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I’ve been reflecting on that a bit, because thirty years of anything seems like a long time, but here I am much to my amazement. So I’ve been thinking about people like Georgia, and all the other saints who got me to this day.
With the Revs. Eileen Parfrey and Laurie Newman, two of the clergy women I’ve been privileged to serve with
I dare not name them because I will undoubtedly forget someone, but I am filled with the faces and stories of people who encouraged me, challenged me, thanked and congratulated me; those who pissed me off or disregarded me, those who treated me like the hired help, those thought no woman should be in a pulpit and all those women who went before me so that I could take my place there. Thank you all.
On my thirtieth ordiversary, allow me to confess a few things.
Every year of these last thirty I have thought about leaving the ministry. Being a pastor can be glorious and can be utterly disheartening. I could make more money. I could have weekends off. I could tell people what I do for a living and not have them make immediate assumptions about me. A three day weekend could really be a three day weekend without having to take a vacation day. Every year I’ve thought about doing something else. But I haven’t.
Sometimes I admit that the real reason I went into ministry is so that I would be a good person. I wasn’t sure I could be good if I weren’t tied to God and the church. I worried I would give into greed, and consumerism, and selfishness, and meanness and, maybe most importantly, not hold myself accountable for those actions. I am far, far, far from perfect, but because I am a pastor, I work harder to be good than I would if I weren’t one.
The last confession is a good one: God and Jesus placed this call in my heart and my head and God and Jesus have not left me or taken that call away. That’s as good a reason as any why I’m still here. The love of God is as strong a tether as I know, and I am grateful, because there are seasons in pastoring when it all feels like free falling and without that tether, I would be a pile of broken bones and hearts and dreams.
So I thank my family and remember when Dad and Jack and I all got baptized on the same day and the day I told Mom I was going to seminary and she said she always knew I would. I thank my first church family at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston. I thank the family that took me under care at First Presbyterian Church, New Vernon, NJ. I thank my family at San Francisco Theological Seminary. I thank my family at Simpson United Methodist Church in Minneapolis where I interned for a year. I thank the congregations that welcomed me and taught me and then sent me off: First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois; First Presbyterian Church, Crown Point, Indiana; Community Presbyterian Church, Clarendon Hills, Illinois; The Kettle Moraine Parish, Waukesha County, Wisconsin; Southminster Presbyterian Church, Waukesha, Wisconsin; Crossroads Presbyterian Church, Mequon, Wisconsin. And the place where I am now, for twelve years, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Portland, Oregon.
Maybe a Waterford cookie jar isn’t a bad image for ministry. It is glass, which means if it breaks it shatters and you can get hurt, but it’s leaded glass, which means it’s also durable. You can see what’s inside, not only like the fishbowl that pastors live in but also the glimpse into the intimate moments of people’s lives. And it holds good things: children of God who gather for a million different reasons, who seek the love of their Creator, who seek forgiveness, who seek wisdom and community and cookies after worship and trust and faith and hope and love.
With co-pastor/husband, parking lot communion on Easter Sunday 2021. I added flowers to my face shield, as you do.
I’d like to share a lovely (in the end) story from yesterday.
I was in my office at the church, and one of our staff members called. She was a block away, and a young man was having a medical emergency, and was that the sort of thing that a pastor might want to know or help out with. I said yes, and my co-pastor/husband and I went out.
Indeed, a young man had collapsed next to his car after stopping at the local bakery. Our colleague and another bystander had called 911, and had determined that the man spoke Spanish. I remember a decent amount of my high school Spanish, enough to reassure him that help was on the way. In the meantime, a woman who lived in the condo in front of where the young man collapsed came out to see if she could help, as did someone from the bakery.
Eventually a police officer arrived, and I think his heart was lightened that it was not a fentanyl overdose, which he has experienced a lot of lately. He made sure the paramedics were on their way, and soon enough, the EMT/firefighters arrived. I don’t know how to ask, “Are you dizzy?” in Spanish, but I was able to tell the EMTs that he had a horrible headache. I think I told the man I was a pastor and would pray for him, but I might have said that I was a shepherdess with gold. The police officer was able to use the emergency contact on the young man’s phone and reached his spouse. The ambulance came, started an IV, and took him to the hospital.
