There is an old and beautiful tale of a rabbi’s child who was inclined to wander in the forest.  Over time, the father became concerned and asked the boy why each day he ventured into the dangerous woods.
           The boy answered his dad saying, “I go there to find God.”
           “Well, of course, that’s a fine thing,” the rabbi reassured his son.  “But, don’t you know that God is the same everywhere?”
“Yes,” said the boy, “but I’m not.”
This story reminds us that our searching and experience of God changes as we find ourselves in various places – spiritually, emotionally, and physically. The important thing to remember is that while God is immutable, we change.  We are continually changing through this shared journey called life.  It also reminds me that I can choose to be a different person today (and tomorrow) than yesterday. It seems important to me, then, that we are supremely honest with ourselves as we determine the values that we choose to guide our life.  Rev. Dr. Maurice Boyd, one of the great preachers of the 20th century, once invited his congregation to consider the following “realities” when developing a credo for life.  These realities are too good not to share.  Enjoy.
 
If what you are after is first and foremost power, you’d better forget about love.
If you insist in putting yourself at the center, you’d better get ready for a life of loneliness.
If you are a gossip, don’t be expecting confidences.
If you view life as essentially a quantitative proposition, you’d better keep your averages up.
If you think life is a race won by the swift, you dare never slow down.
If you think the fight goes to the strong, you’d better never relax.
If you love life in the fast lane, don’t even think of setting your heart on anything that takes time.
If what you are seeking is security, then you’d better forget about genuine ecstasy because you can’t have both.
If you honestly believe that life is a rat race, don’t be surprised if you don’t find any dignity in it.
If you’re primarily interested in justice and not in mercy, you’d better never make any mistakes.
If you are ruthless on the way up, don’t be looking for tenderness on the way down. 
 
Glad to be your pastor… DON
 
Chasing Rabbits...An Inside Job
6.5.2018
Anything mechanical is not my cup of tea.  Renee has come to know and love me as an “idea type of guy.”  All that to say, I am a mechanical moron!  Give me a book or something to be written, and I have found my niche; planning or creating something, I’m happy as a hungry flea on a hound dog! Anything else…I make no promises! Chainsaws?    Absolutely terrify me.  Hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.?  Gave them up for lent many years ago and never reclaimed them!
Which makes it even more surprising when, while channel surfing late at night a few weeks ago, I became enamored by reruns of the television hit, Extreme Makeovers: Home   Edition (not to be confused with the Extreme Makers – plastic surgery, wedding, or weight loss editions!).  Despite being a confessed mechanical moron, I am deeply impressed with those people who have wonderful mechanical skills and know how remodel homes, exterior and  interior.  Perhaps a tad more than “impressed.”  Okay, I am downright envious on them!
With those remodeling masters from Extreme Makeovers fresh in my thinking, this challenging piece of dialogue from Noah benShea’s clever book Jacob’s Journey came to mind:
“All of us are magicians,” said Jacob.  “With great skill we shift who we are as if we were peas under walnut shells.  Soon, we ourselves have no idea where we are hidden.  Soon, pride in our camouflage causes us to become caught in our own slight of hand.” 
“Well,” said the young man, “at least I’m not old like my grandfather.  He sits with his chin resting on his cane, doing  nothing for hours.  I have my whole life ahead of me.”
“You do have your whole life in front of you,’ said Jacob, “and yet life is an experience not only of breadth, but of depth.  As you grow older, the game of life goes inside, making room for memory.  The interior life is no less real, and in some ways more private, more ‘yours.’”
“But,” said the young man, “what do you think my grandfather spends so much time thinking about?”
“Maybe he is thinking about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes,” said Jacob.  “Maybe he’s worried that his grandson is living only on the surface of life, and he wonders when you’ll come inside.”
Spirituality is bi-directional. Most certainly, spirituality looks ‘up’ to our God, but authentic spirituality invites – no, demands – we journey within, to the inside, and consider the possibility of doing some divine remodeling. SELAH (stop and think about it).
 
Glad to be your (transitional) pastor.                                                                      DON

