Category: Words and Rabble

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My Pastor(s)

In 2005, I read Father Joe, Tony Hendra’s memoir of his encounters with “the man who saved [his] life.” The opening lines sets the table: How I met Father Joe. I was fourteen and having an affair with a married woman.

Obviously, Tony was a troubled youngster. One awkward (but ultimately fortunate) day, the husband walked in on his wife and Tony in each other’s arms. Concerned for Tony’s well-being, the husband contacted an English Benedictine abbey and connected Tony with Father Joe who, for the following decades, became Tony’s guide, spiritual father and friend.

I believe all of us, even those of us with far less memorable prompts than Tony, find ourselves in need of wise spiritual guides, friends who will listen to our stories, learn the contours of our heart and then help us to see the truth and help us to stay true to our path. This world is confusing. And wearying. We need help.

I have a good father who I talk with regularly. He counsels me on any major decision, and he listens in on many minor ones. My dad is a man of integrity. He is a gift.

I also have a pastor. He’s retired now and lives a good distance from me. We converse via letters. It’s a slow, leisurely conversation that happens across miles and months. It’s not so much his answers to my questions that I find life-giving (in fact, answer would be a bit generous – he’s sparse on specific advice); rather it is the patient, plodding reminders he offers, simple nods toward what is true and beautiful and worthy of my love and energy.

Let_God_Francois_Fenelon

Several years ago, I found another wise, spiritual guide, another pastor of sorts: François Fénelon. Two friends introduced me to an old volume of letters passed between Fénelon and those he was guiding in faith, most of whom served in the debauched court of Louis XIV. These letters, old as they were, touch on precisely the themes I wanted to explore: fear, doubt, faith, hearing God, prayer, loneliness, friendship, community, boredom, relentless noise, suffering.

I was so taken by Fénelon’s gentle (but sharp) voice that I wanted others to hear these conversations. I wanted others to find a guide in Fénelon even if they hadn’t yet found their own flesh-and-blood pastor or Father Joe. So, I wrote a book, and Paraclete was kind enough to publish it. However, it never was made available digitally. I’m pleased to announce that now it is, on the Kindle and the Kindle app on ipad, etc.

For the next 8 days or so, it will be available for $2.99. Then the price will jump. You may download it, and if you find that you like it, I’d much appreciate it if you’d pass the word to your friends, small groups — or even irreligious friends curious about matters spiritual. There really is something here for most everyone. And as you might know in this crazy book world, if friends don’t help me out, my work is dead in the water.

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Sugar Shack

We dropped the boys off for summer camp, and I half wanted an invite to stay. Just after the entrance, we passed a paintball course and the archery range. Once we parked, I sighted a massive water slide and a 15 foot high platform from which you would jump, drop onto a wide rubber launch pad called “the blob” and then catapult into the water. Rock climbing wall, skate ramp, zip line. Mercy.

Before leaving, I noticed a small hut, painted funky blue, near the lake’s edge. Scribbled across the front, in psychedelic scrawl, was the shanty’s name: The Sugar Shack. I like the whole bohemian motif, but my boys first time away from any part of our family circle would be a week mixing it with young beauties at a place that has a spot, next to the lake no less, dubbed The Sugar Shack. Mercy.

Miska and I were undeterred, however. We were crossing our own threshold – that blessed (and for years now, entirely unfathomable) moment where we get a second taste of what life was like when there were two, not four, in the clan. The week would be all for pleasure: good books, vineyards, local culinary spots we’ve wanted to try, late mornings with premium coffee. I overheard Miska humorously describe our plans to a friend: “We’re going to pull down the shades and descend into hedonistic revelry.” Now those are words that would make any husband perk up. Our own sugar shack. Mercy.

Wyatt and Seth loved camp, everything about it. Yesterday, they regaled me with energetic tales of the Shack. It was amazing, profound, eye-opening. They had no idea what they’d been missing, and they were certain life would never be the same. I braced for the details: Apparently, The Sugar Shack serves snow cones with any variation of the available 50 flavors of syrup, all for 50¢.