I went to the hospital, mostly because I wanted the man’s spouse to have someone to talk to about what happened. The fellow at the ED check-in desk could not have been any nicer. He took my card and heard the story which he said he would pass on to the man. I then found a chaplain, who was equally kind. I do wonder what they thought of me and my boundaries – but I figured I wasn’t violating any HIPAA things and I left the ball in their court to contact me.
This morning when I got to the office, the man’s spouse had left me a voicemail, thanking me and all those who helped. And then just as I sat down to write this post, the young man called. He was relieved I spoke Spanish. (I told him he needed to speak slowly.) He was better, and home, and he really just want to say thank you. But we agreed to get together for coffee next week.
So thank you to the strangers who noticed a young man in pain and stopped to help. Thank you to the neighbor and the bakery worker. Thank you to the first responders and EMTs and the hospital staff.
Remember, friends: kindness is never wasted. Being present to others really is a superpower.
A group of seven amazing women have joined me this Lent for a discussion of the book This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley. If you haven’t yet read it, stop reading this blog, order it from a bookstore or library, and begin to savor it. The book is like chocolate mousse – rich and beautiful and something to be savored slowly, like mousse or a really good Cabernet.
Anyway, last night as we discussed the book our conversation wandered off a bit, as happens. We were talking about how someone so young – Arthur Riley is in her early thirties – can write with such depth of wisdom. Maybe she is an old soul. But we also talked about how the love her father and grandmother showed her affected her. And then we wandered off in our conversation.
I am the parent of a teenager. I am blessed – as is my daughter – to have known some of her friends since they were all kindergartners. I know and love their parents. I have enjoyed watching them grow up and navigate all sorts of things we navigate – the onset of periods, the waning and waxing of friendships, latent talents emerging or big talents fading away – and things I never had to navigate when I was a teenager – mobile phones, social media, climate change.
As I watch these friends and my own child thrive and struggle, I want to tell them that everything will be okay, even though I know that isn’t true. Sometimes things aren’t okay and never will be. Sometimes the person is killed by the cancer. Sometimes the breaks in the relationship are unmendable. Sometimes the wildfires can’t be stopped. So resiliency matters, being able to weather the storm, being able to get back on one’s feet, or at least get out of bed.
One of the women in the book discussion group is a pediatrician and knows better than I the things that kids face, and the need to develop resiliency. A key to that, in my opinion though I think she would agree, is knowing that someone delights in you.
Who delights you? What awkward tween delights you? What child waving hi brightens your day? Who makes you smile when you think of them? And have you told them that, in so many words? And when you tell them that, do you make sure they know that your delight in them is unconditional?
Here’s the thing about resiliency and delight: they go hand-in-hand. Resiliency isn’t about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Resiliency requires community, connection, knowing that you aren’t alone. Resiliency requires that you have cheerleaders, coaches, people who remind you of how delightful you are, even when you are in the midst of suffering or shame or grief.
Because we will all know suffering. We will all know shame. We will all know grief. That we all will know those things (if we haven’t already) is a bond we share. And maybe when you can’t get out of bed and all the colors look faded and nothing tastes good, you don’t want to hear that Auntie Jane adores you. But maybe Auntie Jane will show up with a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, and bring it to you in bed, and listen to you, because she delights in you.
So please, please: if there is someone you delight in, tell them or show them, especially if they are going through a hard time. Especially if they are a child or teenager, because they have been through it with Covid in ways we’ll never understand. Especially if they are a human being.
You, by the way, are delightful. Thank you for reading this.
I had forgotten so much about September in these past few years.
I had forgotten that those who can flee for beaches and mountains and just plain other places over Labor Day weekend, squeezing in one last breath of summer like pause. I forgot how quiet the block is, how fewer people show up for church.
I had forgotten the absolutely delightful sound of children screaming in fun on the nearby school playground; the posting of all the first-day-of-school pictures on social media; the sight of parent holding their kindergartner’s hand as they head to school for the first time.