Anything mechanical is not my cup of tea.  Renee has come to know and love me as an “idea type of guy.”  All that to say, I am a mechanical moron!  Give me a book or something to be written, and I have found my niche; planning or creating something, I’m happy as a hungry flea on a hound dog! Anything else…I make no promises! Chainsaws?    Absolutely terrify me.  Hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.?  Gave them up for lent many years ago and never reclaimed them!
Which makes it even more surprising when, while channel surfing late at night a few weeks ago, I became enamored by reruns of the television hit, Extreme Makeovers: Home   Edition (not to be confused with the Extreme Makers – plastic           surgery, wedding, or weight loss editions!).  Despite being a          confessed mechanical moron, I am deeply impressed with those people who have wonderful mechanical skills and know how          remodel homes, exterior and  interior.  Perhaps a tad more than “impressed.”  Okay, I am downright envious on them!
With those remodeling masters from Extreme Makeovers fresh in my thinking, this challenging piece of dialogue from Noah benShea’s clever book Jacob’s Journey came to mind:
“All of us are magicians,” said Jacob.  “With great skill we shift who we are as if we were peas under walnut shells.  Soon, we ourselves have no idea where we are hidden.  Soon, pride in our camouflage causes us to become caught in our own slight of hand.” 
“Well,” said the young man, “at least I’m not old like my grandfather.  He sits with his chin resting on his cane, doing  nothing for hours.  I have my whole life ahead of me.”
“You do have your whole life in front of you,’ said Jacob, “and yet life is an experience not only of breadth, but of depth.  As you grow older, the game of life goes inside, making room for memory.  The interior life is no less real, and in some ways more private, more ‘yours.’”
“But,” said the young man, “what do you think my grandfather spends so much time thinking about?”
“Maybe he is thinking about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes,” said Jacob.  “Maybe he’s worried that his grandson is living only on the surface of life, and he wonders when you’ll come inside.”
Spirituality is bi-directional. Most certainly, spirituality looks ‘up’ to our God, but       authentic spirituality invites – no, demands – we journey within, to the inside, and consider the possibility of doing some divine remodeling. SELAH (stop and think about it).
 
Glad to be your (transitional) pastor.                                                                      DON

Chasing Rabbits....We Need Each Other
4.2.18

       A majestic cathedral in Northern Europe was known for its magnificent organ.  Unlike the electric organs of today, these organs depended on a man who would pump by hand the air needed for the organ to produce its great sound.
 
           A guest organist was scheduled to play for the 4 PM recital featuring the works of Mozart and Mendelssohn.  The brilliant guest organist bowed before the crowd and said, “For my first selection I will play a piece by Mozart.”  He sat at the organ and began to press the keys but  absolutely no sound came out.  He attempted a second time; but again, to no avail.  This time, very aggravated, he said loudly, “For my first selection I will play a piece by  Mozart.”  He returned to the keyboard, but still no sound.  Suddenly he heard a voice from behind the organ, “If you don’t say ‘we,’ I ain’t gonna pump!” The organist smiled and said, “For OUR first selection WE will play a piece from Mozart.”  The great music was heard by all.

         The church of Jesus Christ always plays it best music when we realize “we” and not “I.”       Perhaps this is why Jesus put a table – the Lord’s Table – at the center of our faith.

        But it’s true: we need each other!  It not only takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to grow a strong faith community.  Parker Palmer, one of my favorite authors, understands the importance of community, saying: “Whether we know it or not, like it or not, honor it or not, we are embedded in community. Whether we think of ourselves as biological creatures or spiritual beings or both, the truth remains: we were created in and for a complex ecology of relatedness, and without it we wither and die.  This simple fact has critical implications: community is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received.” (Parker, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community, 1998).

       How do you like that…void of community – God’s special gift – we die!  It eludes us eternally. Not only does community maintain life, it is also the source of our healing: physical, emotional, and spiritual. I think of the Lakota people and their practice of the “inner circle” (“hocokah”) comes to mind.  Originally formed around the elders of the community, this practice promoted healing, change, and intense communal support.  As psychiatrist Lewis Mehl-Madrona describes the practice, “We can make community, create community art, create community ceremony and dance and ritual and music for our healing, even if faced with the lack of blueprints for how to do this.  We can dance. We can keep rhythm.  No other primate from capuchin monkeys to non-human apes can keep rhythm. This is uniquely human, and we must use it to our full advantage to entrain ourselves to    coherence with each other for maximal healing and transformation (Mehl-Madrona, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story, 2010).”
 
      If I am hearing the good doctor correctly, he is telling us we need each other – and to just do it!  Don’t worry about doing it “correctly,” just be and stay in community!  I am so very thankful for our tribe, sometimes called the First Christian Church, as we worship, work, and play together. Truly, a genuine and authentic gift of community! As St. Paul reminded the faith community in    Philippi, “I thank God upon every remembrance of you.”  As always, I look forward to dancing and being in community with you on Sunday.  Glad to be your (transitional) pastor. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                      Pastor Don