Mercy.

Every summer – and every marriage – needs a place called The Sugar Shack.

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The Groove of Love

On a recent return trip from Memphis, a flashing engine light, a front brake grinding to bare steel and a battery calling it quits at a rest area all combined to provide us one heck of a day. As the drive drug mercilessly on, Miska sensed her family's spiraling weariness and, in a truly selfless act, broke out in song. Channeling Tina, she sang, What's love got to do, got to do with it. Miska raised her arms and put her body into it. The confines of the front seat and the restraint of the seatbelt was all that kept her from completely getting her groove on. I loved it. I joined in. The car was rocking. 

Since then, when it seems the family needs a quick pulse of levity, Miska or I will hit the first note, and the other catches up. Neither of us would ever be mistaken for musically gifted, but we let it rip none the less. The boys, let me tell you, are thrilled. They roll their eyes and groan and cover their ears. A time or two, though, I've heard them sing the tune themselves. Protest all you want, a good song snags you whether you like it or not.

A couple days ago, we realized the boys had never heard the actual version. They'd never heard Tina Turner belt her way through this sad tale of second hand emotions. Miska cued the single, and after the closing note, Seth said, "Mom, it's way better when you sing it."

Seth's effusive words tell the truth: Love has everything to do with it.

 

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Vocation and Healing

My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but unsubconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. But it can also deepen the wound. {Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone}

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Yesterday, a friend asked why I became a pastor. My story's both as dull and as fascinating as every story you'd discover with such a question. My path (and my vocation) has all the holiness, but no more, as my friends who pound hammers, type code, or translate German. Tending to soil or tending to children is no different, other than minor particulars, from tending to souls or words. All of it will make you giddy. All of it will break your heart.

I took up the stole the same way I took up the pen and pretty much the same way (with a few more hairpin curves) I became a husband and then a father. I had a desire I couldn't shake accompanied by a fear I'd screw up and be a fool, two signals (especially when they arrive holding hands) that you're on to something important. I took the step in front of me, and I kept stepping. And here I am with a few scars, a few stories and much, much gratitude.

To me, the more interesting question is: why do I stay a pastor? There are plenty of reasons not to, none of which I'll bore you with here. However, this place, this community, this way I've found to tend to my little plot of earth, is where I've settled. Lest this somehow come across more noble than I intend (or more noble than the truth), let me clarify. I am not a pastor because of a mystical, irrevocable call or due to unrelenting faith. I do not pastor because I possess a driving vision for a new expression of the church of tomorrow. I do not pastor for the pay or the prestige, both of which are (how shall I put this?) … thin.

I am a pastor because this is what, for now, my heart has to give away. I am a pastor because I have found that somehow, as I labor for the mending of other broken and weary souls, I encounter my own mending, my own healing. My sermons do not provide my lectures for the congregation, but rather my questions searching for answers, my convictions born out of travail. I do not pray as one who, with iron-clenched certainty, stares down mysteries; I pray trembling. But I pray and I tremble with tenacious hope. 

Verghese tells us that to live such a way invites both healing and wounding. I believe this will be the experience of every true vocation, every place where, more than merely our skill or expertise, we choose to give away our life and to offer our work and ourselves as fellow humans doing the best we know to follow every scent of grace.

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Songs of Friendship

On my desk sits a picture of me conversing with two friends. We're situated on old pews at the front of an old stone chapel. Gold rays cascade through the row of four stained glass windows perched high, at the rear of the vestry. The light shoots a straight train from those lofty windows down to the tops of our heads, as if the sun wanted to pass a few final blessings before setting. 

Miska took my photograph and printed a line on it reminding me that "to love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten." She knows that these friends, along with a few others, do this for me. And I hope I do the same for them.

We all need people to remind us what is true about ourselves, pointing out with great delight our strength and beauty and splendidness. We need people who believe in, and trust, the deep good God Almighty has firmly planted within us. You can go anywhere and hear someone sing a song of rejection or regret, duty or obligation, judgment or dismissal. We need more songs of hope, more songs of everlasting friendship. We need more blessings before the sun sets. 