I had forgotten the nostalgia and melancholy that whisper to me as the days are now visibly shorter, as the occasional cool night remind me of what is coming. I had forgotten that long-planted desire to buy a plaid skirt and mary janes.
I had forgotten how busy things get again for people, for families with kids in school, at church when all the programming starts up again and there are room schedules to juggle, and information to get out, and more demands on my time. I forgot how very extroverted I get in the fall.
Two years of a pandemic changed what I remember. In the midst of this weekend’s fire warnings across the state, I remember two years ago when the air quality index was literally off the charts bad. I remember the depressing silence of the nearby playground. I remember meeting everyone’s dogs, and then meeting those dogs’ people. I remember preaching to the tiny camera on my computer. I remember sleeping well and worrying a lot.
This September I am restless. I know I’m forgetting things despite my well cultivated to-do lists. I am restless for any weather other than skies that smell of smoke and have no color and host a pink sun. I am anxious to know if the families at church discovered other ways to spend their time on Sunday morning. At the end of summer, I long for a vacation.
So many September songs – I am not the only one who finds this a provoking month. “Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow.” “Do you remember the twenty-first night of September?” “Wake me up, when September ends.”
Well, it is a transitional month and we are in a liminal time, so perhaps restless or nostalgic or sad, or excited, or eager, are all valid.
“Chronos time is how we measure our days and our lives quantitatively. Kairos is the qualitative time of life.” (Josep F. Maria, SJ)
I’m thinking about Holy Week, and worship services for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. I’m thinking about palms and azaleas and stripping the church. I’m thinking about despair and hope, short-term and long-term wins, and whether or not to invite folks up to the sing the “Hallelujah” chorus this year. In other words, I’m a pastor three weeks out from Holy Week.
On Holy Saturday, our group of dedicated volunteers will decorate the sanctuary for Easter: butterfly banners, white paraments, real azaleas and fake lilies, as the organist and this pastor are allergic to the real ones. The problem is that the flowers get delivered on Good Friday, and must be hidden away lest one preparing for the solemnity and sadness of Good Friday be confronted with the hope and life of Easter.
It’s like chronos time – the delivery of Easter flowers on Good Friday – collides with kairos time – the holiness and presence of God in despair and in joy. Maybe that’s just what life is: flowers in the midst of mourning.
It’s like all the images of sunflowers in social media, signs of support for the people of Ukraine enduring the horrors of war. It’s like wee flowering weeds pushing up between cracks in the concrete. It’s like that grain of wheat which must fall and die in order to bear much fruit.
To be honest, it’s what coming out of this pandemic (please, God; fingers crossed) feels like. There’s the chronos of fewer and fewer requirements to wear masks, and the declining numbers of hospitalizations and death. There’s the wonder of seeing people’s smiles in real life, and sitting in a restaurant and catching up with a favorite waiter.
And there’s the kairos of our emotional and psychological landscape having been forever altered by the experiences of these past two years. We cannot get back the things that we missed. We cannot say goodbye to the people who died when hospital visits were prohibited and memorial services had to be livestreamed. I can count five people who were dying whom I said goodbye to on the phone. It was awful. The sadness, despair, and anger that hung over us and inside us during the pandemic is not something that can be measured, put on a calendar, given an end date. Those things exist in the kairos time.
Some years when Easter morning dawns, I am still in Good Friday. Sure, I’ve written a homily for the day but it feels as real to me as the fake lilies that don’t make me sneeze. And there have been Good Fridays when I’m just pretending to be sad and solemn but my heart and soul are already at the empty tomb. As much as I like things to be in order, I have finally accepted that I cannot plan out my feelings or schedule my soul. And that is good.
So maybe this year, as I walk by the Easter azaleas on my way to conduct the Good Friday service, I will let all of that be, knowing that while God’s time is not my time, nor our time, God is still present with us all the time.
Yesterday morning, as I was drinking my coffee and going over my sermon, which would be delivered to an online-only congregation, I read a headline and immediately had some thoughts. As of Monday morning, only two parishioners have sent me a link to yesterday’s New York Times editorial by Tish Harrison Warren, “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services“.