Direct from the “did that really happen” file comes this little gem from the Arizona Republic newspaper. Officer Tori    Matthews of the Southern California Humane Society got an emergency call: a boy's pet iguana had been scared up a tree by a neighbor's dog. It then fell from the tree into a swimming pool, where it sank like a brick. Officer Matthews came with her net. She dove into the pool, emerging seconds later with the pet's limp body. "Well, you do CPR on a person and a dog," she thought to herself, "why not an iguana?" So she put her lips to the iguana's mouth. 
“Now that I look back on it," she says now, "it was a pretty ugly animal to be kissing, but the last thing I wanted to do was tell this little boy that his iguana had died." The lizard         responded to her efforts and is expected to make a full recovery.
Now that story may not impress you, but it impresses me. I salute Officer Tori Matthews. Despite loving all things reptilian, the line for me is drawn at mouth-to-mouth action with an iguana! But I commend Officer Matthews for her heroic and compassionate act.  Well done, Officer Matthews, well done.  She went beyond the call of duty. I salute you.
Okay, yes, it’s a funny story and the humor could go on ad infinitum. But what I found particularly impressive about Officer Matthews’ unusual actions is the compassion she demonstrated toward that young boy. He was heartbroken over the seeming death of his        beloved pet iguana.  His world came crashing down on him because of the unfortunate events that had transpired that day.  For a young boy – perhaps just a tender eight or nine-year-old lad – you just never know when tragedy will strike and it will be the last day in the life of your       beloved iguana’s life! No doubt the youngster was traumatized, devastated by what was           happening. Officer Matthews was having none of it; she sprang into action, forfeited her sense of hygiene, took a risk – and it worked.  She saved the day!
It’s the same type of compassion witnessed the other day on a Detroit freeway.  Eight truckers positioned their 18-wheeler rigs side-by-side under an overpass bridge when they     received word came from the police about a man who was about to complete suicide by jumping off the bridge.  They tied up freeway traffic in both directions for hours as the man was coaxed off the bridge by police.  
     According to Jesus, compassion is a central attribute characterizing faithful Christian  living.  I have been re-reading Marcus Borg’s book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Borg’s classic (if you are a progressive) changed my life over 20 years ago when it was first    published. On the subject of compassion, Borg reminds us that Jesus refers to God as a “womb.”  In fact, the origins of the word “compassion” in both the Hebrew and Aramaic languages of scripture is related to the word womb.  Matthew the gospel writer tells us to be “compassionate as God is compassionate.” Thus, according to Borg, to be compassionate is to be womb-like.  God is womb-like, Jesus says, therefore, you (we) are to be womb-like.
What does it mean to be womb-like?  Borg says that it means to be life-giving and      nourishing.  It means to feel what a mother feels for the children of her womb: tenderness,   overseeing their well-being, finding her children precious and beautiful.  But it can also mean fierceness and being protective.  We’re talking Mama Bear protectiveness, here! This is          especially true when her cubs are threatened or exploited in any way.  So to be compassionate, as God is, finds its roots in social justice, challenging exploitative ethics and systems of domination.    
     One of the greatest joys I have every week is to look out from the pulpit and see a congregation of compassionate people.  Whether its feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless, keep children from sleeping on the floor, giving voice to the voiceless, or a multitude of other compassionate acts, First Christian Church-Morehead understands what compassion, womb-likeness, is all about! I am honored to be part of FCC’s compassionate movement as your (transitional)  pastor.                                                                                       Shalom,
                                                                                                                         Don
 
                                                                                                   

​1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.  So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.  Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
​
I just got back on Sunday afternoon from a spiritual retreat.  It was a silent retreat, where one has sacred, safe spaces, and the support of the others there, to simply listen for what is stirring in our souls, and read, or contemplate sacred texts and thoughts.  

It isn’t an easy thing to do.  As one teacher shared with me years ago, the most frightening thing about being alone is you know who you are going to meet, and sometimes our own selves can be the most frightening person we know.  

That is why it is so vital to have a relationship with the living God – with the Christ who knows human pain - and the Holy Spirit, which can be with you, holding you while you venture into your own depths, where you know you are not alone. There is a power of Grace and Compassion with you, and that is the only way we can make the spiritual journey unscathed ~ having the presence of the creator and lover of our souls, always offering us hope.

So, I was on this silent retreat, and I was journaling, as I do, and I came across so many painful feelings I have carried with me since youth.  And I came to realize that there was a lot of pain from the experience of envy.  Either people envious of me, or my envy of others.

Envy, as a noun is defined: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck; and the verb is: desire to have a quality, possession, or other desirable attribute belonging to (someone else).  

Wow.  I thought I’d start listing my sins in this area, but realized very quickly that it really is intensely a part of so much of my life, and others!  I am not alone!

The first thing many think of when we think of envy in the Bible is the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain killed his brother Abel because he was jealous that God was more pleased with the sacrifice his brother had made.  But I was thinking, maybe envy goes even further back into the depths of humanity.  
The story of Adam and Eve is that they were told not to eat from the tree which would give them knowledge of good and evil.  And they both did anyway. There is a sense of their desire to have what God had. The most core separation that humanity has from each other – is our desire to have what others have.  And just as the fruit of the tree brought knowledge of good and evil – with that came also the awareness of negative and destructive concepts such as shame and evil.

Now, one of the spiritual tools I use is a little dictionary. Even though I may know what a word means, I have always been empowered to a deeper understanding of that word, when I would look up the definition of it – and write it out and pray upon it and contemplate how that word, or those feelings play a part in my life – for good and bad.  And I’ll even define words in the definition for more awareness. And another thing I’ll do is look up the antonym – the opposite of the word - and define that.
Near Antonyms of envy are: benevolence, goodwill, kindness, sympathy.

And I found another word that I had never heard of before, that could be the opposite of envy ~ it is “Mudita.” Mudita is a word from an ancient language called Sanskrit, and it means: “joy; especially sympathetic or vicarious joy; the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being.”
And, seeing as I always seem to be seeking antidotes to sin, I wanted to find out how I could catch myself when I was being envious.  Now, this is so hard to do! Because, face it, don’t we all think we have really good reasons why we are unhappy about stuff we want and don’t have?  These envies are hard to really accept ~ who wants to ~ so we can much easier not see the unhappiness we carry as something else, or someone else’s fault.  