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Buzzsaw

Why does the journey to the calm, peaceful terrain of our soul often require the most violent encounters? When we desire authentic living and a heart of integrity, when we commit to our true self rather than the many fictitous personas, hold on. We're about to run through a buzzsaw.

We expend extravagant amounts of energy attempting to tightly manage risk, working to craft an impeccable identity and concocting safety by charting the future with us securely at the wheel. Eventually, we recognize the futility, and we take a good look at what our commitments to these illusions have cost us. We're only a shadow of our true person. And we are never at rest.

Now we have a choice. If we choose to be free, which is what it means to be true, we must be courageous. What follows will be a death of old ways and old lies. We may wail and curse and attempt to turn back, but, having tasted something more, we keep going. We want to live. And once we step into the truth and abandon the lies we've crafted, we are graced, here and there, with suprising shots of contented joy. We learn, with practice, not to grasp for this grace. But we do receive it, and we are thankful.

When Jesus said that the seed first had to die before it could live, he wasn't blowing smoke.

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Fly, Birdie

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"Let the bird fly free," the old Mohawk proverb says. "If it returns, it is yours. If not, it never was." Wise words, repeated in ballads and poems and somewhere amid every junior high breakup that has ever existed. We tend to cling to this axiom when we're absolutely desparate, when we've tried every other trick in the bag and we hope that this pinnacle act of tough love will finally bring our child or career or lover or friend or blasted book we've been mud-wrestling with home.

Yesterday, as we drove through the rain, Seth pressed his nose to his window and watched. After a few minutes, he said, "Dad, you know what would be sad? If a bird flew into the storm and got pounded to the ground by the rain. Or fried by lightning."

"Yes, Seth. That would be sad."

That's the thing about those birds. Sometimes the birds we set free get chopped up in a squall or run into a line of buckshot or hook up with a revved, wide-eyed flock of party birds flying south to Cancun. And those birds aren't looking back.

If we release something, while clutching a demand for it to return, we haven't released it at all. If releasing a thing really only marks our attempt to trick someone back or to game the system, then we're merely continuing our role as the universe's control freak. To let the bird fly free means we truly let it loose. We send it with a prayer or a blessing. Our heart may stay with it. We may hope against hope that it returns. But we have said farewell. If anything changes, then that will be the first page of a new story.

For the past month, I've had bristling energy for a new book. After four years of book wasteland, I thought I was on to something. I sat back this weekend for the cold hard look. I see flashes here and there, but it's groping too much. It's flat. The words aren't true enough yet. I have to take my hands off the keyboard and let the pages fly into the waste basket and the filing cabinet. And the releasing can not be a mental maneuver to trick the creative gods into getting the juices flowing. I have to say a blessing and bit it adieux.

My fear is that the pages or ideas will never come back. I fear because I carry the misguided belief that there are a limited number of words, only a finite portion of opportunities. I'm greedy with my words, clasping them like a toddler grips his one tootsie roll. This greediness gives the surest sign that I must let it go.

* * * * 

Last month (interestingly, just about the time I hit high gear on my book), a couple birds and I were pitched in a skirmish for control of our balcony. After several vigilant days, I was the victor. However, last week I traveled out of town, and when I returned, Miska pointed out the nest as well as the bird atop looking rather coy.

The bottom line is that whether the birds are coming or going, we have precious little to say about it. We might as well stop fighting against our life. We'd do better to make peace with the birds and the people and the loss and the joy. And get on with the living. There's lots of that to do.

 

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Hear Your Laughter

My wife the poet put beauty to paper with her recent verse. This past weekend, I asked her to recite it for me, twice. I read the piece to a few friends last night, and one friend, Raul, said, "That comes from the heart of an empowered woman." Indeed.

