A High-Tech, Old-Powered Remedy

Cough, cough… two dry coughs are followed by an intentionally shallow sigh so I don’t launch more of them like Roman Candles.  I’m tired of coughing, and I’m miffed to admit I have so little control over this cold.  At the start, I took the first cold pills I came across in my stash of random meds; then, when that didn’t work well enough to suit me, I resorted to finding my glasses and actually reading the mini-print on the label beyond the section that began with the bold-faced “Directions.” I took more pills, different pills, pills for different symptoms, and then, I took a break from taking pills to avoid a rebound effect that I think I remember some doctor talking about on TV one time.  Cough, cough...’why two times?’ I wonder absentmindedly. I’m not sure about much today, but I am pretty sure that my mind politely absented itself sometime around 3 AM.  Can’t have gone far though.   I’ll probably come across it somewhere around here when I’m picking up used tissues later.  Too tired to look now.

I shuffle to the computer desk and sit down, pressing a few buttons to find the world.  Still there.  Someone “likes” someone else’s post.  Nosey me, I click to see what that might be and I’m led to a Youtube upload of a slightly balding man playing an old hymn on the piano.  He’s alone.  Me too.  So, although the song is one I’ve heard a zillion and a half times, one I’ve sung so many times that I know all 4 verses by heart, I decide to unmute the speaker icon and let it roll.  To tell the truth, I decide to listen, at least partially, because I remember how irritated I was last night when a TV commercial advertising a rock concert struck me as having usurped its title to describe a mere couple of decades of radio oldies.  Calling their concert “Rock of Ages” seemed like a no-brainer affront to God, even if the hymn itself was old as the hills from whence its image came.  I was in a growly, dug-in mood.  Then, here today, in the broad daylight that I’m greeting with squinty eyes, the song itself arrives on my Internet doorstep.  I click in defiance, on principle, to demonstrate, to no one in particular, which side I’m on.  Click, click…

He sings slowly.  In no hurry.  Usually I prefer upbeat renditions, but today I just give up. 

Which, as it turns out, is the perfect way to hear this song.  At the second verse, my heart decides it’s OK to barge in with my raspy voice and make a duet of it.  Naked…helpless…foul.  Perhaps also, arrogant…controlling…wallowing in self-pity? I clear my throat during the interlude and to my surprise, I “soar to worlds unknown” in soprano.  But in the end I pray in a spoken, broken-voice, “let me hide myself in Thee.”  Once again.   

Tired, sick, old Christian that I am at times. 

Turns out that I’m still tucked into that sound, safe place.

So, I’m typing, and coughing, and still typing, and part of me thinks this will sound too hokey, too Jimmy-Fallon-Thank-You-Note-ish, but here goes.  Thank you, George Hunsberger, and thank you, some friend of a friend - unknown to me - for posting, for liking, and simply for being yourselves out there.  You matter to me.  And thank you James Ward, whoever you are, for singing and playing so beautifully. ( http://youtu.be/UznDZGOLTM8 )

It’s all so simply graceful.

You know.  

Pastor Shirley   

A mother remembers...

A recent conversation with a ministry colleague, who also happens to be a young mother, made me think of this poem, written shortly after I delivered our first child many years ago.

As my friend reminds me, one of the essential differences between the way we tend to celebrate Christmas these days and the biblical story of our Lord's birth that we proclaim is the inherent level of control embedded in our expectations.

This poem takes a more back-to-basics approach to "expecting."  It's called, 13 more days.

Thirteen more days

'til Christmas --

We know beforehand

just when to celebrate

the nativity.  We

count shopping days,

penciling activities

on December's blocks,

organizing his birth.

Yet in that first moment

the words

must have been whispered

as they have been

many thousands of times

before and since,

in surprise and surety –

"It's time, Joseph. It's time."

Lord, awaken us this Christmas

sharply, suddenly,

that we might gasp

with Mary's joy,

"He's come!"

Pastor Shirley

What's Working?

I’ve always been interested in how things work and yet, I still persist in trying to catch the news in some form each day. That’s either a comment on the resiliency of optimism (holding out hope for a report of a random act of kindness somewhere), the addictive quality of pessimism (now what!), or something else.