I just was tired of being unhappy about some things and I wanted to do something constructive about it. So I determined I would try to look at each sadness, each complaint, each negative and destructive thought or feeling and replace it with a gratitude, or a joy.  One of my online sources said the cure for the verb envy is gratitude.  And the opposite word of the noun envy is Mudita - Joy.

Now, this is where the scripture comes in. Paul was writing to the Thessalonians about their faith and how amazing it was and what their faith is good for.  Everyone knows that bad things happen to everyone.  It may feel like some more bad things happen to some people than to others, and that may be true, but the solution is not to get angry or envious, but to empower ourselves so that when “[the] sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and there will be no escape!” If we can be empowered against the darkness, then we will be amongst those who know that we are loved, and “are not in darkness” we will know that we “are all children of light and children of the day.” 

If any one of us here feels that they are in the darkness, I pray we will seek to find an antidote – to seek the light – to seek the hope ~ seek the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives and trust him as we travel into our souls looking for our depths to be filled with the sacred until we know it all over our entire bodies!  That is wholeness in Christ! Having all of our depths know we are sacred and work to become new in Christ – ever new – ever growing – ever seeking integrity with the one whose we are. 
And make no mistake about it – there is not one person here who is not loved intensely by God, who God does not desire to be united with fully!  Everyone here is born in sacredness and that is their true home!  

It may be work to find our way back into the home of sacredness, we may fall away at times, but our human calling is to know that we are beloved.  That is why Paul tells the Thessalonians: “since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation . . . Therefore encourage one another and build up each other.”  This is why faith communities are so vital – because we need each other to reminds us that we are sacred, that we are not alone, that we are children of the living God and precious.  Church, 12 steps programs, sociologist – can all attest to the truth that we need to find our way to each other, to not be envious – but to take joy in each other, to seek gratitude in what we have because right now, in this moment – we can have the love and forgiveness, the grace and the compassion of God and right now in this moment it is enough!  YOU are enough, right now. You really are.  Amen 

​Rest in Eternity Now

​Spirituality has a few essentials to it.  One of them is the concept of being fully present in the moment of “NOW”. There are so many pitfalls to our human awareness because we so often stray from the present moment.  Much of our personality has been re-designed through our past experiences, and if we allow destructive past experiences to affect us today, we often are missing out on so much human connection, truth, presence, power and peace.  Some say we cannot know God if we are hindered by our past - we are not living our true selves – because we are wearing protective covers over our true beings.  I believe this to be partially true.  We see more dimly the presence of God the more our past clouds our soul. God is always able to be known, we need only desire to. 
 
But we often protect our true beings from past pains; we learn to guard ourselves from what may happen again.  And, yet, our true beings need to be vulnerable in order to fully know God. This does not mean we need to allow ourselves to be used and abused, it means we learn and live in grace and not harden our hearts and live in fear. The part of our soul which wears a cloak of protection from the past is also guarded against the power that God has to be with us fully. 
 
There is also another hindrance to being in the present knowing God, and that is worrying about the future.  We do need to be able to plan ahead, make goals, look forward to events, but worry is such a waste of time and blocks the confidence we have that God will be with us now and forever.  When we worry about something, we are expressing a doubt that God may be with us then. And often worry keeps us from being ABLE to imagine solutions in the present.
 
So, being in the NOW is very hard to do.  And it is wrought with complications and dangers.  I love this article from a year ago by Richard A. Mueller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley:
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/09/27/495608371/now-and-the-physics-of-time
 
From this article:
Time is elusive and enigmatic. The moment now is ephemeral.
 
Einstein's quandary was described by Rudolf Carnap:
 
"Einstein said the problem of the Now worried him seriously. He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation. So he concluded 'that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside the realm of science.'"
 
For me, the mystery of time – of the NOW - connects right into the concept of ETERNITY – of God being the ALPHA and OMEGA!  And soon our church will be experiencing All Saints’ Day (November 5th) as well as Eternity Sunday – the final Sunday of the Church year (November 26th).  It is this time of year that we watch the glorious and beautiful death of the leaves from our trees, and plants, going into hibernation so they can bloom again in the spring. Time is contemplated NOW.
 
And for me, I am so grateful that our God is a God of all time and space.  So I can go into the past with God and be healed and empowered. I can catch myself worrying about the future and let it go, in trust and gratitude.  But what is most vital to me is that I can be in the ever elusive NOW with God and discover a peace, a power, a comfort ~ that restores my soul like no nap or vacation ever could.
 
I pray for each One who reads this. I pray for this Town. I pray for this State. I pray for this Nation. I pray for this World. I pray for this Universe. I pray for all the Universes that are now or ever will be, and in doing so, I am part of eternity NOW. From thence my strength comes.