Amid the many lines begging to be savored, she speaks of the invitation to "hear the sound of your own laughter." To listen for someone else's laughter is to delight in them, to take pleasure in their joy and their happiness. I have a friend named Tom whose deep belly guffaw is unmistakable, and it is one of the many things I love about him. When I haven't heard Tom's raucous joy in a while, I miss it.

However, to listen for my own laughter is to take delight in my joy and happiness, to know that anyone who doesn't revel in her own joy can't truly revel in another's.  Watching for my own laughter is to refuse sour spirituality and the false religion of self-flagellation and to believe that God is kind and generous, leaning forward, ready to grin and join the fun — God eager to hear me the way I'm eager to hear Tom.

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Slow Friendship

alanfrombangor

Last year, Dominion Power sent a crew through our neighborhood, switching out the old style meter boxes with a new digital model that, at the end of each month, shoots our monthly kilowatt usage to who knows where. Probably to an accountant in Wisconsin. So far as I know, I'm not co-dependent on the electric company, but as much money as I give them annually, there's something lacking when I don't have an actual person stop by my meter, checking in to see how my energy's doing.

I wish there were meters we could hot-wire to our souls, to tap in and see how our energy's doing. Miska regularly asks me (as I do her), "How is your heart?" Too often, it takes me too long to answer. This hesitation often signals that it's time to perk up, time to pay attention. We all need a person (or several) who will ask us these sorts of questions, people who actually want to wait and hear the answer. There is no substitute for a living, breathing friend whose mere presence in our life offers grace. Over years, these soul-friends see the ebb and flow. They notice the signals that trouble is brewing or sadness has knocked us a blow. They have the courage to tell us we're pushing the edge and need to taper down, and they have the history and the love to remind us, in the sketchiest places, that we've been here before and will be here again. 

Long-life friends give space to slow words and slow questions. They understand that knowing what to say is not nearly as vital as being willing to pause and be present. To let the moment be whatever it will be. To simply enjoy the conversation.

These friendships rarely happen quickly, and they must always endure relational swampland – that mucky stretch that stinks and provides little immediate joy, the muck you simply have to sludge through. Friendship that endures the years – and thrives amid the years – continually releases the demand for friendship to be efficient or to follow a straight line. Dominion Power replaced the meter because another could do the job with less hassle, less people, less cost. Obviously, they're aiming for profit, not friendship.

Other than Miska, I have a couple friends who do this for me, and I hope I do this for them. I'm horrid at staying connected via the phone, but the last week or two, I had to ring a couple of my pals. I simply needed to hear their good voice. I needed to be connected with that solid ground we share. I'm committed to them; and they to me. I don't know where the years will take us, what swamps we will traverse. But I'll walk it with these men.

If you don't have such a friend, I truly pray you find one. Until then, you could be this friend for another.

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A Blessing on Mother’s Day

Women of grace, beauty and immense courage: When you desire to nurture and create life, you embody for us the power and creative love of the Trinity, the God whose very being emanates life. When you bring flesh and bone from your womb, you renew for us the holy truth that God, from the very beginning, births all that is good and beautiful in our world. When you show us what is true and pray over us with tear-drenched faith and point us toward the God who loves us, you articulate what God’s Spirit longs to speak into our heart. You, woman and mother, are a prophet of the Living God.

For those who ache for the children you’ve lost or the children you’ve yet to know,

For those who know wounds and loss from your own mother or children,

For those in the thick of the bone-wearying labor of loving children – and especially those who think you’ve been drained of every last ounce of energy,

For those with regret,

For those who, on behalf of your children or another’s children, wage war against some evil that would ravage them,

For those who are loving, mothering or blessing children not your own,

For those with new life in your belly,

For those who need to know the powerful ways your love, nurture, prayers, tears, fears, anger, weariness, hope, laundry, meals, midnight watches, exasperation and laughter have all participated in God’s mysterious act of creating beautiful life,

We bless you.

May the God who filled Mother Eve with life and who filled Prophetess Deborah with wisdom and power and who brought our Savior into the world through a women of remarkable courage, fill you with all mercy and joy today. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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