Inaccessible healthcare websites, international surveillance of cell phone conversations, renewed interest in conspiracy theories for historical events, lack of support for public schools, shifting more responsibility for food and shelter for the unemployed or underemployed to non-profits, distrust of government representatives, disgust at huge profits and bailouts, long terms of recovery from being underwater either from storm surges or from mortgage losses - our society is a mess!  My own chosen constructs and political leanings sway and stagger.  My confidence wanes.  I’m sick of it.  Tired.  And the irony is that in the midst of this, I’m actually fine. By that I mean I’m still standing.  Solvent.  Healthy.  Secure. Befriended.  Married with children. Educated. Passionate about my life’s work. Blessed.  Fortunate.  I take the cake, as they say, on all the above, but I’m frosted with frustration and foreboding. This is what I have in common with nearly everyone I know.  I’m beginning to discover that the only thing that might work will have to be “something else.” 

I’m a Christian, but not the sort of Christian that you might expect, that is, not the sort that seems to make the daily news.  For example, I don’t worry about prayer in public schools.  I prayed in study halls, at lockers, at ball games, on my way to and from schools all my life, and I never missed another person leading the group in prayers aloud because, for one thing, the bible, and Jesus in particular, warns against its pitfalls (Matthew 6: 5-6).  In fact, I don’t regularly grumble about or retreat from humanity with all its flagrant failures and debauchery, partly because I was raised to practice honest self-examination and largely because Jesus was known for moving among and eating with low life.  It was the one true, irrefutable charge against him, and yet, in the context of his purpose and character, that choice was transformed from a condemnation to confirmation of his message and then, believe it or not, to commission for those who would follow him. 

In trying to figure out how things work, I’ve uncovered the value of that rather inauspicious word, expectation.  It was like discovering hidden wealth.  What do I expect?  The difference between what I expect and reality is the measure of my disappointment or sense of offense.  Since I can’t fix reality, I had better adjust expectations.  That doesn’t mean I accept or – what’s the psychological advice? – embrace reality.  While I am diametrically opposed to embracing judgment, I also don’t embrace what prickles or is sleazy.  There’s a third way.  I embrace something else. 

So, here’s how it works:  You have to pack and carry two basic expectations:  1) Jesus is Jesus.  We are only like Jesus when His Spirit produces something else through our attempts to engage life’s situations and relationships.  2) People are people, God love them.  Everyone I meet is lovable, because God made them so and, in fact, does love them.  But at the same time, everyone I meet is also certainly selfish.  Everyone I meet struggles with the dichotomy of money or other form of personal power and God; everyone chooses regularly between self-indulgence and sacrifice.  Everyone I meet is self-righteous, excusing him or herself and judging others.  Everyone.  It’s only when I expect something different from that, something more from others, that I’m offended, disappointed, frustrated, or shocked.  It’s only when I expect something different, something more that I tend to play dress-up in self-righteousness myself, tossing those faux-god boas of emotional reaction around my shoulders.  You can flaunt high and mighty principles all day long, but you can’t fix people.  They won’t shape up.  They don’t shame up.  They aren’t berated into better-ness. 

I expect Jesus to be Jesus and people to be people.  At the same time, I try to remember which one I am and how I'm doing at the moment.  And, especially, I remember that Jesus repurposes damaged goods, left and right.  He’s good at it.  Perfect, actually.  That’s not too high an expectation to believe; he is something else. 

So I expect the news to be graphic and gripping and awful much of the time, unless interrupted by God's grace and provision.  I expect the world to be continually dying and bent on decaying and God to be continually resurrecting and life-giving.  I do not expect to be abandoned, because I have God’s word on it that that will never happen.  I expect praise to be a response, not pre-requisite or leverage in my relationship with such a powerful ally who is also, always my loving abba-father.  That’s as far as I can go with figuring out how it all works here.  It gives me a place to stand and not be blown away.  It gives me a place to start. 

May you have undaunted Grace and Peace, 
Pastor Shirley