I sometimes don’t remember what I did yesterday, but I remember clearly when I was in High School reading Ecclesiastes, and felt myself transported from wherever I was sitting into the realms of miracle and wonders.  I read it once, and each word felt like it was speaking to me – lifting itself up from the page and into my entire brain, not just my eyes and ears – it was filling my soul.  And then I read it again, and again.  I was addicted to the text for one day. I wanted its truth t be ingrained in my soul forever.

And I guess it makes sense that it would, at that age.  High School is a time where you feel like you better be ready to be launched into adulthood with all its responsibilities, and yet, you really don’t know enough yet for maturity, so there is an existential crisis just brewing.  And as I read: “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.”  It felt as though I could release the breath that I had been holding in my soul worrying about the future. It felt as though I could live in the moment and trust the entire universe.  Thinking and worrying about something I did not know about, which was most likely vanity, was shared with me as being un-spiritual.

And it really is, un-spiritual.  The Preacher was right, so much of what we humans do, we do to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, and that is a form of vanity.  We may need to do those things to get to the place where we can love and accept ourselves as we are, just as the preacher did, but in the end, it is vanity. Don’t forget – he listed all these things as things he tried!  He speaks of “The Futility of Seeking Wisdom,” “The Futility of Self-Indulgence,” “The Frustration of Desires” . . . He speaks as one who knows because he has tried them all and in his search for the truth of life, he tries it all and comes to discover that: “This also is vanity and a chasing after (or feeding on) wind.” And we may carry a little too much stigma to the thought of vanity.  To me, vanity is just a distraction and a little shy of narcissism, but often, as soon as we realize our vanity, it is as if it slips away (if we let it) and not hold tighter to the vanity out of shame and denial.  

Most people know Ecclesiastes because of its “Everything Has Its Time” passage:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up; 
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

The Preacher, in speaking of the vanities, encourages us, in this text, to experience all of life in the right time and place.  We lose this in life, sometimes, out of our fears.  We try to be stoic when we should just let ourselves cry, or we don’t dance or laugh enough – this text is designed to help us focus on knowing where we are in our lives RIGHT NOW and to allow ourselves to be fully in that place.  This text is often read at funerals, I guess because people need to be reminded that death is a part of life, and mourning is OK. How we ever got it in our minds that mourning was not OK, I will never know, perhaps we hate seeing our loved ones in pain because of some loss that can never be made better.  Mourning is hard.  And yet, we are also told in the same phrase that dancing is OK, too, even while mourning . . . there is a time for it all, and it is only truly vanity if you are doing the right thing at the wrong time.  Like speaking when we should be silent, or vice versa.  There is a right time, and we are called to seek God in that moment, and not to fill in the space with vanity.

So, all these vanities – all these things we shouldn’t do – we are given the relief from the confusion by being FINALLY given a direction to aim for: “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by . . . This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot.”

It is OK to be happy and enjoy ourselves.  I cannot imagine being fully happy if there is some suffering going on and I can relieve it.  This happiness is a happy void of vanity – void of self absorption – void of guilt or shame. The Preacher focuses so much on vanity as a warning, and when he has stripped away all those things we can lay our ego on – then he says – there he says – that we can experience joy.  Being in the moment – accepting the truth of life in the right time, and living it fully, this can bring joy.  

Well, the town is buzzing with the students from the university. This is my first go round with the Morehead rhythm of: Students; No Students; then Students again. During these 5 months (163 days from March 1st, 2017 to today, August 12, 2017) I’ve been here, I’ve traveled out of this county at least 20 times, which means at least 20 times I have seen the sign that welcomes us to Rowan County saying something like, “Rowan County, Home of Academic Excellence.” One would hope that having seen the sign so many times I would be confident in the exact wording of that observation by now, but I don’t ~ however you can trust me; I have the gist of it down. 
 
This is what I find almost earth shatteringly mystical about that sign – it is so true, and so powerful, and so amazing, and here we are walking or driving around town, acting as though what has been happening in this area since 1887 is ordinary, when it is actually, sublime.
 
Education makes huge differences in lives, and even one life can make a difference in one family and community, and changed communities can influence the wider communities . . . every life has the potential to create impressive, and yet still unnoticeable changes.  There are those lives who do create noticeable changes. Recently I received a scan of some notes written by Inez Faith Humphrey on “Mrs. Phoebe E. Button (1840-1892)”.  This is one life (two if you count her son, Frank along with her, but this was written about Phoebe) of a soul dedicated to changing lives for the better, and doing so through education:
 
"Sometimes a person’s service is measured, not so much by details remembered or recorded about the person, as by a movement started, the spirit put into the service, and the later results of the movement. Such is the case with Mrs. Phoebe Button.

In 1887, when Rowan County, Kentucky, was so torn by feuds that it was known as 'Bloody Rowan,' Mrs. Button and her son Frank came to Morehead, the county seat, to establish a school for the purpose of building up the spirit of good will that would eradicate the desire for 'feudin’ and fightin’.
…
From the beginning, Mrs. Phoebe Button had the right idea of teaching students so that they in turn could teach others. At the end of seventeen years the school had prepared three hundred teachers, and the number was increasing."
 