In case there is a paywall and you can’t access the editorial, in a nutshell Ms. Warren makes the case for dropping online services (which would include livestreamed and prerecorded) and going back to in-person services only. Her theological point is valid: Christians are an incarnational people, and worship is best in person, when it is visceral, physical, when we get to experience the best and worst of being with other people. We can hear their voices and the cry of babies; we can smell our favorite person’s perfume or shampoo; we hear the whine of hearing aids being adjusted, and truly share from a common loaf and common cup. Some of those thoughts are my extrapolation of hers.
But. But but but but but. I fear that Ms. Warren has not taken in the fullness of the Body of Christ into her argument.
Last night, my favorite group of pastors weighed in on the article in a text chain. I trust these people with my faith and with my life, with laughter and with preferences in bourbon. They agreed with me (which is always nice) and here is what we would say in response to Ms. Warren and maybe anyone who believes that online worship should go the way of tokens for communion, male-only clergy, and a publication of what each family pledges to the church.
First: not everyone can manage the physicality of our worship spaces. The congregation I serve has worked hard to make our sanctuary accessible, and it is, but it’s a long walk or wheelchair ride from the accessible entrance (which is right next to the garbage bin enclosure) to the sanctuary. And frankly, for anyone with back problems, our pews are uncomfortable if not excruciating. Some have a hard time wearing a mask for an hour or so. And some can see and hear better online.
Second: some people cannot come to worship. Some live far away. Some are sick. Some are unable to leave their home. Some live with chronic anxiety and public gatherings are terrifying. Some have a napping baby. There might be a winter storm with icy streets. Offering online worship provides a way to get that weekly dose of Jesus that might not otherwise be possible.
Third: computers are not going away. Online events are not going away. Using technology is not going away. We wonder how many of our committees will choose to continue to meet on Zoom, rather than drive to church on a dark and rainy night, going straight from work to a meeting without getting any dinner. Rather than shun the opportunity that online worship offers, we should embrace it.
There are probably more reasons but three seems a good number. Let me add that last night we made the decision to go back to in-person worship and I could not be happier about that.
And as for me and my house, we will continue to offer both in-person and online worship, to the glory of God.
Photo taken by a parishioner worshipping only. She and her husband are unable to attend in person because of health concerns.
What if, in our lifetimes, we had the ability to perform one miracle?
That thought came to mind as I was walking the dog the other morning, when I often get my best thoughts. We were walking by my neighbors’ house, and I was wishing I could make his cancer disappear. That would be a miracle, because it’s the kind of cancer that cannot be cured.
What if we all got one miracle?
Years ago, a parishioner who was very dear to me experienced a cataclysmic medical event, went into a coma on life support for two weeks, and then, after the family decision to remove the life support, died. She was fifty years old, good, kind, funny, healthy, and beloved. When I went to see her in the hospital, unresponsive, machines helping her breathe, feeding her, helping her eliminate – that sound of those machines has never left me. I prayed so hard for a miracle. “Save her,” I prayed, again and again, knowing in my soul that only God could save her, that her recovering would be a miracle.
But it didn’t happen.
As I walked the dog, I entertained the idea. If I had one miracle, would I use it at the first opportunity and then be done? And if I did that, would I regret it later on? Or would I save it, thinking that if my child ever needed it, it would be there for her? And if she never needed it and I never used it, would it become a wasted miracle? Or would I save it for myself? Or would I use it for peace in places of war, or water in places of drought, or a contraption that would prevent catalytic converter theft?
By the time I was home and taking the dog’s leash off, I decided I would not want the responsibility and burden of having a miracle at my disposal. Too hard to make that decision, too much of a temptation to be selfish or selfless, to have that sort of power.
We don’t get miracles, but we do get other things, like patience and prayer, like hope and grace. We get doctors and scientists and pharmacists. We get casseroles and Postmates gift cards. We get friends who drop everything at moment’s notice. We get hospital chaplains and Kleenex and gallows humor. In the end, maybe all those are better than a miracle.
Hold Fast to What Is Good 