So now we are in 2017, 180 years later, and the town is buzzing with college students and professors gearing up for a new exciting year, wondering what will be learned, discovered, embraced, experienced in the semesters to come.  And this is a miracle which has come from a lot of hard work and dedication of individuals who have hung on to principles and morals, and ethics ~ and then trusted that if we take these steps we will be instruments of grace and truth to the world around us.  And I believe that one can have no doubt, that what we do in the faith of goodness and mercy, will bear the fruit, whether we are aware of them or not. 
 
May we walk these streets aware of the awe-inspiring mystery of the love of God, others, and education, and how we are a part of it all.

​Jesus says to love your enemies, and so it is something many of us strive to do.  But we are humans, and we have emotional challenges. I know it can be easy for me to love other people’s enemies, because I do not have the experience of mistrust that the others’ have.  And sometimes, I see the pain that others’ carry from their traumas and my heart aches.  I so wish they could be free of the pain they carry, from the loss of trust.
 
I am reminded of the story about the pastor who carried a glass of water and asked how heavy it was.  People were guessing the weight, and then the Pastor said that the weight depended upon how long the glass was held.  The longer it was held, the heavier the glass became.  She continued saying, this is also true with the pain we carry from anger, disappointments, etc.  The longer we carry them, the heavier they become.
 
What is also true is that the longer we carry them, the more insidious a part of us they become and the harder it is to separate our precious, beloved soul from the pain we carry.  They become part of who we are, and affect us in ways we may be unaware of.  They can surprise us and we react to the past pain in present moments when it may or may not be appropriate.
 
Pain is important to learn from.  I was kicking myself yesterday because I put some fresh meat in a greased frying pan, and the hot oil splashed up onto the tender part of the inside of my wrist.  As I was going to the cold water, I had to laugh at myself.  How many years have I been cooking?  How many times have I burnt myself, on oil, on the oven rack, on a hot pan . . .?  So many decades of burning myself in the kitchen in so many ways possible, and I still haven’t learned . . . I had to laugh and shake my head, and remember “Sighs too great for words…” Not learning from pain can cause us a lot of pain . . . physically and emotionally.
 
So I have as the title to this Blog, “How To Love And Be Loved By Everyone” because it seems like the kindest thing to live a life of grace – and it seems to be what Jesus wishes for us.  The real world is full of people who are carrying their glasses of pain with them, and we never know what might set us off, or what we might do to set others off.  And it would be so lovely if we could somehow set those glasses down, forever.  I sometimes think I can do that, and then suddenly, I see I have picked it back up, unawares.
 
The best I can think of, as a response to “How To Love And Be Loved By Everyone” is that it honestly is impossible to do.  Even the most beloved son of God was incapable of being loved by everyone, but he seemed amazingly capable of loving everyone, which is why he lives on to this day, which is what makes him God.  But he wanted to encourage humanity to keep trying ~ to make it our goal ~ because trying to love everyone is the most productive way to self discovery and self awareness, and self discovery and self awareness is the most intimate way to discover the God parts of our being.
 
Knowing our pain, being aware of those people and events which have caused us pain, is one way to begin to let go of the glass, and to free us to live in joy with God.  Setting the glasses of hurt down on the alter of God’s mercy frees us from the burden, and can free the other as well, and be an opening to reconciliation and the amazing power which comes from that.  Living in joy with God . . . begets more joy, and the world need all of that they can get!

“Feelings, nothing more than feelings . . .”

Sorry if you will now have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day.  “Earworms” can be so disturbing.  The song has been stuck in my head for about 24 hours now because I’ve been trying to sort out all my thoughts and feelings from the General Assembly (GA) in Indianapolis this past week.  The experience of GA stirs me on so many levels, and the feels just hint a little at all that is going on.  They are like whispering little voices talking all the same time saying different things and I wish I had Dumbledore’s Pensive and wand to sort them out one by one. But I don’t. So I will do it the old fashioned muggle way – with ink on paper, or whatever one calls this medium now, keyboard and word program.
 
First of all driving there was stirring. Saturday I drove up to Cincinnati and then through Indiana to Indianapolis.  The drive through Kentucky was just breathtaking! It was a lovely clear day, and the green hills had a special glow about them.  Then we got to northern KY and I began my feeling of disorientation.  Thank the creator for GPS, because I didn’t really have to think too much about where I was going, because my mind was flitting all over.  I knew these roads.  They were familiar to me.  Yet I hadn’t been in this area since May 2009, I do not believe.  And I even lived in this area before went overseas in 1993.  People I knew, jobs I had had, random memories were popping up out of nowhere.  There was enough still there to remind me of the past, but things had changed so much. And I began what I have been referring to as my “Rip Van Winkle” mode ~ trying to remember what was, while being overwhelmed by the differences. And I had to just keep on moving . . .
 
So I get through Cincinnati and start traveling through Indiana.  I was born in Indiana ~ West Lafayette, IN as a matter of fact.  And I was recalling road signs from my childhood which said, “Hoosier Hospitality is no accident!!” I was looking for those signs.  Didn’t see them. That didn’t make Indiana any less hospitable, but I did miss the hills of KY. 
 
I arrived at the hotel, settled in, and still in my traveling clothes thought I’d get checked into the assembly. And as I wandered around, I saw people all over the place – some with official GA badges hanging around their necks, some with costumes on!  I think there were more in “Pop Con” costumes then from our assembly at that point.  It was awesome!  According to the online source: “Indy PopCon is a pop culture convention that has been held at the Indiana Convention Center since 2014.”  Young people wandering all over for their convention, dressed as their favorite characters.  It gave me so much joy! 
 
Then I ran into a friend from the Capital Area, and since he couldn’t get a second ticket for his husband to join him, he let me have his ticket to Sharon Watkin’s farewell dinner.  And I had to go, like, immediately. I latched myself onto another friend and her Mom, and went to the dinner, dressed in my driving clothes, and had hoped my smile would shine away any vision of my sweat pants.
 
As I sat at the table, and people joined us, one soul from my life after another was suddenly in front of me, and I was quickly overwhelmed with joy.  I think I even squealed a few times.  The dinner was lovely, the presentations were moving. Then I went to the Capital Area reception and saw people I hadn’t seen for months and met new people and after that, still in my ugly sweat pants, I floated back to my room. 
 
Sunday I was planning on watching the FCC Morehead worship service from my hotel room, but there were some technical difficulties, which caused me so much frustration because I really wanted to see it, and at the same time I wanted to be there to fix the problem, and still be in Indianapolis… O THE AGONY!!!  Then I discovered that one of our church representatives was sick and unable to make the trip, and that made me sad. So I did a lot of meditation and prayer. After that I went on and toured around the halls afterwards and ran into the delegate who could make it.  She was brilliant and joyous and she gives me so much hope!  We went to lunch outside, the sidewalk was uneven at one point, and I fell. People came rushing to my aid, but no one could do much for my greatest ache – which was my wounded pride. That fall caused me pain throughout the rest of the assembly, but got better. I just keep moving on . . .
 
There were, over the next days, worship services, workshops, business and resolutions to be dealt with ~ and history to be made!  Our denomination voted with over a 2/3rds majority to call Rev. Teresa Hord Owens as general minister and president. She is the first black female head of a mainline protestant church. But those facts are not what make her election such a phenomenon. It is what she symbolizes for our faith. For our denomination, unity is, perhaps, its most important guideline.  “We are not the only Christians, but Christians only,” “All means all,” “We are a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” These are all sayings that our denomination holds dear, and with the election of Rev. Owens, we are continuing our commitment to unity of all God’s people.
 
The theme of this year’s Assembly was “ONE”.  A simple word, with so many challenges and interpretations.  Being ONE people, regardless of race, sexual orientation, nationality, political leanings, is our calling as set from Christ. John 17:22-23 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  It was good to focus for days on the idea of loving God, loving each other, and having hope that we may be one.  I was reminded of the early days of me “discovering” the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I was seriously thrilled that this was a church who was not set on proclaiming that theirs was the only way to God, one that respected education, differences, communication, and tried to focus its being on loving God and each other and being ONE. 
 
I can say I am proud to be called into this church.  I am in love with everyone who was at the convention – and perhaps especially happy that for a day or two we shared the convention center with those extraordinary young people of Pop Con!  It seemed like such a perfect fit. 
 
So, I drove home on Wednesday, really wanting to be Sabrina and just wiggle my nose and be home and not have to drive 4 hours.   But I am glad I go to experience the wonders of Kentucky on the return trip.  I looked into the rolling hills before me and knew that soon enough I would be nestled into those mountains and be home, where I could so loudly exclaim, “I LOVE MY CHURCH!”  I love it because it knows how to love, how to strive to be ONE with each other.  And we are called to know and share this love, because there are so many, who do not know the bountiful, glorious, love that has no boundaries, that God is. 
 
In unknotting the threads of my feelings, I can say with confidence that those confusing feelings, that pain, the disorientation and the “Rip Van Winkle” affect all came down to the ONE truth that God has called us to unity in love regardless. And there is joy in proclaiming this.  We had days of focusing on ONE, we lived ONE, and so let us affirm our truth that in God is the power, in us is the power that we can achieve more ONE every day of our lives.  Feelings need some reflection and guidance and time, in order to overcome our previous life experiences, and find the purity of God through all our ego based selves.  And this is what community in faith is all about.  This is the urgency of NOW in becoming ONE. Come to church, let us love and share and know that there is ONE God, and we are a vital part, in and of that ONE!

​“Don’t you know that it’s all about that grace, ‘bout that grace, not judgment . . .”
 
I did it again, I forgot something.  I confess, I am not always on top of things.  I try to stay on top of things, but don’t you know, the compassionate Pastor’s life is not an easy one.  Such a diverse profession – part door to door salesman, part preacher (and the Holy Spirit is not always adhering to my timeline), part community organizer, part family consultant, part friend to all, part counselor, and only some of this stuff can ever be planned and fit into a nice timetable. Most often what happens in a day is thrust upon me and I need to be flexible and set priorities in the blink of an eye.
 
I miss those days when I was Assistant Manager at Jean Nicole at the Turfland Mall.  There, I would open the doors, straighten the racks, greet customers, encourage staff, sell clothes, try on clothes myself, balance the books, lock up the place and leave it all behind. 
 
As a Pastor, I keep a list of things to do, I try to not lose anything, but some things slip through.  And I do feel bad about them when they do.  When I slip up, I wonder how anyone can trust me, ever. I pray to God that I will be helped and forgiven, and I desire nothing more than to never overlook, forgive, misquote, ever, ever, again!  And then . . . life happens, again.
 
So I begin to try to look at things another way. When I mess up, I see it as a calling for me to be kinder and more generous in offering grace to others when there are mess ups!  And when I hear someone judging someone else for an imperfection, it is my greatest desire to offer the judger another perspective, because grace is so important.
 
I find people almost fearfully apologizing to me for minor infractions, and I wonder what they have experienced in life which makes them feel they have to worry so.  And yet, I know what they experience; because I have been on the receiving end as well and the giving end of rudeness and cutting remarks as a result of another’s imperfections. 
 
My go to response when my mental imperfections pop up is – “I am so stupid.” And then I wonder how Centre or LTS could have given me degrees, me being so dumb? How could I have lived and preached and pastured in Germany, me being so dumb?  So I am logically forced t come to the conclusion that I am not dumb.  I have a different sort of intelligence, perhaps. ~ one that is not dependent upon memory, but on emotions. 
 
According to Wikipedia; "Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capability of individuals to recognize their own and other people's emotions, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence
 
And I think this is the most important aspect of knowing God – the degree to understand human emotions, and respond with grace – and essential to healthy human spiritual growth.  So when we find ourselves angry at someone, feeling like we have been slighted and therefore we want to lash out to cause them pain because of the slight we think we have received, may we strive to remember that we are adhering in those moments to a kind of knowledge that has little to do with healthy wisdom. Healthy wisdom is striving for grace, for we too, are imperfect.  Empathy and grace can bring us to an intelligence that reaps far greater rewards than relying purely on a competitive sense of knowing.  Love comes not from force, but from a sense of trust and togetherness. This is why God gave us free will, so we could love God, and know what love is, it is not forced, it is freely given through caring about the feelings of each other. 
 

​I was recently asked by a friend of mine about this blog, and if the earlier posts were from the previous pastor.  I said yes.  I wasn’t sure how to separate Rev. Molly Smother’s from mine on this, so I have just accepted it and moved on. Perhaps I should take some time to figure that out.  For now, I’ve just been busy getting to know the congregation, settling in and reacting to my new environment, and being Pastor, Mother, wife, pet Mama and friend. 
 
But upon corresponding with my friend about sharing a blog site with the previous Pastor, it got me contemplating how strange this profession is.  Unless you are doing a new church start, you will always be following someone in the ministry.  And most congregation members have numerous pastors to remember and compare you to.  So, it is weird!  It seems a little like being a new step mom to a serial marriager (I just made up that word); wanting the family members to like us, and knowing we must earn the love and respect by ourselves, one by one, creating new relationships.
 
Being newly called into a congregation is a challenge for everyone.  Often new Pastors have found they accidentally triggered a response to something a previous pastor had done or said.  Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so good.  There is a phase for the newcomer to feel like they have to tread very carefully and at the same time there can be so much newness and joy in the honeymoon phase of a new call, it is tempting to run into what we think is a field, when it turns out to be a china closet. 
 
And people will always have preferences as to how ministry will be done.  Pastors want to create a special experience for everyone to feel the sacred, and grow into the faith continually.  We who have been called into this ministry have been called because of who we are, and our integrity of being cannot always so easily be adapted for each individual congregant’s preferences. Our sincerest prayer is for our love to be accepted and to be loved and accepted for what we so want to offer the church, God and the world. 
 
Pastors can bring their baggage from previous experiences as well. Some people may remind us of someone from a previous congregation, for good or for ill, and it can be hard to see the new congregant for who he or she truly is.  These kind of relationships take time to become genuine and meaningful.
 
But the great thing about this whole experience is that the “serial marrier” is the body of Christ. And if we call look towards each other as beloved of Christ, if we all strive to love and accept each other as he would have us relate to each other, there is great hope for serving the community as he did.  Jesus taught, and shared his observations about how we can live n community.  The key is to reach beyond who we think we may be or who we think the other should be, and discover the newness of each day in Faith. 
 
Soon Eastertide will be over. Pentecost is June 4th, and then we enter into the “Ordinary Time”.  Here in Morehead the ordinary time seems to already be upon us as the University is on the summer schedule.  They are relaxing days of contemplation and making our faith routine and strong.  I am excited to see where we are in our relationships by the end of the ordinary time in November.  My hope is that we will know each other more sincerely, accept each other honestly, share with each other what we see and what we need, and grow in being Christ’s hands on this earth. Peace Y’all!